Why does everyone love Bioshock?

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Composer

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very well done environment

unique combat for its time considering its main competitors.
a motherfucking wrench!
seriously the wrench is a pretty big reason.
 

AngelicSven

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Justice4L said:
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 Bioshock was extremely atmospheric, immersive, and atheistically pleasing,(Which in my book, goes a long way.) and the gameplay and story were terribly average. I actually caught on the 'twist' way early because it's from an old Sci-Fi book I read when I was kid.

However, to say Fallout and Mass Effect weren't samey and repetitive is strange, considering if you read much Sci-Fi, ME is a bunch of used concepts thrown into a game and that Fallout is plothole ridden and overall just not interesting. Though, if you dig em, more power to ya.

FYI, these threads are stupid.
 

Phoenixmgs_v1legacy

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Treblaine said:
Phoenixmgs said:
The gameplay was really great for the first few hours but it did get a bit repetitive during the middle sections. I basically did the freeze/shoot combo for most of the game. I wish the game would've had situations that forced you into changing up your tactics. Later in the game, I choose to start using the wrench and with all the right tonics stacked, the wrench was so overpowered.
This is what I am talking about, gamers over dependence on "hand-holding".

EVEN IF BORED you won't try anything new until it is SO LONG into the game! You say you have to be forced by game design to try something you want to try anyway. How about you actually use the freedom that is given to you than demand that other freedoms are taken away for you to try them.

Why weren't you trying all the weapons at a steadier pace?
I was trying the other plasmids and weapons here and there, you had pretty much a standard arsenal of guns in Bioshock, I know what those guns are capable of. And, most of the plasmids were weren't that effective. A game should make it so that one tactic should not be allowed to be abused. It's like in a hack and slash game where one combo is effective against every enemy, there's no reason to not use the same combo the whole game then. 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's the opposite of hand-holding as it makes the player think of the solution themselves.

mr. awesome said:
Phoenixmgs said:
Also, the ghosts were never explained.
http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Ghosts

They were explained...
My fault then. I did play Bioshock off and on over like a 2-3 year period.
 

Naeras

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Decent atmosphere and magnificent storytelling.

The shooting action in itself was also somewhat above average.
 

Treblaine

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Matthew94 said:
Treblaine said:
Matthew94 said:
Treblaine said:
Matthew94 said:
Treblaine said:
Phoenixmgs said:
The gameplay was really great for the first few hours but it did get a bit repetitive during the middle sections. I basically did the freeze/shoot combo for most of the game. I wish the game would've had situations that forced you into changing up your tactics. Later in the game, I choose to start using the wrench and with all the right tonics stacked, the wrench was so overpowered.
This is what I am talking about, gamers over dependence on "hand-holding".

EVEN IF BORED you won't try anything new until it is SO LONG into the game! You say you have to be forced by game design to try something you want to try anyway. How about you actually use the freedom that is given to you than demand that other freedoms are taken away for you to try them.

Why weren't you trying all the weapons at a steadier pace?
You are complaining because he didn't limit himself due to bad game design?

Jesus christ...
N.O.P.E

Fail attempt at putting words into my mouth.

Limit himself? How is willingly trying out NEW THINGS a LIMITATION?!?!? What he is saying is the game SHOULD have limited him, and FORCED him to use different weapons/plasmids and combos rather than just trying them himself out of sheer boredom/curiosity.

He WAS limiting himself by his nonsensical refusal to try new combos till he was bored to the point of quitting. Gamers today are so dependant on hand-holding, it is beyond their comprehension to try something without being rail-roaded into it. I am arguing AGAINST limitation, both the player's own limitation (to stick with familiar weapons) and also Against any idea that developers should limit the game to force you to try new things.

There was no bad game design, except for all the games previously that has gamers "raised in captivity" unable to think for themselves in games they aren't ready to appreciated freedom when it is given to them. And they call it bad game design.
He is saying there should be a reason to use the other plasmids instead of the ice combo and that is a perfectly valid point.

I love how you are trying to act all high and mighty in this games defence when in reality it is a dumbed down game itself, made for dumbed down gamers.

I'm reminded about something to do with a pot, kettles and black...

Look at System Shock 2, look at Bioshock. I hope you realise you have been insulting yourself as Bioshock does hold your hand and is dumbed down whether you want to admit it or not and that is the very thing you are against.
You don't seem to have played either. Nor thought particularly hard about what you are saying, just regurgitating the same narrow arguments the traditionalists have been using since 2007.

Bioshock doesn't hold your hand any more than System Shock 2.

You seem to be confusing:

"get rid of bullshit like your weapon dissolving after 10 shots"
___and___
"constrain the freedom of the player to compensate for poor player imagination"

You have just as much, actually MORE freedom in Bioshock! You don't have to be stuck along a particular path of plasmids/tonics, there is more CHOICE there to swap out and try different things! System Shock 2 limited things so much that you were forced to ignore whole aspects of gameplay to focus on a few areas specialising enough to make it through the game.

Bioshock gives so much freedom, in options and resources to explore those options.

Actually, Bioshock DOES give you occasion to try new things, like in Fontaine Fisheries you temporarily lose all your weapons but the wrench (keeping plasmids of course).

"He is saying there should be a reason to use the other plasmids"

There is, it's called endeavour. It's the reason Human Beings have created civilisation and travelled as far as The Moon while our Chimpanzee cousins are still shitting in trees.

The logic astounds me. He is bored of using just ice-combo, yet will not endeavour to try something new to break that monotony??!?!

"hmmm I'm sick of buying and eating this flavour of ice cream, yeah there are plenty of other flavours but I need someone to force me to try something new"

Do games REALLY need to pander to such foolishness?
Well I was referring to the giant arrow that tells you where to go in Bioshock, that would be the hand holding you dearly hate.

The weapon degradation is unrealistic but you can compensate for it and if it truly is unmanagable for you a quick ini edit can make it easier for you.

The fontaine fisheries point is valid but it only lasts for about 3 minutes and all I did was spam sonic boom and they couldn't do shit to stop me.

I have no real problem with your point on changing tactics, I did that all the time on BS1, I had to considering how hard some bits of the game were early on on very hard mode with no vita chambers (ps3 only).

BS2 however I just spammed Cyclone Trap and Security Plasmid III until it said game over.

I think BS is a good game however playing SS2 has sullied my opinion of it.
Gawd, you are a hypocrite. You are happy to recommend editing code to compensate for dissolving gun bullshit in SS2 yet you won't factor ticking the check box to turn off the compass in Bioshock? The Quest arrow isn't "hand holding" which you seem to totally misunderstand.

There is a difference between subtly pointing out options and being taken against your will (like a parent leading a toddler by the hand) to the choice that you are forced to make.

Bioshock does do this minimally with the least curtailing of freedom, like Fontaine's Fisheries you lose your guns only temporarily. Also later when the plasmids go crazy you have to rely on your weapons more and try new plasmids you may never have considered before.

The arrow doesn't tell you where all the loot is, where all the hidden rooms and alternate pathways are. It's there in case you get completely lost with just a general clue as where is the right way to go to advance to the next stage.

And you admit to spamming the same attack over and over yet complain that it is boring. If it is boring, why do you do that?

You really have it in for Bioshock, in that you dismiss the Fontaine's Fisheries section being only 3 minutes. Not only is that an exaggeration but it is also irrelevant, the point is that it forces you to TRY new plasmids and that is all you need, an introduction. I don't think ANY developer can accommodate for players like you that seems to constantly fall back on spamming over and over again the most simplistic plasmids (sonic boom).

Maybe you would be more suited to a simpler game with less options, like Halo or something. You just like to spam the same thing over and over again, all the depth and variety of bioshock games is wasted on you if you refuse to use it all unless forced to.
 

orangeban

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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

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.

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.
 

The Funslinger

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Sep 12, 2010
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I haven't played any Bioshock games, but here's the answer: People have different preferences and standards to you.

A better question is "why do people love 'why do/explain why people like X" threads. It's pointless, at best. And this is coming from someone who rarely complains about thread trends.
 

k-ossuburb

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I went into it a little bit biased, for one I'm a great fan of the Steampunk subgenre, for another I loved "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" (although I can't really remember anything about it since it was years ago since I read it last).

Also, on a very old gaming show I used to watch I saw it make its first appearance at E3 in a very short demo. Some things were different, like the animations for the plasmids, but it was pretty much love at first sight and I waited for what seemed like forever for it to finally "surface" (LOLSEEWHATIDIDTHERE?).
 

robot slipper

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I'm glad I gave Bioshock a chance, because I really liked it once I got into it. At first I was like - plane crash? underwater world? crazy people in masks? WTF?? But the crazy people grew on me! There was also something very awesome about a little girl calling a giant killer robot with a giant killing drill "Mr Bubbles". That and the interesting social commentary of course. And the wrench.

In comparison to other games that I like, I did find it quite easy (didn't figure out that I could turn off the vita-chambers - doh!), but it was good for the story. It would have been nice if they had some more variety for the hacking, but I did get quite kick-ass at connecting those pipes!
 

blindthrall

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Bioshock 1 had much better gameplay than Fallout 3 or Mass Effect 1(not 2, 2 was pretty fucking tight, gameplay-wise). Mass Effect 1's combat, while thrilling, was still very mired in skill rolls, which definitely took away from the spontaneity of combat. Fallout 3's gameplay was the same, but with added wonkiness and bugginess. There is almost always a splicer looking for you-how can you not like that level of tension? You never know where the next fight will take place-Bioshock forces you to improvise, not just use the same shotgun/biotic over and over (although you can do that with the bees). Finally, Bioshock's story was on par with Mass Effect for about 2/3 of the game, then peters off into cliche. And Fallout 3's story... I played the hell out of that game but it wasn't for the story.
 

Rad Party God

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Meh, just one of those "Am I the only one who didn't like this?" threads.

I loved it. That's all.
 

MrLumber

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I thought Fallout, Bioshock, and Mass Effect were all pretty mediocre.
I personally didn't feel like any of their stories were particularly stellar, and Fallouts was just boring. Topped with the fact that I still don't find RPG shooters to be any good. Deus Ex: HR gets around this by having a significantly larger variety of gameplay options, and less restrictive rules on gunplay. The fact that I'm bound down to a specific subset of guns in any game, in the already repetitive shooter genre is just lame, and does nothing for the actual gameplay.

To me, none of the three aforementioned games had good enough stories to give their poor gameplay structure a by, and therefore were all pretty sub-standard games. Personally I find sweeping story lines fine, but not without any sort of high concept moral quandaries going on, something, again, none of those games had, with the possible exception of Bioshock, but Deus Ex does a much better job of it anyway.
 

remnant_phoenix

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Zeh Don said:
....the story and philosophy behind the world of Rapture are far more interesting and thought provoking than the current "YOU ARE A WESTERN SOLIDER - KILL ALL THE ARABS IN THEIR COUNTRIES" setting and story that's puked about
This. A thousand times this.

I personally loved the gameplay (no iron-sighting needed, no two-weapon limit, cool powers like shooting lightning out of your hand, etc), but what really drew me in was the art deco steampunk setting and the story with interesting sci-fi, historical, and objectivist commentary. The fact that it has a silent protagonist really ups the immersion and made me feel like I personally was the one who was exploring Rapture.

Gameplay-wise, it really comes down to personal preference, and I personally perfer the Bioshock/Half-Life/Doom approach to FPS to the Halo/Call of Duty approach.

But even if Bioshock did have Call of Duty style gameplay, I'd still love it, because in terms of story and setting, Bioshock is a cut way above the generic schlock that floats around a lot of video games, particuarly first-person shooters.
 

hyker

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Feb 2, 2010
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because yahtzee brought in atleast 50% of the escapist, and yahtzee likes the game because it's arty
 

someonehairy-ish

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I enjoyed it for the many highly entertaining ways of killing stuff. In no other game can I set bees on someone to chase them into a pool of water, electrify the pool and then crossbow them to a wall if they recover.
The story was good but the way there are so many clever little details in the game that you probably missed a few if you raced through it. Also, the set-pieces toward the beginning were excellent.

Uhm, what else?


The graphics were good? The music was also good? The art style was extremely cool, as was the setting?


I don't really see how this can be average tbh.
 

Ubermetalhed

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Kathinka said:
well..it was pretty nice. but if you ever played system shock 2, you probably will only have a tired smile left for the consolized, dumped down experience that is bioshock. don't get me wrong, it's still a very good game. not great perhaps, but very good. a lot deeper than what console players usually get served. pc players who remember the hayday of deep games know what i'm talking about though when i say that it's not as big a deal as it gets made out to be nowadays.
You couldn't be more spot on. Exactly right.

Bioshock is indeed a depressingly watered down version of SS2. It makes me cringe when people tell me that Bioshock was either 'atmospheric' or 'scary'.

I can only speak for the first ME but the story for that was crap only picking up at the last 5th of the game. Fallout 3 was also crap, its variety of missions making the story interesting enough to continue.

Bioshock, or SS2 rehashed story was far superior even if it was delivered in such a lacklustre way.
 

Mr. 47

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May 25, 2011
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I agree. I didn't see much new, and stopped playing to go play Mass Effect 2. I didn't dislike, but I didn't enjoy it either.
 

Jake0fTrades

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Bioshock was a step towards making video games a respectable medium. A story deeply influenced by literature and philosophical ideals, voice acting well on-par with most movies, and consistently pliable gameplay mechanics.

I have no idea what you're talking about. But I respect your opinion.