Bioshock (spoilers for those who, like me, play games years after they are released)

[Aliem]

So. Yes. I'm late to this party.

I just finished the first Bioshock game... and I'm blown away. It was incredible. The Medical Pavilion was especially terrifying, and the Arcadia gardens were gorgeous. The atmosphere was incredible, and the world was beautifully realized. This is absolutely a game I will play with the Oculus Rift.

That said, it was imperfect. The truly scary moments were too few; walking through a flooded morgue, watching a corpse float through the only path, seeing a shadow moving at the end of said path, having the lights go out on me, and then when they come back on, said shadow is gone... THAT was scary. Moments like that did not happen often enough. I would have preferred more ambush scare fights against splicers than the too-often relied upon waves of splicers when you knew exactly where they were coming from. The Medical Pavilion was far too early in the game to be the scariest level in a horror-themed shooter.

Another grief is with the Big Daddy... Those fights were always way too underwhelming. They were simply too easy! Big Daddy should be this imposing, monstrous thing, not a slightly more powerful enemy that is felled with a few more well-placed shotgun shells.

The biggest complaint I have, however, is the lack of impact player choice actually has on the outcome. I chose to save all the little sisters, and was fully satisfied with my ending, but based on that I knew what my ending would have been had I harvested them. The 2.5 endings (the evil ending and the bad ending are the same thing with a different tone in the VO. Come on. That's lazy.) just weren't surprising enough. The moral implications should have been more pronounced during actual gameplay. There was one section, after the death of Ryan, that choice should have been pivotal. In fact, this game could have easily had a completely different final boss encounter based on player choice alone! Imagine if, had you harvested little sisters, Fountaine remained in a helpful place and Tenenbaum became the antagonist to replace Ryan. Missed opportunity, I think. A completely different end game.

All in all, I loved this game. I must have, because I rarely ever post entire threads on individual games. I wish I had played it, and many others, much sooner. I'm going to start up Bioshock 2 later tonight.

[mrz84]

The first Bioshock is a great game and like you, I do feel that it could have been much better. The idea of Tenebaum being the final boss if you harvest the little sisters is an interesting one, though I feel that Fountaine's agenda still could have been addressed if that happened. Bioshock 2 I've yet to finish myself (I'm about half through it, but my attention span seems to shift between games to easily and I haven't played it for at least 2 years now. I doubt I'll ever get around to infinite at this rate) and I like the Proto-Big Daddy idea as the player. While it gives you more options in combat, it doesn't make you too powerful over your opponents. In fact, there are some ares, even on lower difficulty settings, where I was almost overwhelmed by the AI. Of course B2 does have some improvements over the previous game, but I feel there is much they could have done if given more time (because we all know that nowadays, developers can and will be pushed by their employers to get a game out as quickly as possible for a quick buck without giving a damn about the impact it can have on the content, more often then not, negatively). I did liek the slight increase in variety of Big Daddy type enemies and some of the new splicers.

[CJC]

The biggest complaint I have, however, is the lack of impact player choice actually has on the outcome. I chose to save all the little sisters, and was fully satisfied with my ending, but based on that I knew what my ending would have been had I harvested them. The 2.5 endings (the evil ending and the bad ending are the same thing with a different tone in the VO. Come on. That's lazy.) just weren't surprising enough. The moral implications should have been more pronounced during actual gameplay. There was one section, after the death of Ryan, that choice should have been pivotal. In fact, this game could have easily had a completely different final boss encounter based on player choice alone! Imagine if, had you harvested little sisters, Fountaine remained in a helpful place and Tenenbaum became the antagonist to replace Ryan. Missed opportunity, I think. A completely different end game.

All in all, I loved this game. I must have, because I rarely ever post entire threads on individual games. I wish I had played it, and many others, much sooner. I'm going to start up Bioshock 2 later tonight.

I, too, recently played Bioshock for the first time (though I had seen it played by another before). I played the second game first, but I have to say that the first one is much better. After having played it, the sequelitis that the second game suffers is much more apparent.

I also agree that the scene with Andrew Ryan should have been the fork point (also, never trust a guy with two first names!), with the remaining sections of the game serving as the split for the alternate endings. This could easily be achieved by swapping out the radio messages in the last three zones, with only the gameplay of the final boss being significantly different.



One thing that bothered me severely, though, was the fact that the game's framing device broke half-way through! It began with a first-person narrator, but every ending was narrated by Sigrid Tenenbaum (in the second person perspective).