Topic: UNDER DA SEA!! (Read 59605 times)

variable_star · « **Reply #100 on:** 28 Aug 2009, 10:46 »

Quote from: Ptommydski on 26 Aug 2009, 06:22

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 · « **Reply #101 on:** 26 Oct 2009, 14:13 »

New trailer. Fast and frantic

Ozymandias · « **Reply #102 on:** 26 Oct 2009, 21:46 »

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 · « **Reply #103 on:** 26 Oct 2009, 22:36 »

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 · « **Reply #104 on:** 22 Nov 2009, 10:08 »

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 · « **Reply #105 on:** 22 Nov 2009, 11:13 »

Quote

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

Hot damn

snalin · « **Reply #106 on:** 23 Nov 2009, 01:27 »

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 · « **Reply #107 on:** 06 Dec 2009, 05:35 »

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 · « **Reply #108 on:** 19 Jan 2010, 18:04 »

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 · « **Reply #109 on:** 19 Jan 2010, 18:57 »

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

LTK · « **Reply #110 on:** 20 Jan 2010, 08:19 »

Quote from: KvP on 19 Jan 2010, 18:04

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 · « **Reply #111 on:** 20 Jan 2010, 10:31 »

Sure. One more needed!

snalin · « **Reply #112 on:** 04 Feb 2010, 14:16 »

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 · « **Reply #113 on:** 04 Feb 2010, 15:07 »

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 · « **Reply #114 on:** 04 Feb 2010, 16:18 »

Yea or Nae?

snalin · « **Reply #115 on:** 05 Feb 2010, 01:20 »

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 · « **Reply #116 on:** 09 Feb 2010, 00:54 »

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 · « **Reply #117 on:** 09 Feb 2010, 11:01 »

FUCK. WINDOWS. LIVE.

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

Ozymandias · « **Reply #118 on:** 09 Feb 2010, 13:10 »

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 · « **Reply #119 on:** 09 Feb 2010, 14:36 »

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.

KvP · « **Reply #120 on:** 09 Feb 2010, 14:54 »

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.

KvP · « **Reply #121 on:** 09 Feb 2010, 15:05 »

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 · « **Reply #122 on:** 11 Feb 2010, 13:57 »

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 · « **Reply #123 on:** 11 Feb 2010, 14:34 »

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 · « **Reply #124 on:** 11 Feb 2010, 17:13 »

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 · « **Reply #125 on:** 11 Feb 2010, 21:06 »

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

Felrender · « **Reply #126 on:** 11 Feb 2010, 22:49 »

Quote from: Blue Kitty on 11 Feb 2010, 21:06

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 · « **Reply #127 on:** 12 Feb 2010, 01:24 »

Quote from: KvP on 11 Feb 2010, 17:13

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 · « **Reply #128 on:** 12 Feb 2010, 02:06 »

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 · « **Reply #129 on:** 12 Feb 2010, 05:56 »

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

KvP · « **Reply #130 on:** 12 Feb 2010, 11:19 »

GFWL is required.

LTK · « **Reply #131 on:** 12 Feb 2010, 17:23 »

And then reinstall it, I meant.

Inlander · « **Reply #132 on:** 12 Feb 2010, 19:13 »

Quote

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"?

LTK · « **Reply #133 on:** 13 Feb 2010, 03:54 »

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.

LTK · « **Reply #134 on:** 14 Feb 2010, 04:49 »

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.

KvP · « **Reply #135 on:** 15 Feb 2010, 21:12 »

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+.

Storm Rider · « **Reply #136 on:** 16 Feb 2010, 01:19 »

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.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #137 on:** 16 Feb 2010, 10:08 »

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.

Tom · « **Reply #138 on:** 16 Feb 2010, 12:19 »

I buy all my Xbox games 2nd hand, during the big sales. No game I have is an exception.

LTK · « **Reply #139 on:** 16 Feb 2010, 15:03 »

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.

Scandanavian War Machine · « **Reply #140 on:** 16 Feb 2010, 15:06 »

Hey, that actually sounds kinda fun.

Boro_Bandito · « **Reply #141 on:** 16 Feb 2010, 21:53 »

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.

Catfish_Man · « **Reply #142 on:** 17 Feb 2010, 01:41 »

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.

LTK · « **Reply #143 on:** 17 Feb 2010, 03:28 »

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.

Blue Kitty · « **Reply #144 on:** 21 Feb 2010, 19:44 »

Immense spoiler All endings to Bioshock 2

LTK · « **Reply #145 on:** 22 Feb 2010, 01:40 »

Well frankly, that doesn't really spoil that much about the game's plot in particular.

LTK · « **Reply #146 on:** 23 Feb 2010, 12:28 »

Hey, the vintage poster ads that came with the Bio 2 collector's edition have graffiti on them. How cool is that?

KvP · « **Reply #147 on:** 22 May 2010, 20:06 »

Irrational released the original Bioshock design documents on its blog. 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.

Ozymandias · « **Reply #148 on:** 17 Jan 2011, 19:03 »

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.

Tom · « **Reply #149 on:** 17 Jan 2011, 22:46 »

It's like the inverse of the first one. Really good game, mediocre story.

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Author Topic: UNDER DA SEA!! (Read 59605 times)