[Overactive Imagination]

Am I the only person that didn't like Bioshock? I played the first few hours with a friend recently on PS3 and it's not fun at all. The gamplay is super repetitive - go into a room, kill a bunch of guys, loot their bodies, search around on the ground for ammo and health, hack some stuff, go into another room that looks exactly the same and do it all over again......

Am I missing something with this game?

[Aptorian]

Are you the only one that feels this way? probably not.

But I have to ask under what conditions you are playing the game. You mebntion you are playing it with a friend for example. Personally, I played it alone, in the dark, with the volume cranked up.

A lot of the things that Bioshock does right revolves around its atmosphere. It's a game that oozes atmosphere. From the architecture, to the characters, to the weapons and powers, to the audio logs, environment, etc. If you don't fancy the setting, the narrative or the design then of course it wont be fun but I think that Bioshock is a pretty exceptional game.

It wasn't just another WW2/Modern warfare shooter, it had deep, mature themes revolving around politics and philosophy, it had a very appealing world to run around in and it scared the shit out of me at times.

[Mentalist]

Compared to pure shooters, it is, indeed, not a great game. I played it the same time I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. the first time, and, yeah, it's shooting parts are nothing to write home about.

The meat of the gameplay is the interplay of plasmids + tonics. There's a ton of possible combinations to give you a bit of an "rpg-lite" experience with crafting a playstyle. The fact that you can freely swap powers encourages further experimentation. The best parts of the game (where it moved away from being a System Shock 2 derivative) were the environment-based plasmids, and their interaction with the actual environment--using electricity to electrocute splicers in the water, freezing, then burning them on an oil slick, etc. Then there was also the "subverting security to help you" bits, though those involved the dreadful hacking minigame.

Essentially, the game had a bunch of neat systems,and using them could make the gameplay quite fun. The problem was, there was also a perfectly viable "shoot everything with guns" approach, which involved fairly mediocre gunplay and was nothing special in itself.


Imho, the sequel was better. It offered more tactical challenges (big daddies + big sisters), and the story was better, because you've had some choices.

@ Apt: deep themes? really?
I mean, yeah, you have the "utopia gone wrong", but aside from that, I didn't find much depth...

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 06 March 2013 - 06:35 PM

[Overactive Imagination]

I'm also playing it on hard which might be making it less enjoyable. Have to be super conservative with ammo, die a lot, and it's important to hack everything which is a huge pain in the ass and not fun at all,

[CowboyYojimbo]

I think Bioshock is one of the greatest games of all time.

I don't know what you could be missing, but it is an experience best lived, and lived slowly at that.

Since you are on the Malazan forum, I would assume you love intricate stories, histories and above all else, details in the smaller things. What I loved above all else in Bioshock was the history and living world. I would walk, not run, around the environment, reading every paper, listening to every diary and looking at every dwelling, imagining what it was like before or what happened in the particular room. Every corpse was saddening, and you could see how their last minutes played out.I would walk, not run, around the environment, reading every paper, listening to every diary and looking at every dwelling, imagining what it was like before or what happened in the particular room. Every corpse was saddening, and you could see how their last minutes played out.
The best part, is how you know nothing about the city or its inhabitants as you go down. Everything piece of the puzzle was a revelation and it came together in a beautiful tapestry.

Play it slowly, and never assume a certain detail means nothing.

[Overactive Imagination]

What about the dozens of times you have to do the stupid hacking minigame? Any way around that? I'm only a few hours into the game but I've already had to do that like 20 times.

[CowboyYojimbo]

Well you don't have to hack everything if you do not want to. When you do or want to, having a bunch of tonics equipped that make it easier helps. There's ones that reduce the speed of flow and the amount of overload tiles.
Make sure you search out every audio diary by the way.

[ForkassalOfTheInnerCircle]

Overactive Imagination, on 07 March 2013 - 03:02 AM, said:

What about the dozens of times you have to do the stupid hacking minigame? Any way around that? I'm only a few hours into the game but I've already had to do that like 20 times.

I didn't think they were so bad. As was mentioned above, what really makes the game is the story and atmosphere. There's a really clever twist to the story late in the game, that I found to be pretty neat. I did never finish the game, though, I played as obsessed until there was only an hour or two left, and then I promptly quit the game, sold it, and didn't really think about it again. I do that sometimes.

[Morgoth]

Would you kindly finish the game and then tell us if you feel the same?

The story as a whole is pretty marvellous, but you need to experience the whole of it to truly appreciate how wel it's made.

When that is said, yeah the combat isn't the best, but still entertaining enough I thought

[Lucifer's Heaven]

ForkassalOfTheInnerCircle, on 07 March 2013 - 06:46 AM, said:

Overactive Imagination, on 07 March 2013 - 03:02 AM, said:

What about the dozens of times you have to do the stupid hacking minigame? Any way around that? I'm only a few hours into the game but I've already had to do that like 20 times.

I didn't think they were so bad. As was mentioned above, what really makes the game is the story and atmosphere.

Yeah, I didn't mind the hacking mini game either. In fact I kinda liked it. I enjoy puzzle games, so these were pretty easy, it wasn't that I much enjoyed them as puzzles. I just liked that you had to actually take a moment to unlock the thing before you could get into it. Not just increase a skill then hit x when you walk up to it. It's a lock to pick, no matter how good you get at it, you still need to pick it to get inside.
And yeah, if you are having trouble, get tonics to help, you can keep them unequipped till you need them. Also, keep in mind, with the right tonics melee can be pretty powerful. A decent fall back if you want to conserve ammo and it isn't a really hard fight (I am a compulsive ammo hoarder in games )

[Mentalist]

Lucifer, on 07 March 2013 - 03:01 PM, said:

ForkassalOfTheInnerCircle, on 07 March 2013 - 06:46 AM, said:

Overactive Imagination, on 07 March 2013 - 03:02 AM, said:

What about the dozens of times you have to do the stupid hacking minigame? Any way around that? I'm only a few hours into the game but I've already had to do that like 20 times.

I didn't think they were so bad. As was mentioned above, what really makes the game is the story and atmosphere.

Yeah, I didn't mind the hacking mini game either. In fact I kinda liked it. I enjoy puzzle games, so these were pretty easy, it wasn't that I much enjoyed them as puzzles. I just liked that you had to actually take a moment to unlock the thing before you could get into it. Not just increase a skill then hit x when you walk up to it. It's a lock to pick, no matter how good you get at it, you still need to pick it to get inside.
And yeah, if you are having trouble, get tonics to help, you can keep them unequipped till you need them. Also, keep in mind, with the right tonics melee can be pretty powerful. A decent fall back if you want to conserve ammo and it isn't a really hard fight (I am a compulsive ammo hoarder in games )

Ice Wrench FTW