THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: Blue Kitty on 05 Mar 2009, 14:24
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More cryptic musings about Bioshock 2. Not much by the way of information.
There's something in the sea (http://www.somethinginthesea.com/) and, for those that have already forgotten, the teaser trailer (http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/22120)
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just saw this on Kotaku earlier but haven't been to the site yet since it sounds like there's not much there anyway.
oh well, i'm fucking stoked nonetheless.
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It sounds to me like you're the father of the little kidnapped girl and the game is about you trying to get her back.
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At the very least, the site seems to imply that the Big Daddys are surfacing to steal little girls.
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I thought this was going to be thread about O'dell Down Under. I'm pretty disappointed.
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I did not know that great white sharks could eat coral until I played that game.
Incidentally they looked like they were having seizures when they devoured something.
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I did not know that great white sharks could eat coral until I played that game.
What? They're carnivorous.
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Somebody hasn't played O'Dell Down Under.
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under the sea? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzrIBut8Fo8
I'm pretty exited by this. Bioshock was amazing, I expect nothing but amazing from Bioshock 2. But I guess they haven't come out with much info on gameplay yet.
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So, how far after the events of the original is this going to be? I thought the entire point in Bioshock was that Rapture was breaking down, regardless of what you did.
Although, there were entire areas of thecity that we never explored. Bah, who knows.
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The original Bioshock took place in 1960. The year scrawled on the teaser page is 1967. So the little girl in question is now a tween.
And as you probably noticed from the first game the Big Daddies went about their Rapture business as though everything was fine. So Ozy's theory is plausible.
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I thought this was going to be thread about O'dell Down Under. I'm pretty disappointed.
Now I want to play that game again.
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Oh man. I never really finished Bioshock. I need to buy it and finish it. And then perhaps, play through it again.
I'm pretty excited for this.
I hope it's not a crappy sequel just for money. I doubt it will be.
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I thought this was going to be thread about O'dell Down Under. I'm pretty disappointed.
I thought this was going to be about Eco Quest.
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Big Sisters? (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173155)
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I was all "big daddies aren't thin" when i checked the site.Glad I was right.
what could be interesting is if they worked together. "Big parents" so to speak.
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(http://medialib.computerandvideogames.com/screens/screenshot_212329.jpg)
http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=210065 (http://"http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=210065")
I heard Jordan Thomas, Creative Director on Bioshock 2 at 2K Marin, worked as lead designer on Thief: Deadly Shadow and designed Fort Frolic area on Bioshock 1. Zak McClendon, Lead Designer on Bioshock 2, worked on systems / level designer on Project: Snowblind at Crystal Dynamics.
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More stuffs up, take a look.
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The site featured a fictional news story of a kidnapped girl, and the description of the attacker seemed to echo that of a Big Daddy -- except for a few key distinctions. The story says the attacker had "incredible speed," and that this person was "thin, above average height, and wore some kind of 'red light.'" Incredibly fast, thin, and above average height... does that sound like an average Big Daddy to you?
Not to nitpick here (I'm totally nitpicking), but except for the thin part, I remember Big Daddies were huge and tall and unusually fast for their size. I was gored many a time by a Big Daddy charging me from across the room.
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I was many a-time out maneuvered by one of those son'bitches, and anyway I mentioned the skinny part in my post. I'm just playing off what they said in the article.
I'm guessing the Big Mommas will be even more difficult than their predecessors.
Oh yeah wasn't this game supposed to be a prequel? What happened?
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It's supposedly both a prequel and a sequel, so I'm guessing it's taking place chronologically after the first game but it deals with events occurring prior to Bioshock, or something to that effect.
If I were to take a wild guess I'd say that Rapture is still alive, perhaps rebuilding itself with its legions of Big Daddies, and it's dispatched faster "Big Mommas" as agents to retrieve the little sisters (as obviously the good ending of Bioshock is canon) so that ADAM harvesting can begin anew. It's also possible the girl abducted is not one of the little sisters from the first game.
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oh snap (http://kotaku.com/5167756/first-image-of-bioshock-2s-big-sister)
(no new information, but there is a pretty picture)
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Re: chronology, the very first letter on the site mentioned in the O.P. is clearly dated 1967. So there's that.
EDIT: Also, I hope that the Big Sisters are a bit more challenging to kill than the Big Daddies (by which I mean I hope you can't, on the normal difficulty setting, simply pump them full of electro-gel and watch them go down like a sack of potatoes).
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I very much do not like the look of that thing on the Big Sister's arm.
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Big news (http://kotaku.com/5169798/spoiler-alert-how-big-daddies-appear-in-bioshock-2) folks
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HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT.
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8===D~~~~
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what
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holy crap that's rad
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My brain is broken now.
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Awesome.
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I'm calling it right now:
The Big Sister is Tenenbaum
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Well I guess that's different. Doesn't bode particularly well for game balance, but whatever.
Actually it would be easy for this to suck. One of the shittiest parts of Bioshock 1 was the part in which you put on the Big Daddy costume and followed the Little Sister around, and not just because it came after the reveal. I loathe escort missions, and (apparently, I've heard) having the girls harvest ADAM for you will produce the same "wave spawn" of splicers as it did in that sequence.
On the bright side you'll probably see Rapture deteriorate as it happens, which will be fun I guess?
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Wait, the game takes place during the fall of Rapture?
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I'm assuming that's the case, else it wouldn't make a lot of sense to make the PC the "first big daddy". What was he doing during the events of the first game? Why would it take him over 6/7 years (roughly, I'm not terribly familiar with the timeline laid out by the first game) to start his search? It's also possible it could be an Opposing Force-esque "sequel" that runs parallel to the first game's story. Besides, 2K Boston hit pay dirt with the antagonist of Andrew Ryan, and there has to be an urge to go with what works instead of trying (and likely failing) to top the first game.
Admittedly there's a lot of stuff that doesn't seem to fit together at the moment, like the Big Daddy revelation and all the stuff on the Promo site. What the promo site hinted at seems to me to be a stronger premise than "you are a prototype Big Daddy and you want to find a Little Sister of your very own". A dumb and mute giant doesn't make for an appealing protagonist outside of the fact that you can do all sorts of damage.
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Hell, even the teaser trailer hinted at more than that.
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Part of me wishes I hadn't found that out, but damn, that game is going to be the shit.
When I looked through those articles on Under The Sea I got the impression of Big Daddy + Spider Splicer. I guess I was right somehow. Do those Big Sisters swim?
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This better not be a giant escort mission.
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This can be so many kinds of bad and just a few kinds of good. I hope they can do this without fucking up.
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That news was kind of a whole lot of nothing.
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The sort that I'd never play. Just like every other sort of multiplayer mode!
Oh wait, I played Ico in multiplayer mode once. The multiplayer mode in Ico is awful.
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Actually I'm lying, I played Time Splitters 2 in split-screen multiplayer mode all the way through the main storyline with my brother and it was awesome. But 99% of my gaming is done on P.C. and playing multiplayer games online against people who spend every spare minute of their life perfecting their skills in that particular game holds little or no appeal to me.
Oh also, multiplayer mode in San Andreas. Man, did that suck!
EDIT: Actually I'm going to tell you all about the multiplayer mode in Ico, because you probably haven't played it and it was hilariously bad. It was one of the things you unlocked as a reward for finishing the game. If you've played Ico, you'll know that there are two characters: Ico, and Princess Whatsername. Princess Whatsername has only two functions: look winsome, and open doors. She's pretty good at both. The rest of the time she spends being threatened by black inky ghosts, and compulsively running towards Ico whenever he calls her.
In the multiplayer mode, the second player plays as Princess Whatsername.
If person playing as Ico presses the "call Princess" button, the Princess will go running towards him. The person playing as the Princess has no control over this.
If you've played Shadow of the Colossus, it's like unlocking a multiplayer mode, and the second player gets to play as the horse.
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Well, comparing co-op in other games to Timesplitters is usually going to make the other game look bad, anyways.
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Well, damn. I read that the makers have plans to make Bioshock into a running series (like GTA) of maybe even five parts. I think it would be hard pressed to trump the first Bioshock with a sequel, let alone four of them. How are they ever going to pull that off?
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i'm not sure why, but for some reason, i have faith in them. for now.
we'll see how i feel after playing 2, but at this point i'm feeling pretty good about it.
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Anyone else that keeps watching the updates on that teaser page? Even though they are making a hype, it's the best hype-making I've ever seen. I will buy this game so much.
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Hey, here's a thought: Jack probably couldn't have saved (or killed) every last one of them Little Sisters, so what could have happened when they grew up is that they got made in Big Sisters. But who would have done that? It's not like there's anyone left in Rapture capable of creating more of these monstrosities.
Another thing: We never saw the Teleport plasmid in the first Bioshock. Maybe we can get it this time...
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just in case there's some crazy people out there who don't read Kotaku religiously (what is wrong with you?!):
name change, no co-op (http://kotaku.com/5176079/bioshock-2-gets-name-change-wont-feature-co+op)
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So from hat I got from the GI article, it's one Big Sister, who you fight constantly, and she is a BITCH. She can siphon Adam directly into her bloodstream from corpses, fueling her rape-tastic TK powers. On the plus side, you are a Big Daddy. Your primary melee weapon is THE DRILL.
And now, you can use plasmids and weapons AT THE SAME TIME.
And, apparently, due to the Big Sister's influence and several other factors, a large portion of Rapture is still stable. In fact, there is still a whole lot of city that Jack didn't explore.
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Big Sister is basically Nemesis/SA-X/Dark Samus, in other words.
Which is cool.
I love that gameplay mechanic when used well. I just hope they do it less scripted than the aforementioned games.
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Big Sister is basically Nemesis/SA-X/Dark Samus, in other words.
Which is cool.
I love that gameplay mechanic when used well. I just hope they do it less scripted than the aforementioned games.
Her appreances, as far as I can tell, are triggered after you kill a certain amount of Big Daddies and harvest/adopt-with-hope-to-liberate their Sisters. In the encounter the guys at GI saw, she flung random debris at you, until forming a shell of rubble and junk, before sending thew whole thing flying. One fo ther chuinks comes sailing for your face. Fade to black.
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Remember that silly thing where they said they'd drop the subtitle Sea of Dreams? Yeah, that's not quite true (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bioshock-2-doesnt-drop-subtitle)
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By the way, do you remember why the escort mission sucked so much in the first BioShock? That was because the Little Sister could die. Now that they still have their delicious little sea slugs in their tummies that make them invincible, and how they vomit Adam for you to use, will certainly take out the dullness of escorting them, don't you think so?
I do wonder what your options are, though. Will you be able to save the Little Sisters this time by taking out the slug, or will the only two methods available be to harvest them or adopt them?
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Remember that silly thing where they said they'd drop the subtitle Sea of Dreams? Yeah, that's not quite true (http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bioshock-2-doesnt-drop-subtitle)
First Big Daddy, who somehow gaimed use of plasimds and Adam
HE IS A PROTOTYPE.
PLASMID CAPACITY WAS REMOVED FROM END MODEL.
IT IS ALL IN THE GI ARTICLE GODDAMN.
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I get to set people ablaze and drill their face off at the same time.....me want. Me want now.
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(http://www.comicquest.com/images/hulk.gif)
YES
THAT IS CORRECT
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MAKE UP YOUR FUCKING MINDS (http://kotaku.com/5197347/bioshock-2-isnt-sea-of-dreams-again)
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"Sky is blue, wait red, shit, blue again,"
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Wait, are people really so absurdly over-excited about this game that they're devoting their actual time and energy to discussing and reporting whether or not the game is going to have a meaningless subtitle that will be completely forgotten five seconds after the box has been opened?
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YES.
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The dude who wrote Fort Frolic is actually the head designer of this one.
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Actually, if anything "Sea of Dreams" makes me think that the designers of this game might have a few original gameplay ideas (by which I mean "designing a game that revolves around something other than turning a fancy location into a bloodbath", NOT "turning a fancy location into a bloodbath in new and exciting ways").
But I know that's almost certainly a forlorn hope.
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Actually, I was posting them because I was a little angry that it was all the news we've been getting for the game lately.
I mean we got the announcement about Big Sisters, then that the subtitle was dropped/reapplied/dropped again.
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The dude who wrote Fort Frolic is actually the head designer of this one.
Fort Frolic? Seriously? That rocks. Sander Cohen was the best fucking character in the whole game. He was just brilliant in his blissful insanity. If the guy who made him made the whole game, I'm definitely going to buy it regardless of what anyone says.
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Here's hoping the boss fights are more than "Vanilla type of Splicer with more health and friends".
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Why should they be anything else? They're just people who shot up Adam as well.
Because they're fucking boring?
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Yes. There's a difference between presentation and gameplay. The Bioshock "bosses" were by and large set up perfectly, but acually fighting them introduced no real change in gameplay, they were just like every other enemy. Even lazy-ass techniques like "shoot the brightly colored weak spots on the enemy" (hello RE5) add welcome variety to gameplay. Having a boss that just moves or attacks differently is enough. The fuckers weren't even skinned differently than the other splicers. They were all stroke and no orgasm.
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You thought Dr. Steinman was boring?
Well, yes, actually. I remember when I first encountered him as a boss fight, and thought he was kind of interestingly insane with having hallucinations of Aphrodite talking to him and stuff, and then I shot him, and he died like any other crazed splicer. That was kind of lame.
Come to think of it, the only splicer boss fight I actually found difficult was Peach Wilkins. I can't really recall whether I had played the game on Hard or not, I think I did...
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Honestly I found it fairly nice to have a game where the bosses really were nothing more than just another character. Completely insane, much more memorable, but just as vulnerable as anyone else.
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There was a disconnect, though. They spent all this time trying to make characters out of enemies that were by definition just like every other enemy in the game. I don't see the point in praising Irrational for half-assing the job of making their characters special. The bosses you fight aren't really the voices you hear on the radio, not really. The voices on the radio are masterful characterizations. The bosses you fight are the same shit in a different room. When you kill them the voices just happen to stop talking.
This seems to be another example of the definition issue that Bioshock elicits. There are three different ways you can see Bioshock - as a story, as a game, or as a game with a story. People who just see the story find it pretty much flawless. People who see the game find it an average (or poor) game. And people who see the game with the story find a flawless story wrapped around an average (or poor) game. I'm in the latter category, obviously. The story was great but the only thing that made the gameplay enjoyable was the art design. It's unfortunate that Bioshock has so many slavering fans because it increases the chances that the deep flaws in the game design will be corrected the second time around (see also: Morrowind -> Oblivion)
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I thought the point of BioShock was that the Big Daddies were the boss fights and the guys at the end of each level were just the guys at the end of each level.
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me too.
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They're only bosses if you disregard what a "boss" is in the context of videgamedom. A boss is an enemy you have to defeat before moving on to the next area / level / plot point in a game. You don't have to kill any of the Big Daddies if you don't want to. You have to kill the level bosses. Even if we assume that Irrational/2K decided to defer development of end-of-level enemies in favor of making Big Daddies the premiere "enemy to beat" in Bioshock, they still failed miserably in providing any variety in that regard. Would Mega Man have been as fun as it is if the same 2 "X Man" bosses were in every level of the game?
But given the Big Daddy's use in the game's advertising it's easy to think otherwise.
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honestly, i never even considered Bioshock as having any bosses in it until just now. it never even occurred to me.
i don't know what, if anything, that says about me or the game though.
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Fizzurst Gizzameplay Fizzootage (http://www.gametrailers.com/player/47806.html?type=flv)
Good that they figured out how to do underwater segments. It was kind of ridiculous in Bioshock that the collapse of Rapture was this great threat and yet you only feel the effects of it the one time at the beginning.
Otherwise, looks like a lot of the same, plus a drill.
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Oh, it looks like using the drill is optional. I kinda figured you were using either a variety of plasmids or the drill, but now I think about it that's kind of dumb. I do hope we get to nail splicers against the wall using it, though, just like in the first Bioshock where they introduced the Big Daddy.
It looks like they are staying with the old formula, there appears to be no major change in the weapons, enviroment and general gameplay. I do hope this is not going to be a FEAR 2, although even if it is, it'll still be good.
You know, now that you mention it, the gameplay of the first Bioshock wasn't all that outstanding. Maybe I should play it again to change my tune. :P
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You know, now that you mention it, the gameplay of the first Bioshock wasn't all that outstanding.
It was simple but well done and the fact that you don't just run through the levels pulling the fire button and occasionally healing makes up for anything else.
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the fact that you don't just run through the levels pulling the fire button and occasionally healing makes up for anything else.
I have no idea what this means.
Details via PC Gamer / OXM UK:
- You're the first Big Daddy ever built, and by far the most powerful.
- Bioshock 2's story is entirely about the Big Daddies, the Little Sisters and the lives they once had.
- You’re the reason every other Big Daddy after you was brainwashed and crippled – you were too good, and you were involved in some unknown incidents that caused Suchong to abort his plans to make other creatures like you: “suffice it to say they decided to simplify”.
- Tenenbaum will be your advisor over the radio, as Atlas was last game.
- The Splicers that have survived for ten years are “apex predators”, who are at the top of the “Adam food chain”.
- You have the option, nicknamed the “superdick” option, which is to adopt a Little Sister, carry her around on your shoulder, take the ADAM she extracts from corpses and brings to you, and then kill her and take all of her ADAM.
- The game is nothing like the “horrible escort quest” in the previous Bioshock.
- Single Splicers or ones in a small group will flee when they see you.
- Whether you can go in it or not, there will be a sunken ship in the sea bed surrounding Rapture.
- There will be more people like Sander Cohen in the game.
- There will be more weapons you can wield than the drill and Rivet Gun, and you can upgrade all of them.
- Once you upgrade Cyclone Trap, you can combine it with almost any other Plasmid, not just fire, e.g. "Ice Traps", "Rage Traps", and even "Security Traps".
- When you drill a Splicer there is a large amount of blood, some of which splatters on your visor.
- Big Daddies will still put up a fight, and can top themselves up with health, so you can’t erode them down by constantly respawning.
- You will have “strong and unforgettable encounters with unspliced characters that you can develop genuine empathy for”.
- There is still hacking, and you can heal security bots.
- There are multiple endings and you’ll know which one you’re heading towards, you will make many choices that will resonate into the end-game.
- Underwater sequences are entirely optional.
- There will be no combat underwater, just a chance to punctuate the action and allow the art team to “go nuts”, but you can find and harvest live ADAM slugs on the seabed.
- Some of the really moody and emotional parts of the game will happen underwater.
- Tenenbaum is still grief-stricken ten years on, especially about the Big Sister due to her origins.
- The Big Sister, due to her mental conditioning, tried to turn herself into a Big Daddy when she realised she was too old to be a Little Sister, and started kidnapping girls to bring to Rapture to restore order.
- You are not on a quest to stop her, she is on a quest to stop you – you are trying to escape Rapture and to do this you use the Little Sisters for saving, killing or adopting so you can receive ADAM. This infuriates the Big Sister, as you are undoing her work to restore order to how she believes it should be.
- Some parts of the Big Sister, like her legs, show her flesh, and she is “skeletally thin”.
- The Big Sister has much more powerful versions of certain Plasmids – for instance a version of Telekenesis that hurls everything in the room at you in a "giant tornado".
- Big Sister can hunt you down anywhere in a level.
- There is an inverted form of the relationship you had with the Big Daddies in Bioshock 1. In that game, you followed around a Big Daddy until you had it where you wanted it and "jumped it". In Bioshock 2, you are the Big Daddy, and the Big Sister is doing the same to you, constantly stalking you.
- There are special things to the prototype Big Daddy and the Big Sister we don't know about yet that will be revealed later, like how you can beat her in each fight without killing her and how you can respawn without Vita-Chambers.
- The game will celebrate your “free will”, contrasting with the previous game.
- It still seems the game will not be a straight sequel, may be partly a prequel.
- Multiplayer is still not revealed, but will be in the next issue of PC Gamer.
I would have preferred permadeath, and the big daddy thing still seems a little too T2 for my tastes, but it will likely be a fun game.
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I just really enjoy any game that isn't Halo, basically.
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I just really enjoy any game that isn't Halo, basically.
Tried Desert Bus yet?
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Gamespot interview with 2k Marin (http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/bioshock2/news.html?sid=6208179&mode=news)
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....Niiice.
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Even more spoilers (http://kotaku.com/5220853/bioshock-2-impressions-spoilers-what-spoilers)
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Guys guys!
Bioshock multiplayer to be a prequel! (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/91580-BioShock-2-Multiplayer-Prequel-Revealed)
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That is pretty dang awesome. Romping around a pre-fall Rapture sounds like a treat.
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Extended gameplay trailer (http://ve3d.ign.com/videos/47600/PC/Bioshock-2/Trailer/Hunting-The-Big-Sister-Gameplay-Trailer)
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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.
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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.
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Yeah okay I think that post was late at night and I was half-drunk but the kelp still looked rubbish.
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(http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2009/05/gam_gameprobigdaddy_580.jpg)
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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.
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Alright folks, November 3rd it is. Unless of course you live in Europe, then it's October 30th
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Hope you're not itching for the game cause It ain't out till next year (http://www.joystiq.com/2009/07/13/bioshock-2-delayed-to-fiscal-2010/).
*sad trombone*
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on the other hand (http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3174425)
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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!
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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.
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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).
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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.
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I still say Andrew Ryan's scene was probably the best scene I have ever had the pleasure of watching.
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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?
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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.
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New trailer (http://gamevideos.1up.com/video/id/26856). Fast and frantic
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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.
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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.
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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.
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a vinyl 180g LP (yes, a record) that has the original BioShock score on it
Hot damn
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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.
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Have you seen the new trailer? It's got new splicers, new big daddies and new weapons to kill them all with (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3VXTO2FiNY). And apparently, your name is Delta. There is also a Multiplayer trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1-HK5LImgA).
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?
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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.
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I want the collector's edition sooooo bad. It's fucking awesome.
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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 €€€?
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Sure. One more needed!
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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.
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Better be quick about it then, the 10% discount goes away in five days. There's a launch trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5bnA2nn7SE) already. I daresay it's holy god-fucking ass-balling amazing.
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Yea or Nae?
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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.
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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!
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FUCK. WINDOWS. LIVE.
I'll be back when I get the game working.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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So far I've heard it's an unneeded sequel that lives off the original while not improving upon much. Is this true?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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I'm pretty sure GFWL alone can be uninstalled from the control panel, you could try that.
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GFWL is required.
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And then reinstall it, I meant.
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GWFL
I am unfamiliar with this games for windows live thing. Did they deliberately choose a name that, when reduced to its initials, looks like text-speak for "godawful"?
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Only when you switch the F and the W. Although it's hard to believe that they didn't deliberately made it godawful to use.
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Okay, now I finished the game. I did everything after Persephone with the Drill Specialist tonic (which makes plasmids cost less but you can only use the drill), in addition to drill vampire, elemental vampire, elemental storm, and security and hacking tonics. Makes you crazy powerful, I took an Alpha Series down in ten seconds.
The game itself... Well, the only inherent flaw I could find is that it's too much like Bio 1. Not just the gameplay, but the plot and its twists as well. You can argue that it's not neccesarily a bad thing, but the déjà vu is so painfully obvious at times. I get the feeling that you have to have played Bio 1 to really get a good grasp of what's going on. I didn't quite get the full picture myself, I'm going to have to replay it for that. The goals were always very single-minded: Get Eleanor and get out, so it didn't give you much opportunity to get involved in the plot.
All in all, it's a great game and a good sequel that knew what it was doing well, and kept doing it well. That's what a good game is all about.
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So far I'm about 85% through the game and I've just recently put my finger on what's not sitting with me with this game that should be great. It's that the theme doesn't gel. Sofia Lamb is haphazardly tacked onto the setting, and the inversion of politics from Objectivism to Collectivism is about as lame in the game as it sounds on paper. It's not fresh. They should have known better than to add a completely new character to Rapture and act as though she was always a major player even though she's never mentioned in the first game. Lamb also isn't given the sort of attention that Andrew Ryan was in the first game, and she's not half as interesting. All we're really told is that she had a daughter who you're attached to, she's a psychologist, and she spouts a bunch of bullshit about Collectivism that's never really matched up in the gameworld - What was really remarkable about Bioshock 1 was how the themes interacted with the setting. Andrew Ryan built a anarcho-capitalist paradise and every new place you visited and every diary you listened to added new insight into both the promise and the eventual failure of his vision. Sofia Lamb, on the other hand, is just a psychiatrist who talks big but at the end of the day is just a tin-pot dictator with an army of mental patients under her command. Nothing in the game tells us anything at all about how Collectivism can horrifically fail. Instead of "Anarchy = Insanity!" it's "Idealism = Insanity!", which is far too broad of a theme to be of any interest.
The gameplay IS improved, though. They added just a little more variety and better AI to splicers, which is a nice. However they didn't really add enough - Rapture is really just the same as it was in Bioshock 1, and without the spooky thematic journey (for lack of a better term) it's not a very interesting place to revisit. From a storytelling standpoint I was also underwhelmed. The game did not make a good impression at all in the first hour or so - The opening cinematic felt like a rehash of the climax in Bioshock 1, and the Little Sister telling you "Eleanor missed you, you need to go find her" was about the lamest example of telling over showing in what should be a world-class game (I felt like Bioshock 1 did more showing than telling) I also missed the stories told through the diaries - aside from a select few characters (most of which you meet in the world) it seems like a lot of the diaries are one-offs, which is disappointing.
Maybe if 2K wasn't so intent on quickie sequels to improve their share value (around the time Bioshock 1 came out the only things that kept them from going under were Bioshock and I think GTA4) they could really build upon what made Bioshock 1 such a success. But they didn't. This game was a pretty major dissapointment for me. I give it a C+.
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This sounds pretty much exactly like what I was afraid of. Unfortunate, but I'll probably still pick it up when it inevitably hits budget price. 2K was practically giving away the original around a year after it came out.
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I got the original Bioshock for free when I bought a 360 at Fred Meyer. It was an in-store coupon. Pretty sweet deal.
I'm gonna do the same and wait for this to be not so full-priced because I just can't justify buying it any time soon.
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I buy all my Xbox games 2nd hand, during the big sales. No game I have is an exception.
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I've given the multiplayer mode a try now. At first it looks very well-crafted: You pick a character - those range from an engineer to an athlete to a fat cat, and that's where the differences end - and proceed to the prologue, where you wake up on the floor recovering from your first plasmid splice. Then you can roam around the apartment. From there you can select your weapons, plasmids and tonics, put on party masks, listen to characters' audio logs, and uh, play a little music. It looks nice but there's nothing in there a menu couldn't do better.
The match selection is a bit confusing. It doesn't have dedicated servers, so no user-friendliness there. It gives you a "Find Match" option to select one of the standard mutliplayer fragfest game types with a slightly different name. Then, it appears that it randomly groups people with the same game type selected into a match, but I'm not sure of that. There's no other option available than to select a game type. After that you wait until enough people join in and the game starts.
I enjoyed the gameplay itself very much, however. It keep things much simpler than conventional Bioshock: Two weapons, two plasmids, and three tonics. You can arrange different combinations in three available item sets, and swap between them while waiting to respawn. You start with a pistol and shotgun, electro bolt, incinerate and winter blast. As you gain levels, or ranks, different weapons and plasmids become available, but there doesn't appear to be a choice in which you do and don't want to get. You can get points by killing enemies (duh), photographing their corpse for a damage bonus (a creative alternative to teabagging), hacking turrets and machines (vending machines are refill stations for eve and ammo, you can rig these to explode), finding Big Daddy suits (these spawn in the map from time to time, haven't yet found one), killing players in Big Daddy suits, and picking up vials of adam that are scattered across the map. So, plenty of opportunity to get up in ranks if you're not good at shooting. Gonna try the other game types soon, too.
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Hey, that actually sounds kinda fun.
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Got it today, and been playing the campaign a bit and the multiplayer.
I went ahead and set the campaign to hard since I remembered that the first game's hard was a joke, and I've actually had a challenge with a couple parts so I'm glad they upped the difficulty of it. I can see all of the complaints KvP has in the game already and even though once I think about them, I can understand what you're talking about but I just don't seem to mind so much. What really gets me is how the place feels so, crowded at any given time I feel like there's too many people talking to me, Rapture doesn't seem so derelict and deserted as it does in the first game. But I'm still enjoying the hell out of the game despite anything wrong with it, so meh.
The multiplayer is really cool and it feels really nice paced and casual. The streamlined system of weapons and powers they use for the loadout is really working for me and I feel like the matches have that same charm and scramble to them as Team Fortress 2. The maps are also really fun and I like how all of the turrets and machines are hackable. Also being Big Daddy kicks so much ass in multiplayer, and you get a good sense of accomplishment from taking one down.
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Is the spear gun (particularly when fully upgraded) really that much more fun than the crossbow or did I miss out in the first game? 'cause damn is it satisfying.
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Maybe it has to do with the way corpses with a rocket spear in them fly around in circles before exploding. That gory sound when you pull a spear out of the wall and through the splicer's head it penetrated, I like that a lot too.
I set the difficulty to Hard on the first try too, but that didn't make it immediately more challenging. I just started playing then, but from what I noticed, you just die a lot quicker than on Medium. It felt unnecessarily punishing, so I went down a notch.
This one thing that did kind of bother me was that they said in a developer interview that being a Big Daddy changes how the world responds to you. Lone splicers will run away and groups of them will try to ambush you, that kind of thing. I didn't notice any of this. Whether there was one or a dozen, they always tried to kill me and rarely succeeded. Big Daddies were no different in behaviour to you than to other splicers. I guess it has to do with Lamb ordering everyone to kill Delta, but I was still disappointed not to see this return in the game.
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Immense spoiler All endings to Bioshock 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5XSHtPSxFw)
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Well frankly, that doesn't really spoil that much about the game's plot in particular.
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Hey, the vintage poster ads that came with the Bio 2 collector's edition have graffiti on them. How cool is that? (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/98559-BioShock-2-Posters-Reveal-a-Hidden-Secret)
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Irrational released the original Bioshock design documents on its blog (http://www.gamesradar.com/f/newly-released-docs-explain-the-bioshock-that-nearly-was/a-2010052111420269082). The original gameplay concept was insane and much more interesting than what we got. It was basically a Cronenberg movie made into a video game. The original storyline was also insane, but not as thematically resonant.
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Necro because I finally got around to starting this game.
John's right on the nose about the game basically. Lamb falls completely flat as a villain because there's just no connection between her and Rapture thematically. She is just evil and power hungry and uses religion and pshycology and collectivism as a means to an end, but this doesn't cut to the core of why any of these things can cause a society to fall except that there are potentially manipulative people. Ryan worked because, to the very end, he was a true believer in what he was saying and thematically the entire game revolved around that.
That said, I'm having fun. It's more difficult than the first game and that was a major complaint of mine regarding it. I feel like, on the fundamentals of a "game" this is better. It's just everything else about it is half-baked or straight up copied from the first so overall it's an expected disappointment.
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It's like the inverse of the first one. Really good game, mediocre story.