Wow. Never even heard of that series before.Sinclose said:
Sounds interesting though and I'm not even into computer games :3
As Per Request, JK Reviews: Bioshock
- Thread starter Julianking93
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Sounds interesting though and I'm not even into computer games :3
One thing I will say is that Catcher in the Rye, for its time, was a good book. Hell, it's a good book now but claiming it holds so many deep and philosophical undertones to me is just bullshit.Kasurami said:
Though, I never saw Stand Alone Complex :3
Right now the fanboy in me screams "...Fetch your hunting rifle. It's open season.", but I'll try my best to suppress it.Julianking93 said:
But I agree with you about the Vita-chambers. I have no idea why they would do them, and I was even more shocked to find them in Bioshock 2. Ever since my first death in Bioshock I quitted using Vita-Chambers and always reloaded when I died.
Occasionally some of the powers felt a bit similar and some useless, but I thought they were fine. Lighting oil pools, shocking enemies and freezing them really brought variety, so did all the traps you could do. However, the "Hypnotize Big Daddy" power was an abomination which shouldn't have ever existed.
The story and setting were superb in my opinion. Andrew Ryan and Fontaine were characters I'll always remember. And I always felt the setting, and I was on my toes, but that may be because I wasn't a very good shot with the Xbox controller and so I was always alert, waiting at someone to lunge at me. Also, because I am a perfectionist I searched all the tapes and they always remembered me of the place around me.
Did you play on PC or Xbox? I have it on both and the gameplay is a lot better on PC, it's much easier to switch between weapons/plasmids and the aiming mechanism was a little less off with higher sensitivity on PC as well.
And, while I can see all where all the criticisms come from, but I think they didn't detract from the overall experience too much to bother me.
And, while I can see all where all the criticisms come from, but I think they didn't detract from the overall experience too much to bother me.
Huh. You seemed to do a great job at suppressing that inner fanboyOniaPL said:
Thanks for commenting! ^-^
Anyway, as for what you talked about... I oddly felt the same way about a lot of what you said. The powers were nice and at times, kinda cool, but it seemed to try and convey them in a way that was original or like they were the first to do it. I've seen it in games before and seen it done better as well. In my eyes, there wasn't a whole lot of originality in this game. One of the things I disliked most about the plasmids was that you could just use the freeze power and one hit (or 3 hit) kill any enemy with the wrench. The first weapon you get is the most powerful and there was no reason to use anything but that, especially since you just respawn 3 feet from where you died.
What I will agree with though is the setting. It's something I did enjoy in the game in the first levels, but that feeling was pretty much gone by the middle of the game. Like I said in the review, I never got that sense of being in a destroyed underwater city after the first few areas when the gameplay shifted in favour of action rather than atmosphere. If they had stuck with the original setting and feel, I would have liked it a lot more.
I played it on 360 first, then PS3 when it was released for it just to see if it was any better (it wasn't) and then I actually recently played it on Mac. I'll admit, the controls are far better but I'm judging the game here based on what it was originally released on and how it was originally intended to be played.Berethond said:
Really? I thought this was a rather short review >.<Marter said:
Still, thanks for commenting, Matt! Glad you enjoyed it and at least somewhat agreed ^-^
You should've played Bioshock back in it's heyday in 2007, though I dunno if you would've found it less of a cliche. It's a game not without it's flaws but one of the best RPG's I've ever played.
But... I bought it on its release day >>MercurySteam said:
This review is mostly my thoughts from when I first played it. Not from a recent playthrough or anything like that.
How do you mean? Just that you didn't enjoy the story or that you didn't find it interesting enough to hear it again?Mimssy said:
That was a problem I had with the game as well. After the first playthrough, all suspense was gone and any horror element I felt before had left as I knew the story.
GoWithDAFro said:
Wow. I'm surprised so many people agreed with me on this >>Radeonx said:
Thanks for commenting everyone! :3
Infinite Space? *looks up*Souplex said:
Ah, a DS game... sorry, can't do that. Don't have DS :3
Though, since Vanquish is done by the same developer, I could give that a try :3
This was a very good review! Well put together.
However, I do disagree with some of your opinions.
I was scared out of my mind in the later stages of the game. The lighting and background noise, along with the Splicers put me in an uneasy place. The bizarre plot and great morale choice system just adds to the experience for me.
In my opinion, Bioshock is awesome. It's well put together, and even though it starts losing it's edge near the end, that couldn't even begin to ruin my overall experience of the game.
However, I do disagree with some of your opinions.
I was scared out of my mind in the later stages of the game. The lighting and background noise, along with the Splicers put me in an uneasy place. The bizarre plot and great morale choice system just adds to the experience for me.
In my opinion, Bioshock is awesome. It's well put together, and even though it starts losing it's edge near the end, that couldn't even begin to ruin my overall experience of the game.
It seems like you're main complain was with the gameplay and such so i think you might have given it a better score if you played it 4 years ago. I get what you're saying but i can't agree (i'm only slightly bias because i think bioshock is the best game ever made) and i can't understand you're complaint with the story which is arguably movie quality. If you listen to what is said in the tapes then the character's are pretty well developed it just takes more effort than in other games. And i'm not saying that you should have done this or anything but if you read the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand which this game is very loosely based on then it only enhances the experience.
As I said before, I did play this 4 years ago. I bought it on release day. This is not a review of my most recent playthrough or anything like that, it's a review of my impressions when I first played it. The thoughts going through my head in the mere 5 hours it took me to beat this game.turbo4400 said:
This isn't me going back, judging it by today's merits. That's unfair to a game, even if it has aged well. Plus, this is a current gen game.
The story was horrid in my opinion. It was bland and generic. Movie quality generic, yes but that doesn't make it good. Saying that it takes effort is just putting up excuses for a game. "Oh, it has a good story, you just gotta look for it"
That can be used to describe a deep and thoughtful story, but when you literally mean that you have to search for a goddamn story in this shit, that is a weakness to the media itself.
Oh sorry i must have missed that part about you playing it when it came out, my mistake. But the story i can't understand how you don't like. It's an exploration of what would happen in a world without any social constrictions (blown out of proportion for the purpose of it being a video game of course).Julianking93 said:
And you don't really have to look for the story in the tapes, they literally add an extra 10 minutes of gameplay maybe during the whole game assuming you don't just sit there and listen to them so that's not really extra effort or anything. And the story of Rapture goes well beyond the story of bioshock, but i guess that's not really relevant. Anyway this story is more than the story of Jack, it is just as much about the futile struggle between Ryan and Fontaine over a diseased and decaying city that neither will accept as the failure that it was. Ryan because he won't believe that his dream can be so wrong and horrible, until he does when you confront him and he basically kills himself. And fontaine just wants the power that has come from "science gone mad", Jack gets caught in the middle after fontaine brainwashes him.
In fact, if a generic story is about people being power hungry and trying to take over the world which is what i would consider generic for a video game, then this is far from it. This story is much more about the psyche of men such as Fontaine and Ryan and the failed experiment of Rapture and how even though it may sound better then the other established societies of the world it only serves to breed corruption and in the end is more of a dystopia then the utopia that Ryan had planned. Going along with this it is similar to what Kubrick looked at in the movie A Clockwork Orange, which is whether people are good because they are good or because of the established society that they are born into and obviously in Rapture it would reinforce the latter.
Call of Duty is generic, Halo is generic, Gears is generic, but the only other game like bioshock is system shock 2 so i can't see how a story based off of one of the most original and thought-provoking books of all time can be generic.
You can not like the story, that's obviously you're opinion and i, obviously, am at the exact opposite end, bland would go along with that i think but the only thing that bioshock can not be criticized for in my opinion is for being generic or unoriginal when it is one of the most original titles of the past decade.
Okay, this is all stuff I've talked about before to Kasurami. I didn't see any of that in the game. What I saw was an attempt at dealing with social commentary that was used in an unoriginal way. I've seen it done before and honestly, done better. The whole "Rapture is just a big metaphor for how things work and crumble in society" or whatever is just annoying to me. I respect your opinion and how much you're standing up for it, but seriously, the game's story wasn't that great. It didn't come off ever as subtly to me, just laziness.turbo4400 said:
The story of Bioshock took from many elements. Some from games, some from films and most from books and literature. To say it's original is like saying Uncharted is original. Yeah, no game has really done a lot of that before, but I've seen it plenty in other mediums. Bioshock, however wasn't original on hardly any front. The story was bland and hides behind a facade of intellect and commentary. There's never any time, except for the obvious fights Ryan and Fontaine had, that made me think "Oh, cool little metaphor" but that was it. Saying the rest is just some big symbol for whatever is ridiculous. They had their intelligence in the game at the beginning, yet it faded over the course of the game very rapidly.
Call of Duty and the like is generic in the sense of gameplay and story. Bioshock is generic in the sense of the same thing, only difference is that it masks its unoriginality. The genericness of the story doesn't come from its lacking social commentary on political ideals, but rather its complete unoriginality and blatant ripoffs. You say the only thing that's similar is System Shock 2, but what a lot of people fail to realize is that Bioshock took so much from System Shock 2, right down to the supposed "social commentary" that it was borderline plagiarism. Switch out a few characters and enemy names and you get the same thing. It comes down to what became the most popular for consoles and that always ends up succeeding. To use a great Cracked.com line; "Go make a cartoon series starring a mouse named Mikey with his pal Ronald Duck and see how long it takes for the Disney lawyers to show up"
Well they where made by the same person so you can't plagiarize yourself...but whatever this is clearly a pointless argument cause neither of us are ever gonna see the other side too clearly. And let's not throw around lazy, Ken Levine has made like 3 games in over a decade because he spends so much time on them.Julianking93 said: