Bioshock - 2K - Xbox360

[sidereal]

Bioshock, for me, represents an enormous gulf in satisfaction between setting genre and playstyle genre.  On the setting side, it is simply love.  Picture the 1940s stylings of Fallout wrapped in an Objectivist dystopia like a Through the Looking Glass version of The Fountainhead and then stuck at the bottom of the ocean and populated with masked psychotics with psychic powers.  In HD.  The sheer, ballsy creativity is astounding, and Ken Levine should be given lifetime tenure in a design role.

On the gameplay side, I hate survival horror.  I hate having to hoard each bullet like it was crapped out by God.  I hate swinging some improvised piece of pipe at a zombie and missing and dying because immediate lethality is supposed to make it exciting.  The discovery that Doom was moving from chaingun running-and-gunning to impotent flashlight waving in the 3rd installment was a low point in my gaming career.  I never made it out of Intro Zombie Town in RE4 on the Wii.  So Bioshock is a test of whether setting or gameplay matters more.

It turns out gameplay wins.  A tactical RPG or straight FPS in the Bioshock universe could be the greatest game ever created.  But this isn't it.  After I waved my pipe at the 27th consecutive creepy guy to jump out of a shadow and shout boogabooga, I turned it off.

If you can stand survival horror, Buy It
Otherwise, Rent It to bask in the setting for 15 or 20 minutes.

[Signe]

I like survival horror lots.  Unfortunately, I can only play it when someone is in the room with me (Righ!) or if I'm in a group.  Fatal Frame, Silent Hill, games like that... can't be alone or I get super creeped out.  I really like Bioshock and the setting is great.  My complaint is that there isn't enough "different" stuff and that it feels too brief.

[Morfiend]

Sid,

I know this isn't an excuse for the game, but only the first few hours are really survival horror, and after that it turns in to what you want, pretty much a straight up shooter.

I personally liked the survival horror part, and I dont normally like that type of game play. If you can stick it out a bit you might really enjoy the last 2/3rds of the game.

[Roac]

I  survival horror, with RE4 being very nearly my favorite game of all time.  I would only play it at night, with the lights off, and after everyone else was asleep.  Bothered my sleep a few nights.

Loved it.

I'd taken Bioshock to be more of a straightforward shooter, with the addition of neat powers.  The horror part hasn't been marketed that strongly, but if it's there, all the better for me.  I can't wait for a go at it.

[Ironwood]

It's no RE4.

Avoid.

[Xilren's Twin]

I dont consider Bioshock to be survival horror any more than I did System Shock 1 or 2  (or Deus Ex, another game i consider in the same genre: story driven action rpg's).  Yes, there are scary elements to the setting, but that's not the focus.  I always enjoyed them more for playing through a cohesive story in a neat setting with interesting gameplay elements rather than the pure shooting parts. (plus the limited ammo part at the beginning is supposed to contribute to the tension, but unllike SS2 in BS that is quickly aleviated).  Yeah, I know, the story in BS just like all the aforementioned games may not always stand up to heavy scrutiny, but it gives you an impetus to keep playing beyond "getting all the weapons/powers".  In SS1&2 and DX1, I wanted to keep going through the game to see how it unfolded, and even though there were parts I wish had been done differently (i.e. the Many end part of SS2), the games did a good enough job to keep me playing to the end; same as BS.

I actually consiider BS and it's ilk to have more in common with games like Kotor, VtM, and the Thief series than I would Resident Evil or Doom for that matter.  Setting plus gameplay wins.

So my recommendation would be if you liked any of the Shock games or DX1, it is definately worth buying flaws and all.

[schild]

Hmmmm. Weird.

I thought System Shock 2 was really the height of survival horror until "night time" in Resident Evil 4. Or the opening of Silent Hill 3.

Which is to say, sure, you were overpowered in SS2, but your prime directive as a player was surival with all the fucked up shit going on.

But "horror" alone, no, that's reserved for things like, I don't know, Maniac Mansion and the Ravenholm sections of Half-Life 2.

[rattran]

Bioshock wasn't bad, it just wasn't that good. It looked fantastic, but the same handful of baddies, the same harvest/heal thing. Levels which were nifty for a while, but all ran together too soon. Overpowered and underpowered skill stuff. A thin plot, with the 'moral choice' being about as subtle as a halfbrick in a sock.

It had touches of greatness though. Some of the set pieces were nice, the tape recordings in place of a plot, etc.

[Signe]

Bioshock wasn't bad, it just wasn't that good. It looked fantastic, but the same handful of baddies, the same harvest/heal thing. Levels which were nifty for a while, but all ran together too soon. Overpowered and underpowered skill stuff. A thin plot, with the 'moral choice' being about as subtle as a halfbrick in a sock.

It had touches of greatness though. Some of the set pieces were nice, the tape recordings in place of a plot, etc.

This is what I meant, really.  It wasn't different enough from itself.  I thought it was going to be really great and, at the beginning, it was pretty great and then it was all just the same.  Hellgate suffers a bit of this, too, but but, hopefully, they'll sort that one out.

[KallDrexx]

I do not know if I am alone in this, but I think the thing that bugged me the most about Bioshock was that the dialogue was delivered almost completely without "human" interaction.  I'm not talking about the tape recordings, because that wasn't meant to be real time talk, but in most places people are always talking to you only over the radio only.  You rarely ever actually SEE someone talking to you.  There was something about this that I really didn't like and it made it hard for me to personally follow (or care) about the story.

In HL2 most of the dialog is spoken by people around you, or you can see them talking to you over a video screen.  In Zelda games the camera focuses on who is talking.  In the Soul Reaver/Legacy of Kain series (except maybe blood omen) cinematics always go on to show who is actually talking, and a lot of times when it's the character thinking to himself the cinematics were setup to portray that. 

Hell even a few times someone is talking to you, and they are near you in the world but they clouded the window with particle effects so you couldn't actually see them.

I might just be wierd though...

[geldonyetich2]

I don't really consider BioShock a survival horror game, either.  Ammunition soon ceases to be a problem, each efficiently-dispatched foe carrying several times more gear than you needed to kill it.  Once you have a massive supply of death-dealing hardware and superpowers, the scare factor largely diminishes.

The ending was a bit flat, but the overall story was cool and the gameplay had more "verbs" than 98% of the stuff on the market.  I look forward to the sequel.

[Yegolev]

I do not know if I am alone in this, but I think the thing that bugged me the most about Bioshock was that the dialogue was delivered almost completely without "human" interaction.  I'm not talking about the tape recordings, because that wasn't meant to be real time talk, but in most places people are always talking to you only over the radio only.  You rarely ever actually SEE someone talking to you.  There was something about this that I really didn't like and it made it hard for me to personally follow (or care) about the story.

I didn't care for this either, and it was particularly bad when I stopped for a second to think "How can this fucker see me?" and "Obviously they can hear each other over my radio (boggle) so why don't they just berate each other and leave me alone?"  Now, the reason it was designed this way is because that's how System Shock 2 worked.  It was somewhat different, though, since the other humans were all ghosts and SHODAN was a computer, so yeah she could see you, and she was taunting you over the PA instead of some handheld radio.  Also SHODAN was one of the greatest villains of all time, while ANNdrew RyAN(D) was just a cheap imitation that resembled Walt Disney.

[Azazel]

I still plan to buy this game at some point, though on the PC rather then 360. I will likely wait till it drops a little more in price, as I have a fuckton of other things to play in the meantime.

[Yegolev]

Oh crap, sorry about the spoilage.

[Prospero]

The art direction was out of this world but the combat was completely blah. The baddies were pretty much MMOG baddies; same model, different name, and ten times more bullet resistant for no apparent reason. The story blew its wad way too early which left the last half of the game dragging. The atmosphere however, was damn near perfect.

What I find really strange is I didn't care about my character at all. Maybe it's just that I've been playing Gordon for 9 years now, but when he starts getting really wounded I kinda start to worry about him. I find the fights in HL tend to get my blood and adrenaline pumping. With Bioshock I never really cared about how badly beat up whatever his name was. I never really got worked up during fights even though I wasn't using the resurrection chambers.

I tend to agree with the folks that Bioshock was an important step for games, but I think it was also a good reminder that games must have solid gameplay.

Oh and the UI sucked. A lot. Maybe it was good for consoles, but I was hating it on the PC.

[Azazel]

Oh crap, sorry about the spoilage.

Not a problem, It's to be expected in a thread about the game, particularly this late. I mean, I still haven't gotten around to watching The Crying Game or The Sixth Sense....

[Ironwood]

He dies with a penis.

[Azazel]

Men often do that.