I’ve had Bioshock for about a year now, and I finally get to play it now that I have an updated graphics card.
Long story short, I’ve only owned Nintendo Systems my whole life and I barely dabbled in PC gaming. I’ve heard Bioshock was a good game to get if IM relatively new to FPS. So far it seems simple enough, I just have to figure out how to get more slots open so I can carry around more than two ‘hand-powers’. They say to get them at Gatherer Gardens, but I’m at the telekinesis Gatherer Garden right now, and there’s no options to purchase Gene Tonic Slots, so I had to ditch my fist of electricity.
Anyway… I guess what I need to know before getting any further is whether or not I can mess up in an irreversible way. This is always a problem for me. Like when I play Zelda… sometimes I just want to play the main game, then go back to look for things, but there have been times where I find out I only had one shot to get something and I had blown it.
So far the “story” is almost non existent… does it get deeper? Right now I don’t even know why “I” was on a plane that crashed, and why I’m exploring these underwater dystopian area. Did I miss a cut scene, or does the story evolve as you progress?
Any hints, tips, things that you liked about the game that I should look out for are welcome.
If you like Bioshock I’d suggest you check out Fallout 3, would you kindly, another RPG/shooter blend (although the RPG elements in Bioshock are pretty shallow). Obivion is also a good place to start.
I like the hack mini-games. I’m playing on easy… and so far, (other than trying to find out how to open mor damn slots), I have full health had um… er… magic arm juice.
Maybe I have to backtrack to other Gatherer Gardens to buy them? Anyway… the mood is great and the graphics are well done. I picked this one up because for some reason I was drawn to it like I was drawn to Resident Evil 4 which is my second favorite game of all time. Hope my instincts were right.
You should be able to buy extra plasmid slots at Gatherers Gardens, some might not have any, in which case don’t bother going back, but keep an ear out for the #"…in the garden we are growing…"
For fighting Big Daddies I find shocking them with plasmids then pumping them full of buckshot (the explosive stuff works best) is a good tactic, if you have any grenades save them for BDs too. Telekinetically chucking stuff (especially explody stuff or big stuff) at them is surprisingly effective if you’re low on ammo.
Most useful tonics I find are the health/eve related ones, you’ll want to go for those first. Static discharge is very useful against melee enemies, of which Bioshock has lots.
What’s your take on the Little Sisters? I have to admit, I can never bring myself to harvest them.
You can “mess up” by choosing to spend you cash on crappy plasmids, but not in any way that’ll stop you from completing the game. Later on, the order in which you upgrade your weapons evidently has an effect on the gameplay, but there’s enough upgrade stations and parts to upgrade everything all the way.
The only bordeline “mess up forever” decision is made when you harvest the slug off Little Sisters.
if you choose to save them, you won’t get as much immediate Adam, but overall you’ll get more, and some additional Plasmids as well. Also, you’ll get the good ending if you never kill any Little Sister over the course of the entire game.
If you opt to kill one, you’ll get much more Adam right now, but less total. Also, once you’ve killed even a single Little Sister, you’re getting the bad ending and can’t go back or redeem yourself.
The story is indeed very deep, especially if you snoop around looking for every audio recording. Mostly though, there’ll be little in the way of big Hollywood-style plot exposition monologues. You’ll discover a piece here, a piece there etc… until eventually the whole story will start to have a shape.
ETA : Oh, and I advise using the camera as much as possible until you’ve unlocked every bonus from every enemy type. It really makes a difference. Not that the game is hard considering you can’t ever die or lose anything, but still, respawning all the time feels…wrong. It’s as if a million Quicksaves suddenly cried out in terror, and were immediately silenced
As you get deeper into Rapture, the vending machines will have a wider selection.
Bioshock’s a fantastic game, but I don’t really think of it as a PC game. It was developed for consoles, not the PC. There’s a certain superficiality to the game because of that - not in terms of story or graphics, but in UI and design. A lot of things are simplified to work with a controller with a limited number of buttons. Compare to, say, System Shock 2, to which Bioshock is a “spiritual successor.” SS2 makes much fuller use of the possibilities offered by a full keyboard and mouse control, resulting in a much richer experience, even though the game itself is comparatively primitive.
Miller, that’s kind of what I mean though. I have a difficult time with normal typing on a keyboard, (and texting on the phone), to begin with. I think “limited number of buttons” at first would be a good thing. May not be the FULL PC gaming experience… but a good middle-ground game. I’ve played it on the 360 at a friends, and the mouse alone is a great help… it’s just the damn keyboard!
I know it’s not a “PC game” as the way a PC exclusive would be; like I said… I’ve only owned Nintendo game machines my whole life. I know nothing about PC games to begin with, I’m just happy I get to play HD games that have better visuals than the consoles… Just a little intimidated by it because I haven’t been in this neighborhood before. I mean… I don’t mean to knock the PS3 or X-Box either… the game may look better on my SMALL HD screen; and PC games are, (for me), a pain in the ass to even get started with. So… I just feel a little uninformed… PLUS, I’m not used to this type of game. I didn’t even get into Metroid Prime.
Both of those games have a great deal of freedom in how they can be played. It’s hard to speak of ‘missing’ stuff; it’s more like allowing for replay or just different ways to get through the game. Although in the out-of-the-box version of Oblivion (or the console version) you could mess up the character leveling and end up being nearly helpless if you weren’t careful.
Many new games are written both for console and PC. One remaining advantage of PCs is with user-created content (level editing, mods, etc.), which is far easier to implement on a PC game.
No you won’t. You will never get more. You get 160 Adam for harvesting. 80 Adam for saving them. Then for every 3 you save, you get a 200 Adam bonus. Doing the math, that means harvesting gets you 40 Adam more. Since there are 21 little sisters in the game officially (23 with the extra little sister bugs), you will lose 280 Adam by saving them all. However, the plasmids you get instead more than make up for that.
There’s actually 3 endings, with 2 sets of animations between them. The middle ending (where you harvest at least 1 but don’t harvest all of them) has a saddened voice-over by Tenenbaum and a very slightly different wording than the bad-ending where she’s angry with you.
Yep. Visit all the optional areas to collect all the story’s. In fact, I’d suggest getting a list from GameFAQs or similar of all the audio recording locations, just to make sure you get them. There is almost one in every room, and the rooms aren’t hidden, but there’s so many optional areas, that you can miss them.
Agreed with the camera. I like using the ice plasmid to freeze them for the shots because it lasts longer and uses less Eve than the electric equivalent. And get both research boosting plasmids.
Now, one thing I’ll say is Telekinesis is the most useful plasmid in the game. It uses no eve to pick something up with it, only to throw things. You can throw pretty much everything that’s not nailed down, and a corpse will pretty much kill any splicer in the beginning of the game, even on Hard difficulty. (I’ve played it both on medium and hard without ever using a vita-chamber.)
However, when you get telekinesis, the better choice is to make sure you’ve melted all the frozen rooms, and than ditch fire for the telekinesis. Being able to stun enemies is very helpful and fire can’t due that like electric can. However, seeing as how right now you’re on easy, telekinesis-throwing of stuff should pretty much destroy anything in your path that isn’t a big daddy.
My favorite way of killing an elite Rosie type big daddy on hard (naturally this works on any difficulty level with any type of big daddy:
Get six proximity mines. Launch them into an explosive barrel. Grab the explosive barrel with telekinesis. Find a big daddy (after snapping all the pictures of it and the little sister that you can) and throw the barrel at it. Easiest big daddy kill ever.
At the point you are currently at in the game there are no Gatherers gardens available. You will find your first after meeting your first little sister. I can’t remember if that one offers an extra plasmid slot or not, but you will find more after that point, and I know by the time you get to Neptune’s Bounty (next area after the clinic) you can find a GG with the option to get a slot.
Bioshock is a good game, but nowhere near my favorite RPG or FPS, let alone PC game. My big problme with it was that the idea of genetically engineered underwater distoypia was great, they just didn’t really depict that. The city is fairly linear(but there’s supposed to be the illusion of freedom) and it doesn’t really feel like it’s underwater to me, except in the first level, before you get to medical. Also, there’s a couple of big events near the halfway point, with one being really awesome, followed by a rather lame one(because I’ve played System Shock 2 and half suspected it for a while).
For me, it feels like the game has two really awesome parts(the Intro and the middle bit I mentioned) and with the rest of the game being merely okay, with a slow decline at the end(with an annoying escort mission to boot).
Better RPG’s: Anything Bioware makes, though the Balder’s Gate games are rather harsh as far as difficulty goes, not to mention any of the Main Fallout games(Tactics and such don’t count).
Better Shooters: Call of Duty 4(as well as 1 and it’s expansion, but those are rather old), No One Lives Forever 1/2, Any of the Thief games(though 3 is hit and miss), Any of the Half Life games(including Portal), Serious Sam(Kill Many Aliens In Ancient Egypt with Lasers and giant cannons. That’s all the plot there is. It’s better then it sounds), Left for Dead(if you like Zombie games).
System Shock 2 is Better then Bioshock in most ways. In fact, some reviewers have pointed out that Bioshock is just a dumbed down remake of System Shock 2 with a setting change. However, getting it to work on a modern computer might be difficult.
So if I don’t kill any of those Little Sister girls, or “harvest the slug off them”, I get the good ending?
The little sisters are the little girls right?
It takes me so long to get through games like this… I’m so OSD with checking evert detail and every room… I still miss stuff, but I try to get everthing like the recordings
The escort mission isn’t as bad as other games, though, because:
You get a new Little Sister every time one dies. At worst you just backtrack a little bit to a hole for her to come out of.
Honestly, the end battle was what I hated most.
It was so freakin’ easy! I honestly expected there to be another “form” of Fontaine that would be a lot harder to kill…but nope. Maybe if they didn’t put a health station in the same damn room as him it would have been a little tricky.
Correct on both counts. There is actually only one sister you have to deal with, and that’s your first. (It’s also the only one where you don’t have to fight a Big Daddy first). All others are optional. Though, fat chance getting through the game without dealing with the little sisters. (One might be able to pull it off on Easy, but I don’t even think it’s possible then. It might make for an interesting challenge.) So if you save the first one and don’t do anything with the rest, you’ll get the good ending. If you harvest the first and do nothing with the rest, you get the angry bad ending.
Additionally, if you want to deal with all the little sisters (which you should want to do), as long as you save every one of the first 21 little sisters you encounter, you will get the good ending. (If you found any of the extra sisters from the bug, you can do whatever you want to any remaining ones after you have dealt with 21 of them. Save them or harvest them, it doesn’t really matter. The game stops keeping track after 21.)
No it wouldn’t have been. I didn’t even bother with it and I still easily kicked his butt on hard. I found the first big daddy fight more difficult (and yes, it is the hardest enemy in the entire game regardless of difficulty level, IMO).
True, but I have a dislike for escort missions in general. If person/thing I’m escorting is at least somewhat intelligent and can defend itself to some extent, then I’m okay with it.
Very rarely, there’ll be one I love, like the “Death from Above” mission from COD 4.
Those of you who disliked the ending might be interested in this very good article about how the writer thinks the ending should’ve gone. Warning: it contains mild spoilers for Bioshock 2, but only by coincidence, which is explained at the start of the article. (The writer, Tom Francis, works for PC Gamer magazine, and is always worth reading.)
If you’re completely and utterly OCD, you can mess up a bit buying plasmids. Basically, they get cheaper over time. I would advise buying the health and eve upgrades first whenever available then the extra tonic slots and then whatever you want. But really, as long as you hold on to telekinesis you’ll always be able to make do.
There is a single bit where you can shoot yourself in the foot, though. At one point, you will have the option of killing a certain character. If you kill that character immediately, you will get a small reward, but if you wait until you encounter this character again later, you will get a much, much better one.
That’s a good way, but not the easiest. The very easiest way is:
to never fight them at all. Not directly, anyway. Use the Security Bullseye plasmid in an area with security cameras. The cameras will send security bots to fight the Daddy. One round of bots will usually take off about half of an elite Big Daddy’s health. One more will finish it off.
But my favorite method, due to the theatricality of it, is a way to kill the Bouncers:
find a nice hallway, set lines of 8-10 Trap Bolts at full and crouched height, and fire a shot at the Bouncer to induce an enraged charge. He’ll hit the bolts and die at a full run. Here’s a video.
