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Post subject: bioshock game
Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:06 am
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I love playing games and I've heard about this game, but is it worth playing. They have the first one real cheap and the second one (limited edition) is on sale (oops they just sold out). Any reviews? I have a PS3.

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Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 11:08 am
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Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 12:50 pm
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Thanks.

Tochai...love your siggy. Emo Phillips if I'm not mistaken.

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Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 1:12 pm
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here is a review of the game, hope this helps:
Well, hellooooo there! After all the mechs and cute loonies and badass sociopaths in that last review, one might have thought all the slobber had been taken out of me when it comes to reviewing and I’d be back to bile. Well, you’d be wrong, wouldn’t you? *insert Lewis Black fingerjabs here* Up on the agenda for today is BioShock, a game I’ve talked about a few times before, mentioning how good it is. Well, now you’ll get to find out just how amazing this game is. So prepare yourselves, dear readers. This post is long, and I apologize in advance, but bear with me, as I’ve some things to say.
Format: PC, XBOX360, PS3.
Players: One.
Difficulty: Easy to Impossible.
Summary: The year is 1960, and Jack is not having a good day. While admiring the gift he just got from his parents, the plane he’s on suddenly crashes in the Atlantic ocean. There are no survivors except for Jack, who makes his way to a strange lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. He ventures inside and finds a device called a bathysphere, which brings him down into the secret underwater city of Rapture, which the founder Andrew Ryan describes as a paradise free of God, government, and morality, a place where you can do whatever you want. But when he finally gets there, Jack realizes something’s gone horribly wrong. The city is in ruin, and it seems the only people left are psychotics, horrible-looking mutants, or both. Now Jack has a choice. Will he try to save what few innocents are left in the undersea hellhole and be the city’s savior? Or will he sacrifice others to save himself and become the new king of Rapture?
Analysis: Okay, I rented this game a long time ago and then got the game about a year ago, but it wasn’t until recently that I was able to work through the backlog of other games and rent all the past and present title I wanted to try from Blockbuster. So yes, I know BioShock is several years old now and that its sequel is already out and probably played by some of you, but it’s my blog, and I’ll review what I want, when I want, so...myah.
Pros: Before I begin the slobber fest this review is going to be, I would first like to make a digression and go into my ubergeek mode. For those of you who aren’t gamers, and even those of you that are, this will make sure you know BioShock’s importance. You see, it’s generally known there are two types of games, and I don’t mean genres like shooters, action, RPGs, etc. I mean games that are either played for the story (what I will call Serious games, to simplify things) and games that are played for the spectacle (Silly games, though I don’t mean this in a bad way, only because it’s the opposite of being serious...black).
Silly games are the ones you play just because they’re fun or inventive in terms of gameplay. The story, if it even exists, is there to give you a reason to stomp the goomba (hopefully not one of my relatives) or shoot the monster. The story can pretty much suck, because it’s all about the rush. However, if the controls were bad, or the physics were too messed up, you’d probably put it aside. These are your Marios, your Mirror’s Edges, your P.N.03's, your Modern Warfares, your BloodRaynes, and your fighting games in general. Then there are the Serious games where it’s the story, the characters, and the writing that matters most. Gameplay here is more often than not a bit simple, and if the controls are a bit shoddy, or the camera’s not a team player, or the hit detection is meh, you’re more likely to shrug it off because you just have to know what happens next. These are your old school Resident Evils, your Silent Hills, your Final Fantasies, your Heavy Rains, and RPGs in general.
But then there are the Hybrids. Games where flawless, or nearly flawless, and fun gameplay is mixed seamlessly with an interesting story, well-written dialogue, and unique characters. It’s the marriage of Silly and Serious, the type of game that hardcore gamers are rewarded with every now and again after all the defending of their hobby, enduring the slings and arrows of those who don’t understand, and slogging through all the dreck just to experience something great. This pantheon is made up of games like Resident Evil 4, The Godfather, Price of Persia 2, Eternal Darkness, Ocarina of Time, StarCraft, WarCraft, and the Fire Emblem series (or at least the first one since the Seriousness has fallen away with later installments). And I can say with glee and thankfulness that BioShock is among such giants of video games.
So yes, BioShock is great. But what exactly makes it so? Well, for one, it looks amazing. The city of Rapture was once a beautiful place, but now it’s a wrenched ruin filled with maniacs. Little touches like previous inhabitants’ footsteps, lodgings, unused food and drinks, clothes and belongings, and even things like all the trashcans – all of these things give you the sense that people actually lived here at one point. Not many games can bring that across. Rapture feels like it could really exist in our world, and this is what it would look like. The sound effects and voice acting are both phenomenal. From the audiologs you collect, to the various people that address you through Jack’s shortwave radio, to the psycho junkie Splicers that are the game’s enemies, once again, it all seems so real. Some Splicers babble songs like "Jesus loves me," while others argue with eachother over spoils before seeing you. And still others rant and rave incoherently. And perhaps most shockingly, when killed, some enemies will seem to apologize to Jack or just in general, now realizing in their final moments what monsters they’re become.
The controls are pretty good, but there are some Cons to hit it with, so I’ll mostly talk about it there. BioShock is a first person shooter, but never before has a game given players such interesting tools to whack baddies with. You see, aside from your more typical weapons like handgun, shotgun, machine gun, you also have your Plasmids, which are different abilities Jack can splice into his genetic code, allowing him to shoot lighting from his fingertips, spontaneously combust people, freeze enemies, and even shoot a swarm of enraged bees from the veins in his arms. For example, you can lay proximity bombs on the ceiling and use your wind-powered Cyclone Trap plasmid to launch enemies into the air, hit the bomb, and fall to the ground in pieces. You can use Enrage to get enemies to attack one another and ignore you. You can freeze enemies and shatter them with a point-blank shotgun blast. Or if you really want to be a vindictive bastard, you can send an Insect Swarm at a Splicer, set them (and the bees) on fire, and then right before they jump into the nearby pool of water to put themselves out, hit the water with lightning and electrocute them while grinning like an evil $@!&. The combat is only limited to your imagination and skill level. And with dozens of Gene Tonics that give passive advantages like damage resistance, better skills at hacking machines, gaining more benefits from Medkits and EVE Hypos (a.k.a. health and mana potions), etc., you can turn Jack into whatever type of character you want. Stealthy Jack? You got it. Tank Jack? Go ahead, customize away. Uber Jack? Hell yeah! Especially if you use what I use, heh.
And trust me, you’ll need everything at your disposal if you want to kill all the Big Daddies, those lumbering, monstrous, armored creatures who protect the Little Sisters. The Little Sisters convert ADAM from the corpses of dead Splicers, and ADAM is the genetic modification material that powers both you and the bad guys. If you want all those wonderful abilities, you’ll have to go through the Big Daddies and then decide the fates of the Little Sisters. You can Harvest them, which yanks the parasite that protects them from harm (and makes the ADAM) out of their body, which kills them, and gain lots of ADAM. Or you can Rescue them, neutralize the parasite, and get half the ADAM, though you will be rewarded in other ways for being such a nice guy.
But perhaps the best part about BioShock is it’s story. The city of Rapture is incredible and each of its inhabitants are not only well-characterized and well-written, but their alignment is up for debate. While I normally hate when people go on and on about things "not being black and white," as it’s usually just a way for hippies to make a good vs. evil argument appear morally equal, BioShock makes a world of gray in the right way – with zero bullshit or bias. It’s up to you to decide who’s who. Is Andrew Ryan, the man who made Rapture, a well-intentioned but flawed man, desperate to hold onto his dream and willing to do bad things for it; or is he a paranoid megalomaniacal tyrant who just wants more and more power? Is Dr. Tenenbaum an unrepentant Nazi collaborator who does anything in the name of science; or is she someone just trying to get by and only after doing terrible things has finally developed a conscience? Is Atlas, the guy who guides Jack through Rapture, a selfish $@! who’s really only looking out for him and his; or is he a good-natured family man with a hatred of Ryan, willing to help anyone escape the hell Rapture has become? Most importantly, is Jack a good guy, out to save the innocents of Rapture at the expense of his own life and sanity; or is Jack a rabid, spliced-up junkie who’ll do anything for his next fix? The last one is entirely up to the player, though there is enough evidence for you to decide on the rest one way or another.
The audio logs you can find and pick up all have little details about the city and those that once lived there. And even such bit players like Andrew Ryan’s girlfriend, various villains and bosses, and even minor people like some guy about to set out for a hot date, you come to know and become interested in just about all of them, always looking forward to hear the next little bit of their story. And the ghost sequences, when you watch the shadows of Rapture’s inhabitants play out scenes from their life, are all awesome and some creepy as hell. But as always, there are always some problems, and despite being so wonderful, BioShock is no different.
Cons: Perhaps my biggest complaint about this game is the controls. Mainly because of the placement for the fire buttons. Instead of shooting with the L1/R1 buttons, you use the L2/R2 shoulder triggers. I don’t know about my readers, but it bugs the hell out of me because the way I grip the controller changes because of that, and my aim is turned to crap when it’s normally pretty good. Then again, I played the PS3 version, so XBOX360 and PC owners might be happy as can be with the layout, but still. Given that you can customize Jack to high Heaven and have lots of options in regards to tweaking the game’s sound, look sensitivity, y-axis inversion, ability to turn on or off spawn points, etc., how hard would it have been to let you pick your own button layout? Honestly, people!
Also, the in-game inventory is a bit bad. And by bad, I mean it doesn’t exist. I’m mainly talking about the U-Invent stuff. In BioShock, when you pick up crappy bits of garbage like rubber hoses, distilled water, alcohol, shell casings, and other junk, you can plug them into these machines that will spit out specialized ammo and other really rare items, but only if you have the right amount of three different item types. There’s no way to check what you have of each without going to a U-Invent machine. Thus, if you’re running low on batteries, as I often was, only trips to a U-Invent machine will tell you how many more batteries you need for that Autohack Tool.
The food and drinks you can find laying around Rapture can be consumed for health and mana, but you can’t save any of it. Sure you can munch that bag of potato chips to top your health off, but when you’re a little low later, it’s either use up a rather valuable Medkit, wait for the next bag of cheesy poofs, or go back and grab what you didn’t the first time around. You can pick up audiologs and decide whether you’d rather listen to them then and there or save them to hear later. Why couldn’t that feature be given to the food and drink items? Though once again, an actual inventory screen would be nice.
And another thing about the audio logs. Whenever you’re about to leave an area, the game reminds you if you haven’t dealt with all the Little Sisters in the level, as if the indicator on the Pause Screen didn’t already divulge that information. Given how wonderful the story aspect of BioShock is, and apparently how proud the creators are of it, you’d think they would want you to make sure you collect all the audiologs. Also, while the goal indicator arrow thingy at the top of the screen is helpful, and damn necessary in the labyrinth most levels are, I have the suspicion the twitchy, gogogo type of players won’t explore the levels fully, and that’s a damn shame. However, the indicator, much like the hint displays, can be turned off.
Also, the bosses are...jokes. There’s really only like oh, let’s say four throughout the whole damn game, which is very long, with like a dozen levels. And one of them is a non-interactive cutscene for God’s sake! Sure there are times when you fight a slightly advanced Splicer, or have a scripted event where you have to hold off a wave or get ambushed, or fight some kind of miniboss, but those don’t count. The usual enemy AI is solid and smarter than your normal FPS bad guys, but all the bosses stick to preset moves. Hell, the final battle is pathetically easy. Almost all the attacks are easily dodgeable and even if you don’t dodge because it would throw off your half-ass aim (maybe due to control issues, like with me), you can just drip-feed yourself health and ammo and unload the Crossbow until the boss buys the proverbial farm. It’ll take all of four or five clips. Yes, I played Easy, and Normal would’ve probably be harder of course, but here’s the thing: Bosses should be harder than the rest of the game (even on Easy), but BioShock’s bosses are made up of NGE fans and Wii owners, so they pose very little challenge.
As far as the story is concerned, while the ghost sequences are awesome, there’s far too few of them. Those were some of my favorite parts, but they really get short-changed, especially toward the end of the game. Also, the subtitles (which are very small and hard to read, by the way) are synched very badly with the audio. Whether logs or radio messages or just someone talking to Jack, the subtitles either move too slowly or too fast, and often start when someone is laughing or having their voiced warped, which several times gives away the identities of the speaker when it’s suppose to be a surprise. The endings are rather interesting but they’re also very short. And there’s really only two of them, with a third just being a variation of one of them. The endings are completely dependant on what you do to the Little Sisters. However, that’s probably a good thing given that BioShock will bring out your sadistic side, and unlike most games, you’re not punished for being as vicious as possible to the Splicers.
Lastly, and leastly, the two smallest annoyances are as follows. The hacking minigame that takes place whenever you try to fiddle with a vending machine for cheaper prices or security bots to get them on your side starts out a bit interesting, but after a while, it becomes very tedious and prone to lots of trial and error. And given that there are at least a hundred machines throughout the game and even more bots, it can be extremely annoying because without hacking everything you see, you will find yourself broke and without extra defense. And the blood effects, while a petty gripe, make me giggle every so often because when you hit or shoot splicers, what comes out doesn’t look like blood. It looks like strawberry jam. I’m serious. Yes, it’s a silly thing to complain about, but...myah. Can’t help it.
Rent, Buy, or Ignore?: Well, despite the several little niggling trifles, BioShock is most obviously an overwhelming Buy. Seriously people, you need to buy this game. Since it’s on the PS3, XBOX360, and PC (i.e. the systems that are worth a damn), and it’s fairly old by game standards, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t buy it. With an awesome, philosophically engaging story (which uses Ayn Rand’s Objectivism (a.k.a. when Libertarianism goes around the bend) as its backdrop), loads of interesting characters, fun RPG-styled FPS gameplay, and more customization than you can shake a stick at, BioShock is perhaps one of the best games I’ve played in a long time, and it’s a worthy successor to that Hybrid moniker.



Yes, I do apologize again for the length of the review, and while the videos aren’t that long, there are a few of them. And yes, I do think both tribute videos should be watched. Set to Lacuna Coil’s "Heaven’s a Lie," this video shows a lot of the kickass gameplay of BioShock, as well several uses of your Plasmids to whack Splicers in entertaining ways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM2HvQZwgAc

Second on our agenda today is perhaps one of the best videos I’ve ever seen, coupled with a song that already has become a favorite of mine even though I’ve never heard it before. It’s a bit slower paced than the first one, but I think it is more in the general feel of the game, especially the lyrics of the song. "Demons" is by Brian McFadden, and without a doubt, this song applies to poor, poor Jack.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fZwgHYtgyk

Our last video today is not a tribute video, but another review. It’s rare for me to do this, but for those of you who want a different take on things, Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation reviewed BioShock early on in his career. And while I don’t agree completely with him, the man is entertaining and makes some very valid points.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/ ... 4-BioShock



And we’re done. I want to thank you all for reading the review and watching the videos. It really means a lot to me. As always, they’re not just for me to get up on my soapbox (though that’s partly it), but to help my readers navigate the world of animanga and games. Speaking of anime, my review of Kanon will be up next, so look out for that. Cuteness and depression, full steam ahead! So until next time, my spliced up snowflakes: A man chooses. A slave obeys. But if you think that’s all there is to it, then you don’t know Jack...

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Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 3:43 pm
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LadyVendettaAngel wrote:
Thanks.

Tochai...love your siggy. Emo Phillips if I'm not mistaken.

You are not mistaken, keen eye.

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Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:10 pm
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ive seen mixed reviews on both.... i dont really know what to think about it (2nd one)... i want to say i liked it but i cant because i was just constantly on edge because of it (in game and out lol)... every moment is an "OH S#!^!!!!" moment because it gives you very little health, very few health packs, and almost no ammo.... great story, but just to creepy, panicky feeling for me

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Posted: Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:18 pm
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SBLS I think you may have set a record for most words in a post.lol


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Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 12:26 pm
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:D :D :D :D
SBLS......I have good eyesight and had to squint for that. LOL

Looked it up on youtube. Don't think I'll get it. I like shooter games but too creepy for me, and I've played Dante's Inferno.

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My dad said, "I'm going to miss you."
I said, "Well, now that I broke that sight off your rifle..." (Emo Philips)


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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 8:39 am
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straycat113 wrote:
SBLS I think you may have set a record for most words in a post.lol



:lol:
straycat113, having forgotten about this, though now I think you might be right :lol:
my apologies. :oops: (that was actually a post from my nephews old review blog)

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