Holy crap it's Bioshock!

Cafe Society
101

I played the PC Demo. While I would really like to know the story of the game, I didn’t really find the game play all that interesting. It was the same with Half Life 2, I just don’t think I like FPS games that much…

It was a little choppy on maximum settings but ran fine on medium. Athlon 64 3700, 2gb Ram, ATI 1800XL. It still looked beautiful.

My question: Is the demo a good indication of the game play? It felt quite frenetic in places, with a shoot first, think later style. I was expecting something a little more like Deus Ex or Dark Messiah.

102

A question for those who have finished the game on medium or hard difficulty:

ADAM-wise, does it matter whether you harvest or rescue? On easy mode, I had 100% rescues, and finished the game with ADAM to spare, having bought out the garden completely. I couldn’t have spent more if I wanted to. It seems like the gifts Tannenbaum gives you once per level more than make up for the lost ADAM from not harvesting. Is this just because I played on easy?

103

I beat it on mediumWell I did 100% saves and had many things I couldn’t buy I got 60 Adam per save (or was it 80? I can’t believe I blanked that. I think it was 60 though) and 200 bonus every three I saved. Is that what you were getting? Or does the price change? It cost me 80 Adam per Eve and health upgrade. About 150 for the top tier plasmids.

104

I beat it on medium and ate all of the children:

I still didn’t have enough ADAM to buy everything but I got most things including the plasmids I was commonly using at level 3. I think there were a few health upgrades that appeared at the last garden and a couple of supports that I didn’t buy.

105

I beat it on hard, saving all the little sisters, and didn’t quite have enough Adam to buy everything. I didn’t get the fully upgraded Swarm plasmid, and I my health and Eve weren’t quite maxed out. I think I had everything else, though.

Except the motherfuckin’ Prolific Inventor tonic.

106

Hmm. For me, that was sitting on a table in Suchong’s house.

107

You sure you aren’t thinking of Clever Inventor? Prolific Inventor is supposed to be the reward for saving all the little sisters. You shouldn’t be able to get it anywhere else in the game.

108

I can’t remember which is which, but one of the two means invented items cost less parts, and the other gives you two of each item you make. Either way, I got both, and not from saving all the Little Sisters.

109

But… but… that would mean something I read on the internet was wrong! :eek:

Seriously, though, all the game sites I checked said the one that doubles the items you get from inventing, you only get from Dr. Tannenbaum. If they’re wrong, that’s awesome, because I can still get that achievement! I’ll have to check that out.

110

It’s not that I actually conserved kits because, like you said, at the end game I was flush with cash. Nevertheless, the game makes it the sensible strategy at harder difficulties. I just find it hard to believe that the developers, who are mostly gamers themselves don’t see the problem with this.

111

Giving up on spoiling in favor of vagueness: I had them both before the end of the game, but I may have gotten the 2x one as a gift. Certainly it wasn’t in the last gift box, though. But remember, I was playing on Easy, it may be that the rules are different.

How would I know if I’d done 100% of the achievements? Something in the endgame movie?

112

Well, I’m glad I tried the download demo first. Turns out my video card won’t play it. DAMNIT!

Ugh, guess it’s time for a new one.

113

I just beat the game (saving all the little sisters, of course!), and I have to say I found the ending to be missing something.

It’s revealed that your character rescues the Little Sisters (Yay!), and appears to die of old age many years later, albeit surrounded by the now grown up Little Sisters. But… Isn’t your character technically immortal? He’s full of Adam, can shoot lightning, fire, and ice from his hands. A very touching ending, but personally, I would have liked an option to save the Little Sisters and re-build Rapture- maybe develop a cure for the Splicer’s condition, even, so they could be normal again?

Oh, and if you pay attention, you find out that Rapture was completed on November 5th, 1946. (there’s an architect’s model of the city with that inscription in many of the Bathysphere stations, including the one you first arrive at) It’s clearly mentioned several times that WWII happened, so that does kind of make you wonder how Ryan managed to build an undersea city in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, with with all the U-Boats and the Sunderlands and Battleships shooting at each other…

How did they even build Rapture in the first place? Not just physically (the technology to do so doesn’t economically exist even today, never mind in 1946), but there seem to have been at least 10,000 people down there… you’d think word would have gotten out, especially after a decade or so.

Rapture is a huge place (there are maps on some of the walls which hint at other significant areas that you don’t visit in-game), so you’d think there would be at least one area where the survivors are still "normal’, so to speak.

Having said all that, it was still a great game and I enjoyed it immensely. I’m going to play it through again and go exploring this time, to see more of the city and try and find all the diaries etc. As others have said, it’s incredibly atmospheric- the whole Art Deco/Retro 20s-50s look is incredibly appealing and very, very believable!

114

Presumably there will be an expansion which will involve the areas that don’t appear in the original. Perhaps there they can seriously tax your resources, though I doubt it. There is a tendency to push supplements by offering newer and better crap.

I still haven’t gotten my copy. Thanks, Amazon. This is one area in which the brick-and-mortar retailers have still got a significant advantage over online sales – if a game only ships on its official release date, you get it well after, unless you really want to spring for fast shipping. At least you could get special deals for pre-ordering online once upon a time. Well, more like crappy gimmicks. But still, online retailers would have different deals to attract your business. Now, it’s the same deal from all of them. Bleah.

It sounds like they went to some trouble to match the feel of System Shock 2. You get cash (nanites) to buy the supplies you need, you can hack security systems, you can boost your stats with plasmids (cybernetics), you pick up messages recorded by people whose corpses were lying nearby, you’re being led on by a voice coming over the radio (PDA), you learn to do research to improve your arsenal. I haven’t seen any sign that weapon decay is going to be an issue, though, which is just as well. That feature was not popular.

115

Yes, it’s clear that SS2 was the model; in many ways they feel like the same game. That was one of my (mild) disappointments with BioShock – I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief at the astoundingly advanced technology they managed to acquire almost fifty years ago. Stuff that we (with a much larger research base) won’t be able to create for centuries yet, they managed in about ten years. Apparently “freeing scientists from the bounds of morality” is something we should try more often. I realize it’s a game and all, but I can’t help thinking they could have come up with a different explanation for how people acquired, basically, magic spells.

The other minor disappointment is mildly spoilery: What was the point of having it underwater if you’re never going to make use of that except for scenery? I expected once I got the Big Daddy suit that there would be an underwater level, but no. (We know from an earlier scripted moment that Big Daddies can move underwater). I kept expecting it to happen, or else the “race against the flooding” they kept setting up for, and then the game was over.

116

Just a quick post for anyone with the PC version and AVG Free Virus scan Bioshock.exe is showing up as a false positive. You can safely ignore the warning it’s an issue with the copy protection program they used with Bioshock.

117

I just got this game the other day (after getting my new gaming rig up and running, ;)), and some thoughts:

First off, is there any way to selectively loot corpses and such? Sometimes there will be things I want (ammo) but things I don’t want (booze…if I have full health and EVE, then it’s just a detriment.)

Secondly…I fucking HATE it when I go through the trouble of killing a Big Daddy, and the Little Sister was either not there, or vanished! What the FUCK?! The first time was my fault. I killed him while he was on his way to get a Little Sister out of a vent. The second time, though, really pissed me off. He was with the Sister, so I started fighting him with some grenades, since they decimate him. I got him down to practically dead, and would have had him, but at the EXACT moment I had to reload my shotgun and BAM, rivet gun to the head (I can’t tell you how many times I have gotten him down to no health, but he’s still standing, and I get blasted before I can get one tiny more shot off.)

Anyway, I go back to where he was, and stupidly just shot at him, killing him in one shot, and of course, no Sister. :mad:

118

I have never had a Little Sister disappear if she was there to begin with, even if we were near one of the vents. If I see a Big Daddy by himself I’ll follow him until he summons a Little Sister. It’s kind of sad to see them trying it after you’ve already rescued all the Little Sisters.

I rescued the Little Sisters in my game, of course, but I don’t buy that this was a real moral choice. I seem to recall that eating them got you only 20 more Adam, but that doesn’t make up for the loss of the care packages that have 200 Adam for every three Little Sisters you rescue.

I played on Medium and had loads of extra Adam by the time I was done. There were plasmids I didn’t get, but I hardly used plasmids to begin with. Toward the end I was popping heads off with the crossbow every chance I got.

119

Someone went through all the audio diaries (and a few external sources) and put together the full history of Rapture. You can read it here. Interesting stuff. Chock full of spoilers, of course.

120

I’ve had them run away from a Big Daddy if they were near a vent. It may be that I interrupted the “I want to sleep now” routine with my attack. But aside from the difficulty of killing the daddies, it won’t matter; the sister will just appear somewhere else on the level.

I can only speak for “Easy.” Harvesting gets you 160 Adam per (so 480 per three), and rescuing gets you 80 Adam per, plus 200 for each three (for a total of 440 per three). Plus the extra goodies, of course. So yeah, not a lot of difference – and as I noted in a previous thread, I don’t think it makes any difference at all by the end.