Prime Junta
RPGCodex' Little BRO
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540
OK, so I spent most of last night up playing Bioshock. I'm almost finished; have one loose end to sort out and that's it.
First off, yeah, it's true: it is a great, possibly groundbreaking game in the same sense that Half-Life or Deus Ex were great, groundbreaking games. I won't elaborate on the good stuff you've already read about elsewhere.
Second, no, it doesn't make every other game look like crap. In fact, there's another FPS out this year that I liked even more: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It had the same, strong, consistent artistic vision, an unusual story with strikingly similar twists, very similar game mechanics (armor and artifacts instead of tonics, more guns and ammo instead of plasmids, limited inventory space and artifact slots to force you to make choices).
However, it also had a wider variety of environments, which greatly increased the impact of the dark, claustrophobic places, more deliberate gameplay and a more "living" world, more character interaction, side quests, and even small branches to the plot. What it doesn't have is the insane polish and richness of Bioshock -- it's clear that the budget was smaller and the team less experienced.
Finally, a laundry list of Things That Struck Me (other than Molotov cocktails, gigantic power drills, wrenches, and lead pipes):
* The voice acting. Easily the best I've heard in any game. The actors sound like they *mean* what they're saying, the accents and intonation are pitch-perfect, like straight out of an Orson Welles movie.
* The writing. It obviously helps that the lines they're reading aren't rubbish, at all.
* The respawning. Didn't like it; feels too much like lazy design. I would have preferred slower, more deliberate combat that doesn't smear your ass all over the wall as much but with no respawning. Would've given more time for sightseeing too.
* The telekinesis plasmid. It's overpowered -- you can kill just about anything short of a Big Daddy by hurling junk at it. (I brained a spider splicer with a rotten pumpkin, which just ain't right.) If they had increased its Eve cost a bit, it would've balanced out better.
* The character models and animation. Easily the weakest visual aspect of the game -- the sets look like Orson Welles, the voices sound like Orson Welles, the characters look like Wallace & Gromit on a very bad Saturday morning. The animation is ho-hum as well, and the ragdoll physics are surprisingly previous-gen. (I only mention this because it jars a bit against the absolutely gorgeous everything else.)
* Some set-piece battles that go for quantity over quality. There's this once place where you have to retrieve something from a hazardous area while beating a clock, and every time you go in, a whole bunch of splicers spawn in there with you and there's nothing you can do about it. Lazy design that goes against the great basic mechanic of the game (slowly taking control over your environment).
Again, I absolutely loved the game -- if any game is worth this kind of reception, Bioshock has got to be it. Clearly the bar has been raised -- it's no longer enough to just kill things in inventive ways; we need the kind of interactivity with the environment that Bioshock does. Next step: fully destructible environments.
Oh, and... if you don't care for shooters, don't bother. As stated, this is a shooter first, last, and foremost. Also, if you've never played shooters but are tempted by Bioshock... well, be warned that it will be punishing. I've played a quite a lot of them, and the first hour or two of the game were... not easy.
First off, yeah, it's true: it is a great, possibly groundbreaking game in the same sense that Half-Life or Deus Ex were great, groundbreaking games. I won't elaborate on the good stuff you've already read about elsewhere.
Second, no, it doesn't make every other game look like crap. In fact, there's another FPS out this year that I liked even more: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It had the same, strong, consistent artistic vision, an unusual story with strikingly similar twists, very similar game mechanics (armor and artifacts instead of tonics, more guns and ammo instead of plasmids, limited inventory space and artifact slots to force you to make choices).
However, it also had a wider variety of environments, which greatly increased the impact of the dark, claustrophobic places, more deliberate gameplay and a more "living" world, more character interaction, side quests, and even small branches to the plot. What it doesn't have is the insane polish and richness of Bioshock -- it's clear that the budget was smaller and the team less experienced.
Finally, a laundry list of Things That Struck Me (other than Molotov cocktails, gigantic power drills, wrenches, and lead pipes):
* The voice acting. Easily the best I've heard in any game. The actors sound like they *mean* what they're saying, the accents and intonation are pitch-perfect, like straight out of an Orson Welles movie.
* The writing. It obviously helps that the lines they're reading aren't rubbish, at all.
* The respawning. Didn't like it; feels too much like lazy design. I would have preferred slower, more deliberate combat that doesn't smear your ass all over the wall as much but with no respawning. Would've given more time for sightseeing too.
* The telekinesis plasmid. It's overpowered -- you can kill just about anything short of a Big Daddy by hurling junk at it. (I brained a spider splicer with a rotten pumpkin, which just ain't right.) If they had increased its Eve cost a bit, it would've balanced out better.
* The character models and animation. Easily the weakest visual aspect of the game -- the sets look like Orson Welles, the voices sound like Orson Welles, the characters look like Wallace & Gromit on a very bad Saturday morning. The animation is ho-hum as well, and the ragdoll physics are surprisingly previous-gen. (I only mention this because it jars a bit against the absolutely gorgeous everything else.)
* Some set-piece battles that go for quantity over quality. There's this once place where you have to retrieve something from a hazardous area while beating a clock, and every time you go in, a whole bunch of splicers spawn in there with you and there's nothing you can do about it. Lazy design that goes against the great basic mechanic of the game (slowly taking control over your environment).
Again, I absolutely loved the game -- if any game is worth this kind of reception, Bioshock has got to be it. Clearly the bar has been raised -- it's no longer enough to just kill things in inventive ways; we need the kind of interactivity with the environment that Bioshock does. Next step: fully destructible environments.
Oh, and... if you don't care for shooters, don't bother. As stated, this is a shooter first, last, and foremost. Also, if you've never played shooters but are tempted by Bioshock... well, be warned that it will be punishing. I've played a quite a lot of them, and the first hour or two of the game were... not easy.
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540
