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dhex Breeder
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:38 am Post subject: i appreciated this |
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http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=88881
Quote: | This is a difficult one, because I'm pretty much incapable of reading a paragraph with it in without immediately, out of hand, rejecting the person saying as having anything worthwhile to say. It's a buzzphrase that's just shorthand for "I haven't actually thought about this at all". But actually trying to engage with it... people who throw the "dumbing down" complaints seem to have two genuine issues.
1) It's easier to play.
2) A load of interesting options have been removed so it's a much simpler game.
The first one's true. BioShock is both a more accessible and easier game than System Shock 2. But "easier" doesn't have anything to with it being "dumber", and hating "more accessible" is just petty elitism from people who'd actually like videogames to be a ghetto consisting of them - especially when some of the things to make the game more accessible can be turned off. As long as point two's not true, then the former really doesn't matter. |
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dhex Breeder
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Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 6319 Location: brooklyn, Nev Yiork
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Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 11:47 am Post subject: |
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preempting dracko, i know he didn't care for the last third of the article but i certainly thought it was ok; then again it probably helps that mr. gillen and i overlap to some large degree in the taste department when it comes to fps games. (and probably nothing else - i can't imagine playing mario galaxy for what it's worth. i have a 401k.) _________________
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
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Joined: 14 Oct 2004 Posts: 6279
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Posted: Thu Dec 06, 2007 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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He didn't hit on my main complaint with the game: It never lives up to its own potential. Mechanically the game is sound. Structurally, the game is good. Hell, even the writing is good most of the time. It just feels like someone cut the balls from its sack before it even had a chance to use them. The Doctor, The Artist, and Andrew Ryan are the most interesting characters (with Atlus being a close fourth, but ultimately failing to be interesting and just cliched by the end). Almost every other boss/character is throw away fodder. I guess I should have just expected less from the game based on the developer commentary prior to it's release.
Also, it's interesting to note that I used the camera A LOT and maxed out pretty much all the enemies. I also thought that the game was quite easy and didn't use most weapons, but I assumed that if something was in the game it was intended to be used, not ignored.
And, if my wife can beat the game without a hard time--and she hardly played FPS games prior--then it's probably too easy. I don't mean this in a harsh way, it's good to have the game accessable, all I mean is that perhaps Hard difficulty should have been normal, and then balanced normal down to easy, and easy to very easy. It's hard to say for this. I would probably enjoy the game more had I played it on hard, but I'll probably never know. _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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Lackey .
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Joined: 11 Jul 2005 Posts: 1107 Location: Canada
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 12:32 pm Post subject: |
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Quote: | Go have fun, says BioShock. |
This might be the crux of the issues I have with the game, ultimately. The setting itself is so unrelentingly hellish that it certainly doesn't inspire exploration, experimentation, or even lingering. You're given a variety of weapons and spells that you can use, but you can never really make the character your own because it all comes down to kill the enemies and get out. I don't think the game would have been significantly different if it had been just a straight-ahead shooter with three different weapons. _________________ | Little bird fighting against a bat sect game | |
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bleak .
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Joined: 22 Oct 2007 Posts: 258
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 2:24 pm Post subject: |
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dhex wrote: | preempting dracko, i know he didn't care for the last third of the article but i certainly thought it was ok; then again it probably helps that mr. gillen and i overlap to some large degree in the taste department when it comes to fps games. (and probably nothing else - i can't imagine playing mario galaxy for what it's worth. i have a 401k.) | You pre-empted me as well, it seems. I felt that the article really lost steam later on, and by that I mean the article seemed to make less and less valid points not in number, but in essence. While I am annoyed by the BioShock naysayers as much as the next guy, I by no means think that it is a perfect game and acknowledge the fact that no such game will probably exist. In light of that it seems fruitless to complain about BioShock's shortcomings, especially when most of the stuff that people complain about aren't even real issues to take up with the game. I did appreciate the article, it just could have been a bit shorter I think. _________________
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Intentionally Wrong .
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Joined: 09 Sep 2005 Posts: 248 Location: [Subject Hometown Here]
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Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2007 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, exactly. I'm glad to see people trying to take the wind out of the phrase "dumbed-down for the console crowd", but this wasn't very effective as a defense of BioShock. It felt like he was primarily taking on the Zero Punctuation review of BioShock, yet at the end of the day, most of Yahtzee's complaints still stand.
I mean, BioShock kind of misses the point of interactivity. It's about choices, right, yet every choice in BioShock with maybe one or two exceptions has no meaningful consequences, and the choice the game is built around (DO YOU KILL THEM?!?!) is only consequential in the most ham-handed of ways. Between the disparity in the two endings and the ADAM reward structure, the choice every little sister presents is about as meaningful as the Dragonlord's offer of employment at the end of Dragon Quest.
It's weird and inconsistent, because while the game's overall structure is asking you to think of the little sisters as something more than a resource to be exploited, the rest of the game is encouraging you to think of this less as a playhouse for the telling of stories and more as a playground for screwing around. In your approach to playing BioShock, there are no wrong decisions. You cannot really screw up or hurt yourself. Sure, you can play inefficiently with a redundant set of tonics and plasmids, but you can switch back to a more effective combination at practically any time. That's the real reason the RPG aspects are so underwhelming--you are not customizing a character, you're just trading up for bigger and bigger blank slates.
BioShock is backwards: the further you get in the game, the less important the choices you made in the beginning become. |
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RaBeeWilliams Beatnik
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Joined: 07 Dec 2004 Posts: 274 Location: Thibodaux
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Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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Balancing is truly a worthy gripe. And he's not far off from Oblivion, either. Trying to complete a sub quest for a spell called finger of the mountain just right so that you're not too high a level and make the spell exceed the max amount of Magicka that you can produce comes to mind. I don't even know if the most "magey" of mages can have a Magicka in the 4-digit figures.
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12185
Here's one of the few modifications that's cropped up for the game. It really solves the issue of creating your over powered behemoth by turning off ingame aids for certain resources, gouging Plasmids and Tonics to nearly triple the Adam, and making nearly everything in the game 4 times longer to kill. Sure, it's covering the amputation with a Hefty bag, but I can promise you'll take any confrontation you get into seriously and be glad when you can walk away from it. Also the Splicers jeers for calling you a coward for running away feel a lot more justified, since you've likely got good reason to. _________________
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Ketch .
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Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 3:55 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, it feels as if there should have been a nightmare mode where you were chargyed for each resurrection.. and if you ran out of that resource game over. Ie. Just like the harder modes in System Shock 2. Sure it would have been horrible but the game was crying out for something to give the meta-game more challenge for the hardcore. This would really have put the edge on the "dilemma" of being good or being psychopathic evil. |
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Shapermc Hot Sake!
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Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2007 4:54 pm Post subject: |
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I was debating on getting the game for the PC just to play though it on VERY HARD or some such like, but I come to find out there isn't anything above hard and, well, hard doesn't seem challenging enough. _________________ “The average man has a secret desire to be a swaggering, drunken, fighting, raping swashbuckler.”
-Robert E. Howard in a letter to a friend circa Decmber 1932
"There is no place in this enterprise for a rogue physicist!" |
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kirkjerk .
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Posted: Mon Dec 10, 2007 5:47 pm Post subject: |
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Two nuances of the Little Sister mechanic that I haven't heard:
A. I knew about the good/bad boolean and wanted to be good. So that meant every time I rescued a sister, given this little hint of pseudo-dyslexia I sometimes sport, I had to double check to make sure I was pressing the correct button. Which kind of brings home the point: the difference is just a button press. (Oh, also, and this wasn't such a hardship because I was playing Easy, but I made sure to get through the escort mission without a loss, because I wasn't sure if that was enough to trigger the bad ending.)
So it sounds like by having the moral dilemma "spoiled" for me I missed out on something (in general I'm not riled by spoilers, these are games not murder mysteries people) which brings up:
B. I think the game does a poor job of pointing out how much more Adam you get by wasting the little sisters. (Compounded, of course, by the bonus gifts of Adam a happy sister tends to leave behind) If I hadn't heard about the choice, I probably would have done the nice thing and not even realized I was missing out on leveling up. _________________ =/ \(<D)_/
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daphaknee just enemies now
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Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 892 Location: YAY AREA
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Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:38 pm Post subject: |
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hmm i just started playing bioshock again because i never finished it
im enjoying it so much more now that im playing on easy because i realized that i dont like shooting things as much as i like exploring and listening to things talk to me
i just like the atmosphere and i want there to be a bioshock ride at disneyland or something man that would be awesome
also i wish killing little sisters was worth it |
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bleak .
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Joined: 22 Oct 2007 Posts: 258
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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:41 am Post subject: |
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On my playthrough of the game I'm just going through and killing every motherfucking little girl I see. My friend looked at me and said, "You know you get tons more ADAM by letting them live?" I looked at him and said, "Yeah."
In spite of the fact that it's a videogame, I'd like to be able to slip myself into the role of BioShock Dude. I'd already decided that I was going to be the unscrupulous prick that I always enjoy roleplaying in games. I knew that you got more ADAM from saving the little girls, but I didn't expect BioShock Dude to have some freaky preternatural knowledge of what benefits he's going to get from which decision, and hell, even if he did, he'd probably still waste those freaky little turds.
Anyway, I'm kind of meandering away from my point here. I think it shouldn't be made clear which decision you make gets you more ADAM, because then you have more incentive to make your own decision. I get kind of sick of it when I see everyone doing one thing just because it makes your character more powerful, or whatever. That min/maxing bull doesn't really belong in mainstream gaming as far as I'm concerned. If you're going to tell a story with your game, then let the story be told, and don't let the mechanics get in the way of interacting with it. _________________
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daphaknee just enemies now
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Joined: 26 Jul 2007 Posts: 892 Location: YAY AREA
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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 2:52 pm Post subject: |
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i want a game where you can play as big daddy |
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Harveyjames the meteor kid
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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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Legends of Wrestling 2??
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Lasa .
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Joined: 26 Nov 2006 Posts: 128
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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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The odd thing about the legends of wrestling games is that they didn't feature a single Japanese wrestler in any of them. Mr. Fuji doesn't count.
Oh, and that they sucked. |
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Cycle Mac daddy
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Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:02 pm Post subject: |
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Lasa wrote: | Oh, and that they sucked. |
That isn't odd! _________________
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