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BIOSHOCK.
- Thread starter BEAT
- Start date
All I recall is all the online talk about this shooty murdermans being touted as the "Citizen Kane of Gaming" and my actively avoiding it at the time 'cuz of the gruesome finishers and being disgusted by the opening bit that offers you a choice (at all) on whether or not to throw the rock at the interracial couple.
That it turns the anti-racists into the new thing to shoot and goes all in on preordained destiny and how your choices don't actually matter in the end just makes it all the worse.
That it turns the anti-racists into the new thing to shoot and goes all in on preordained destiny and how your choices don't actually matter in the end just makes it all the worse.
Honestly, I still kind of commend Bioshock for trying to make a statement, particularly in an environment where game companies (PR departments) are still trying to claim that games where you murder people in an extremely one sided, international war are apolitical or whatever. That said, the progression of Bioshock -> Bioshock Infinite -> Burial at Sea proved that even when the writers tried to "do better", they only reinforced how completely out of their depth they were on making comments on... anything.
I still appreciate that Bioshock Infinite got the concept of "quantum" generally "right". This is in contrast to most videogames, where "quantum" or "infinite" only ever refers to a really powerful laser in the final act.
I still appreciate that Bioshock Infinite got the concept of "quantum" generally "right". This is in contrast to most videogames, where "quantum" or "infinite" only ever refers to a really powerful laser in the final act.
There was a fair mix of the weaponry, you could set traps or whatever as well as use environmental stuff like puddles and oil.
The problem with traps and puddles, though, is getting enemies to trip them or step in them. In almost every game they're in, it's more trouble than just shooting the dudes. I used them for a little while in Horizon, but mostly stopped later on.
R.R. Bigman
Coolest Guy
I haven’t played either the first game or Infinite since they came out, and skipped 2. I liked most of the first game a lot, but everything after the “The Twist” is crap. Infinite ensorcelled everyone, including me, in it’s marketing, but the only thing I think about it now is that only huge cowards who are afraid to say anything go down the “nothing matters“ route.
Bioshock 1 and 2 have maybe the coolest and best-realized setting in a video game. Loved both of em.
Infinite sucked for many, many, many reasons. Many.
Infinite sucked for many, many, many reasons. Many.
All of this. I appreciate that Bioshock helped keep interest in System Shock-style games alive, but Prey is a vastly better game in every respect, so I feel no need to return to Bioshock.
seriously, though—play Prey if you haven’t already because it is so so good
B2 is the best of the three, for my money.
I played the first game because people kept talking about how cool the twist was. The twist was fine, but I think Sharkey guessed the twist prior to the games release on the survival horror episode of Retronauts so I was somewhat expecting it.
The part after the twist where it felt like I was playing a DOOM boss was pretty disappointing I thought.
I have not played any other Bioshock games.
***
I'm cautiously optimistic about the Netflix show. For all of Bioshocks faults I found the Underwater world of Atlus, the Big Daddies and Little Sisters to be pretty intriguing and unique. I think it could be good.
I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell and Resident Evil Infinite Darkness from Netflix. I'm curious enough to watch the first couple episodes at least.
The part after the twist where it felt like I was playing a DOOM boss was pretty disappointing I thought.
I have not played any other Bioshock games.
***
I'm cautiously optimistic about the Netflix show. For all of Bioshocks faults I found the Underwater world of Atlus, the Big Daddies and Little Sisters to be pretty intriguing and unique. I think it could be good.
I enjoyed Ghost in the Shell and Resident Evil Infinite Darkness from Netflix. I'm curious enough to watch the first couple episodes at least.
Prey 2017 is also a vastly better Deus Ex: Human Revolution, at least as far as your abilities and using them to snoop in places you don't belong go. Noticed many mechanical similarities in what you can do with your abilities.
I should reinstall Prey, I got distracted by other things and needed to clear room for FF7R when I hadn't played it for a while.
4-So
Spicy
I will always go to bat for the Bioshock franchise but I'm also the kind of person that will stick with something if I like the art direction, worldbuilding, music, etc., while largely ignoring or shrugging at the story and characters if those things are not hitting the spot, so I might be the outlier here. But, yeah, I love those games, all of them, had a wonderful time, fight me, etc.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
My wife adores these games, only shooters she will play. Hopefully you guys will forgive her.
I enjoyed the first one, hell of an atmosphere and shooting bees from your hands is fun. I remember thinking the vita chambers made things too easy and recognized that they really didn’t do as much with the little sisters as I think they wanted to.
Watched my wife play bits of 2, seemed fine but I never felt the urge to actually play it.
Infinite was fine, loved the scenery, rolled my eyes at the morality bits again, started to get really sick of killing dudes by the end. The timey wimey inter dimensional bullshit was fun enough.
I enjoyed the first one, hell of an atmosphere and shooting bees from your hands is fun. I remember thinking the vita chambers made things too easy and recognized that they really didn’t do as much with the little sisters as I think they wanted to.
Watched my wife play bits of 2, seemed fine but I never felt the urge to actually play it.
Infinite was fine, loved the scenery, rolled my eyes at the morality bits again, started to get really sick of killing dudes by the end. The timey wimey inter dimensional bullshit was fun enough.
all else aside, Binfinite felt like a step down in the action vs. 2.
Nah 2 didn't have rails you could ride around on
It's improved over how it was around launch, but if you can play it on something with a solid state drive...definitely play it on something with a solid state drive.
The game keeps track of the locations and states of a lot of objects that are affected by physics and can be moved or destroyed.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
This isn't supposed to single you out, I just want to talk about this point, that I read so often, back than. I finally did play the first Bioshock in 2016, I think, and the only reason why I made it through was the vita chambers. I just died so insanely often to this obnoxious, infinite-feeling waves of splicers. I promise, to someone who is really bad at FPSes, Bioshock was hard enough.
Again, not to single you out, I don't even know if you still have this opinion.
Elsewise, I love the setting of the first game, and just wished it had either different gameplay, or maybe just excluded splicers, letting you just fight Big Daddies. But that comes from someone who just doesn't care for this genre, so, *shrug*. Would have loved, if this had been a walking simulator. And yeah, I wished the game actually took a position, instead of acting neutral. This is a general thing, though, while stories don't need to use a sledgehammer to make their point, I prefer if I know, at the end, where it stands. A story doesn't have to be neutral to be good, by now, I feel it is stronger if it actually has a position. But I think I already digress here. I still enjoyed the story, and learning about how all of this fell apart, which, I mean, of course it did.
Oh, and I hated the very last part. It was cool to play a Big Daddy, but having to protect a Little Sister was the absolute worst. She died so often, I considered giving up, because it didn't seem like I was capable of making it through this section.
After not caring much about the first game, I didn't want to play the second one. And after I learned about the Hook in Infinite, I immediately lost all interest i Infinite. I just can't stomach this level of pointless brutality.
All that said, if you enjoy these games, keep doing so. It's fine.
The first Bioshock game drove me straight up the walls. You've got a game that chastises you for being a gruesome murderer. But gives you literally no other choice but to murder if you wish to keep playing it. And the game and its cowardly script thinks that lampshading this fact - that the player has limited agency - somehow counts for something. No. Lampshading something is the rhetorical equivalence of saying "I'm not racist, but..." and then saying something racist. "I am committing this dubious sin, but since I've said that outloud, I'm actually really clever and not doing bad at all!" Nah.
Meanwhile I watched the world suck the toes of Ken Levine because he made a game with the same basic themes as MGS2, but only done much worse and six years later. When MGS2 and MGS3 chastises you for being a bloody murderer, there's real weight to it. Because the player is given all of the tools to do everything completely non-lethally (which is actually *easier* than going the lethal route!) and the only people the player can blame for being a murderer is then themselves. Bioshock though metaphorically punches you in the face with your own fist and asks, "Why did you do that to yourself?" as if they're not just being really deep, but also doing us a favor somehow despite punching us in the face.
Ah, but I could electrocute puddles on the ground, or hurl bees in order to murder cult victims. Truly a work of art.
Meanwhile I watched the world suck the toes of Ken Levine because he made a game with the same basic themes as MGS2, but only done much worse and six years later. When MGS2 and MGS3 chastises you for being a bloody murderer, there's real weight to it. Because the player is given all of the tools to do everything completely non-lethally (which is actually *easier* than going the lethal route!) and the only people the player can blame for being a murderer is then themselves. Bioshock though metaphorically punches you in the face with your own fist and asks, "Why did you do that to yourself?" as if they're not just being really deep, but also doing us a favor somehow despite punching us in the face.
Ah, but I could electrocute puddles on the ground, or hurl bees in order to murder cult victims. Truly a work of art.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
I definitely prefer the chambers thematically to an infinite number of Bookers who happen to be walking through a magic door the moment you died and are completely up to speed on what is going down.
I don't have a problem with either mechanic. I don't have time/patience to lose more progress than checkpoint systems tend to allow! The narrative conceit behind them, if any, matters little to me.
Ken Levine thought he was making the game that Thief was ten years before Bioshock came out. And he failed at it. He failed at even making a decent System Shock.
I thought it was fun to shoot the dudes.
*fart*
*fart*
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
I hadn't even heard of her before Bioshock and read a bit of The Fountainhead to see if she'd been treated unfairly.
I've never read a more morally fucked up pile of dreck. It feels like something an 80's cartoon villain would have written. If anything, Bioshock should've dunked on her harder. People actually read that crap and thought "man we should run society like that"???
FelixSH
(He/Him)
There are just shitty people, who will cling on to any philosophy, as long as it will give them an excuse not to share money, especially if said philosophy argues that sharing is bad, even for the ones who receive, actually.
I still enjoyed the stuff I read from her (everything but Fountainhead), but that's mainly due to me really liking totalitarian dystopias. And I think she would have written really fun soap operas. Her characters can be real drama queens.
I still enjoyed the stuff I read from her (everything but Fountainhead), but that's mainly due to me really liking totalitarian dystopias. And I think she would have written really fun soap operas. Her characters can be real drama queens.
A while back I was hosting a stream and a viewer asked what my least favorite game was. Granted, my experience in some genres is limited but I'm pretty sure I responded without hesitation that the game I would pay good money to never have to play again would be Bioshock Infinite.
Even aside from all the perfectly valid story reasons that have been brought up here, it was, to me, a loud, obnoxious, boring, confusing mess. I'm pretty sure a large chunk of my disdain came from playing BI right when it was released but shortly after catching up and playing BS2. I don't remember a thing about the BS2 story and very little about the game at this point, I just remember really enjoying it mechanically and largely for one reason: you could use a plasmid and a weapon at the same time. I remember finding the combat challenging, engaging, fun, and varied, and that the progression system left me feeling empowered by the end of the game.
BI, on the other hand, has zero progression. You gain no permanent abilities. Your weapons can barely hold enough ammo to take out one medium-sized bad guy. The combat is just noisy, in both audio and visual senses. Enemies are huge damage sponges. At no point did I ever feel like I was getting more powerful. The only reason I hung on to see it to the end was the plot and that obviously was a huge mistake. Story aside, you could maybe argue there's merit in designing a game that way where you're always barely winning, barely scraping by. But purely from a gameplay/mechanics standpoint, I don't find that fun and I consider it a big step back from BS2, which I actually enjoyed.
I don't know if I'm adding anything here other than to say when people speak of Infinite with any kind of reverence I get a little twitch under my eye and wonder if they have ever taken a step back to think critically about any of the media they consume.
Even aside from all the perfectly valid story reasons that have been brought up here, it was, to me, a loud, obnoxious, boring, confusing mess. I'm pretty sure a large chunk of my disdain came from playing BI right when it was released but shortly after catching up and playing BS2. I don't remember a thing about the BS2 story and very little about the game at this point, I just remember really enjoying it mechanically and largely for one reason: you could use a plasmid and a weapon at the same time. I remember finding the combat challenging, engaging, fun, and varied, and that the progression system left me feeling empowered by the end of the game.
BI, on the other hand, has zero progression. You gain no permanent abilities. Your weapons can barely hold enough ammo to take out one medium-sized bad guy. The combat is just noisy, in both audio and visual senses. Enemies are huge damage sponges. At no point did I ever feel like I was getting more powerful. The only reason I hung on to see it to the end was the plot and that obviously was a huge mistake. Story aside, you could maybe argue there's merit in designing a game that way where you're always barely winning, barely scraping by. But purely from a gameplay/mechanics standpoint, I don't find that fun and I consider it a big step back from BS2, which I actually enjoyed.
I don't know if I'm adding anything here other than to say when people speak of Infinite with any kind of reverence I get a little twitch under my eye and wonder if they have ever taken a step back to think critically about any of the media they consume.
Just for clarification, are you saying here that Bioshock failed to live up to the legacy of the System Shock games, or that Shock 2 failed to live up to the legacy of Shock 1?
jpfriction
(He, Him)
All this Bioshock talk makes me want to play Prey and Deathloop again. I wonder if I ever bought that Prey DLC…