BioShock [SPOILERS INSIDE: ENTER AT OWN RISK]

[Ironwood]

I do use the camera and have got a ton of bonuses, but I used it sparingly and I honestly never thought to photograph electronic equipment.

A Loser is Me.

Of course, now I'm reading the 'spoiler' sites and forums, I'm finding that I missed quite a bit anyway.  That's probably a good thing from the replayability point of view.

I did it on HARD to start with, so now I can be more sedate.

[Velorath]

promise you'll do it with gusto? or verve. ?!

I promise nothing.  I let my boss borrow my copy after I finished it anyway, since I don't plan on going back through it for a while.

[Falwell]

Make sure to film the little sisters / big daddies. The damage hit for the daddies is significant at +++, and you get a permanent max health and eve bump for every level of little sister research.

And if you want to make your ammo shortages become few and far between, get the less breakage upgrade for the crossbow. Easily the best gun upgrade outside of your damage ones.

[JWIV]

Make sure to film the little sisters / big daddies. The damage hit for the daddies is significant at +++, and you get a permanent max health and eve bump for every level of little sister research.

And if you want to make your ammo shortages become few and far between, get the less breakage upgrade for the crossbow. Easily the best gun upgrade outside of your damage ones.

The crossbow actually pisses me off.  I've got no problem accepting  super powered blue kool-aid.  My brain locks up however accepting that a crossbow is more powerful than a shotgun.   I really wish they used something else for their sniper rifle equiv.

[Ironwood]

But it has explosive bolts !!


Also, did anyone else really, really, really go mad on the 'drain the lake bit where splicers are going to come at you' ?  I must have laid down all my electric bolts and all my prox mines and it turns out there was only about 3 or 4 splicers that charged me.  I know because I counted corpses later.  They didn't even make it into my room.

:(

[LK]

Well, Half-Life 2 showed that a Crossbow can be more powerful than a shotgun.

[Tebonas]

Ok, I'm through. Have I got that ending right? A bunch of brainwashed girls running around in the outside world who are conditioned to stab every prone body with sharp objects? Man, their husbands better be light sleepers. 

[Miasma]

I never found an explanation for the tattoos on his wrists, does anyone know about that?  I thought maybe they represented the chains that Ryan's statues use but that would mean he'd of been tattooed as a baby which doesn't make sense.

[LK]

I was thinking the tattoo was related to him being a genetic experiment and meant to be used as an identifier of him being a product of the great chain.  Or teasing you wondering if he's directly related to Ryan.

Considering the extent of the character's identity in the game is only in his hands, the chain distinguishes him from any other male character's hands.

[Kitsune]

Tattooed as a baby, I figured.  One could either see the chains as a cynical thing, 'the great chain' being tattooed on someone meant to be Ryan's assassin, or as a hint at the character's status as a slave.

[JWIV]

I was thinking the tattoo was related to him being a genetic experiment and meant to be used as an identifier of him being a product of the great chain.  Or teasing you wondering if he's directly related to Ryan.

Considering the extent of the character's identity in the game is only in his hands, the chain distinguishes him from any other male character's hands.

After the reveal of your origins I'm pretty sure that it's simply a reference to the great chain. 

[lamaros]

So does the story suck?

I don't really care much about spoilers, nor do I care that much about FPS games, so I'm only going to consider this if I can play it kinda like Thief and it has some good story and atmosphere to make the FPS elements managable.

And I don't think "twists" make a good story in themselves even when done well, and assuredly few computer games do them well.

On those notes, how does the story stand up? (Note: I think the Halo story sucks, I have really high standards etc etc)

[Kail]

So does the story suck?

I don't think the story itself is particularly interesting (especially if you've already played System Shock 2) but it is told well, and there are a few very cool scenes to remember.

Just finished it, and my thoughts on the game are basically:

-Too similar to System Shock 2...  You've got psi powers, research, hacking, vending machines, audio logs, and so on, despite them not fitting in terribly well with the setting (hacking in the 1950s?)... the same basic setting, the obvious plot parallells between SHODAN and Sullivan... the ability to see ghosts, which seems even more tacked on than it did in SS2...  There's even some audio log (in the plant area, I think) where the guy talks about going to stock up on "med hypos" before his next date...  yeesh.  I could see this as a semi-sequel to SS2 if it wasn't for the fact that the plot similarities between the two games pretty much spell out the big reveal before it happens (and I always hate those stupid "I've been manipulating you all along!" plots... they kill the replay value for me, since you usually have to go back and take orders from the guy you know is a villain).

-The environment kept getting in the way.  Just about everything seems to blur your vision badly, from being damaged to walking through streams of water (which are everywhere), to wearing that helmet or even just equipping the camera.  I get it, you guys know how to use the blur filter, please stop.  Audio logs had a similar problem, with jackasses one room over screaming "I'M SORRY FATHER, I'LL DO WHAT YOU SAY!" while I'm trying to listen to something.

Sullivan:  "You know, I played you like a violin, boy, haha, you never realized th-"
"AWOOOGA AWOOOGA KABLAM RATATATATATATA AWOOGA"
Me: "I'M SORRY, WHAT?  SOME RANDOM PEDESTRIAN THREE FLOORS DOWN"
"AWOOGA KABOOM AWOOGA RATATATATA EEP EEP EEP EEP AWOOGA KABOOM"
Me: "SET OFF THE SECURITY SYSTEM, KIND OF LOUD IN HERE, COULD"
"AWOOGA MERT MERT MERT KABOOM KABOOM RATATATA KABOOM AWOOGA AWOOGA"
Me: "YOU SPEAK UP A BIT, PLEASE?  MAYBE REPEAT THAT LAST PART?"
Sullivan: "-such a fool, we could have been partners, you and me, but-"
"MEEP MEEP KABOOM RATATATATA KABOOM AWOOGA"
Me: "WHAT?  WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BEAN FARMERS?  I'M LOOKING FOR SOME BOOTS, DO YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE?"
etc.


-That "would you kindly" scene was pretty awesome, even though I knew roughly what was coming.  I'm getting increasingly annoyed with these "false memory" backstories, which seem to be the new trendy version of the "amnesiac hero" cliché, but whatever.  I got the "good" ending, which I thought was surprisingly thoughtful, too.  The opening reveal in the bathysphere was beautiful.

-Seemed to be some unbalanced mechanics.  That one power where you turn invisible by standing still seems extremely unbalancing, other people have already commented about the wrench buffs.  Pistol seemed almost useless for anything but headshots, machine gun seemed worse.  I personally like exploitable mechanics, but I guess they bug other people.

- Game didn't crash once for me, though it did minimize unexpectedly a few times, which was odd.

Still a cool game, I think, though.  I don't dig it as much as I did System Shock 2 (which seemed more internally consistent), but it's still fun.

[UnSub]

Sullivan:  "You know, I played you like a violin, boy, haha, you never realized th-"
"AWOOOGA AWOOOGA KABLAM RATATATATATATA AWOOGA"
Me: "I'M SORRY, WHAT?  SOME RANDOM PEDESTRIAN THREE FLOORS DOWN"
"AWOOGA KABOOM AWOOGA RATATATATA EEP EEP EEP EEP AWOOGA KABOOM"
Me: "SET OFF THE SECURITY SYSTEM, KIND OF LOUD IN HERE, COULD"
"AWOOGA MERT MERT MERT KABOOM KABOOM RATATATA KABOOM AWOOGA AWOOGA"
Me: "YOU SPEAK UP A BIT, PLEASE?  MAYBE REPEAT THAT LAST PART?"
Sullivan: "-such a fool, we could have been partners, you and me, but-"
"MEEP MEEP KABOOM RATATATATA KABOOM AWOOGA"
Me: "WHAT?  WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BEAN FARMERS?  I'M LOOKING FOR SOME BOOTS, DO YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE?"
etc.

That was hilarious

Also true, which is why I turned on both voice and art subtitles. It means I can read what is being said while also keeping an ear out for approaching Splicers.

[lamaros]

Still a cool game, I think, though.  I don't dig it as much as I did System Shock 2 (which seemed more internally consistent), but it's still fun.

Thanks. Guess it's a No for me then.

[Ironwood]

Kail had the same experience I did.


This was a really cool game, but I still would prefer to play SS2 over again.

The story didn't really work either.  I've had a lot of time to sit down and think about it and the whole 'Rapture Coming Apart' just plain doesn't make any sense.  At least in SS2 people were being taken over by worms.

The end boss was also a complete yawnfest and I did it on HARD.  You jump about unloading on his face and it's over.  If I wanted that, I'd go reference my DVD collection.

Really, really nice game but overall a real dissappointment.  It's entirely possible to be both.

[Tebonas]

While I completely agree on the endfight that was WAY under Big Daddy difficulty, I thought the story made sense.
 
It the premise of Atlas Shrugged brought to its logical conclussion given the more negative aspects of human nature you can't seem to escape. If you think Ayn Rand is an idiot or a wishful thinker you can play the game and say "Told you so!".

[Ironwood]

I think you're filling in the story blanks in your own mind.

Don't do that - Go back and simply read all the logs.

I guarantee you'll come out of it saying 'What ?'

[Kitsune]

Rapture coming apart made perfect sense; it was founded on an idealistic philosophy that, much like communism, only works when everyone plays fair.  Enlightened self-interest being a motivator for people to achieve is grand in theory, until an unenlightened person with a baseball bat decides that they have a shortcut to success.  Now add in a highly-limited resource (Adam) that people need very badly as a spur for people to abandon any sense of fair play and voila!

[Miasma]

I don't think there was ever any notion of fair play in the philosophy, on the contrary brutal no holds barred competition was a cornerstone.  You were sold weapons to accomplish this.  I haven't yet decided if the philosophy is an example of how pure libertarianism can go bad or pure laissez-faire capitalism.

Yeah, let's see if we can get a sticked spoiler thread moved to politics!

[Ironwood]

Oh For Fucks Sake.

Yes, it made perfect sense.  The story of how it did so did not.  Note I said the story didn't really 'Work' for me.

I'm not talking about fucking philosophy here, I'm talking about what actually happened.

For a start, I don't get why it was a highly limited resource.  It came from Sea Slugs.  Slugs.  In the Sea.  Where they were.  In the Sea.  Further, Adam seemed to be 100% recycleable.  So where did the shortage come in ?  Jap Nutbags logs and Bleeding Heart Woman suggest that the recycling came in later, but this is something that ended up being used for virtual frigging currency, so there must have been enough to BUILD a society on.

Sure, the Political, Psych and Philosophy Majors can now come in for a wank and say 'Aha, well, you see, when humans control the means of production and...' to which I'll say 'Shut the Fuck Up You Pansy Ass Dickwad' and demand to see HOW it all came apart.  I didn't, for example, notice a particular shortage of Adam when there was an infinite supply of FUCKING NUTTERS kicking my ass till I restored at the nearest stupid ass Vitae chamber to get right the fuck up.

Which bothers me too, since if It was tuned to Ryans GC, then he should have got up too.  Fucking Clownshoes that bit.


Fucking City in the 1950's that used Water to power the electronic machines.  Let's not start on the Idealistic Philosophy thing.  I was hacking Machines using Water.  Fuck me, it's 2008 and I can't even Cool my fucking PC using water.

I wish they'd stuck with Mind Worms.  Because Mind Worms make sense.

Sea Slugs Vs Mind Worms.  I'm all for it.

Maybe in the next game SHODAN can fight the resurrected Ryan.  That'd be awesome.


What I really, really don't get is this :  They KNEW that Adam fucks the mind up.  I don't give a fuck how cool it would be to come in to work with BEES COMING OUT OF MY ARM, if it turns me into a nutbag, I'm not going to do it.

Silly.

[Tebonas]

The main problem is that Levine chose to give us just bits and pieces and we are invited to find as many of those bits and pieces as we can and fill in the blanks ourselves.

I REALLY would lilke to read the whole backstory that had to exist before they split it up into Audio logs, cutscenes and visual clues.


Edit: Just for perspective. People know what heroin does to them and they still take it. One of the side effects of Adam (according to the audio broadcasts) is addiction.

[Miasma]

I never bother trying to demand too much sense from sci-fi or fantasy because they can just make up whatever they want to explain it, as Xena on the Simpsons wisely said "yeah, well, whenever you notice something like that, a wizard did it".  Maybe there is a hidden recorder somewhere saying that since the economy had no rules everyone farmed the fuck out of the slugs until they were extinct, then you had a limited quantity of something everyone had an endless craving for.  Who knows?

As for Ryan not coming back to life I assumed he programmed it that way since he was committing suicide, first by the self destruct, then by you.  I don't know why he chose to die like that since he could have told you to go sit in the corner until the city explodes.  I've learned to just make shit up to fill in plot holes in sci-fi fantasy games.  In my mind Ryan was going to die with his city, then you got to him and he decided that while he still wanted to die you might be able to save his city, so he ordered you to kill him to snap a bit of the control Fontaine had over you, bludgeoning daddy to death against your own will is bound to teach you a few things.  Is my explanation bullshit? Absolutely.  But then I recognize it's impossible for a sci-fi fantasy game to make sense.  I mean when you get right down to it if he had welded shut every Securis door you would have never got to him and there is something like that in every single game.  If evil geniuses built more walls and fewer doors they would always win.

[Kitsune]

Some of the logs indicated that if an Adam-using person didn't get more of the stuff occasionally their super-duper cells would go all fucked-up on them, thus the splicers being ugly and insane, so on top of the demand for Adam to do the initial splicing, everyone needed a steady supply thereafter.  City full of people needing a regular dose of Adam plus collapse of social order (and presumably the sea slug harvesting) equals batshitzania.  They were obviously having some issues with meeting the demand even before everything went tits-up, which is why they started recycling the Adam from corpses via the sisters.

As for Ryan and resurrection, some people think he disabled the vita chamber in his office so he'd stay dead.  I dunno about that, I wouldn't be surprised if he turned up later for a sequel, 'cause they did go out of their way mention that the resurrection chambers were built to work for him.

[LK]

So, I don't get why the main character didn't turn into a splicer eventually with all that ADAM in him.

[Ironwood]

Sea Slugs.


From the Sea.

[Kitsune]

So, I don't get why the main character didn't turn into a splicer eventually with all that ADAM in him.

Presumably it takes a length of time without Adam to start getting fucked up, and thanks to Fontaine the character ends the game with a couple thousand Adam points, enough to live out his life.

Sea Slugs.


From the Sea.

Just because something is from the sea doesn't make it abundant within the sea.  Giant squid are from the sea, too, but we've only ever found, what, three of them?

[Kail]

As for Ryan not coming back to life I assumed he programmed it that way since he was committing suicide, first by the self destruct, then by you.  I don't know why he chose to die like that since he could have told you to go sit in the corner until the city explodes.

I sort of read it as him trying to "redeem" you, the way he kept repeating how "a man chooses" and then ordering you to kill him... seemed like he was trying to get you to break your conditioning, to free you, but you couldn't do it.

I am a bit confused about Fontaine's plan, though.  So the big scheme is to take Ryan's fetal son, genetically condition him to follow your orders, then send him to the surface for a bit, then bring him back down to do what you want... I'm not sure why that bit with "send him to the surface" is in there, nor how he inferred that you, by yourself, would be able to kick the ass of the entire rest of Rapture (especially considering how powerful Fontaine is personally, why doesn't he just do it himself?).  Why not just keep him in Rapture?  Train him in how to use plasmids and things before the big day?  Why send him to do whatever it was he was doing on land?  Generally the purpose of sending a sleeper agent somewhere is so that they can be in enemy territory at a key moment, not so that you can bring them back unexpectedly.  And why bother with the false memories?  The only reason I can think of is to protect the secrecy of the big plan, but who the hell is he going to blab it to?  The vast majority of the population is beyond rational communication.  And Ryan already knew somehow, but couldn't do anything about it.

[Ironwood]

Indeed.


Sea Slugs.

They came from the Sea.

The whole Fontaine thing was bollocks.  I'd rather I'd be genetically aged in a day (which was hinted at) and then given 'false' memories.  The whole 'You got off and went round the world and then hijacked a plane to crash in the sea' was utter, utter drivel.

But apparently it's because Fontaine's DNA was keeping him away from Robo Turrets.

Or some such shite.

I'm getting very bitter about this.  I blame the Sea Slugs.  Perhaps I need some Sea Salt.

[Kitsune]

Putting the main character out of Rapture also put him out of Ryan's reach, making sure that daddy couldn't wrest him away from Fontaine's control.  As for 'why not do it himself', Fontaine was a coward.  The vita chambers wouldn't work for him, he'd have no second chances if he got killed.  Better to have an effectively immortal sap do his dirty work for him.

[Rasix]

stuff

  Predictable.  Some of your gripes have merit, but man, you really can work yourself up over stuff like this.

Really, really nice game but overall a real dissappointment.  It's entirely possible to be both.

This I mostly agree with.  The game is not a classic.  If someone asked me to rattle off the "best games ever" this will not get included.  Too many nitpicky problems that were somewhat exacerbated by the less than perfect execution of the environment.  There was a decent amount of stuff this game did better than SS2 but it just well woefully short with the environment.  Too big, too many enemies, too little done with ghosts and set pieces.  Almost no tension compared to SS2 where it was there in tons.  You'd think with all of those crazy plasmids we'd have more mob variety and more mobs doing crazy shit. 

I didn't care much for the interface also.  Too much hidden information that should have been present at your fingertips. I should have gotten an achievement for getting through that gauntlet without losing a little sister.

I enjoyed the experience though and might actually play through on Hard (got a majority of the achievements though).  Medium just got kind of easy at the end where cash was in no shortage and you could just use optimal ammo for everything, trivializing most encounters.  Big daddies were just too easy with unlimited electronic buck (stun + electric damage).  Fontaine wasn't a difficult boss fight either. I expect to die at least once trying to beat an actiony end boss.  The sisters stabbing the shit out of him was pretty neat though.

Why are you so upset with sea slugs?  The supply was limited by little girls available, not the slugs, or am I missing something?

[Comstar]

Sea Slugs. They came from the Sea.

There was a recording from Tanerbaun that clearly said that they needed the little sisters to be able to get a lot more Atom than the slugs provided by themselves. Without the little sisters you couldn't get the massive amounts everyone wanted.

[Kitsune]

Yeah.  Adam was made from the cells of some sea slug, they were the source of the stuff.  There wasn't enough supply for the demand, however, so they made the little sisters to recycle it by drinking the blood of the dead.  The slug-things in the sisters extracted the bits of Adam from the corpse blood, and when they were full, they'd be harvested.  Coincidentally killing the girls in the process.

So y'see, the sisters weren't the original source of Adam, they were walking repositories of the stuff.  And since the sea slug production line was likely no longer in operation by the time the game takes place, there is no other Adam supply available to the main character.

[WindupAtheist]

There was a recording from Tanerbaun that clearly said that they needed the little sisters to be able to get a lot more Atom than the slugs provided by themselves. Without the little sisters you couldn't get the massive amounts everyone wanted.

Why does this remind me of that one Simpsons episode?  UP AND AT THEM!

PS, EDIT:  Ironwood, you're a hardcore sicko, and I say that with respect.  I kicked every single puppy in KOTOR and never even went back to see the light side ending, I cut like fifty peoples necks in that hotel level in Hitman and thought it was hilarious, but I can tell you right now I wouldn't be able to waste any of those little girls.

[Ironwood]

Ach, that's nothing.  It's entirely, entirely weak the way they did it.  Once you've pulled the first ones stomach out and realised that 'Fade To Black' is the weakest fucking emotional trigger in the world and there ain't even a fucking body, you just don't care.  All you think about is another Combat Tonic slot.

Then you get to T's Creche and you feel ROTTEN.  Then you read a spoiler site that says 'You're Getting the Shit Ending for Even Wasting One of those little Fucks' and suddenly it's Apple slashing time all over again, because, hey, it's just a game and you've already fucked yourself for 'GOOD' stuff and the 'GOOD' ending.

I'll admit that the Big Daddy Escort was a little more difficult because you have the 'Angelic' wee girls and, in fact, they're spouting off about Angels every five seconds.  Makes it not as funny when the spider slicer cuts her open with a hook.

As for you Rasix, you said the same shit I said, but you don't care.  I do Care.  This was meant to BEAT SS2.  It didn't by a very, very long chalk and I'm enormously dissappointed.  And, like the scab in my mind, the more I pick at it, the more annoyed I get.

And you don't need to come in here and ply me with bits of the story.  I get the slugs and the Adam shortage and the where the wee girls come in.  I just think it's entirely weak.

This wasn't a game about Politics, or shortages or human failings.  This was a game that said 'When a society takes drugs that make them insane, insane stuff then happens.'

Big Fucking Whoop.


Mind Worms.  The next game better have fucking Mind worms.