Bioshock 2

[Purkake]

So you're basically fighting Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

 

Bioshock would be so much better in a consensus reality Planescape kind of setting. You don't even have to go too far into the fantasy territory. Rapture fell because people lost belief in Andrew Ryan, over the course of the game you use superior firepower to get people to either believe in Ryan's vision again, believe in your own or something completely different.

Edited January 23, 2010 by Purkake

[Slowtrain]

If that's true, then console shooters must be really bad.

No, just similar and severely lacking in RPG elements, at least back in 07.

 

 

What were the rpg elements in Bioshock again?

It had hacking, weapon upgrades, passive and active powers which is more than most console shooters.

 

 

Oh. Its funny how primitve console chooters are. (or were).

[Hell Kitty]

Er, that's more than most shooters on console and PC.

[Jaesun]

So you're basically fighting Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

 

[bhlaab]

So you're basically fighting Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle?

 

Bioshock would be so much better in a consensus reality Planescape kind of setting. You don't even have to go too far into the fantasy territory. Rapture fell because people lost belief in Andrew Ryan, over the course of the game you use superior firepower to get people to either believe in Ryan's vision again, believe in your own or something completely different.

 

That's a terrible idea. It's a game about objectivism and the fall of utopia, not the power of dreams.

[Purkake]

But it could be so much more!

 

*evil laugh*

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Yeah, that's a pretty **** idea, Purkake. Never make a game. Ever.

[Purkake]

I wasn't planning to.

 

Geez, everyone's a critic.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

 

 

 

Anyways, I don't even know what the plot of Bioshock 2 is. I tend to stay away from videos of that game, they tend to have big spoilers or reveal too much. Same thing as Mass Effect, I guess.

[Purkake]

Something about an underwater city, I think.

[entrerix]

i liked bioshock, the sequel looks like garbage.

 

 

then again, system shock 2 was fantastic

 

then again, we got different people working on bioshock 2 than those who worked on system shock 2

 

the people working on bioshock 2 do not give me any confidence whatsoever

[Jaesun]

i liked bioshock, the sequel looks like garbage.

 

 

then again, system shock 2 was fantastic

 

then again, we got different people working on bioshock 2 than those who worked on system shock 2

 

the people working on bioshock 2 do not give me any confidence whatsoever

 

Agreed, that's my same fears as well.

[Purkake]

Launch Trailer

 

Awesome trailer, but if the game actually played like that I would throw up pretty quickly.

Edited February 4, 2010 by Purkake

[Slowtrain]

AT least they had a new enemy.

[Pop]

Is there anybody out there who wants this game and wants to get 10% off it? Because I'm in with 3 other guys on a Steam 4-pack and we need a fourth dude.

[Morgoth]

No thanks. Retail is still cheaper.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Playing it now. Left quick impressions on Rock Paper Shotgun. SPOILERS, somewhat, follow.

 

On one hand it’s somewhat meatier – as in, enemies seem cleverish and often seem to use environments to draw the player in and to set up small ambushes. Having a Little Sister drain up a corpse requires you to set perimeter defenses to protect her since it draws up Splicers – these battles, small in scope, are actually quite intense and require you to have a good feel for the environments. Also the hacking “minigame” seems more appropriate. Personally I’d ditch it entirelly but now, from interface to intention, it’s a lot more natural.

 

On the other hand, the unbefugginliveable respawns are a pain. They’re a lot more pronounced than the first game, to the point where for the most part you can’t even take a few minutes to breathe before being attacked. It seems overtly ridiculous now when you just came from a dead end and something attacks you from behind… Three times in a row, in the same area. Again, this is from experience, and several times you aren’t made aware of them – it’s not Fable mass respawning all the citizens you’ve just killed, mind you – but it’s egrarious to hack a turret, turn back, take a few steps then suddenly hear the “CLANG” in your helmet from a Splicer that just respawned. And it did respawn because the turret didn’t had the time to trace and bullet rape it, and you just came from a dead end.

 

This side of Rapture is also a bit more contained. It’s like Dead Space: one large world divided in levels across a tram ride. It also perpetuates unreachable/invincible NPCs through glass proof booths.

 

It’s also not very clear why draining a corpse of ADAM raises Splicer awareness, or why I’m getting warnings to prepare myself against an oncoming Big Sister. You hear screams and the screen flashes red, which several hours into the game you’ve already come to realize means one’s coming. And people complain about Nintendo and Zelda and always having to read “you’ve found a key!”. Something in the options, perhaps? It’s a bit grating. Fighting them can be hard since they're super fast and resilient. It's been a decade since I felt like going from Normal to Easy difficulty, and not because it's hard - simply, because most skirmishes are so numerous and off putting that I'm left wondering "how can I make this end quicker?". I won't change difficulty levels because I'm a good trooper, but therein lies the rub: is it a better experience when I can't move across two small rooms without something spawning on my ass? Is it more "intense" when I spend three minutes defending my and a Little Sister's position against a wave of enemies, then scour the remains to jack up my ammo and health, only to be attacked again the minute I'm more or less back on my feet? Suddenly, I miss Resident Evil 2's PC options where you could reduce zombie numbers to "improve performance", except we all know what we used that for.

 

It’s certainly a lot more “shooter” than the first game, which leaves me undecided. The morality in the first game was pretty hamfisted but the world was a lot more… Shall I say mysterious? I felt the first game was a lot more about discovery – of the Daddies, the Sisters, the things which made and unmade Rapture. Here, part of the mystery is gone. You are a Big Daddy who doesn’t really play or control any different than any other FPS main character. I mean, drilling Splicers makes me smile, but then I’m using machine guns and hacking tools and I’m wondering “why am I playing with a Big Daddy who behaves like everyone else?”. And then the familiar aspects of the first are both welcome and repetitive in a way – why am I still finding these audio logs scattered around? Do these people really have nothing better to do than leave messages about? At one point, you enter a room where there’s a tape on a bed. You hear it and the woman talking feels that Lamb’s poster on the wall is looking down on her. When I heard that, I told my girlfriend who was watching me play “wanna bet that there’s something behind the poster and that it’s going to open a door behind that closet?” And then, I defecate you negative, there is a goddamn switch behind the painting that opens the closet next to it so you can move forward!

 

Also, I was very disappointed with the intro. The first one’s was clearly one of the best intros ever, like Half-Life and Modern Warfare, to really give players a sense of place and of self all the while limiting your interaction and just letting you soak up the environments by looking, at your own pace, to what was around you. Here, it’s a ride. We were already spoiled on being a Big Daddy, sure, but you don’t have the satisfaction of realizing this yourself: the game forces the character to look into a glass and see his own reflection.

 

The one thing that seems to be very good – potentially, at least – is the feeling that dealing with key characters in a certain way may affect the final outcome or at least, how certain things play out. There’s a big hoopla about the main character’s past and how he was a “monster”. At one point you are confronted by a woman whose jaw was broken by you. You have the chance to either kill her or let her go. Crude morality, perhaps, but the result is nice – she starts doubting the reputation you had and decides to help you by sending Elite versions of those robo-turret-choppers to help out againt an ambush. I suspect that had I killed her I wouldn’t have had any means to get some. And I’ve yet to see if these decisions do matter in the long run or if they’re confined to each level, but it’s a nice touch. Though over the course of the next levels, I fought two bosses where buckshot was the only diplomatic discourse available.

 

The combat is definitely a notch up. It's actually easy to imagine a multiplayer environment here, with certain powers having been tweaked and subtly changed, and how this applies to frantic but somewhat tactical approaches to combat. I'll only be able to try the MP next week but the basics seem good enough for it to be balanced (and it already is, somewhat, in SP). Of course, stuff like having a chance to freeze enemies with the Drill kinda seems like overkill, but there's still a lot to enjoy in the powers (and it's still a chance to freeze, not something that happens automatically).

 

I know I'm jaded, and a jerk, and a nitpicker. It's not being a sequel that bothers me, or that it's more intent on being a shooter that carries over half of the spirit of SS2 or Deus Ex. Its just that the first gave me plenty of reasons to play, even if it wasn't best game ever material. The sequel has its sights on going further down the rabbit hole, which is nice, but the overall feel - up until now - is not so much "I want to find out what else happened to Rapture" but "I want to find out what was the point of going back to Rapture". Sadly, among kung-fu spawning splicers and the over reliance on street vendors still not making much sense in Ryan's utopia, I still have yet to find a reason.

Edited February 8, 2010 by Diogo Ribeiro

[Nepenthe]

Thanks for the review, thanks for saving me some money.

[RPGmasterBoo]

Nice review. I'll be skipping this one I think.

[Morgoth]

Playing it now. Left quick impressions on Rock Paper Shotgun. SPOILERS, somewhat, follow.

 

On one hand it

[Diogo Ribeiro]

These are first impressions, mind you, albeit I've sunk quite a few hours into it; I've been told there's an "excellent twist" towards the end. I can't verify this yet, but I am checking out the slog that proceeds it. For the most part it's the same system, tweaked and polished and slick, but one which generally makes the options you have more engaging than the times you have to use them. I've found at least two or three moments where I have oil spills, cameras and water right next to a corpse waiting to be drained of ADAM. I like choices but there's often this surplus that you can't help but wonder if it's not overkill.

 

I thoroughly enjoy charging up Plasmids and double whammy enemies with them, but there's nearly always a way in which their use is so painfully obvious it kind of defeats the purpose. Like, at some points, you carefully booby trap an area then "trigger" the hordes only to realize they're attacking, and coming from the metal girders up there, which is kinda awesome and makes you go "DURR why didn't I think vertically?"; while at other points I'm laying all kinds of mines and mini-turrets around a circular area and enemies bypass them because they seem to have conveniently spawned right by the perimeter defenses. That a game manages to make me feel both smart and stupid in equal measures is nice; that it kinda feels its cheating by placing enemies according to the way I set up defenses rather than how the level is designed (I set up Mine Rivets across all 4 doors and after the skirmish, they're all virtually intact because THEY DID NOT CROSS THE DOORS EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE THE ONLY ACCESS POINTS INTO THE ROOM) is bad.

 

Had they applied the same tweaks to world and character exposition - rather than still waiting for me to casually pick up audio logs or to listen and see this type of memory flashbacks - it could feel a lot better.

 

I *hope* to be a bit more optimistic as it moves forward but I'm not holding my breath. Still, I'll try to be. And I'll try to update the more I get into it.

Edited February 8, 2010 by Diogo Ribeiro

[Walsingham]

Something I just realised would be kind of cool would be if you had the option of interacting with other characters who might help you out, but being a big dady you couldn't do it easily. Exploit that Frankenstein's monster feeilng with some hand gestures and gurgles. Not sure how that might work.

[Morgoth]

Please keep us updated RP!

[Kaftan Barlast]

So the gameplay is better? What baffled me is how the original game could get so much praise when the actual gameplay was the embodiment of mediocre.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Kaftan, I think it's safe to assume that if you disliked the core gameplay - juggling plasmids, weapons and tonics; the combat itself; the hacking; scavenging through debris and trash cans - you'll dislike it here since it's still the same. Main difference is the combat is a bit more refined, there's a couple of tough as nails new enemies and you do get a small piece of brilliance called the Speargun, along with some engaging moments where you need to protect the Sisters from 10+ Splicers coming from all sides. But even then, those moments where you protect the Sisters really only happen if you decide to rescue rather than harvest them. Otherwise it's right on par with the first.