BioShock [NO SPOILERS]

[Yegolev]

Killjoy, who started his third playthrough before the game was released, did the math and you would essentially be missing only one upgrade at the end by being nice instead of nasty.  So my advice is to not worry about it.

[JWIV]

Killjoy, who started his third playthrough before the game was released, did the math and you would essentially be missing only one upgrade at the end by being nice instead of nasty.  So my advice is to not worry about it.

And only because their upgrade math is goofy.   120 for a level 2 plasmid and then 150 for a level 3 with no prerequisite requirement.   The problem is that the level 2's come a hair too late prior to the level 3's so are only of marginal use.

You're better off really just upgrade the absolute minimum to level 2 and skipping straight to level 3 if you can.

[Yegolev]

He also said that, but min-maxing is for Nippon Ichi games.

[Kitsune]

Atlas only stated that the sisters weren't human up until the point that Tannenbaum whipped out the Save Little Girls plasmid.  At that point he didn't debate that they could be de-freaked, but rather that you were an idiot and going to die if you didn't get as much Adam as possible.  Saving some psychotic little kids is well and good, but if it makes you die and fail to save the city and the kids wind up being eaten by monsters anyways, well.

I think the more cogent question here is: if Tannenbaum cares so much about the welfare of people, how come she doesn't hand you a way to cure the splicers, too?  You save a girl, but have to shoot mommy and daddy in the face with a shotgun, how well is that gonna work out in the end?

And Killjoy is wrong.  If you harvest rather than save, you'll be reaching the end of the game with at least a couple extra upgrades and likely three or four, depending on just how expensive an upgrade you're buying.  Given that an upgrade can cost between 20 and 150 Adam and I don't want to post the exact amount of Adam in a spoiler-free thread, I'll just leave it at 'definitely more than one'.

[LK]

Killjoy, who started his third playthrough before the game was released, did the math and you would essentially be missing only one upgrade at the end by being nice instead of nasty.  So my advice is to not worry about it.

And only because their upgrade math is goofy.   120 for a level 2 plasmid and then 150 for a level 3 with no prerequisite requirement.   The problem is that the level 2's come a hair too late prior to the level 3's so are only of marginal use.

You're better off really just upgrade the absolute minimum to level 2 and skipping straight to level 3 if you can.

Weapons are so powerful in the game and ammunition is plentiful that I skipped getting attack plasmids and focused my ADAM purchases on slots first, then good Physical/Engineering/Combat Tonics (you have to buy 53 for an achievement anyway), and had enough leftover to pick up Lv. 3 of all abilities by the time I reached the end without having bought INsect Swarm, Cyclone Trap, or anything over Lv. 1.

[trias_e]

And Killjoy is wrong.  If you harvest rather than save, you'll be reaching the end of the game with at least a couple extra upgrades and likely three or four, depending on just how expensive an upgrade you're buying.  Given that an upgrade can cost between 20 and 150 Adam and I don't want to post the exact amount of Adam in a spoiler-free thread, I'll just leave it at 'definitely more than one'.

[semi-spoilers]

I don't think the difference is that great.  If you want to save them, do it.  You got some very cool stuff you wouldn't get otherwise.

[/semi-spoilers]

[Yegolev]

And Killjoy is wrong.  If you harvest rather than save, you'll be reaching the end of the game with at least a couple extra upgrades and likely three or four, depending on just how expensive an upgrade you're buying.  Given that an upgrade can cost between 20 and 150 Adam and I don't want to post the exact amount of Adam in a spoiler-free thread, I'll just leave it at 'definitely more than one'.

Yes, it depends on how you spend your points, and he was being very vague since I did not want anything spoiled so he did not tell me what he bought.  See JWIV's post about skipping early powers.  I seem to recall him saying it came out to a 200 point difference.  It's not something I am going to worry about very much on the first playthrough.

I did take his advice on what weapon upgrade to get first, however, since that was very minor.  Besides, it seemed pretty damn obvious.

[Kitsune]

I played through my first game rescuing the sisters and never felt that I had too little Adam to continue.  However, I'm used to playing System Shock 2 on impossible difficulty, so I play super-super frugal.  I skipped several health/EVE upgrades and skipped all of the level 1/2 plasmids, except for swarm, because it really amused me.

One thing that I wish I'd known at the time, none of the upgrades you can buy at the vending machines will be found laying around for free.  I stayed away from buying several tonics with the thought that I might find them eventually, and that doesn't ever happen.  What does happen sometimes is finding different versions of a tonic; you might see version 1 in the vending machine, find version 2 by researching things, then find version 3 sitting under a desk.  However, you can use multiple versions of a tonic and have their effects stack, so getting more powerful tonics doesn't necessarily make the lesser ones obsolete.

[Azazel]

Atlas only stated that the sisters weren't human up until the point that Tannenbaum whipped out the Save Little Girls plasmid.  At that point he didn't debate that they could be de-freaked, but rather that you were an idiot and going to die if you didn't get as much Adam as possible.  Saving some psychotic little kids is well and good, but if it makes you die and fail to save the city and the kids wind up being eaten by monsters anyways, well.

I think the more cogent question here is: if Tannenbaum cares so much about the welfare of people, how come she doesn't hand you a way to cure the splicers, too?  You save a girl, but have to shoot mommy and daddy in the face with a shotgun, how well is that gonna work out in the end?

And Killjoy is wrong.  If you harvest rather than save, you'll be reaching the end of the game with at least a couple extra upgrades and likely three or four, depending on just how expensive an upgrade you're buying.  Given that an upgrade can cost between 20 and 150 Adam and I don't want to post the exact amount of Adam in a spoiler-free thread, I'll just leave it at 'definitely more than one'.

Can you guys please shut the fuck up with the spoilers in thier fucking thread?
There's two perfectly good threads where you can go on about what Tannenbaum had to say. Some of us are still waiting for the DRM to become less like AIDS before buying the game, yet retain an interest in the game (and this thread being where I expect to first hear about the digital AIDS being removed.)

[Rasix]

This is all very general shit in a 10 page thread.  Yah, lets post it in a thread where the end might be given away.  Where are we supposed to talk about playing the game while we're playing it? Do I need to make a new thread? "Trivial crap you'll encounter in the first 30 minutes, discuss it here."  Bleh.

Would everyone kindly not talk about plot points until you can wander over to spoilerville and discuss it?

[schild]

I figured the Stuck at a Part thread would be used for this sort of stuff. Next time I'll make a "shit from the first 2 hours thread."

[Azazel]

This is all very general shit in a 10 page thread.  Yah, lets post it in a thread where the end might be given away.  Where are we supposed to talk about playing the game while we're playing it? Do I need to make a new thread? "Trivial crap you'll encounter in the first 30 minutes, discuss it here."  Bleh.

Oh, sorry. I thought the initial post described what this thread was supposed to be. You know, what with the title in caps being NO SPOILERS and the banwarning from schild.

Regardless, do you really think though, that the best place to talk about the game while playing through it is the NO SPOILERS thread?

 

[Murgos]

The stuff we are talking about is the very end of the intro section.  Not sure if the unlocking of the last game mechanic in what amounts to the tutorial counts as a spoiler.  Especially when it's just conjecture.

The crap about how to game the plasmids is MUCH more spoilerish, especially the parts where it's discussed exactly which plasmids you should buy or can get away with not buying or are game-breakingly broken.

[Azazel]

So, essentially you're saying that some of the stuff people (you) are discussing isn't especially spoilerish, while some of the stuff (other) people are discussing is quite spoilerish. Wonderful.
Now if the more spoilerish stuff could wander off into the other thread, that would be lovely.

ta.

[Ironwood]

Heh, you think you feel bad now, wait till you get to the end of the game and you wake up with Bobby in the shower...

[Yegolev]

Heh, you think you feel bad now, wait till you get to the end of the game and you wake up with Bobby in the shower...

Nice.

[Bunk]

Boy, am I not a happy fucking camper right now.

So it turns out I have one of the evil pirate programs installed on my PC - powerISO. I've never really used it for anything, but was playing around with it yesterday. I didn't think about the fact that it would set itself up in my startup.

So I go to play Bioshock a few minutes ago. Put in the disk, hit play. Nothing happens. Just sits there, no messages or anything. I remember powerISO, and figure that must be the issue. So, I open up msconfig, disable it, hit close. It asks me to restart, I say yes. Nothing pops up to tell me anything is running, or anything like that.

After reboot, dbl click the icon to play = FNF.

It ate the fucking executable. On a game that I'm only allowed to install twice.

Shitty fucking luck, or another hidden feature of SecuRom, who the fuck knows. I just know that I am pissed off enough right now that I have no urge to reinstall the fucker.

[schild]

Huh. I have PowerISO.

It didn't erase that or fuck around with it. Neither did Daemon Tools.

[Bunk]

Will it let you run Bioshock with powerISo running in the system tray?

What happened to me, was that after double clicking Bioshock, it didn't run. No message or anything, it just didn't run. So, I guessed that it was powerISO, and disabled it. After I rebooted, Bioshock had eaten itself. Could be Window's fault, could be Securom's, could be my mother's - I don't really know, I'm just pissed about it.

[Miasma]

They have upped the number of installs to five, their system still sucks though.

[Engels]

Here's a question; I'm switching computers; does it let you transfer saved games after you've uninstalled it from one computer to install it on another?

I noticed that under "My DOcuments" there's a new Bioshock folder with saved games. I'm gonna assume that you can transfer that to a new machine, but I dunno.

[Tebonas]

Not that it does help you any, but it has nothing at all to do with Poweriso, Bunk.

I had the exactly same problem on the day of my initial install. I played for some hours, made a break, and after the break I had the same thing as you. I reinstalled it (without changing any other program) and since then it worked till now.

That pissed me off as well, if you only have a few installs you better not let me waste one of them on bugs. Fuckers!

[cmlancas]

This game is pretty fun on hard. I finally fired it up last night. My girlfriend and I screamed when we got mobbed a few minutes into the game.


Very fun. I don't know if it is Robot Jesus or not yet, but it certainly is very, very polished. Props to 2k for putting out quite possibly the most polished game so far.


On a side note, is anyone else frustrated that your EVE auto-recharges but you have to hit f for your first aid kits?

[Ironwood]

Yes.  It also took me quite some time to realise I could reload eve with a key press.

Manuals.  Lolz.

[Kitsune]

I preferred to manually use the EVE hypos; annoying as hell to wait through the four-second injection in the middle of a fight.

[Ironwood]

Er, No, you don't quite understand :  That should have been Instruction Manuals, Lolz.

There were plenty of times when manually sticking myself would have been a damn good idea !

 

[LK]

This game is pretty fun on hard. I finally fired it up last night. My girlfriend and I screamed when we got mobbed a few minutes into the game.


Very fun. I don't know if it is Robot Jesus or not yet, but it certainly is very, very polished. Props to 2k for putting out quite possibly the most polished game so far.


On a side note, is anyone else frustrated that your EVE auto-recharges but you have to hit f for your first aid kits?

My first Big Daddy encounter on Neptune's Bounty was a revelation in what Hard will be like.  Enemies got tons of hit points, yo!

[Ironwood]

Which only means you respawn a LOT before they die.

Pointless playing this game on Hard.   I wish I hadn't.

[lesion]

I loved it...only once did I get fed up and zerg-rushed a rosie from the tube.

the majority of the fights (until the end) lasted several minutes, used up tons of ammo and piles of meds/hypos. delicious!

[Engels]

What's wierd is that I can nigh empty a clip off my tommy gun into those spider mutants and they survive it, but if I throw a chair or a corpse at them, they drop dead. Be warned, the same trick doesn't work on a Rosie or a Big Daddy. Unless what you toss back at them is there proximity grenade.

[Kitsune]

Headshots get a really high damage multiplier, so much that spraying a splicer all over the torso with the tommy gun won't do nearly as much damage as shotgunning them once in the face.  I've found that quick taps on the machine gun trigger to toss out one or two bullets at a time make it much easier to keep them hitting around a splicer's head, doing a lot more damage as a result.  Don't hold down the trigger, it becomes impossible to control.

[Ironwood]

In A similar vein, a crossbow bolt to the forehead seems to drop anything, even on hard.

You'll also notice a massive damage increase using the same tactic on BD.  Be warned, it'll only work once before you're charged.

:)

[Engels]

So its wise to sneak up on a BD and snipe a headshot with the xbow before the interminable fun of running around getting smooshed repeatedly starts, yes?

[Ironwood]

Well yes, I'd think so.  Except there's no need to sneak to a big daddy.

 

[MrHat]

Game keeps freezing on me every now and then.  Hard Lock.

So I've been saving.  Alot.  And of course, it seems to only freeze now when I haven't saved in an hour or so.