Bioshock demo!

[Femto]

You have to make sure when you see a Big Daddy that a Little Sister is walking next to him.

If you see one by himself, then just follow him for a little bit until he grabs a Little Sister from one of those holes you usually find on the wall (the one from the trailer).

Then kill him and harvest the bitch.

I don't know how it works on the PC version but on the Xbox you can see how many Little Sisters are remaining on the level when you hit start.

[LordMune]

Yeah. The start screen shows two daddy/sister couplings and one (freed) sister out of a total three. Problem is, I've watched these daddies for a while, and sometimes they pass right by the sister vents, sometimes they bang on them and wait awhile and nothing happens. I'll reload a save and try again tomorrow.

EDIT: Oh and that fucking spider splicer bitch with the flowers. FUCK HER. I've never quite hated a game character as much as I hate her. She killed me once, then chased me around the level as I wasted my entire stash of grenade thrower ammo on her; freezing her and beating the crap out of her didn't do much except bug her out and add a permanent layer of ice geometry around her feet. Only when I electrocuted the puddle she was standing in as a health station poisoned her did she finally die. Jesus Christ. The Big Daddies' got nothing on her.

[MadDogMike]

The absence of an alt-fire mode suggests that the current control layout for switching between your plasmid abilities and your weapons was thought out by a chimp with a brain tumor rather than an interface designer... but such things are likely something I can either tweak or patch later on, provided the game is as open to modding as its contemporaries are.

In the controls binding menu, there are two controls listed as "Change to weapon and fire" and "Change to plasmid and fire". I don't know if they work, because the guys at EB Games set the wrong version aside for me, so I'm playing it on my Xbox 360 instead.

The game kindly informed me I had not had my ass handed to me yet by two of the three Daddies in Neptune's Bounty when I "beat" the level. I backtracked for some miniboss action, but now the two remaining Daddies seem to be missing Sisters. What the hell. I'm not killing them just for the loot.

Did I break the game or are you supposed to be screwed once the message telling you you fucked up with the ADAM collecting pops up?

Not every big daddy has a little sister tagging along. Once you harvest/free a little sister from one particular area, the next big daddy will still come along looking for her (he'll bang on the little sister holes in the walls and seem annoyed that she's not coming out). Just search the level some more or wait around for the big daddy to try a new hole instead.

I'm harvesting each and every one of those fucking cunts.

You'll be unhappy to know that by freeing the first three little sisters you find a teddy bear filled with the following items left in front of the next Gatherer's Garden for you by that scientist woman:
- 200 Adam
- "Turn big daddy" plasmid (can't remember the exact name, but you can throw this plasmid at a big daddy to get it to think you're a little sister so it protects you)
- something else which I can't remember, but it was most likely a whole heap of money

[Femto]

The game runs out of steam a little bit towards the end but it's still pretty good.

I think one of the problems is that by the time you get to the last few levels you have so many upgrades (weapon, plasmids, tonics, research) that it's just mindless blasting with as little thinking as possible.

I'll be replaying it on hard soon to see if that changes.

I'll also change my plasmids and tonics around.

Also, rescue the Little Sisters.

[MadDogMike]

The game runs out of steam a little bit towards the end but it's still pretty good.

I think one of the problems is that by the time you get to the last few levels you have so many upgrades (weapon, plasmids, tonics, research) that it's just mindless blasting with as little thinking as possible.

You know, that's easily solveable by looking at the situation from a slightly different perspective. You're strong enough that the game becomes too easy, what do you do? PLAY WITH THE ENEMIES! Now is the time to start playing around with your plasmids, and trying out interesting combos on the enemies to multiply your ownage of them.

For instance:
- Stacking all of my wrench buffing tonics and pretending I'm a D2 paladin with a Schaeffer's Hammer. You can even imbue your wrench with elemental damage and chance to freeze, I love it.
- Lighting objects on fire using Incinerate, then lobbing them into groups of enemies using telekinesis.
- Setting up elaborate traps for bouncer type big daddies, then shooting them and making them charge into it to see if you can kill them before they make it to you.

There's probably many more possibilities, but there's a lot of plasmids I don't have yet.

[Artezul]

Managed to go through much of the game using a combination of wrench and crossbow. I thought the wrench would go obsolete as you go through the game, but with the right mix of tonics and research it's amazing how efficient it becomes. Of course I don't advise it against the Big Daddies.. Though I could take out a 1/20th of it's life with a swing, they take 1/4th of mine with one of their attacks. Their's also the simple logic that leaving myself at point-blank range with a target that is bigger, stronger, faster then me is counter-productive.

The hacking mini-game does become monotonous with so many things to hack.

Spider Splicers become easier to take out as you progress. Also freezing a target; if you dont' shatter the target before it unfreezes the damage you just inflicted upon it becomes null.

The only plasmid I didn't really find useful was Enrage, but admittedly it's my least used ability.

[Femto]

The hacking mini-game does become monotonous with so many things to hack.

You can hack turrets and security bots automatically if you research them enough.

Too useful.

Spider Splicers become easier to take out as you progress. Also freezing a target; if you dont' shatter the target before it unfreezes the damage you just inflicted upon it becomes null.

The freezing gauge is separate from the regular health gauge and you do cause permanent damage after freezing an enemy, just nowhere near as much as you would normally. Also, shattering enemies is counterproductive because they don't leave any bodies to loot which is important on Hard where enemies take more damage and supplies run shorter.

[Artezul]

Nice, I didn't know that. I never considered taking pictures of the bots themselves.

How did you manage during the escort? I had a really hard time keeping the Sister alive.

[Femto]

The escort mission was a breeze because if one of the Little Sister dies, you can just call another one by hitting those pipes with the wrench and you incur no penalty whatsoever in doing so.

That whole part is stupid because they make it a point to tell you that the Little Sisters are invulnerable but here they actually take damage all of a sudden.

I'm sure they could've worked out a better solution for that part that works within the context of the game if they had spent more time with it.

Awesome game though.

Game of the Year maybe?

[Artezul]

I thought the same thing until one of the girls died and Tenenbaum explained that because we removed the ADAM from the girl she is no longer invulnerable.

[Femto]

I thought the same thing until one of the girls died and Tenenbaum explained that because we removed the ADAM from the girl she is no longer invulnerable.

Wow.

I must've missed that.

It all makes perfect sense now.

I remember now that they didn't have those freaky yellow eyes when I was escorting them.

I should've known better than to assume that Irrational (or whatever the fuck they're called now) would let something like that pass them by.

Thanks for clearing it up.

[LordMune]

I thought the same thing until one of the girls died and Tenenbaum explained that because we removed the ADAM from the girl she is no longer invulnerable.

Wow.

I must've missed that.

It all makes perfect sense now.

I remember now that they didn't have those freaky yellow eyes when I was escorting them.

I should've known better than to assume that Irrational (or whatever the fuck they're called now) would let something like that pass them by.

Thanks for clearing it up.

The Little Sister health bar icon still has glowing eyes.

They still harvest ADAM.

They still react to Big Daddy pheromones.

Overall it was a pretty dick move to keep reinforcing the notion that Little Sisters are invulnerable, only to throw it out the window for "it looks like a Little Sister and it acts like a Little Sister and it's probably been a Little Sister for most of its life but hey they take damage now have an escort mission GL HF".

Would you kindly is amazing though. The plot on its own is pretty weak (and the Tenenbaum thing definitely feels unfinished toward the end), but WYK solves so many problems with the inherent constraints of game design and the paradox of freedom in an artificial environment on a near-philosophical level, it's hard not to be stunned.

[Femto]

[spoiler]I would've liked to be able to choose between saving or killing Ryan.

Or like I read somewhere, having Atlas say "would you kindly save me?" after you beat him and then having the option to either save him or kill him.[/spoiler]
The entire moral aspect of the game is weaksauce.

You get more by saving the Little Sisters so there's really no point in harvesting them.

If anything, it should've been the exact opposite, i.e. saving them should've been less rewarding than harvesting them.

That way the moral aspect is in direct conflict with your in-game needs.

The game is not without it's problems but it's still one of the best game I've played in recent years.

Nothing has blown me away quite like the original Metroid Prime did but I guess nothing ever will at this point.

It's probably my favorite game ever.

[LordMune]

Bioshock is the best shooter, nay, the best PC game I've played in quite a few years now- but yeah, it's not better than Prime. I'm a bigger fan of Bioshock than of Prime, but it's a matter of being able to recognize quality even if it does not directly appeal to you.

I feel like Irrational really could have used one last brainstorming session and a couple of months to get everything in place. The weakness of the moral choice in the game is the most prominent issue; it's a huge game-spanning thing, but in the end it's a superficial design issue that can be fixed in a couple of days of messing about with pre-programmed tools. On a purely technical level, Bioshock is almost perfect.

[Femto]

I find that the enemies are the weakest part of the game.

There are Splicers and there are Big Daddies and that's pretty much it.

I know that there are different varieties within each group but they just all look the same and they can all be handled exactly the same way (except for Nitro Splicers which are a breeze if you happen to have Telekinesis).

Even the bosses are just regular Splicers that take more damage.

The fact that you get so powerful towards the end bothered me as well.

The game just couldn't hold on to the awesomeness of the first few hours.

[War Machine]

Bioshock's a good game with great graphics and some cool new ideas, but it falls short on some other aspects.

I've had some trouble with saving settings, the game keeps resetting to the defaults almost every time I turn the game off, so each time I load my game I have to lower the mouse sensitivity and the resolution because it refuses to remember what I selected earlier. And why can't I rename my saves? It gets confusing when you have two or more saves in the same place because they have the same name. Also, thanks to the fact that the quicksave doesn't save two files (like some FPS do), the game crashed and the quicksave was corrupted, sending hours worth of play down the drain. Another minor nuisance I had was that it's tough changing plasmids, the F keys are too far away when you're struggling in a fight.

The game's cool, but overall, I still think that Half-Life 2 is better (except in graphics, but newer games will usually beat the old ones in that).

[Femto]

Bioshock's a good game with great graphics and some cool new ideas, but it falls short on some other aspects.

I've had some trouble with saving settings, the game keeps resetting to the defaults almost every time I turn the game off, so each time I load my game I have to lower the mouse sensitivity and the resolution because it refuses to remember what I selected earlier. And why can't I rename my saves? It gets confusing when you have two or more saves in the same place because they have the same name. Also, thanks to the fact that the quicksave doesn't save two files (like some FPS do), the game crashed and the quicksave was corrupted, sending hours worth of play down the drain. Another minor nuisance I had was that it's tough changing plasmids, the F keys are too far away when you're struggling in a fight.

The game's cool, but overall, I still think that Half-Life 2 is better (except in graphics, but newer games will usually beat the old ones in that).

This is why I dislike PC gaming.

It seems like most of these issues could've been solved by getting the 360 version.

[Starnum]

I don't know the issue at hand, but I'm pretty sure I can support that statement.

I've always been more into console gaming than PC games though.

[War Machine]

Yeah, I've also been more of a console gamer, but I don't have enough for a new console.

Usually, xbox games are ports from PC games so they get a little extra or at least as much attention as their console counterparts, but it seems to be the other way around with this game. Anyway, I just read about an update and it seems to fix a couple of problems:

"Update improves stability when loading autosaves and overall game stability, corrects audio during title menu loading, and addresses AI behaviors regarding use of health stations."

[Dominion]

HEY... im getting a new rig sos i can play this game... have you guys played it? if so... whats your specs and what kind of frame rates do you get while playing?

[War Machine]

iMac (2006 model) with 2.0GHz Core Duo processor, 1GB DDR2 SDRAM and 256MB VRAM ATY Radeon X1600. Runs fine with highest quality, but it gets a little "choppy" during complicated fights, so I lowered the resolution a little bit. Although I have the initial version without any updates and I didn't "buy" it, so the few problems with the graphics might stem from that.

[LordMune]

2.6GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM, GeForce 8600 GT. Absolutely playable with everything maxed- though not under Vista. Jesus that OS is a resource-hogging piece of shit.

[Aetherfukz]

AMD Athlon 3600+ (clocks around 1,8 GHz I think), 1 GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 8000something. Absolutely playable with everything but shadows on high quality. Haven't tried Vista and will not do so until I really need DirectX 10 for Age of Conan.

[Dominion]

ALRIGHT! its 430 am and i finally got my comp up and running after trying to reinstall my OEM xp cd to no avail... BUT my bro had an extra copy of xp sp1 so thats what im on now....

anyways i havent got around to playing bioshock but im in the process of d/ling the demo... i played the ut3 demo all on high and im impressed with my system's performance

Athlon 64 X2 6000+ - ASUS ATI X1950 pro - 4GB 6400 Muskin - ASUS M2N-E
all for under $700

AMD may not be as good as Intel right now but the prices they are at now are a STEAL, especially since they seem to do better against the other Intel processors in the same price range, which is why i went with AMD... also, i was lucky to snag the last X1950 pro at the store i bought all my parts from

ill update on the bioshock performance but so far everything is positive
Cheers

[Dominion]

UPDATE

I tried bioshock out and there were no problems what so ever with everything on high
looks like my new rig will be able to stand the test of time... like my old one which last for over 5 years

in any case... a while ago i posted a topic regarding the berserk ps2 game and how i was trying it out via emulation with the PCSX2 emulator... i tried it out on my new rig and im impressed! i was getting around 30+ frames using the plugins that came with the program, which is good considering the emulator is still some what unstable

i got as far as the first cut scene where gatts wakes up from his dream of the eclipse and has to fight the snow demons... oh well