Bioshock - overrated ?

LordBritish

LordBritish

2[H]4U
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I'm playing Bioshock and other than the graphics, I see nothing really special about the game play itself.

I haven't bumped into any Friendly NPCs yet - everything is an enemy or at least neutral until you attack them.

Game play is kinda Doomish/Quakeish except for the "magical" abilities.

Do you think the game is overrated?
 
no. The art direction is very refreshing. The story is interesting and fleshed out. The sound editing is very good. Each stage feels very different and well thought out. Every FPS feels Doomish/Quakish. It's the execution afterwards that matters.
 
What can I say, I love the graphics but not only the technical details in how accuate the water is but also the art direction and style they've gone for is equally as impressive.

The AI seems pretty damn good especially the spicers who have multiple attack routes across ceilings and floor, not to mention close and long range attacks, the AI between the little sisters and big daddies also looks impressive.

Between the weapons and plasmids theres more than enough tools to do the job in ways which appeal to everyone and allow a great deal of replayability.

Audio is top notch and 5.1 on my system was good.

Story is brilliant, the twists keep you thinking and theres so much room for catching additional glimpses of story as you play again for the 2nd time or more, the audio diarys are scattered everywhere.

Scares, these were awesome, some brillian scares in fort frolic.
 
It may be slightly overrated but mostly because a game this good hasn't come out for a while. I'm personally hoping that mass effect blows this game out of the water. I had high hopes for this game and it delivered so if Mass Effect does the same I will never regret buying a 360 even if it blows up twice.
 
i just picked it up tonight after work and other then sitting throught all the begining stuff again (ie.. the demo) i am really enjoying it.

i am trying not to run through it to fast, i having a lot of fun failing at hacking stuff :)

i do have a couple quirks with the game, if u shock a bad guy and club them they go down, if shock them and shoot them they come out of the shock. seems odd to me, as well no native screen shot support bugs me.

my biggest peeve with game was the securerom crap and activation it worked ok but zonealarm went off right away

but other then that i am enjoying it a lot the playing with head phones and the audio and atmosphere give me the creeps, graphics are great story line is new its not the same old same old. but i guess if u did the run and gun it would feel very standard FPS look around search for stuff it gives the game more depth.
 
definately used the chance with shocked enemies to get headshots, they do so much more damage, with the damage addition to the pistol and anti personnel rounds the pistol remains a highly powerful weapons throughout the game (if you can aim that is)
 
Based on the reviews I thought that the demo would blow me away and convince me to buy it... but all I played was more cookie cutter FPS.
 
So basically you've only mentioned gameplay "issues" and calling it over rated?
Have you played through the game atleast once to witness it's great story?

And who cares about friendly NPCs? Hack a turrent, theres your friendly. In a world like Rapture, you just not going to have many/any friendly NPCs.

And one can say 90% of FPS' have gameplay this is "Doomish/Quakeish" or "CS-ish". Not a very fair comparison. I could say that Doom has very "Wolf3Dish" gameplay. Or then say that Wolf3D's gameplay was too much like the slew of other first-person games before it...
:p
 
It's a great game, but arriving after a sea of mediocrity, and before a wave of high-end games, it's now hailed as amazing. It does deserve a mention among the best FPS games in terms of overall presentation, but is unlikely to warrant a "best" in any specific category except perhaps for its artstyle. It's a sequel to a great game, and was aiming to continue and elaborate on the success of a previously critically acclaimed game, and succeeded in doing so by attaining both critical and popular success this time around.

It wasn't looking to craft a new genre(Because they already did it with System Shock, it's really /their/ genre, since only Deus Ex has been a serious competitor after all this time) or up-end the industry. It was meant to be a great game and it did just that. It's a hard enough task as it is.

There are a great many FPS games out there, SS2 and Bioshock were able to individuate themselves and set themselves apart with their own definitive style and gameplay. To fairly assign a relative qualitative term to the game, you'd have to cite specific examples of where it succeeds or fails against the competition, and it performs favorably in this regard.
 
Presentation-wise, it may be the best game I've ever played, and I was impressed that something of such originality could even succeed. Unfortunately, the replay value is considerably hindered with such design, and that's something very important to me in a game.
 
I loved everything about the game, only downfall for me really is the forced mouse acceleration (pc version). And before anyone asks, I have done every single ini hack, editing all possible values.

One thing I was quite amazed with was the AI being able to follow you, like when you hacked a turret or hypnotized a big daddy, they were always able to follow me and not get stuck. The art and presentation of the game was one of a kind as well, some very cinematic and theatrical moments in the game.
 
Not overrated at all. I'm glad it received the rave reviews b/c a game like this does not deserve to go unnoticed like system shock.

This game is more than just an fps.
 
I don't like these fantasy based dark games at all. The game had potential for great immersion but once the gameplay started and the ultra-boring monster-from-dark-corner shoot-em-up begun it degraded to DoomIII levels in terms of gameplay.

All that 'horror' loses its appeal very fast and the game becomes a boring repetition of monster killing and dark moods. The first seconds of the demo looked promising as if the storyline would be at least somehow believable but no - little sisters and mutated monsters. Yeh, that's the first in the industry I have to give 10 points for innovation there!

Can't understand why someone would want to play a game like that. Well, back when I was 12 I digged this sort of stuff.
 
Bioshock is a good game but not a great one. My biggest bugbear is the game balancing and the fact is so easy. It's a pumped up console game, crap Gene Banks, Ammo dispensers, Gatherer's Gardens. Where's my inventory? Ridiculous Vita Chambers taking all the suspense and fear out of the combat. This game is flawed; I can't believe more people can't see it? I actually feel sorry for some Bioshock acolytes; I guess they have been fed console pap for so long they can't see the wood through the trees. I gave up on the game when I got to Olympus Heights, the repetitive combat / same Splicers gradually bored me to death. Shame, Bioshock will go down as a missed opportunity.
 
It had a hint of console which irks me a little, the mouse acceleration on the PC is almost unbearable, there's nothing like broken, un-fluid motion to remind you of the massive limitations of console controllers in FPS games.

Didn't have a problem with the rest, the auto aim, homing style nature of someof the plasmids such as rage was kinda stupid though.
 
Netrat33 said:
no. The art direction is very refreshing. The story is interesting and fleshed out. The sound editing is very good. Each stage feels very different and well thought out. Every FPS feels Doomish/Quakish. It's the execution afterwards that matters.
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What he said.
 
It was a frickin' awesome game, but I don't think it deserved all the 10's it got. The game design leaned a bit towards the console side, which was so-so. And some of the combat was kind of unsatisfying. The whole tape recorder thing was a bit overdone - as it was pretty much the only way the story advanced. I would have like to have seen more npc interaction.

Oh, and towards the end I was so sick of hacking machines.

There's nothing severly wrong with the game at all. It's a production masterpiece. Just a couple little quirks that keep it from perfection.
 
PoweredBySoy said:
Oh, and towards the end I was so sick of hacking machines.
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Actually forgot about this. I'm still playing the game but this is annoying me now. I was hoping earlier that the hacking games would change at least a few times. In system shock 1 they had at least 2 with variety on how they are played. But this is minor for me.
 
Hacking was a minor inconvenience, I could hack most of the machines in full before the fluid even got past the first tile, they weren't very hard at all.

Except for the ones which were impossible...had none the first time through and 3 so far this time, completely blocked off exits :confused:
 
Netrat33 said:
Actually forgot about this. I'm still playing the game but this is annoying me now. I was hoping earlier that the hacking games would change at least a few times. In system shock 1 they had at least 2 with variety on how they are played. But this is minor for me.
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In System Shock you had to go into cyberspace to unlock doors etc. That was seriously cool, the hacking in this game is like pipes and gets boring very quicky. Thank god for auto-hacks (I bought loads)
 
spicey said:
In System Shock you had to go into cyberspace to unlock doors etc. That was seriously cool, the hacking in this game is like pipes and gets boring very quicky. Thank god for auto-hacks (I bought loads)
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it had the cyberspace but it also had the doors that had like 3-6 wires that you had to crisscross to get the power to fill up the bar or the puzzles that looked like

xxx0
x x x
x0xx

That might not make any sense to those never played system shock :p
 
This game most definitely IS great, but it has it's issues. First and foremost - it's too f*cking easy, ESPECIALLY if you explore everything on your way (therefore finding all weapon upgrades, shitloads of ammo and igredients for inventing machines) and use the camera. It was scary in the beginning, but around the middle I started feeling damn powerful and now, as I'm near the end, I don't even bother with stealthy gameplay - I can obliterate every splicer in a blink of an eye and hell, even Big Daddies aren't a threat anymore. Second - the plasmids were DAMN overhyped. IIRC developers were bragging quite a lot about them and I was really expecting some cool interaction with environment while using them... But sorry, you can't even freeze the water - which is kinda pathetic. Dark Messiah was IMO WAY better in terms of interesting, free-form combat. Next - enemies. Fighting the same types of enemies throughout the whole game gets boring. I know that it's a city bulit by humans under the atlantic and there will be no demons from hell, but for god's sake, they could at least have dogs :) Anyway, that'd be all. Overall it's a damn good game, but definitely not a 10/10.
 
I don't think so...Bioshock does what it does better than any other game in recent memory. If you are looking for an rpg or twitch shooter then look elsewhere...think of Bioshock as a survival horror type game that has atmosphere and immersion that is second to none.
 
Very good game, but tbh out of the survival type horror catagory I will have to say I enjoyed and thought resident evil 4 was better (in its time)

very good theme, its a welcome change from all the other fps games around.
But I just completed it loved it, the ending was refreshing and positive
(well for me at least) lol
 
The art direction and audio are really fantastic and it's generally a 'good' shooter but yes, I also though it had been seriously overhyped.

Gameplay wise it's just Doom3+Dark Messiah at the end of the day, right down to the PDA audio logs and the spells. That's not a bad thing at all but it's not the second coming of Christ that the press would have people believe.

I think a lot of people had hoped for more of a STALKER-esque experience in this amazing city, which would have elevated the game to a different experience entirely. They tease you with Rapture but I never felt like I was truly exploring it. I was just sight seeing whilst being led from level to level, objective to objective, fighting the same limited number of enemy types, with the same attack patterns and doing the same thing in almost every single room, like every other corridor shooter.
 
yes its linear... its a shooter. half-life 2 is linear, as was half-life, but they are heralded as some of the best FPSes of all time...
 
Finkus said:
They tease you with Rapture but I never felt like I was truly exploring it.
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Well, maybe that is because you didn't explore it then. I explored it.



I guess if you didn't figure out how to "play" the game, it probably wasn't very fun. BioShock was just like System Shock 2 and possibly 1 (I didnt play 1 so I can't say first hand) and nothing like Doom 3 or whatever game you guys want to compare it to.

The story, the theme, and the enviroment all pulled together to be one of the best gaming experiences to date. If you missed one of those elements, I can see how you would be in this thread complaining.
 
It's overrated if you feel it let you down. As for me, I felt it delivered and the hype was warranted. One of the best games I have ever played hands down.
 
I read the hype, and ignored it. Several of the most hyped games in recent memory were disappointing to me. Including HL2 and Doom3. Bioshock delivered. It wasn't what i expected, and the story made me want more. Hopefully, this won't be the only excursion into rapture. :)
 
If you play the game using some ingenuity, it's a lot of fun. I came across a group of splicers unaware of my presence so I backed up a little, found a corpse, lit it on fire with the incinerate plasmid then hurled it at them with my telekinesis...took 'em all out :cool:

I think it's been a while since a game of this caliber has come out and so some of the review scores are a bit inflated. The game is not 100/100. It certainly has some physics issues and glitches that can break the immersion but everything else that makes for a great game like gameplay, visuals, sound, story; BioShock has it all.
 
I enjoyed the game. My only qualms with it is if you spend time exploring levels you become very powerful very quickly through weapon upgrades, etc. Eventually you rarely end up using your plasmids and just run through rambo-style.

In addition the game wasn't too "challenging" in the sense that there was no penalty for dying and a Vita-Chamber was always within a minutes reach of where you were.

I wish the game relied more on using your plasmids in conjunction with your weapons (although you could do it for fun, it wasn't necessary after a couple weapons upgrades) and that there was some type of penalty for dying.
 
I believe it is very overrated. All this talk about comparing it to SS2, it's not anything like SS2. At first it seemed like it would be, but after a few hours I realized this was just another run and gun that took place underwater with a few extras. SS2 had lots of tension brought on by, among other things, lack like ammo. Weapons were unvieled pretty slowly and ammo was scarce. In Bioshock by the end of the 2nd level I had a shotgun, machinegun, and grenade launcher and more ammo and money than I knew what to do with. Wallet was always full and ammo was always full. I was able to freely run and gun through the levels like I would any other generic fps. It was a huge letdown and I've stopped playing it out of boredom. I was expecting more, I didn't get it.
 
bildad said:
It was a huge letdown and I've stopped playing it out of boredom. I was expecting more, I didn't get it.
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Why don't you try using some of the different plasmids and setting up ways to take out enemies? Play it differently than you would a normal FPS, and you might find you enjoy it. They've always said that a player can run through it with guns blazing if they wanted, but you also have all these other options available.
 
They should have created situations where you needed to think of creative ways to use your plasmids in conjunction with your weapons to progress instead of letting people gun down everything.
 
Xrave said:
They should have created situations where you needed to think of creative ways to use your plasmids in conjunction with your weapons to progress instead of letting people gun down everything.
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They did
 
Finkus said:
They tease you with Rapture but I never felt like I was truly exploring it. I was just sight seeing whilst being led from level to level, objective to objective, fighting the same limited number of enemy types, with the same attack patterns and doing the same thing in almost every single room, like every other corridor shooter.
Click to expand...

I actually agree. In the demo I really felt I'd be stepping into a huge film-noir underwater world. I'm on the final level right now and short of seeing water and glass domes, you'd swear you could be in any post-apocalyptic world. I never really felt like I was in an underwater world.
 
GDstew4 said:
They did
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Other than an occasional door being held by ice or a shorted keypad, none of the situations required use of plasmids.

Although some fights could be improved by plasmids (catching bombs with Telekenesis), they were a letdown.
 
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