Bioshock - Daily Wrapup

Dhruin

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After a confusing start, the Bioshock demo is in general release. If you don't have it yet, grab the 1.84Gb file from Gamer's Hell, Worthplaying and the usual mirrors.
Don't forget updated drivers - both nVidia and ATI have new (beta) drivers with Bioshock optimisations.
Respected journalist Keiron Gillen has an interview with Ken Levine - apparently initiated by Ken, which is rather unusual - on his site Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
RPS: The other thing about the Spiritual Sequel line is that I think it confuses people. I see lots of Shock 2 in there, sure… but I think it’s closer to Shock 1, in many ways. Being based on the equipment rather than actual statistics - that it’s more of a shooter with a lot of things piled on top…
KL: Absolutely. It’s funny, as when we were making Shock 2, any time there was any deviation from Shock 1 there was a lot of very angry people. And now people are forgetting that Shock 2 really added all those RPG elements and character growth stuff that wasn’t in Shock 1, which was more of a clean FPS. There may be some more similarities, in that regard. And hey! I’m cool with that.
On that note, they also have a short feature on the original System Shock.
...and Worthplaying has a review with a score of 9.2/10:
If Bioshock has one notable flaw, it lies in the game's difficulty level, or lack thereof. On the normal difficulty level, it's just a bit too easy. It is still fun, but once you start getting a solid number of plasmids, you can tear through every Splicer in your way as if they were nothing. By the end of the game, I was using the default wrench on every enemy, not because I needed to save ammo, but because my plasmids made the Wrench so ridiculously powerful that it would have taken me longer to kill Splicers with a gun. I was rarely using many of the plasmids or alternate weapon types available to me — only the wrench, Electro Bolt and the occasional grenade and armor-piercing bullets for the Big Daddies. A game being easy isn't a tremendous flaw, but considering the wide variety of options available to you in defeat foes, it's rather wearisome that the straightforward smash-and-grab technique is the most effective. The game does offer a hard mode, however, for those gamers eager to up the ante a bit, but the differences between the modes are not quite enough to give experienced players a much harder time, although it does encourage the use of some of the lesser-used plasmids.
...while GameSpot says 9/10:
While on the surface it might look like little more than a very pretty first-person shooter, BioShock is much, much more than that. Sure, the action is fine, but its primary focus is its story, a sci-fi mystery that manages to feel retro and futuristic at the same time, and its characters, who convey most of the story via radio transmissions and audio logs that you're constantly stumbling upon as you wander around. All of it blends together to form a rich, interesting world that sucks you in right away and won't let go until you've figured out what, exactly, is going on in the undersea city of Rapture.
...and Tom Chick says 5/5 at Yahoo!:
Roll over, Half-Life. BioShock is the best single-player shooter out there. It's one of those rare games that comes along every five or ten years, sucks you in, knocks your socks off, and haunts you for years after you've played it.
More information.
 
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The great thing about Tom Chick's article is that it tells you enough without making you feel spoiled or evaded ... and there is the final paragraph:

The most salient fact about BioShock is that it's different. If it doesn't sell well, perhaps it's time to abandon hope and resign ourselves to the eternal recurrence of space dungeons and World War II. Games like BioShock are what we need. They are what we deserve. This is one of the best examples of where we should go. It's silly to argue whether games are art, which doesn't matter one whit, when you can simply point to BioShock and say: "Games are this."
 
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I don't even play shooters but that review makes me feel I should want this game. I may get totally crazy and download the demo. It may just reaffirm my lack of twitch skills but at least I might last long enough to see what everybody's on about. :)

Edit: That's a very nice interview at Rock Paper Shotgun also btw (well have to do something while waiting for the demo to download--servers are still packed)
 
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Well it should be available in stores today (as well as Two Worlds). Anyone get a copy yet?
 
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Well it should be available in stores today (as well as Two Worlds). Anyone get a copy yet?
I see a 8/21 date everywhere but no time - most of these are 8AM, 2PM or 5PM deals ...
 
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After having played through the demo I still don't understand all the hype about the game... honestly, I feel it's totally overrated.
 
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After having played through the demo I still don't understand all the hype about the game... honestly, I feel it's totally overrated.

Just from playing the demo I would agree with you but I think there is approximately 19.75 hours of gameplay (going by the 20 hours total that was mentioned in some reviews) that we haven't seen yet so I would advise against judging the game too early. When more plasmids, more weapons, more money (and a way to spend it), a bit more non-linearity, and more story become available, then maybe we'll understand what the super high scores are all about. Or maybe not. We'll see... :)
 
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Oh come on. What do you want, then? This demo was one of the most well done demos I've ever seen, and of course it doesn't invite you to the whole experience. I feel the demo understates what this game will really be, but I've seen intelligent, chaotic battles with excellent environments, the likes of those I haven't seen in years in any game. Whatever game genre you like, you have to respect this, or you're dead inside. That's my opinion.
 
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I'm blown away by the demo. The art deco motif and the retro music give it a Fallout feel. It's a post-apocalyptic experiment gone wrong like I am Legend aka The Omega Man.

The SS2 dialogue ambiance is taken up with Splicers as they rant along the lines of their insane and faded memories. It's really spooky at times.

I had to turn the graphics down to half to get it to play which left me with some really ugly colours in the dark and blotchy effects. My AMD Athlon 64 3000+ w/ 1mb of memory I think was enough but I think the real problem was the nVidia 6200 256mb AGP memory card. I'm barely above minimum requirements but I think with a better video card it would be much better.

When combat was going on, especially with the combat bot, things got jittery for me and it was really hard to control my mouse. There was a tendency to overshoot the mouse but if I hit the fire button just as the target turned red then it could be effective.

As for money I actually had the opportunity to use it on the combat bot when I hacked it by hitting V. It cost me $10. It was crippled at the time so I don't know if what I paid for was hacking it or repairing it.

Do you think your disappointment was too high expectations or the tremendous hype the game has received? Is it you don't like FPS's?

I was surprised by the M rating it hit me with at the front. I didn't see much to object with (just grisly spookiness) except some dialogue.
 
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As a hardcore crpg'er I played the demo for about 15 minutes and that was enough for me. The game is awesome unless you don't care about storyline, atmosphere, sense of humor, etc. It's not an RPG but it's still a lot of fun. I purchased the game and am only about through the demo area but already I can tell that I'm going to enjoy the full game. They had plenty of copies at the local Frys Electronics and the PC version was marked down from $49.99 to $39.99.
 
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Widescreen issues

I haven't been able to confirm this yet, but apparently at the 2K forums there is an issue that the FOV is the same regardless of screen width, meaning that widescreen users lose visibility.

Check here.
 
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I was surprised by the M rating it hit me with at the front. I didn't see much to object with (just grisly spookiness) except some dialogue.

How desensitized we have become. Electrocuting people and then smashing their brains in with a big wrench is not worthy of a M rating? But I digress...
 
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Apparently bioshock has the new online activation system:

now remember now these images are from the computer i played the game on not less the 6 houtrs ago.and now i reinstalled xp no go.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v481/crowgrrl22/screen1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v481/crowgrrl22/screen2.jpg

I dont have the full details but what Ive heard so far is that in the activation process
the game is tied to your hardware. Multiple installations/change of hardware => game stops working. Calling securom might fix though. If people start calling them lots I wonder if they will eventual start to take toll for the phone activations.

Only legitimate customers who have purchased the product are able to unlock the program which is bound to the hardware after activation. This ensures that once activated, it cannot be transferred to another PC and therefore not being mass pirated.

Dont buy the game until you have proper PC to run it!

One another shoddy thing is that you cant sell the game in ebay etc once you have finished it. Instead the game becomes worthless the instant you change hardware. Better just throw it into to the trashcan.

Decided to install my vista. haveing probelms instaling vista so i decided to install on dads vist which is under the minimum specs some to play around on it. No sound lol. so i boot up the dual boot xp version on the same machine and guess what guys? No install wont accept actiavation only 2 machines so lets seee what this means for me 1 i installed on my machine and then wiped it out so that machine is no longer viable to install on and the other one i installed onto has crappy grafix and no sound so thats a no go in essance i just spent 60 dollars now just look at a broken game untill a pirtate version comes out no way in hell im paying for this shit again. Blows my mind that the same machine but dual boot is two differnent machines to them.

From users that have replied having hit the limit, it looks like it really is only 2 activations in total - and reinstalling on the same PC, in a different copy of windows counts as the 2nd activation. So people going 'oh, it installed fine on my laptop too, it's no problem' are in for a nasty surprise when they come to reinstall windows.

this happened to me too, i can't even express how angry i am..

I picked up my LE copy of BioShock at midnight, and I installed it on my PC thinking it would run with playable fps, but it turned out to be pretty choppy. So, I installed it on my laptop instead, thus letting me play Bioshock. However, once my brother tried to install it on his PC, he got the exact same error shown in the picture. No more than 2 installations? outrageous. How about future system upgrades? I wish I hadn't opened my LE box so I could at least get my money back. Nowhere does it ever mention that only 2 installations are allowed.
 
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Last I heard steam version has it too.
Then it might be a no buy.

BTW, could you please provide links to this discussion?
 
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I was surprised by the M rating it hit me with at the front. I didn't see much to object with (just grisly spookiness) except some dialogue.
Then I have no idea what was presented in the demo ... because the first couple of hours have been pretty clearly a heavy M experience.
 
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Then it might be a no buy.

BTW, could you please provide links to this discussion?

Well, Steam is in and of itself an online activation system, right?

Process is simple - You download and decrypt and run. I had the preload done, and then it still took ~20 minutes to finalize the download and decrypt process. But nothing else - no separate activation system.
 
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I would figure this game is like any other Steam game - can install on any machine but you can only have one copy of Steam logged in at a time so it effectively ties you to running the game on one PC at a time. That doesn't bother me at all and is actually part of the functionality that I like about Steam.

Game is running fine for me. I like it so far but is more of a shooter than I had hoped. I was playing Deus Ex: Invisible War while waiting for Bioshock to release and that feels more open ended so far.

Bioshock is still a lot of fun but more in the way that FEAR was.
 
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