Bioshock - PC Demo Now Available

[Corwin]

The PC Demo for Bioshock is now available for download from Fileplanet. (http://www.fileplanet.com/176066/download/BioShock-Demo) You must be registered there to avail yourself of their services. Registration is Free.

Thanks for the notification Acleacius
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=6057)

[Acleacius]

Ouch, there maybe a problem. :S

Seems 2k Tricked us, I am reading on their forums and it sort of starts here on the 40th page.
http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4509&page=40

Apparently anyone can download this but either you need to wait till Monday at 7pm EST, you have to be a Paying Subscriber using the Download Manager to Decrypt it or both, sigh. :(

I am not real clear at this point, so if you Pay per Gig of download with your ISP, please don't try this until more infomation is known or you don't want to possibly waste your time.

It's alot of reading and I am at 900 meg atm, so I dont have a difinetive answer, atm.

[Avogadro]

I'll recommend a sight to those who care http://www.bugmenot.com/

[Corwin]

I've linked the news page to the other forum thread on this issue.

[Acleacius]

Ok, mine completed and it does have the "Error in Compressed File" which looks to be the Encryption, so no go. :(
Damn you 2K. :p

[Sir Markus]

I'm a member and can't download. I think there must have been something wrong with the file; hopefully they'll get this straightened out sometime today.

[Sir Markus]

I just found this alternative link to the demo, in case anyone is interested.

http://games.softpedia.com/get/Games-Demo/BioShock-PC-Demo.shtml

[txa1265]

The whole PC demo thing seems to have been quite a mess - announced-denied, confirmed-unconfirmed, released-pulled. Oh well, I pulled the trigger on my Steam order so I'll have it tomorrow anyway ...

[Brother None]

Yeah, what a mess. the Russians seem to have it now (http://www.ag.ru/files/demos/bioshock/23089)

[txa1265]

The latest according to 'The Cult of Rapture (http://www.2kgames.com/cultofrapture/home.html)' site:

The wait is nearly over. At 7 PM EST the BioShock PC demo will go live for you to enjoy. We will have exclusive pre-loading at Fileplanet. Set your watches for 7 o'clock!

IMPORTANT: Please be sure to download the latest drivers from ATI and Nvidia that will be available Monday for best performance with your video cards.

[Surlent]

Anyone tried the russian version yet? The one from Softpedia seemed corrupt.

[Grantus]

Anyone tried the russian version yet? The one from Softpedia seemed corrupt.

The Russian link is very, very slow, unless you pay for VIP access. I'm downloading around 10Kb per second -- only 49 hours before the download is finished!

[Acleacius]

Here you go look what I found. :)
There are a total of 20 files, so just rename each download to part02, part03 and so on.
http://rapidshare.com/files/50143581/BioShock_PC_Demo.part01.rar


Edit sory about that bad link fixed.

[txa1265]

I would suggest waiting for the official release - at that point there should be a flood of mirror sites which will at least make the speed reasonable.

[Brother None]

Yah. I don't understand this silly rush.

The versions currently out are versions hacked from leaked versions or something. Borderline piracy in any case. Just wait, calmly, it'll only take half a day or so

[Acleacius]

Piracy? No not at all this is the Legal Demo, File Planet released the Unencrypted Demo out Accidently.
Not sure where you got they were Hacked, maybe you were guessing and did Not read the official forum threads, posted. :p

SIlly, rush?
This maybe one of the best games ever made, iirc when SS2 was released the reason it didn't actually sell well was the release of the original Half-Life poped up at near the same time and stole all of Irrational thunder and now 7 or more years later they are finally getting their shot.
I realise everyone is jaded after oblivion but this isn't bethseda, this is Irrational and that should be enough said. :)

[Lucky Day]

The softpedia link keeps quitting on me after about 3 seconds. I can only get about 200k of the file Markus.

for those able to get it to run how is the performance?

So far I only see the Demo on Torrent but the 360 version is available.

Here's a link for a torrent of the Demo (http://www.mininova.org/tor/848104). Naturally, there's a lot of leechers and only a few seeders right now.

[r3dshift]

The torrent file linked above works fine. I've DLed that one and played through the single player demo already, and I must confess that it's been the greatest experience for me since... Planescape : Torment, perhaps? Anyway: fabulous, marvellous, extraordinary game, really looking forward to the full version.

Oh, and FP are feckers. 'nuff said.

Edit: re: performance. It is mighty fine! I was a wee bit worried that my rig (AMD 64 3000+, 1 gigs of RAM, GF7900GT) wouldn't handle the thing, and boy, was I releived to find that the game runs extremely smoothly @ 1024*768 with all GFX options maxed out! Terrific work, great optimisation of the UE3 engine, well done!

[zakhal]

Edit: re: performance. It is mighty fine! I was a wee bit worried that my rig (AMD 64 3000+, 1 gigs of RAM, GF7900GT) wouldn't handle the thing, and boy, was I releived to find that the game runs extremely smoothly @ 1024*768 with all GFX options maxed out! Terrific work, great optimisation of the UE3 engine, well done!

From another forum dx10 (?):


c2d@3,3GHz, 8800GTX, 3 gigs memory, 1680x1050 all maxed and Windows Vista --> fps 10-30

He mentions a terrible input lag (mouse) and the only thing said about graphics is that its inpar with xbox360.

[Lucky Day]

I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (2ghz) on XP Pro 32 with 1gb RAM and an nVidia 6200 w/ 256mb. I'm thinking I'll be a too slow.

There's a great deal of better performance on XP 64 but there a compatibility issues with a lot software. I'm thinking of setting up a dual boot. Anyone running XP 64 or Server 2003 with this game?

[Brother None]

Piracy? No not at all this is the Legal Demo, File Planet released the Unencrypted Demo out Accidently.
Not sure where you got they were Hacked, maybe you were guessing and did Not read the official forum threads, posted.

That's what I understood. Mistakenly, apparently.

SIlly, rush?

Yes. Wait a half a dozen hours and it'll be nice, neat and multi-mirrored. I don't get the chaos and hurry of people to get a demo. Then again, I guess the messy release is to blame

[Lucky Day]

how many people wish they hadn't tripped over themselves to get a 360 when it first came out?

The fileplanet copy is a good example of why you should always wait.

[aries100]

I usually wait 1-2 or 2-4 days after a demo has been released before I download a demo for a game. Then, hopefully, the internet craze etc. has died down a little and the demo can be gotten in reasonable time.

[northreign]

There's new nvidia drivers out now for performance in bioshock. Should also be some from ati. grab them before playing the demo or full game.

[Acleacius]

Brother None
"Yes. Wait a half a dozen hours and it'll be nice, neat and multi-mirrored. "
Hehe, yes your right of course, but this is Bioshock! :)

[Sir Markus]

I'm running it on a Pentium 4 3.2 ghz, 1.5 gb ram and 7600 gt vid. card, and it runs fine at 1280 x 960. This game is genuinely creepy, but to my tastes, it almost seems like there's too much going on in the game. Don't get me wrong, it's extremely well done from top to bottom, but the whole but it's an awfully frantic experience.

[Brother None]

It's out now. Here's the various necessary download links



Link: NVidia BioShock Drivers (http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_rel70betadriver.html).
Link ATI BioShock Drivers (Click BioShock) (http://support.ati.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=894).

Link: BioShock demo on 3ddownloads (http://www.3ddownloads.com/RPG/Bioshock/Demos/BioShockPCDemo.zip).
Link: BioShock demo on FileShack (http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/10997/BioShock+Demo).
Link: BioShock demo on FilePlanet (http://www.fileplanet.com/180044/download/BioShock-Demo).
Link: BioShock demo on Gamer's Hell (http://www.gamershell.com/download_20697.shtml).

[Moriendor]

Played through the demo on a Core 2 Duo E6300, 2048MB RAM (DDR-400), XFX GeForce 7950GT 512MB AGP, Win XP w/ 94.24 XFX drivers (the new nVidia beta drivers that were released today once again don't support 79xx AGP cards).
Performance was great most of the time in 1280x1024 with all visual eye candy enabled. It stuttered a little and got a little choppy when there was a lot of stuff going on but overall it was acceptable.

I liked pretty much everything about the demo so maybe it's easier to focus on the "bad" stuff ;) .

The first thing I found pretty weird was that the character did not say a word. After the plane crash he managed to get back to the surface and we can hear him breathing hard, gasping for air but he doesn't say a thing? Huh? And it seems even weirder that he doesn't say anything when he discovers the lighthouse and the entrance to Rapture. A good old fashioned "What the fuck?" would have seemed very appropriate here :biggrin: . OK, maybe it will all make sense in the end if/when we find out that our character is not human or something but it's just kinda strange that the guy doesn't react to these crazy events/discoveries at all. Definitely could have used some Prey-like comments to make it seem more real and less awkward.

Another thing that I am slightly disappointed in is that the credibility of the world could have been better. There are invisible walls that are holding you back from going to places that you can see. You barely take any damage from fire. And whenever there is a leak then the water pours in like mad but the water level doesn't rise at all. Those leaks would have maybe been the perfect opportunity to create a sense of urgency to get your butt in gear and move on but I guess that they thought otherwise.

On the interface and interaction side it might have been nice to have a real inventory where you can store your picked up stuff instead of the instant consumption/usage of everything that is lying around somewhere.

And finally on the technical side, I think they have set a new record for loading times. Luckily you don't have to reload on death but you just respawn at the nearest shrine ummm... vita thingie, I mean :) .
I also got some sound crackling though I'm not sure if this is due to the retro theme of the game (read: intended) or a real sound issue.
Well, and being a non-native English speaker I turned on subtitles and found out that they need some polishing because they are not synced with the voices. What's nice is that you can replay every(?) dialogue and radio message so it's not a big deal and I turned subtitles off again very quickly.

Other than these fairly minor issues it looks like a great game that is 100% FPS (as advertised). The atmosphere is great, the enemies are pretty wild, the setting is making you curious to move on and to get further into the story, the hacking mini game is a lot of fun, ... it's all good. Bring it on :) .

[JDR13]

The first thing I found pretty weird was that the character did not say a word. After the plane crash he managed to get back to the surface and we can hear him breathing hard, gasping for air but he doesn't say a thing? Huh? And it seems even weirder that he doesn't say anything when he discovers the lighthouse and the entrance to Rapture. A good old fashioned "What the fuck?" would have seemed very appropriate here :biggrin: . OK, maybe it will all make sense in the end if/when we find out that our character is not human or something but it's just kinda strange that the guy doesn't react to these crazy events/discoveries at all. Definitely could have used some Prey-like comments to make it seem more real and less awkward.
.


I know that everyone isn't going to agree, but I actually like having a silent protagonist.

The main character was silent in both System Shock games, so it doesn't surprise me that he's the same way in Bioshock.

[curiously undead]

almost completely true JDR 13. you forgot his one word that was oh so priceless. "...nah"

i'm keeping the demo at bay and instead been defraging my computer and driving over an hour out of town for dinner so i wouldn't be tempted. going in early to work tommorow for a half day so i can spend the rest of it with bioshock...tick tock tick tock

[xSamhainx]

I'm getting it @ 1.1mb a sec from Gamespot, then again I'm one of those types who hand them money once a year to have hassle-free and quick access to such things. I dont know what the free account gets you, prolly not so nice.

They also have a video review up from Jeff Gerstmann @ 9.0

[txa1265]

I know that everyone isn't going to agree, but I actually like having a silent protagonist.

I haven't played the demo since I've already pre-ordered Steam, but this is one of those things I have very mixed feelings about. On the one hand I can understand and appreciate it from an immersive narrative stand-point, but on the other sometimes it makes no sense at all. Because no speaking means no interaction with other people, no discussion, etc. And that means you ned to spend the entire game either working around it or ignoring it ... like in HL2. I know you liked it there ... and you know I didn't ;)

[GothicGothicness]

I also got some sound crackling though I'm not sure if this is due to the retro theme of the game (read: intended) or a real sound issue.


Turn off reverb in sound settings.

And finally on the technical side, I think they have set a new record for loading times. Luckily you don't have to reload on death but you just respawn at the nearest shrine ummm... vita thingie, I mean

Ummm, did we try the same game! I have a much much slower AMD 3700+ and Geforce 7800GTX... and the load times were very short! :S

[Prime Junta]

I know that everyone isn't going to agree, but I actually like having a silent protagonist.

Me too... most of the time. It's hard to do well, and requires a very well-written main character. The character voices in NWN2 for example are just lame; OTOH Chronicles of Riddick did this extremely well. As did good ol' Duke Nukem 3D back in the day, although that was rather different. ("It's time to chew gum or kick ass... and I'm all outta gum.")

[Thaurin]

Weird. If I try to install nVidia's GeForce beta drivers, it says that the program cannot detect any drivers for hardware in my system. I checked if I had the correct drivers four times, downloaded it twice and I have a GeForce 6800 GT, which should be supported by the driver I downloaded. What the hell?

[magerette]

Weird. If I try to install nVidia's GeForce beta drivers, it says that the program cannot detect any drivers for hardware in my system. I checked if I had the correct drivers four times, downloaded it twice and I have a GeForce 6800 GT, which should be supported by the driver I downloaded. What the hell?

I had the same issue when my video card was going out--it wouldn't install or even acknowledge the new drivers. It was a memory writing issue for me. Hope that's not the case for you. These are beta drivers so who knows? :)

[Thaurin]

Can't imagine it's my video card that's giving up. I haven't had any problem at all with it, and this is the first time I've ever seen something weird coming up.

Anyway, I've played through the short demo already, so it's moot. The framerate wasn't the best on my AMD 3500+ 2GB RAM GeForce 6800 GT computer, but playable to some extent. Framerate dropped below 10 FPS in busy fights.

I have to say that this game has the record for best in-game cut-scenes ever. I remember when first playing games like Mafia that I wasn't sure if it was prerendered or it the game engine had already kicked in; the same thing happened here, but I think it was all in-engine. I couldn't believe my eyes when I was swimming in the water among the flames. I need stuff like this ever few years when technology reaches a new landmark. :)

Perfect depth-of-field, the water effects, the mood, I thought it was great, but I'll need a video card update for this one at the least...

[Moriendor]

Turn off reverb in sound settings.

Will try that. Thanks :) .

Ummm, did we try the the same game! I have a much much slower AMD 3700+ and Geforce 7800GTX... and the load times were very short! :S

Yup. Must be a different game that we played :biggrin: . I just stopwatched the loading times (G15 keyboard display clock FTW!). The first loading sequence when the game is loading for the first time after the first cut scene took 50 seconds and the second one before you actually enter Rapture itself (right before you see your first Splicer) was 1:50 minutes. That's not what I call "very short". In fact it reminds me of the C64 days ;) .

I know that everyone isn't going to agree, but I actually like having a silent protagonist.

The main character was silent in both System Shock games, so it doesn't surprise me that he's the same way in Bioshock.

I would agree if it were consistent and if he would shut up entirely but as I said it's plain weird that your character resurfaces from the ocean after the plane crash and you can hear him very loud and clear how he's breathing hard, gurgling, gasping for air, spitting out water and all that stuff. And then... silence. Just seems strange IMHO. You have this guy who just survived a plane crash and who is swimming in a sea of burning fuel in the middle of the ocean and he's got nothing to say? No crying for help? No "Shiiiiiiiiiiiit where am I"? No "WTF"? Nothing? Just seems awkward. They should have silenced him completely for it to seem more natural or added at least a few mumbling-to-self lines like you had in Prey or in Call of Juarez or Dark Messiah (or Duke3D as PJ pointed out) where it was well done in each of those games.

@Thaurin: Do you have an AGP model of the 6800GT? Some (all?) AGP models are not supported by the latest nVidia drivers. I was having the same problem with my XFX GeForce 7950GT AGP. I have to use the 94.24 drivers (which do work fine and I'm not too fond of beta drivers). If you really want to try the beta drivers though, you should be able to "hack" the INF file and force it to install. You should be able to find info on how to do that pretty quickly at a site like Guru3D (http://www.guru3d.com/) (or their forums that is).

[Thaurin]

@Thaurin: Do you have an AGP model of the 6800GT?

Nope, PCI-Express...

If you really want to try the beta drivers though, you should be able to "hack" the INF file and force it to install. You should be able to find info on how to do that pretty quickly at a site like Guru3D (http://www.guru3d.com/) (or their forums that is).

No need to be hasty, I guess. The demo ran fine, if maybe not perfectly, but it wouldn't have made a lot of difference I'm sure. It's not like my card is new and needs the latest updates, I think. I bet it's more for the latest generation of cards that need the tweaks.

[JDR13]

Will try that. Thanks :) .

I would agree if it were consistent and if he would shut up entirely but as I said it's plain weird that your character resurfaces from the ocean after the plane crash and you can hear him very loud and clear how he's breathing hard, gurgling, gasping for air, spitting out water and all that stuff. And then... silence. Just seems strange IMHO. You have this guy who just survived a plane crash and who is swimming in a sea of burning fuel in the middle of the ocean and he's got nothing to say? No crying for help? No "Shiiiiiiiiiiiit where am I"? No "WTF"? Nothing? Just seems awkward. They should have silenced him completely for it to seem more natural or added at least a few mumbling-to-self lines like you had in Prey or in Call of Juarez or Dark Messiah (or Duke3D as PJ pointed out) where it was well done in each of those games.
.


I don't consider breathing hard, gurgling, gasping for air, and spitting out water, things that would exclude him from being a silent protagonist.

Duke Nukem 3D imho is to this day the best spoken character I've ever played in a FPS. I just recently discovered a program called Eduke (http://eduke32.com/) that allows you to play Duke3D in WindowsXP in high resolution and with true mouse look. I can't believe how fun this game still is to play, I definitely plan on going through the whole game again in the near future.