Wow, didn’t realize it’ll be available through Steam. That’s rad.
Ooh, it’s on Steam. checks Darn, goes by the Europe release date here (the 24th) rather than the U.S. one. Oh well.
La la la, waiting for call from GameStop about my Collector’s PC Edition, la la la, I can’t hear you.
And the damn of it all is that I just know my computer doesn’t have the specs to make it run all purdy. But I don’t care! It’s Irrational! (er, 2k!)
I’ve got the collector’s edition reserved too. I’ve been wanting this game ever since I first heard about it, a year or two ago. I loved System Shock 2.
I just have to live through Saturday, Sunday, and Monday and it’s mine! Mine!
The reviews I’ve read make it sound even better than I had hoped. I had worried that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations but it sounds like it’ll surpass them easily.
Cool. Thanks for the heads-up.
Pre-load is complete. For the next three days, I will soothe and appease the girlfriend to the best of my ability in hopes of lessening her ire at all the time I’ll spend “playing those silly games” after Tuesday.
The other pre-load, if you will.
Yeah, I played the demo all the way through. This game is damned fun.
I wonder what the replay value is going to be.
Argh! Still no PC demo, anyone tried out the xbox 360 demo yet? Let us know! 
Played the PC demo last night. It’s really cool. I don’t know if I’m going to start lauding it as the greatest game ever made like I see elsewhere, but it’s fun. Very immersive. The retro-environment is really neat. The water effects were as impressive as I’d heard. Ran well on my machine, too. . .although I’m really anal and tweak settings and stuff until it’s just how I like it. I didn’t do that last night, because. . .hey, I’d preloaded and the game would be out today, right?
I guess I’m not gonna bother going to the pit with this, but I made a bad call preloading through Steam. At 1600–because it wouldn’t activate any earlier–I boot up Steam and it decrypts Bioshock, and I come to find that the preload was really only about 80% of the full download, and this final 20% is trickling in at about 50KB/s.
Sigh. I should have just picked up the box the old fashioned way.
Anyone smarter than me out there playing on the PC right now?
I’m going through that right now also. Seriously, WTF? Couldn’t the pre-load have been like 99% of everything? This sort of thing chaps my hide. The game was supposed to be playable at 3:00 and it isn’t.
Well, I think ill go and pick it up for my 360 today on the way home from work…
That’s weird. I remember I pre-loaded HL2 and they just threw the switch a couple minutes after launch and it was playable. And that was when Steam sucked.
I’m on the 360 for Bioshock so I don’t have experience with the Steam release.
I’m about 10 hours into the main game. Bottom line is that it isn’t the Greatest Game Ever Made, so don’t listen to anyone who tells you that. What it is is a very very good single player experience. Personally I find that really exciting since these days it’s all Battlefield this, MMO that, Deathmatch this, and the Capture the that. A well crafted story I can play at my own pace is really awesome. I LOVE that there is absolutely NO MULTIPLAYER component that they felt compelled to spend time working on.
This is basically what the 10/10 and high 9 scores are trying to relay.
I don’t know if I “love” the fact there’s no multiplayer. I think this game shouldn’t be viewed as a strict FPS, but as a game like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. It’s just in a different format.
My teen son got this today with his own money. Don’t kill me, but I’m a bit concerned at the [del]sadism[/del] violence I saw in it*. It definitely earns its M rating. I would not want my younger son playing or watching it.
The images are very clear and sharp. The sound effects are er, quite effective as well…
*okay, okay-it’s just pixels on a screen. I’m squeamish.
Games are effective at conveying emotions, yes?
I’d say inciting or exciting emotions, but YMMV…
I’d like a game where there was a mystery to be solved–character driven, not just a shoot 'em up. Sorry, am hijacking.
Has anyone tried the PC demo yet (for those of us w/out a 360). I can’t seem to get it to even bother to install atm /sigh.
Have you tried getting it from Steam?
I have, partly as a test to see how it would fair on my system. Looks pretty nice, but my comp is pretty close to the recommended level. The beginning is interesting, mostly because I didn’t realise that you’re not playing a silent “you” protagonist, but apparently a voiced character. And the splicers aren’t “Grr Argh!” brainless zombie types, but reasonably articulate (albeit nuts) people. I spent most of the first few minutes thinking “What the hell was that noise? Where’s the voice coming from? I need a frickin’ torch. Gah! Oh, just a shadow. What the hell was that noise…”.
Nah, tried two separate download sites (fileplanet and one other). I’m way way beyond even the reccomended specs, but it won’t even install…some bizzare permissions thing that i’m stumped to fix (and I fix comps for a living). Should I take this into GQ?
That sounds pretty stupid of Valve/steam to do, but I would suggest to you (and everyone) to still use Steam anyway. Or any online distributor. Not because I’m a shill for them, but because the publisher gets most of the profits from boxed retail sales. As things switch to online distribution the actual distribution costs come down, and a bigger percentage of the profit can go to the developer. I’m guessing, for example, probably $30+ of each half life 2 sale over Steam went to valve, when more like $5 of each boxed sale went to them. Then again, they might’ve had agreements with a publisher so that they got a lot of the share of Steam sales anyway, I’m not really sure.
It’s sort of like music and the record labels - if you could buy a CD and have the artist get a dime, or buy it online off their artist’s own website and they get 90% of the profit, that’s better in my view.
edit:
Does the account you’re on have administrative privileges?
Don’t worry about it. After 3 hours on my 1.5 Mbit/sec DSL line, it’s less than 1% downloaded. Average speed has been around 2K/sec. There’s a good chance you and I will be playing it on the same day.