Why does everyone love Bioshock?

[Treblaine]

Is there a point to a "i like ketchup, i hate mayo... Why does everybody like mayo so much.. it makes no sense!"

Seriously... Personal taste is personal taste. If alot of people enjoy it....it becomes a large title.

But do they like it for reasons related to video games? (I'm playing devil's advocate here)

Take for instance the music industry. What happens quite often, is that particular artists have massive followings, not because they're introducing revolutionary music, or are particularly talented, but rather, because they are attractive and singing/performing.

Well you can actually have a discussion there, in how important image is to enjoying music and whether that is necessarily a bad thing. I mean imagery is a huge part of the music business these days, you could definitely argue that for certain people it doesn't necessarily have to be all about the music. Or how yes it's a rip off of many different works, but it does combine many different works with a unique twist to make it more than the sum of its parts.

OP has given us nothing. All he has said is he hates Bioshock, that apparently it is boring and only suggested inkling is that it isn't exactly like Fallout 3.

 

[AlternatePFG]

When you say Fallout has a better story, and we're talking about games that share the time period, please say you don't mean Fallout 3. Bioshock was an excellent story up until

Spoiler

Atlas/Fontains betrayal, which sorta just let the game meander for a bit before dying in a ditch

Fallout 3's story. The italics are plot holes.

Spoiler

Dad opens the vault, somehow letting in 50 billion radroaches that kill lots of people and drive the overseer crazy, forcing you out.

You go out, and find that people, after 200 years, are still scavenging for salisbury steak and living in dirty shacks, with no attempt at farming or infrastructure made . You find dad in some old vault with an old crazy dude in it. Kudos to the game, that bit was well done.

You help dad fix his big water purifyer until the Enclave attack and attempt to activate the purifyer, which dad also wanted to do. So he blows himself, the Enclave, and the purifyer up.

Someone else wants you to go to Little Lamplight, a settlement populated entirely by kids, which someone still exists and have great difficult going through. You then fight through a billion super mutants, grab GECK, at which point you are ambushed by the Enclave, who apparently made it to the GECK despite the fact they'd of had to go through Little Lamplight, which trust me, they are way too dickish to have done.

The Enclave then decides not to kill everyone like their president wants, the colonel rebels, and decide to just plain activate the purifyer, like dad wanted to. You break out, kill a bunch of dudes, possibly destroy the base, and then have an epic battle for the purifyer despite the fact you are both attempting to do the same thing with it.

Bioshock however, was an interesting, simple (as in straightforward) story that had a wonderful setting and intriguing premise. You might say I'm being unfair with my anlysis, but I stand by my statement that Fallout 3's story and writing was Dumb and Bioshock's was clever.

That's not even getting into the DLC or the sidequests, either! Like going through all of Operation Anchorage just to get past a door. (And not a Vault door either.) I really liked Fallout 3, but it certainly wasn't for the story in the slightest.

OT: I agree completely about the game's story is great until Fontaine is revealed. He is a horrible villain and isn't nearly as good as Andrew Ryan. I think I said in an earlier post that pretty much everything about BioShock is great, except for the gameplay, which is really why I want to like it, but can't. The art design and atmosphere are absolutely perfect though.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Yeah, I thought it was average. Not horrible, but just sort of bland after awhile - yet another corridor shooter with RPG elements. And that final boss was just mountains of meh. I get why people embrace it so much, though. The art style and design were just stunning at times. The first 20 minutes of that game were among the most breathtaking and surreal this generation. It's too bad that most of the gameplay revolved around hitting/shooting things and lame water pipe hacking. I was really disappointed when it didn't get made into a 100 million dollar movie. I thought it had more potential to wow in that medium than in video game form. I have high expectations for Bioshock Infinite, however.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Standard arsenal of guns?

Considering the "standard" game today is a two weapon limit where all the guns are near identical full-auto hitscan weapons that are a 2-5 hit kill, Bioshock is VERY non-standard.

Bolt gun with electro-traps, Flame/Freeze/Electro throwing gun, Proxy-grenades, electro-shotgun, freezing-wrench. These are very unique.

What do you want? A gun that shoots bees? Well there's a plasmid for that!

"A game should make it so that one tactic should not be allowed to be abused."

Yeah, Bioshock does that! Later in the game thuggish splicers become generally immune to electro-bolt and in general they become so much tougher (as much as 10x more health) that you cannot rely on the same combos without suffering a lot and having to use vita-chambers all the god damn time.

"there's no reason to not use the same combo the whole game then"

yes there is, there are many reasons not to mindlessly use the same combo:
(1) it is tediously boring in identical repetition
(2) it is not most effective for all enemies so takes longer and more resources
(3) it doesn't evenly use your resources
(4) it arbitrarily denies you to experience other aspects of gameplay.

My mind is boggled by the depressing lack of endeavour demonstrated by a even a few people on these forums.

"How is it 'hand-holding' if a game throws a new situation and/or enemy type at you that forces you to think of a new combat strategy?"

That is NOT what I am talking about. That IS what Bioshock does!

Sure if you are totally hard-headed and don't want to try anything new, you technically could just spam the same combo over, and over, and over again. But that is pretty foolish considering all the enemies and circumstances that encourage you to try different things!

It's just it does not FORCE you! If you LOOOOVE a combo so much you can go through the whole game with it if you are persistent enough. Hand holding would be to take you and give you precisely the only way to beat something.

You seem to be a really odd case where you seem strangely reluctant try try a superior and more fun strategy/ability unless it is the ONLY one that works.

By standard arsenal of guns I meant Bioshock has pistols, machine guns, shotguns, RPGs, etc. I know what those guns do before even trying them. Yeah, some guns have different ammo types, which is cool. I'm just saying it's not like the game had unique guns that I had to try out to see what they did. The plasmas had to be tried out to see exactly what they did, not the guns.

I started using my freeze/shoot combo to make researching easier as I would freeze an enemy, snap off a couple shots of them, and then shoot them. Outside of the Big Daddies (which were incredibly easy to kill once you got some power guns) and maybe a couple boss characters, you can freeze every enemy in the game, you can use the freeze/shoot combo ALL game. Freezing not only works on basically every enemy but it also works on everything else like turrets, cameras, and bots. Freezing is an easy and effective method combat tactic all game in Bioshock.

For example, Bayonetta forced you into learning how to dodge offset due to certain enemies being immune to witch time so you can't just spam the dodge button to get witch time and then spam the same combo over and over while the enemy is defenseless. And, playing the game on the harder difficulties really makes you become less and less dependent on witch time.

 

[DexterNorgam]

OP, because its a good game.

It's got a good story told in a interesting manner. It has arguably one of the best settings of any video game. It can be played several times without being overly repetitive if you are creative enough to not use the same build over and over.

 

[Clive Howlitzer]

Lets see...
1. No regenerating health and an actual life bar?
2. Not set in a jungle or dusty desert environment?
3. Not shooting terrorists or Russians?
4. Able to carry more than 2 weapons?
Sounds like a win to me! Seriously though, I thought the game was pretty good, certainly not the best thing ever however given the stagnation of FPS games lately, pretty much anything that breaks the mold is great to me.

 

[Harry Mason]

Um, because it's really really REALLY good?

It has a more unified aesthetic and color palette than any game I've ever played, a political scientists wet dream for a plot, creative upsets of shooter genres integrated into the main game mechanics, stellar sound design, and a uniquely haunting atmosphere. As far as I'm concerned, it still holds up extremely well for its age and there have been vary few games as creative developed since.

By the by, there's something deeply annoying about people creating entire threads just to say they don't have a taste for something. Can you imagine if people did to opposite?

Thread: "When I played Resistance 2, I enjoyed it."

There are only ever going to be one of two responses to something like that: "Yep!" and "Nuh-uh!"

 

[sean360h]

Am I the only the only person who thought that Bioshock was deeply average?

Sure the story was decent with a few cool plot twists but that didn't make up for the tedious gameplay which became boring and repetitive. People kept on praising the story when games like Fallout and Mass Effect's story is 10x better. They also have better gameplay. I don't hate the game, I'm just pretty underwhelmed.

Does anyone else think it was average or do you think it was great?

It was great in the sense that it was so unique as was bioshock 2 which I loved but(but nobody else did) I will agree mass effect and fallout far surpass bioshock in almost every category but then again I have friends who thing the peak of what people can achieve in gaming is call of duty Black Ops and the only game that will surpass it is modern warfare 3 so opinion is opinion

 

[Treblaine]

By standard arsenal of guns I meant Bioshock has pistols, machine guns, shotguns, RPGs, etc. I know what those guns do before even trying them. Yeah, some guns have different ammo types, which is cool. I'm just saying it's not like the game had unique guns that I had to try out to see what they did. The plasmas had to be tried out to see exactly what they did, not the guns.

Really? You are actually complain about this?

How about you name some firearms that the game could have had that ARE unique! So bohemian you had no idea what you would do till you tried them out to see what they actually do.

Really I'd like to hear what better weapons you would suggest for bioshock, yes I am calling your bluff. I'll make it easy, point out a game with a better arsenal of firearms, not just semantically, but how they are USED!

And what is the problem with having some firearms that follow some conventions in any way? The weapons are hugely varied in their strengths and weaknesses, there is no "assault rifle" that is just good at everything.

The weapons really did have to be tried out, the differences in fire rate, recoil and so on you can't just make assumption like that the Tommy Gun won't have much recoil when it does.

I started using my freeze/shoot combo to make researching easier as I would freeze an enemy, snap off a couple shots of them, and then shoot them. Outside of the Big Daddies (which were incredibly easy to kill once you got some power guns) and maybe a couple boss characters, you can freeze every enemy in the game, you can use the freeze/shoot combo ALL game. Freezing not only works on basically every enemy but it also works on everything else like turrets, cameras, and bots. Freezing is an easy and effective method combat tactic all game in Bioshock.

Except you lose all the loot when you shatter them. Did you not realise that?!? And you can't freeze to chip away most of their health as unless you break them enough to shatter them then they'll come back with only a fraction of HP lost!

Missing out on all that great loot = balance

Also you will be over using your Eve or LN. how about trying some different tactics that won't cost you so much great loot AND make better use of the loot you have.

Yes, freezing is ideal for machines but not for human enemies, it does no direct damage and cost you loot which is a serious cost with Big daddies and special-characters who drop some serious loot that you don't want to miss.

...playing the game on the harder difficulties really makes you become less and less dependent on witch time.

Bioshock on higher difficulties the freeze time gets ridiculously short, you either have to spend a lot of eve or resort to using heavy artillery to shatter them before they thaw. Actually, just progress all the way through the game and thaw time reduced with increased health that also takes more hits.

Yeah, I thought it was average. Not horrible, but just sort of bland after awhile - yet another corridor shooter... I was really disappointed when it didn't get made into a 100 million dollar movie...

 

[DexterNorgam]

Am I the only the only person who thought that Bioshock was deeply average?

Sure the story was decent with a few cool plot twists but that didn't make up for the tedious gameplay which became boring and repetitive. People kept on praising the story when games like Fallout and Mass Effect's story is 10x better. They also have better gameplay. I don't hate the game, I'm just pretty underwhelmed.

Does anyone else think it was average or do you think it was great?

It was great in the sense that it was so unique as was bioshock 2 which I loved but(but nobody else did) I will agree mass effect and fallout far surpass bioshock in almost every category but then again I have friends who thing the peak of what people can achieve in gaming is call of duty Black Ops and the only game that will surpass it is modern warfare 3 so opinion is opinion

I also enjoyed Bioshock 2. It was not perfect, and probably wasn't as good as the first, and probably didn't really even need to be made with the way Bioshock wrapped up, but I for one was just appreciative of another ticket to Rapture.

 

[sean360h]

Am I the only the only person who thought that Bioshock was deeply average?

Sure the story was decent with a few cool plot twists but that didn't make up for the tedious gameplay which became boring and repetitive. People kept on praising the story when games like Fallout and Mass Effect's story is 10x better. They also have better gameplay. I don't hate the game, I'm just pretty underwhelmed.

Does anyone else think it was average or do you think it was great?

It was great in the sense that it was so unique as was bioshock 2 which I loved but(but nobody else did) I will agree mass effect and fallout far surpass bioshock in almost every category but then again I have friends who thing the peak of what people can achieve in gaming is call of duty Black Ops and the only game that will surpass it is modern warfare 3 so opinion is opinion

I also enjoyed Bioshock 2. It was not perfect, and probably wasn't as good as the first, and probably didn't really even need to be made with the way Bioshock wrapped up, but I for one was just appreciative of another ticket to Rapture.

The only thing in bioshock that drove me insane was the fact that every now and then it would give you a simple objective like walk to the elevator at the end of the corridor and you could bet your life that that elevator would be gone by the time you reached it and you'd have to walk all the way across rapture to get to another elevator

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Yeah, I thought it was average. Not horrible, but just sort of bland after awhile - yet another corridor shooter... I was really disappointed when it didn't get made into a 100 million dollar movie...

I didn't say the movie was going to be any good. I just thought it might have a chance of looking good. Considering the money and people attached, it would have at least accomplished that goal. Are big budgets that repellant to you? Because Bioshock the game cost millions of dollars to make to begin with, I assure you.

 

[Treblaine]

Yeah, I thought it was average. Not horrible, but just sort of bland after awhile - yet another corridor shooter... I was really disappointed when it didn't get made into a 100 million dollar movie...

I didn't say the movie was going to be any good. I just thought it might have a chance of looking good. Considering the money and people attached, it would have at least accomplished that goal. Are big budgets that repellant to you? Because Bioshock the game cost millions of dollars to make to begin with, I assure you.

No, I just know what a couple hundred million dollars on a Hollywood film gets you: anything and everything is liable to be changed to maximise ticket sales at the cost of integrity. And you admit right here you don't even expect it to be good... yet $100 millions dollars in Hollywood that seems to be expected.

Rapture is not a place you can explore in a 2.5 hour runtime on a cinematic format, I think you'd struggle with several 20+ episode seasons like with Lost discovering about The Island and its inhabitants. As a game, you explore rapture at your own pace, seeing, experiencing and influencing so much to learn more about it in significant meaningful way.

The idea of condensing it down to a movie as anything other than an addendum to get people to play the game... genuinely sickening.

PS: as expensive as video games are, they aren't a patch on films. For example, Inception cost $160 million while Bioshock cost $15 million. That's greater than a whole order of magnitude more expensive.

 

[dyre]

I thought the game's environments and atmosphere were excellent, and the backstory was quite interesting, but the actual plot was a bit dull. The gameplay got boring over time, even with cool stuff like shattering ice and electrocuting water (don't really remember; it was awhile ago). I enjoyed the game, but I never got the "wow, I'm blessed to have had the privilege of playing this game" feeling I got from, say, Witcher 2 or Mass Effect 1.

 

[dyre]

Rapture is not a place you can explore in a 2.5 hour runtime on a cinematic format, I think you'd struggle with several 20+ episode seasons like with Lost discovering about The Island and its inhabitants. As a game, you explore rapture at your own pace, seeing, experiencing and influencing so much to learn more about it in significant meaningful way.

I think it could be done, perhaps by someone like Ridley Scott (if he still made movies like Blade Runner, that is) or Stanley Kubrick (if he weren't dead). A lot of the game isn't really plot-necessary, or at least it could be cut down without sacrificing much, as long as most of the characters are kept. Though actually, what I'd prefer to see is a film about Rapture leading up to the fall. IMO, Bioshock's finest storytelling is about the events preceding the actual game.

Of course, such a film will never happen. The film industry seems even more screwed by production company interest than the video game industry.

 

[CityofTreez]

Rapture is not a place you can explore in a 2.5 hour runtime on a cinematic format, I think you'd struggle with several 20+ episode seasons like with Lost discovering about The Island and its inhabitants. As a game, you explore rapture at your own pace, seeing, experiencing and influencing so much to learn more about it in significant meaningful way.

I think it could be done, perhaps by someone like Ridley Scott (if he still made movies like Blade Runner, that is) or Stanley Kubrick (if he weren't dead). A lot of the game isn't really plot-necessary, or at least it could be cut down without sacrificing much, as long as most of the characters are kept. Though actually, what I'd prefer to see is a film about Rapture leading up to the fall. IMO, Bioshock's finest storytelling is about the events preceding the actual game.

Of course, such a film will never happen. The film industry seems even more screwed by production company interest than the video game industry.

I think it would be better as a HBO mini-series. Like The Pacific.

A two hour movie to too short to tell the story of Rapture. Hopefully in my lifetime that dream will come true. :3

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

By standard arsenal of guns I meant Bioshock has pistols, machine guns, shotguns, RPGs, etc. I know what those guns do before even trying them. Yeah, some guns have different ammo types, which is cool. I'm just saying it's not like the game had unique guns that I had to try out to see what they did. The plasmas had to be tried out to see exactly what they did, not the guns.

Really? You are actually complain about this?

How about you name some firearms that the game could have had that ARE unique! So bohemian you had no idea what you would do till you tried them out to see what they actually do.

Really I'd like to hear what better weapons you would suggest for bioshock, yes I am calling your bluff. I'll make it easy, point out a game with a better arsenal of firearms, not just semantically, but how they are USED!

And what is the problem with having some firearms that follow some conventions in any way? The weapons are hugely varied in their strengths and weaknesses, there is no "assault rifle" that is just good at everything.

The weapons really did have to be tried out, the differences in fire rate, recoil and so on you can't just make assumption like that the Tommy Gun won't have much recoil when it does.

I wasn't really complaining about Bioshock's selection of guns. You asked me:

Why weren't you trying all the weapons at a steadier pace?

My response was that you don't really have to try out the guns because they are rather standard. I never said it was a bad thing nor did I complain about it. There was just really much reason to have to try them out is all.

Vanquish had some unique weapons and the game forced you to keep switching up what gun you used by constantly giving you different enemy encounters.

I started using my freeze/shoot combo to make researching easier as I would freeze an enemy, snap off a couple shots of them, and then shoot them. Outside of the Big Daddies (which were incredibly easy to kill once you got some power guns) and maybe a couple boss characters, you can freeze every enemy in the game, you can use the freeze/shoot combo ALL game. Freezing not only works on basically every enemy but it also works on everything else like turrets, cameras, and bots. Freezing is an easy and effective method combat tactic all game in Bioshock.

Except you lose all the loot when you shatter them. Did you not realise that?!? And you can't freeze to chip away most of their health as unless you break them enough to shatter them then they'll come back with only a fraction of HP lost!

Missing out on all that great loot = balance

Also you will be over using your Eve or LN. how about trying some different tactics that won't cost you so much great loot AND make better use of the loot you have.

Yes, freezing is ideal for machines but not for human enemies, it does no direct damage and cost you loot which is a serious cost with Big daddies and special-characters who drop some serious loot that you don't want to miss.

You get so much loot from just looking around, you don't need any loot from the enemies. I always had $500 in my wallet and I almost always payed to heal as well. You get plenty of eve especially if you have the right tonics for getting eve from hacking and other such things. I was always full of eve the whole game. I don't believe you can freeze big daddies and special characters.

...playing the game on the harder difficulties really makes you become less and less dependent on witch time.

Bioshock on higher difficulties the freeze time gets ridiculously short, you either have to spend a lot of eve or resort to using heavy artillery to shatter them before they thaw. Actually, just progress all the way through the game and thaw time reduced with increased health that also takes more hits.

It took me 3 years to play through Bioshock 1 time because the middle section of the game is boring and repetitive, that is my main complaint about Bioshock is that it stretched itself too thin. Also, I very rarely replay games that don't have new game+ feature because I don't feel like building my character back up. Bioshock has enough things to earn and build up (plasmids, research, tonics, weapon upgrades) that I don't want to do that all over again. Bayonetta had an awesome new game+ where you face different enemies and such while getting to keep everything you earned. Arkham City is doing something very similar with new game+ and I'm almost positive I'm going to replay that game already.

Also, Bioshock's story is very nonsensical if you think how dumb

Spoiler

Fontaine's

plan was.

 

[spartan231490]

Am I the only the only person who thought that Bioshock was deeply average?

Sure the story was decent with a few cool plot twists but that didn't make up for the tedious gameplay which became boring and repetitive. People kept on praising the story when games like Fallout and Mass Effect's story is 10x better. They also have better gameplay. I don't hate the game, I'm just pretty underwhelmed.

Does anyone else think it was average or do you think it was great?

I thought it was pretty great. Def not world-shattering, but the story was much better than Mass effect(never played fallout, so not my genre), and the gameplay was fun. Not at all tedious. At least for me, it was a solid 95th percentile of games.