Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-10-06, 17:50:
Are you mainly into single player games? I think most of the nostalgia for Quake has to do with the deathmatches people used to play. I found the single player fun at the time, but not groundbreaking.
That's a good point, and yes, I mostly play single player games. But even so, I can't recall anyone saying that Quake's single player was lacking. Or criticizing it's looks, even though to me it's 255 shades of brown colour scheme, and it' very similar looking levels, and lack of interactive environmental objects/features made the game boring to look at.
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-10-07, 08:12:
Well, I'm only a couple of hours in right now, but BioShock does seem quite interesting. I like the retro aesthetic. It reminds me of Fallout, especially the artwork on the posters. On the other hand, the gameplay is very reminiscent of System Shock 2, in the sense that you're thrown into a hostile environment and the only seemingly friendly person is contacting you remotely. Having played SS2 in the past, I think I can kinda guess where this is going.
BioShock's graphics have held up nicely to this day, in no small part due to its unique art style. The sound design is very good too, and the EAX implementation seems to be great so far. There were some really nice occlusion and reverb effects at the very start of the game, when you first descend into Rapture, and that Splicer starts banging on the sphere.
The mix of "magic" powers and standard weapons is pretty cool. I particularly like how the environment reacts to certain powers, like water conducting electricity and such. I'll add more impressions as I progress further into the game.
Bioshock looks and sounds beautiful, and is amazingly atmospheric. It also plays very well, is imaginative, thought provoking, and it's story is interesting enough to provide quite a lot of fan-fiction and many fan-theories. On the minus side, the game can become too easy on repeated playthroughs when you've mastered the upgrade systems (and in fact, the game really seems to want you to complete it, such as there being ammunition for you to pick up everywhere, the way you can pay a machine to let you auto-hack it (who would design a vending machine, security device, etc, like that?), the way a simple hack can change a machine to target your enemies instead of you, etc), after the big revelation the game's enjoyment levels drops off a cliff, the final boss battle is awful (it's too easy, it doesn't 'fee' like it should be in the game, it isn't believable that the extremely intelligent and manipulative enemy who is so used to sending others to do his dirty work would now choose to fight you when he now ruled Rapture and could have used it's assets against you), and so on.
Many System Shock 2 fans really dislike Bioshock because Bioshock was hyped up to be the spiritual successor to SS2 but then turned out to be very simplified, and actually a different genre (Bioshock is a very pretty first person shooter with light RPG elements, whereas System Shock 2 is an RPG with first person shooter mechanics), and Bioshock's lack of gameplay depth when compared to SS2 really disappointed SS2 fans. The two games do have their similarities in story, characters, situations, and so on, but the games play different enough that it's possible to love one game but really dislike the other.
BTW, if after playing Bioshock 1 and 2, you want to experience more of the city Rapture, then you might want to read the novel based on the two games, BioShock: Rapture. It's a good book, much better than most novels based on video games, and it doesn't just regurgitate texts and situations from the two games, but it does a good job of building upon them, and fleshing out the story with non-game characters and situations. Don't read it until you've finished both games though, to avoid spoilers.
Bioshock 2 is a much better game, gameplay-wise, than the first game, in my opinion. It fixes most of the first game's flaws, for example, the final battle 'feels' like the rest of the game, the enjoyment factor is consistent throughout the whole game, there are more upgrade paths for your character build, better weapons, you have more choice in what gene tonics you wish to equip in Bioshock 2 because they are no longer separated into the types Combat/Physical/Engineering instead you can now put any gene tonic into any of your eighteen slots, a slightly better morality system, the bot-pathing for the flying turrets is now better, and various other improvements.
On the minus side, Bioshock 2's main characters don't perhaps seem as memorable as those in Bioshock 2, Bioshock 2 has no such equivalent as the magnificent first view of Rapture (when in Bioshock 1, you are going down in the bathysphere, and you first see Rapture - one of the best visual introductions in any game ever), B2 doesn't do much to make your gameplay as a Big Daddy feel too different to playing as a human in the first game, although you can walk on the ocean floor in B2 you still don't get a real feeling of freedom because these areas are so small and utterly enclosed, and we still don't get any of Rapture's mysteries explained.
I am no fan of Bioshock: Infinite, though. It is frequently very beautiful and atmospheric, and Elizabeth is well written, but otherwise I found it very disappointing. The combat is slimmed down even more, the game's mechanics and situations are much too similar to Bioshock 1 and 2 and they just feel out of place(for example, you can freely purchase all sorts of weapons and offensive vigors (Infinite's versions of plasmids) in Bioshock: Infinite, which sort of made sense in Rapture due to the civil war there and Ryan's insistence that anything could be sold on the open market, but this makes no sense in a peaceful and law abiding society - why would you be allowed to buy explosives or vigors that hack machines or cause humans to commit suicide? Plus in Rapture, the population were insane which explains why you searched bins, because the lunatics stored money and edible food in the bins, but that wouldn't happen with the sane people who make up most of Bioshock: Infinite), Bioshock: Infinite came out missing many of the features and abilities that made the game's preview videos so interesting, the story (which started out well) feels all over the place and the story's end is pretentious drivel. I found the game really disappointing, overall.
clueless1 wrote on 2023-10-07, 13:19:
I completed Bioshock a few years ago and Bioshock 2 earlier this year. The one thing I struggle with is the amount of work and technology that would have to be involved to make such an under-sea city, and for that to be accomplished in the equivalent of the 1950s? I kept finding myself saying "Yeah, right" and it ended up tainting the gaming experience for me. I find a distant space station in the future with an AI that goes rogue due to removal of ethical restraints much more believable then a vast under-sea city built with 1950s technology. That said, I still enjoyed the games enough to complete them, and at some point I will play Bioshock Infinite (all while muttering "yeah, right" constantly 😉 )
Oh, the city of Rapture made no scientific sense, agreed. The buildings looked very similar or identical to how real-life land-based buildings look, when instead Rapture would be domed/hemispherical to counter the immense pressure of the weight of the ocean permanently pressing upon the buildings, short wave radios probably wouldn't work on the bottom of the ocean (I could be wrong though?), visibility at that depth would be so low that everything on the outsides of the buildings (neon signs, architectural features, even the buildings themselves) wouldn't be visible, there might (again, not sure) be problems with using normal air in (airtight, of course) buildings at that depth of the ocean, it's utterly insane to let people (let alone drug-spliced lunatics) use ballistic and explosive weapons in environments that contain glass windows and walls holding back a trillion tons of water, etc.
The lack of logic of Rapture's environments never bothered me, though. The game never claimed to be realistic, and I do think that realism should only be in a game if it enhances the game, which is rarely the case. Though having said that, I do think that Rapture suffered from a flaw in that the homes/living areas in the game didn't feel live in (a flaw it shares with Bioshock 2, System Shock 2, Prey (2017), and countless other games), and a little more realism in Rapture's living areas (more pot plants, unique pictures and furniture, varying wallpaper/paint/items of property, etc) would really hep with the immersion factor.
