You might want to consider letting your younger son check it out. Sure, there might be some emotional scarring, but it might be worth it, if it scares him away from Objectivism.
Fiiiiire.
Fiiiiire. Water. Water and fire. Oh, god, so pretty.
Odd ‘weight’ to the controls, and that sound I make when I jump… disturbs me.
Dear 2K,
Why do you not want me to play your game? I really want to. I do! I’m even not playing Persona 3 while trying to figure out what the hell’s going wrong with your stupidly unhelpful error messages. At least it didn’t die halfway through installation, like some other people are experiencing…
Anyway, after poking through the files, I’ve discovered a mess of comments left from debug. The PC version is clearly just a port of the 360 one, which fills me with a great sadness, and also explains the “Gaming for Windows” banner around the box, meaning that a contract has been signed with the devil instead of making a game that actually, you know, runs on machines that people are using.
Well, after sitting through sluggish download speeds to get that last 20% for the better part of an hour, a post on the steampowered.com forums directed me toward deleting the ClientRegistry.blog file in the Steam directory. After restarting Steam, my download speeds were back to normal and I was playing shortly thereafter.
I’ll continue to use Steam, though. I think it’s an excellent model, although there will be hiccups every now and then. I like not having to swap DVDs. I like having my games keep themselves patched. I can back up all of my Steam games easily (if not necessarily quickly) so there’s no real concern of “losing” any by not having physical discs.
I’m with you on wanting devs to see a bigger cut of the profits, but more importantly, I just don’t care to patronize any of the big box stores or even any of the gaming stores.
I got my husband a new gaming rig for his birthday (OK, I told him to go ahead and build one, since I don’t know from computers), and bought Bioshock yesterday. So last night I just sat and watched him play for 20 minutes or so, and it was really entertaining, not even playing the game myself. The pictures are soo purty - when you look up from underwater and see the fire - just WOW. And I like your radio guide: right at the beginning, when he says impatiently,Pick up a crowbar or something, would you?
Have you played the MYST games and The Longest Journey series? Both RPGs with mystery and puzzles, and cool stories, and absolutely no shooting or (gah!) jumping puzzles. Neverwinter Nights is good too - there is the element of killing people and running for your life on occasion, but it doesn’t make my palms sweat the way FPSs do, and there’s an unfolding mystery you have to investigate.
I’ve seen this Steam and Direct2Drive stuff, and frankly I’m wary of it. I wouldn’t have bought Sam & Max Season 1 if they hadn’t assured me I could upgrade to getting the game on an actual disc. If it’s putting more profit in the hands of the actual game makers, that’s swell, but will that make it a game I can’t let my friends borrow?
I’ve been playing the demo while I wait for those bastards at Amazon.com to send my copy. For all the vast difference in graphics and even style, it does have a very System Shock 2 feel to it. Here I am running around trying to figure out what the hell is going on with a pipe wrench bobbing in front of me. So familiar. For those of you who haven’t played System Shock 2, you can simulate the experience: put one hand on the keyboard at the WASD position and the other hand on the mouse. Now start crapping your pants.
Ok, so far I have to say I love this game.
I’ve always been a sucker for the moderny/decoy style that the game uses. Of the first 3 hours I’ve spent playing the game, I’ve spent a good deal of that time just looking out of the windows and at the environment.
Notice the music? Is it not perfect for the atmosphere?
I am really pleased with how it looks. I have it running with all the bells and whistles on, and I wonder how much would be gained if it were running with DirectX 10.
The music does call the actual period into question. I haven’t gotten to where they explain when exactly this city was built. But the Ink Spots were from the 30’s. Of course, such distinctions were fairly irrelevant in Fallout, which also featured the Ink Spots in a retro atmosphere that jammed the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s together, and arguably even elements of the 60’s. And 80’s. I doubt the programmers would deny having been influenced by Fallout, but the look in this one is more consistently tied to a particular aesthetic.
Well the date flashed at the very beginning of the game is unambiguously 1960. However, we don’t know when the city was built, but 1920-30 sounds about right and fits with the Art Deco style. The other major event that we don’t know the timing of is when the city was “abandoned”, essentially freezing things at that point in time.
Unrelated–
Wait till you encounter the U-Invent weapon upgrade stations! The weapons (visually) get even more steampunky.
We do know the timing of that; New Year’s Day, 1959. Thus all the signs are still up, and hadn’t been taken down. And the splicers wear their masks from the New Year’s Eve party. Read it somewhere.
Yeah, not to get all spoilery, but there is that mystery gradually unravelling. Some charismatic leader who liked to see himself cast in giant bronze brought a group of people to build a city in the ocean depths so they could live according to radical new political and social theories while they casually modified their DNA. So far, so good, right? And yet it all went wrong, somehow. I can’t wait to find out why.
Also, don’t forget he specifically created it as a place where “scientists could function free from the bonds of morality,” which always works out so well.
Without a doubt the best thing about the game is the production design. The hyper Art Deco and retro 40’s commercial feel are just amazing. Haven’t like the production design this much since Grim Fandango (also Art Deco).
The gameplay is ok. In a way, it’s both too hard and too easy. Hard in that you die alot (at least I do on Medium); easy in that you resurrect a few feet from where you die. I heard Easy was too easy and the frequent deaths in medium tends to break up the immersion. Also i think they were a little too stingy on ammo. I appreciate the need to conserve, but jeez, half the time I have almost no ammo for most of my guns.
You need to use more plasmids: Electro/Winter Blast for the stun and then come in swinging with the wrench works brilliantly. Works even better if you have the plasmid that upgrades your wrench damage.
Collect lots of money. Buy ammo!
I totally agree with your comment about too easy AND too hard. However, I do like the continuity of the resurrections (enemy health, position, etc.).
I’ve got to start over. I decided I wanted to try the game without turning myself into a monster by splicing DNA like crazy (well, more than necessary) and avoiding doing all the awful things possible in the game.
It’s just way too hard to do that at least for the first time through on medium.
So I’ll pitch my first three hours or so and start over. This time humanity be damned!
BTW, is anyone else bothered that the protagonist after surviving a plane crash immediately gets into a bathysphere that they find and then injects themselves with any electrified syringes that are just sitting around?
I don’t think you had a lot of choice in the middle of the ocean. There weren’t even any bits of other survivors to eat. It was the bathosphere or nothing. But then you’re tooling around watching mutants go nuts and have to get their fool selves brained with a wrench and then you go ahead and inject yourself with the first mysterious liquid you see, why not? It does seem a bit hasty.
I’ll concede that it’s possible that the main character doesn’t know what a bathysphere is, but he’s undergone trauma, has potential internal bleeding, and he jumps to decend thousands of feet in a pressurized ball? He’s lucky that just getting into Rapture from that tower didn’t kill him.
Must have seen the pattern. You survived a plane crash that didn’t leave anybody else even floating. You just happened to land next to the only thing sticking out of the water for many kilometers. At that point, you gotta figure you’re bulletproof. There’ll never be a better time for joyriding and injecting yourself with whatever you find lying around in the men’s room.
Bioshock PC users take note:
Copy protection issues–
And, annoyingly enough, widescreen display issues. The official line is that they developed in widescreen and are allowing 4:3 users more vertical FOV, but I’m thinking that’s a mighty fine distinction. The net result is still that I will see less of the game on my wide screen than I would on a standard aspect ratio screen. I’m not up in arms about it, seeing as how my screen is darn big (22", wooo), but it still seems odd.