What are You playing now?

[Slowtrain]

Frankly I played it disregarding the Vita Chambers for some reason. I suppose it was an automatic thing, to try to avoid dying.

 

Thus I had a good time with the game and found it very tense.

 

 

I played that way for the first couple levels, and enjoyed the game, but then I got bored with pretending that "dying" meant anything and just took the direct approach.

 

Then I got really bored and then eventually really really bored and then somewhere on level 5 decided that I would rather be picking lint out of my navel than playing this game, so I did and never finished it.

[RPGmasterBoo]

A pity, it has a nice storyline that's worth sticking through to the end.

 

For a FPS of course.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Beating bid daddies is all about how creative you are with the combat.

 

 

No, its not. I don't even get how you can say that. Did we play the same game?

 

All you have to do is run up to it and beat Big Daddies with a wrench. When they kill you, just run back and do it some more. There's nothing to be gained by being creative vs being thuggish and unimaginative. And the thuggish approach is faster and less resource intensive to boot.

 

Defend Bioshock for its attempt at narrative if you want; don't defend it for its cruddy combat gameplay.

 

edit: And I'll just point out that 2 small changes would have made Bioshock's combat a lot more interesting:

 

1) Make respawning in the vitachamber cost resources

2) Make all wounded enemies in the gameworld reset to full-health when the plcayer character respawns.

 

 

Suddenly it's a much different game, combat-wise.

What I meant is it's only fun if you get creative. I know Vita-Chambers suck, I even said so, and to make the game fun you really have to avoid them. We played the same game, I just decided not to rely on Vita-Chambers and play the game the way I wanted to.

 

Remove the Vita-Chambers and the combat is great.

 

@Will: Yeah, I especially liked the part where they ripped System Shock 2 off right down to the plot twist and then threw in some genetic hypnosis for good measure.

 

Awesome stuff.

 

How do SS2 and Bioshock have the same story or plot twist? Bioshock pretty much ripped off SS2 on a lot of gameplay elements, that much I agree with, but they didn't copy the story. How does

[Purkake]

I mean the other twist,

the one where your guide person(Polito/Atlas) turns out to be the Big Bad(SHODAN/Fontaine).

Edited January 20, 2010 by Purkake

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

I mean the other twist,

the one where your guide person(Polito/Atlas) turns out to be the Big Bad(SHODAN/Fontaine).

I really wouldn't call that a ripoff. You can see this twist in loads of other games/movies and it's really not the most important twist in the story.

[Purkake]

Perhaps, but with all the other similarities to System Shock 2, including the same writer, it just feels lazy.

 

While the presentation is top notch the story itself(at least Jack's part) is pretty convoluted and contrived IMO. The things I liked in Bioshock were the art design(including the music) and the whole failed utopia thing they had going on there. Most of the other stuff was either mediocre or bad.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Purkake

[RPGmasterBoo]

BioShock did too many things right do deserve to be branded a rip-off, especially considering that most other shooters on the market are by and large unimaginative, uninspired garbage.

 

Compared to them BS is the second coming.

 

I personally enjoyed it more than Far Cry/Crysis, Doom 3 and Half Life 2 combined.

Edited January 20, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Purkake]

Sure it's better than your average shooter, but I expected much more from Ken Levine. Like more RPG elements and gameplay that isn't based around a single mechanic(Big Daddies and Little Sisters).

Edited January 20, 2010 by Purkake

[RPGmasterBoo]

Actually, give me a better PC shooter in the last few years.

[Purkake]

Going solely by the shooting mechanics, most of them. Bioshock was a good shooter only because it had a decent story(by shooter standards at least) and some RPG elements in it.

 

Farcry 2, Crysis, COD4 all had much better shooting mechanics, they just didn't have much in the story department.

 

Half-Life 2, especially EP2 was a much better game overall, even if it's shooting mechanics were showing their age as well. The difference is that Bioshock wasn't trying to be "just another shooter" it was actually trying to be an RPG, but ended up as a shooter.

Edited January 20, 2010 by Purkake

[RPGmasterBoo]

In your opinion, do you see anyone playing those games in a few years?

Edited January 20, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Purkake]

I see people playing their sequels, just as I see people playing Bioshock 2(or whichever number they are at) in a few years.

[Raithe]

When you get down to it.. Far Cry and Crysis could both impress on a technical level. The trouble being they had no damned soul to them. Which made them distinctly uncomfotable to play. At least to me, they came across as a touch too... mechanical? and fairly uninteresting beyond the technical aesthetics.

[Oner]

In your opinion, do you see anyone playing those games in a few years?

,o/

Edited January 20, 2010 by Oner

[RPGmasterBoo]

I see people playing their sequels, just as I see people playing Bioshock 2(or whichever number they are at) in a few years.

 

Exactly, because they're just upgrades which are as popular as long as the technology that drives them is tolerable. There is no incentive to play once the sequel arrives, because they have nothing that sets them apart.

 

Bioshock has enough value to be played retrospectively for those who've missed it the first time around, and enough uniqueness to warrant another playthrough in due time IMO. Something the others dont have.

 

Half Life 2 was dull. Apart from that its story got no closer to anything that resembles reason. I liked it well enough but I doubt I'll play it ever again.

EP 2 was very, very good, but it was simply too short. The entire episode thing Valve has going was a mistake from the onset.

 

Of course all of these are opinions, and I don't really value shooters highly by default so I might be more inclined to something that attempts artsy/intelligent even if it bites the dust gameplay wise.

Edited January 20, 2010 by RPGmasterBoo

[Purkake]

As I said Bioshock isn't bad, my problem with it is that it could have been so much more. As it stands it's a mediocre RPG with high production values or an above-average shooter with a good story. It could have been the next Deus Ex or System Shock 2.

[Slowtrain]

BioShock did too many things right do deserve to be branded a rip-off, especially considering that most other shooters on the market are by and large unimaginative, uninspired garbage.

 

 

Its a total rip-off of SS2. I mean, its the same developer so he can do what he wants with his own games. But he just took SS2 and made it mediocre.

 

And hey, he made a lot of money off it. Some credit where credit is due: he figured how banal, pretty games get more love than smart, ugly ones.

[Slowtrain]

ATM, I am actually playign several different games. Which is actually extremely unusual for me as I generally only play one game at a time. But nothing at the moment is overly compelling at the moment, so I am puttering around with different games.

 

Currently I have playthroughs ongoing with:

 

Morrowind

Fallout 3

The Witcher

Jagged Alliance 2

X2-The Threat

 

The most difficult part is remembering where I am in each game when I come back to it.

 

 

Anyway, in a couple weeks, I should have Call of Pripyat and that will most likely dominate my gaming for a while.

[Gorth]

At home I am currently playing X-Com UFO Defence and Kings Bounty: The Legend. At work, I played Wii bowling. Yes, the company big cheese bought a wii for the office. Quite nice with a decent sound setup and a projector showing it on the big screen

[Slowtrain]

X-Com UFO Defence

 

 

 

If that isn't a call to greatness, I don't know what is.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Still playing Machinarium. Bloody wonderful game.

 

Company of Heroes is dirt cheap now on Steam people! 3 euros for the original game + expansion!

[Gorgon]

Still playing Machinarium. Bloody wonderful game.

 

Company of Heroes is dirt cheap now on Steam people! 3 euros for the original game + expansion!

yeah, plus a fee for paying with a credit card, which in my bank at least is more than 3 euros, so these micro transactions don't really work for me, I have to lump a lot of stuff together for it to make sense.

[Purkake]

Still playing Machinarium. Bloody wonderful game.

 

Company of Heroes is dirt cheap now on Steam people! 3 euros for the original game + expansion!

yeah, plus a fee for paying with a credit card, which in my bank at least is more than 3 euros, so these micro transactions don't really work for me, I have to lump a lot of stuff together for it to make sense.

What's stopping you? Grab Men of War as well(original + expansion) for

[Monte Carlo]

Men of War.... hmmm. I can't make my mind up about it. There's something... flat about the visuals and it has the worst, most wooden VO EVAR.

 

It's certainly not as good as CoH as far as I'm concerned.

 

EDIT: An review on GameSpy I have to agree with 100%

 

In the end, there isn't one uber-feature that deserves all the credit for making Company of Heroes such an outstanding game. Any element by itself -- the deep strategy, the extraordinary art design, the sound, the unit AI or the multiplayer aspects -- might have made Company of Heroes a decent game. Two or three and you have the makings of a great one. It's only when you get all of these things together wrapped up in a package with amazing flair and polish and a fanatic attention to even the smallest details that you get a truly outstanding title. I wish we had more of them, but until all games are made like Company of Heroes, at least we have this one to show us how it's done.

 

Art direction, music, mood, VO, gameplay... all polished and executed with extreme skill and style.

Edited January 22, 2010 by Monte Carlo

[Purkake]

The gameplay was supposed to be good, you can discount the VO.