UNDER DA SEA!!

[Inlander]

I hope they improve the look of the sea-wandering sequences before release. The leaves and fronds of all the coral and kelp should be wafting, not standing stock-still like support columns in a building. I know, I know, I'm being disgracefully nitpicky and gameplay's more important than graphics and all that good stuff, but it really bothered me how undynamic that sequence looked.

[KvP]

As I understand it, coral isn't usually very flexible! Those "flower" things looked a lot like the tubes you'd find in deep-sea fissures. They're supposed to look weird anyway, because of the rampant ADAM mutating things on the ocean floor. Still, plants are obviously a dumb idea. I don't think UE3 (Irrational's build, anyway) can handle fluid geometry that well.

[Inlander]

Yeah okay I think that post was late at night and I was half-drunk but the kelp still looked rubbish.

[Blue Kitty]

[LTK]

Looks nice. But the helmet can't be right, you can clearly see in the video that it's supposed to be the same as Rosie's. Unless they're going to change it in the eventual game, which is not improbable.

Let me just say: There is no way I'm not getting this right on the release date. Even if it is sixty euros.

[Blue Kitty]

Alright folks, November 3rd it is.  Unless of course you live in Europe, then it's October 30th

[KvP]

Hope you're not itching for the game cause It ain't out till next year.

*sad trombone*

[Zombiedude]

on the other hand

[LTK]

Well, shit. Bioshock 2 was the game I looked forward to playing the most this year. On the other hand, a Bioshock novel has the potential to be really, really cool. I think there's a lot of potential in the game's characters to be put into words. Just think of Cohen!

[LTK]

Hey guys, I thought you should now that the website somethinginthesea.com has now a whole room to investigate as opposed to a world map with notes. There is a bottle of Arcadia Merlot on the file cabinet...

There are also several puzzles, and among the archives, recordings of O.O. Lutwige who was searching for Rapture, and apparently, found it. There is a box with a memory puzzle on the table, and if you solve the puzzle you get another cryptic message from Lutwige, and also a keyboard with music notes corresponding to longitudes, latitudes, and... times of day? There are sun icons along with numbers like 6:28 and 5:37, but no different hours than 5 or 6. There is a piece of sheet music on the tabel with the first line of 'Drunken Sailor', with the notes coloured, for use with this box, obviously. And... aw, hell, I left the box and now I have to do the puzzle all over again. Damn it.

There is also a safe on the right side of the room with the Ryan Industries logo on it. it has four tracks where you can move eight different buttons over. On some points of the tracks there are slots the buttons can fall in to move to another track. The buttons need to fall in the slot that is in the middle of the bottom line of the second track from the center, but in a certain order. Unlock it and there's another of Lutwige's recordings.

[Ptommydski]

I didn't know this thread was about Bioshock. For me, the saving grace of the original (which was bright and brilliant at first but ultimately very tedious) was that you were a regular chap and you were in genuine peril from borderline everything. Being a Big Daddy ruins that completely. That's some really lame second guessing of the audience right there.

Can't wait until they bring out the next installation of the Half Life saga where you play one of those giant combine striders.

[LTK]

I didn't know this thread was about Bioshock. For me, the saving grace of the original (which was bright and brilliant at first but ultimately very tedious) was that you were a regular chap and you were in genuine peril from borderline everything. Being a Big Daddy ruins that completely. That's some really lame second guessing of the audience right there.

Can't wait until they bring out the next installation of the Half Life saga where you play one of those giant combine striders.

I don't know if you read all the previews, but if you did, you heard that because of how powerful the Big Daddy is they had to add another character that was even bigger and badder: The Big Sister. That's the factor that keeps the peril in the new game (hopefully).

[Scandanavian War Machine]

not to mention that it sounds as though you'll be protecting your fair share of Little Sisters from splicers and the Big Sister, so we may be getting a different kind of peril but it could (and hopefully does!) have the same kind of effect.
then again, the whole "Joe Schmoe" thing doesn't really apply to me: i never really got that feeling from the first game since i could, you know, shoot fire out of my hands and use any gun i happened to stumble upon with expert proficiency.

it's been said before but i'll say it again to reiterate: it wasn't the main character that made Bioshock what it is, it was the environment and, to a lesser extent, the supporting characters.

[ackblom12]

I still say Andrew Ryan's scene was probably the best scene I have ever had the pleasure of watching.

[Ptommydski]

it's been said before but i'll say it again to reiterate: it wasn't the main character that made Bioshock what it is, it was the environment and, to a lesser extent, the supporting characters.

Honestly, the "sea as a character" theory is so overplayed when talking about this game. Sure, there was water outside when you passed a window as you traversed the maze of corridors which have characterised just about every FPS since W3D. Amazing! It's a bit like saying the thing that made Doom great was that Mars was a character because sporadically you could see it out of a porthole. Or space in System Shock 2 etc.

[LTK]

I have to agree with that. Sure, walking the ocean floor does get you closer to the sea, but when you look at everything else in Rapture that's out to get you, the sea doesn't seem all that threatening at all, does it? And nowhere in the game were you actually in danger of drowning or something, the leaking corridors never fill up and the bulkheads keep the walls of water away. If the sea was a character, it'd probably be the useless, annoying sidekick villain.

War Machine didn't mention the sea specifically, though. I thought the atmosphere played a large role in the Bioshock experience too.

Hey, another thing, am I the only one here who enjoys solving the puzzles and digging through that archive cabinet on the website?

[variable_star]

I didn't know this thread was about Bioshock.

Yeah, me either. What am I going to do now with my essay on the relationship between Sebastian and Flounder?

So, now that I've finally broken down and gotten myself a console, this game is high on my list. System Shock 2 is on my list of top ten games ever made, even ten years later it's still got more atmosphere than most recent titles.

[Blue Kitty]

New trailer.  Fast and frantic

[Ozymandias]

Man there are some very different looking splicers and daddies in there.

First time I've ever seen a trailer advertising the end of a press embargo, though.

[KvP]

It's nice that they've expanded the enemy roster. That was probably my biggest complaint about the first game. It looks like they've gone closer to the original Bioshock concept, insofar as splicers are concerned. The few that are left have been "naturally selected" and their plasmid abuse has rendered them completely monstrous.

[LTK]

You are not going to believe what Bioshock 2's Collector's Edition will hold. I mean, the bottles of Arcadia Merlot they mailed to some of the active forum users were nice, but look at what you're gonna get for the price of $100 (PC $90): http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96282-BioShock-2-Special-Edition-Floats-Ashore

Now let's hope that it will be sold outside the US too. Even if it does, I'm just going to assume they'll ignore that currencies even exist and charge Europeans €100 too, if not more.

[Ozymandias]

a vinyl 180g LP (yes, a record) that has the original BioShock score on it

Hot damn

[Jeans]

Yeah, I'm getting the collector's edition.

[snalin]

I'd buy it if I had something to use that LP with. Having it just sit around isn't really something I'd pay for. then again, the art book and... we'll see.

[LTK]

Have you seen the new trailer? It's got new splicers, new big daddies and new weapons to kill them all with. And apparently, your name is Delta. There is also a Multiplayer trailer.

I've also found the Collector's Editions for pre-order on Play.com, and it costs either 70 pounds or 90 euros regardless of platform. Hmm, I wonder if it's possible to buy the UK edition, have them ship it for free to a delivery service, and then have the mail send it to me?

[KvP]

Preordering via Steam in online. I need two people to enter into a 4-pack deal with me - I think the savings are like 10% or something.

[Emaline]

I want the collector's edition sooooo bad. It's fucking awesome.

[LTK]

Preordering via Steam in online. I need two people to enter into a 4-pack deal with me - I think the savings are like 10% or something.

That's a good plan, mind if I join in for the $$$ instead of the €€€?

[KvP]

Sure. One more needed!

[snalin]

Maybe I'll sign up - I'll have to go through my finances tomorrow to see if I can afford it, but it's Bioshock 2 we're talking about here, so probably.

[LTK]

Better be quick about it then, the 10% discount goes away in five days. There's a launch trailer already. I daresay it's holy god-fucking ass-balling amazing.

[KvP]

Yea or Nae?

[snalin]

That's 33,7 Euros on each of us, 276 NOK. This is at least going to cost 500 when it drops, if I'm lucky, 400, but that's unlikely. Count me in! PM the details, pretty please.

[KvP]

Alright homos, the game has hit on Steam. I'm downloading but I'm probably going to go to bed and play it in the morning!

[LTK]

FUCK. WINDOWS. LIVE.

I'll be back when I get the game working.

[Jeans]

I bought the Rapture edition and got a neato book of concept art! It is pretty cool. As for the game itself -

I've played for about two hours. It is very much like the original Bioshock, really, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone now. Rapture is still a scary and gorgeous broken utopia, the splicers still have the ability to pop up from nowhere and make you jump out of your skin, the sound effects are excellent and creepy as hell (though there is one voice actor whose attempt at a southern US accent rather ruins the mood occasionally), and the weapon system still feels clunky and weird. My favourite part about this game so far is the reappearance of Tenenbaum from the first game. Anne Bobby, the voice actor that does her voice, was excellent in the first, and has surpassed herself this time around - her voice is amazingly well done. Other than that, the writing seems to be on roughly the same level - the audio logs and radio transmits still has some pretty good lines. That said, I'm not far enough into the game to judge whether the actual story is good or not. Time will tell, I guess.

[Ozymandias]

Kotaku definitely said that the first few hours of the game feels like a retread and made them question the logic of making a sequel, but once you get far enough in, it feels like such an improvement over the original that it melted away.

[LTK]

I've played a bit now, I am at the amusement park at the moment. You're right, there are numerous déjà vu-s in Bioshock 2. Creepy mood music, suffocating atmosphere (quite literally), being ordered around over the radio, etcetera. Plasmids and weapons can be combined quite well, but they have some drawbacks, like the difficulty in switching between weapons, ammo and plasmids. There's also no more eve recharging. The fights I've been in were a bit frantic but not especially bad. I haven't had much practice with the drill, so I'm mostly using the rivet gun, which is very effective. Hacking can now be done at a distance and in real time, and it improved a lot over the last Bioshock. By the way, did you know the original concept of hacking in Bioshock was to rearrange the vending machine's pipe flow in order to give Adam to the little man inside so he would give you cheaper items? Anyway, now it's no longer a puzzle but reliant on reaction time, although it's not really hard. The punishment is a lot more severe, though, as the bots will find you immediately.

Being a big daddy does not feel nearly as badass as you would expect. A gang of four splicers will take you down in under twenty seconds on Hard difficulty if you're not careful, and you can only carry 5 first aid kits, which run out very fast too. Even so, there is an abundance of health, eve and ammo to be found so far.

[Jeans]

I've been struggling a lot with finding medkits, actually! What I have noticed, though, is that money is waaaay more plentiful than in the first game, and there is an absolute dickton of vending machines around, so it works out.

[KvP]

Yeah I'm about an hour in and it's pretty unremarkable so far. But I've only got shock / telekinesis and the rivet gun, so things are probably going to expand here in a bit.

[Jeans]

Alec Meer on RPS wrote a bigass thing about it.

[KvP]

They did the "scrap all your best enemy concepts and leave them in the art book" thing with the first game as well.

That's a pretty good writeup, though.

[Felrender]

So, anybody else beat it yet?

I have to say, they really outdid themselves in terms of atmosphere.  I was worried that "Rapture 10 years later" would just have more rubble and uglier Splicers, but they handled it really well.  Also, I never thought Ryan would appear sympathetic.

Also, holy shit, the last genetic key.  That was the weirdest/coolest thing.

[LTK]

Hell no, I would be totally bummed if I finished it already. I'm having so much fun that I'm already fearing the moment it ends.

I'm just past the point where the spider splicers show up, and I've noticed that the balance of item looting and item consumption kind of zig-zags. One moment I'm feverishly low on health and first aid kits, and my guns go 'click' more than they go 'bang', and five minutes later there is so many health, eve and cash around that I don't know what to do with it all. It probably has to do with the instances of hyper-consumption, like gathering, Big Daddies and Big Sisters, that burn through health and ammo real quick. I especially like being able to set traps now. It's much more practical than Bioshock 1's trap bolts and cyclone traps, but sometimes it can make things too easy. You can plan ahead of gathering and Big Daddies, which usually involves creating a minefield out of trap rivets. On their own they're not especially effective, but twenty of them in a radius of one metre wil keep plenty of splicers out. That's how I take out almost all Big Daddies now; set a minefield in his path and take him out with whatever else you've got. Then there's the Big Sisters, who appear unexpectedly, but still give you enough of a heads-up to plant some cyclone traps and rig them with fire, lightning or ice. It's not very challenging, but the fun mostly makes up for it.

I liked photo researching in Bio 1, but here they made it even more fun. Now you have a video camera which tapes splicers for a minute or so, but you won't get much points for taping a Big Daddy lumbering around, you've got to fight them. What's best, the more different ways you kill a splicer or Big Daddy with on tape, the more research points you will get, be it with the drill, shotgun, turrets or traps. This motivates variety in researching and killing them; First you can let the security bot finish the Spider Splicer off, but the second time you meet one, you might take him down with a Drill Dash. It really encourages you to spice things up, but always in your own way and never forcibly.

[KvP]

Unfortunately for me, Games For Windows Live is preventing my game from starting. It worked yesterday but it's back to crashing when it gets to the main menu.

[Blue Kitty]

So far I've heard it's an unneeded sequel that lives off the original while not improving upon much.  Is this true?

[Felrender]

So far I've heard it's an unneeded sequel that lives off the original while not improving upon much.  Is this true?

Not in the least.  If anything, it expands on the groundwork laid down by the first game, and brings up several interestig concepts.

[LTK]

Unfortunately for me, Games For Windows Live is preventing my game from starting. It worked yesterday but it's back to crashing when it gets to the main menu.

The Steam installer went loopy when it tried to install Visual C++ and GFWL at the same time. Have you tried reinstalling GFWL from the website?

[KvP]

Yeah. Far as I can tell it's a problem with the version of GFWL that comes with the game - it creates savegames differently from the current version of the client. Thus when you start it up, GFWL gets confused and locks up. I've tried deleting the Bioshock 2 folder GFWL creates but I've had no luck so far.

[LTK]

I'm pretty sure GFWL alone can be uninstalled from the control panel, you could try that.