Bioshock Questions

[Gallifrey]

I know there have been a ton of Bioshock threads, but I didn't want to resurrect something from August nor did I want to inadvertently read spoilers, so I made a new thread.
This past weekend I did a small upgrade to my aging PC (new graphics card, more memory) and played the Bioshock demo because I could.
It wasn't too bad, I rather enjoyed it and so the demo pretty much had me sold. Then the demo ends and there's a long trailer for the game, showing tons and tons of fancy combat and, well, that un-sold me. What I thought might be a highly atmospheric mystery/survival/exploration game was shown as a combat-heavy slogging (albeit with many snazzy plasmid-using maneuvers) and I was seriously dead bored by the time the trailer ended.

So I'm wondering, how is the game really? Is it very combat heavy (were the trailer selections there to sell the game to FPS addicts), or does it have a better pace, more like System Shock 2? And how long is it? I tend to lose interest in shooters after about 15-20 hours of gameplay.

I loved the imagery of the game, that whole 50's/steampunk collision really worked for me. Having to scrounge for ammo was nice, and selectively tackling opponents (what weapon or plasmid to use, or just avoid them, etc) adds to the game. But the trailer just showed flat-out combat assaults made head-on, so I'm wary.

 

[JDR13]

It's definitely more combat heavy and "twitch" reliant than either of the System Shock games, I can tell you that. But on the flip side, it's also a lot easier in general than either of those games, and the difficulty is adjustable.

The atmosphere and scenery\art direction in Bioshock are indeed very good, some things seem a little out of place, but in general the view is fantastic.

It's more FPS than the SS games were, that's for sure. It's also a lot shorter than either of those games. It's not a "mystery/survival/exploration" game, although there is definitely some mystery throughout the storyline, the levels are not very large and exploration is somewhat limited imo.

I enjoyed it and thought it was a very good game in general, though not the all time classic that some people will try to have you believe, and not as good as either of the System Shock games.

 

[Gallifrey]

Hm. That's kind of what I expected, really. Which is unfortunate as the game looks phenomenal, and I'm not talking graphics quality, but art design-wise it's lovely. Tacking on a twitchy shooter to that is rather a let-down, but par for the course in most gaming these days.

Perhaps it'll be a bargain bin buy in a couple of years.

 

[JDR13]

Keep in mind that the combat is a lot more "thought out" than most FPS's. There are multiple ways to get past any given situation, you don't have to go in guns blazing. Even though I stand by what I said about it being more twitch than the SS games, it's not as if it's Doom or Halo either.

 

[fatBastard()]

There is a certain tonic that will allow you to become invisible when standing still. This will allow you to do a much more stealthy approach to most encounters, be it a whack at the back of the skull, set a trap or simply wait for the most opportune moment to strike.

Playing with this tonic made the experience much more like how I played a stealthy Deus Ex than a twitch action shooter.

 

[dteowner]

I'm awful at twitch games. I have the eye-hand coordination to do it, but it's just not the type of experience I'm looking for when I play games. Too much effort.

I played Bioshock on easy. While it's still a FPS thru and thru, on easy the game truly is, ummm, easy. That allowed me to actually pay attention to the atmosphere of the game. I don't generally do "immersion" in my gaming either. Bioshock was simply the most immersive game I can ever remember playing. I paid attention to the story and paid attention to the environment and actually listened to every tape I found (the sound bites are Bioshock's equivalent of the traidtional RPG in-game book).

Since (at least on easy) you can acquire every single tonic and plasmid in the game by the end, I say that there is exactly zero RPG to the game. If you're expecting an RPG, skip this one. If you're looking for an immersive experience and can stand an FPS (which, as FB and JDR mention, does allow for multiple approaches for progress), I'd get Bioshock.

It was a short game, so it will probably fit into your 15-20 hour window pretty well.

 

[Gallifrey]

Thanks for the replies folks. While I'm not going to run out and buy this game now, I will keep an eye on it and when it's cheaper will pick it up. I loved the setting, not so much the gameplay, so if the Easy setting allows more setting to be taken in with less irritation or interruption, that's great.

 

[woges]

The Art Deco look of Rapture really is impressive.

Seems to have been built in an extremely clean sea mind.

 

[woges]

If you play on easy I guess you'd finish it in 15-20 hours. It's more a fps with spells than anything else though.

 

[KazikluBey]

Having to scrounge for ammo was nice, and selectively tackling opponents (what weapon or plasmid to use, or just avoid them, etc) adds to the game.

I played it on medium, so maybe you need a little more variation in your strategy on hard, but the thing is... While you can kill foes in a number of ways, there's not really any reason to. Just pick one style, be it freeze n' hack or gunning and run with it for your plasmid/weapon upgrade selection, it'll be enough for all the splicers. Then use your explosives/armor piercing on big daddies. Whoopdidoo. I thought it got boring quite fast.

Also, there's not really any need to "scrounge" ammo, there's so much ammo, money and adam available that it'll come shooting out of your ears soon enough.

And then there's the bloody "hacking" minigame. You'll spend like a quarter of your time plumbing if you don't decide to destroy all of the security bots, cameras and automatic machine guns and rocket launchers.

The atmosphere was indeed nice but it would have been better if Rapture had actually, you know, resembled some sort of city. As it is, the grand underwater city of Rapture almost has the same sort of floor layouts you'd expect in Doom and Quake.

Oh, and there's also the ridiculous plot which is what made me stop playing before reaching the end. It's quite clear they didn't spend a whole lot of thought into it. (Senior Designer Joe McDonagh: "Bioshock for instance started out on a tropical island with Nazis.")

Spoiler

I reached the "plot twist". Writer's 101: Do not make your readers/viewers/players feel cheated out of the experience. Examples include ending a story with "and then he woke up!", but also what Bioshock does. It's fine to jerk the reader's chain by making him/her/it believe things by planting false leads, but Bioshock tells us as little about the protagonist, when starting out, as Half-Life does. This is fine in a game that isn't about the protagonist but Bioshock's protagonist is central to the story, and we discover the protagonist's fate in "first person" as though it was all about a "third person". What could have been an ok book or movie plot - where the separation between protagonist and reader/viewer and their respective knowledge is expected - is utterly ruined in Bioshock because without an emotional connection built up there can be no emotional impact once you find out the truth.

I hadn't expected this to form into an anti-Bioshock rant, but there you go. Oh, and if anyone feels like taking issue with the spoiler part, maybe we could keep such replies in another thread or PM's.