Game Play: Bioshock 2

Personally, the Bioshock franchise is an odd measure of the change in my gaming habits. The first game was one of the last games I played on the PC, that my PC at the time could handle well and yet I still spent a lot of time trying to fiddle with the resolution on the damn thing to make sure I was getting the prettiest darn experience possible.

This game - I just popped it into the PlayStation 3 and moved on. Not only did getting the PC not occur to me, I don't even have a PC to play it on anymore. This isn't really meant to be yet another nudge at the PC market, just a footnote that whether the genre is dying or not, it's somewhat dead to me.

Anyway - the game itself. Bioshock 2 takes the player back to Rapture. If you haven't played the first one, you won't be totally lost ... but you will be missing out on a quite a bit of detail as the story of the second game builds heavily on the first. And once again, Bioshock 2 succeeds in storytelling to a point well past most shooter's benchmarks. There are very few non-interactive cut scenes, and far better character interaction than most games. This goes well past "hey, aren't you Gordon Freeman" to - "I just totally tried to kill you, what are you going to do about it?". While it's not exactly deep character development, it does allow players to literally go past the "glass wall", such as the ones Matt and I noted in our Dead Space conversation.

Mechanically speaking, the game is nearly identical to the first game, which is good - we're talking about a shooter with a rich heritage here and it shows. My favorite addition is the more free-form moments where you need to defend a little sister. Some of the fights got very dynamic and fluid, which is getting more and more rare in the shooter world, as the "virtual shooting gallery" has become more common. There are scenes which are clearly staged, but much of the world of Rapture feels organic and connected, not a series of artificial scenes stitched together.

Finally, I think the ending is much, much improved over the original. Oh sure, there are logical inconsistencies you can drive a truck through - but at least it felt like a consistent, coherent narrative ... and not a end animation tacked on to be done with it. This time I was careful to save every little sister ... so I don't know if the "harvest one, and you get the bad ending" rule is still in effect.

I have not tried the multiplayer yet, I'll give it a go this week and report later. The total game play was probably about 20 or so hours ... you can finish it in a week or so without too much trouble. The summation is what one would expect - if any game similar to Bioshock (Bioshock itself, System Shock, Deus Ex, etc.) has ever entertainted you, Bioshock 2 will not dissapoint. All in all, well recommended.

I will have an upcoming post, though, about how the shooter genre needs to evolve. This is a footnote on the genre, not on Bioshock 2, but in the same way this game book ends my PC gaming experience, I think it also bookends - along with many other titles like Modern Warfare 2, my welcome mat for some tired and true FPS concepts.

But, that's for another time.

Compilation Of Critical Thinking On BioShock

Thanks goes out to the Discount Thoughts blog for this excellent roundup on articles about BioShock, and I say that not just because Cathode has a link in there. It's a pretty impressive summary across several blogs and a great index for discussing the game.

Game Play: BioShock Narrative

There are times when I see Ebert's point.

But first, this post is for people who have finished BioShock. If you haven't - there be spoilers.

So, back to our old friend Ebert - who threw down the gauntlet some time ago that games are, at best, a troublesome form of art. While I don't agree with him, and still don't, games like BioShock exist as a kind of sample of the trouble games have as narrative.

Firstly let's dispel one of the most common misconceptions people have with game narratives. A backstory is not the same as a storyline. In Doom, you start the game as a marine trapped on a Martian base with everyone else killed by a horrible experiment gone wrong. That is not the story, that is the backstory. Doom actually has a better backstory than most - in fact it had a much better backstory than most games of the time - but the actual story persists as "lone marine travels from room to room blowing crap up."

My problem with modern shooters is that most haven't progressed much more than that. Now the main mechanic is to add a goal to provide some excuse for the player to travel from point A to point B. These reasons are usually pretty artificial and once the player reaches point B - largely forgotten. Usually the most substantial character development is getting a new gun.

So while we have all these fancy graphics for rendering characters - we just don't do much of anything with them. Many writing classes will tell you that a story is essentially characters in conflict - but most game narratives never have characters complicated or rich enough to have any conflict other than pointing weapons at each other.

Which can make for a fine game, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't make for a fine story. A fine story is when you can remove all the shooting and still have something worth watching.

And backstory is important ... mystery novels for instance are mostly backstory - but there's always a tangled plot to get to that backstory. It's never as simple as breaking down a door.

BioShock tries - and in some places succeeds - to break this mold. A little bit, at least. I think the most brilliant moment in the game is when you kill Ryan because you're programmed to kill Ryan. It's almost postmodern in nature ... why do you kill him? Because you have no other choice. You have to in order to progress. And calling out the fact that Atlas has been whispering instructions in your ear and then you having little choice but to follow them ... it is a moment which excels merely in framing the typical shooter scenario into a clever frame. You just experienced a dash of character development, free of charge.

The ending though? The ending? What the hell was that?

Instead of framing anything within the game - you're submitted to a cinematic which barely makes any sense. You have no control over your actions - you simply betray the Little Sisters without any warning and then inexplicably escape into a hundred bathyspheres and ... nukes? What? Someone sent a rescue sub with nukes?

BioShock has a pretty lovely backstory - but honestly that is all for naught if it can't even arrive to a sensible conclusion. Can't even allow the player to achieve their original goal - to escape - by themselves. In the end, the player is robbed of both the experience and the narrative.

I still liked BioShock. Quite a lot. It ranks up there as one of the better shooters. Just don't try and tell me how great the story was, if you please.

BioShock's Lost Plasmids

A perspective 2K Games forum member, using the PC version of the game, uncovered several .ini files that contain not only a downloadable content announcement but also unused plasmids that are in the game but aren't implemented. Potential spoilers are ahead, so beware.

The unused plasmids names include Machine Buster, Vending Expert, Sonic Boom and EVE Saver. Sonic Boom, for example, is listed as being able to "hurl creatures and objects back with a blast of force." An option called "LockedContent" is set to true on all four plasmids, so one can guess that these are planned DLC.

In addition, it appears a whole section of plasmids was cut from the game too. They're called Ecology Plasmids and include a plasmid called Drone Neutral Dampening Field Plasmid, which has drones take longer to sound their alarms.

As of writing, 2K hasn't announced any plans to release any DLC or a level editor for BioShock. Previous 2K games, such as The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, had a robust level editing community and thousands of mods and custom levels are readily available for the game. Hopefully BioShock fans can get their hands on an editor in the future too."

-- Is 2K Games planning BioShock DLC?

Still very much enjoying the game and really wish they'd release an SDK for it. The Unreal engine is insanely mod friendly and it always gives me a bit of the annoyance when I can't jump in and try and muck with stuff.

Game Play: BioShock Mechanics

As Winkyboy pointed out in a recent comment, BioShock is something of a mixed bag when it comes to the nuts and bolts of the gameplay. I'm not talking about the excellent use of the Unreal engine or the amazing water effects - I think we can all agree BioShock looks good.

And it plays good - don't get me wrong there either. In fact, it plays better than 90% of the shooters ever made. It's solid and holds its own against heavyweights like Deus Ex.

But how does it hold it up against heavyweights like System Shock? Or System Shock 2? It's easier to compare them since it is a direct development evolution. BioShock clearly pulls from System Shock 2's playbook. It corrects some things and simplifies some things - with interesting outcomes.

Firstly, the use of plasmids and other mods seems more user friendly to me than SS2's power ups. Here the streamlined nature, while not providing nearly as much variety as Deus Ex did, is a lot more user friendly than SS2. It feels harder to have a bad set of mods and the frequently available Gene banks makes sure your decisions can be temporary.

Which brings us to the Little Sisters. Winky pointed out that as ethical decisions go - this is a pretty light one. Oddly, I've heard arguments for both sides - either always harvesting or always rescuing the girls. Personally, I've fallen on the latter simply because the gift mods seem to offset the additional Adam one might get - and I haven't really been starving for Adam anyway. The Big Daddies provide mini-boss fights sprinkled throughout the game and quite honestly the whole setup seems magnificent.

I'm enjoying the hacking minigame as well, although there seems to be little punishment for failing. Sure, you get hurt and sure eventually you might get assaulted by security drones ... but why waste an autohack or cash?

Especially when you have the Vita-Chambers. I can't get a handle on these things ... if I like them or not. I think they are better than many of the alternatives. Basically a combination of quick save (which is either absent by design or the save files or too big to allow) and checkpoints - they are at least very convenient. They seem to make the game really easy though - and if that doesn't at least draw away from immersion it takes away some of the scare factor.

Which is a shame, because it is one of the game's real strengths.

I only have one real suggestion - but first, let's talk about the weapon modification and invention system. I love that you can collect random objects, put them in that bottomless pocket all shooter heroes are equipped with, and then convert them into something useful ... like bullets. So why can't I take the rubber hose, some batteries, a sump pump or whatnot, and increase the damage on my shotgun?

Well, clearly because that might make the game too easy. Halfway through the game you'd have a full set of souped up weapons.

Two things would have adjusted for that - one being a mod system more like Deus Ex's where weapons can only be upgraded to a certain point. So you could turn that assault rifle into a high rate of fire sniper - but not a cannon. Also if there was a penalty to dying.

How does the Vita-Chamber reconstruct all my weapons anyway? I suppose it teleports me wholesale, fixes me up and sends me on my way. But that's some deathgrip I've got on the shotgun there.

It would have been interesting to use a Halo style inventory, with only a couple of weapons capable of being held, and you lose whatever gun you had on hand when you died. If you had another one, you get to keep that. You can try and go back and fight your way back to your gun, or get a new one.

Just something so that I can't use a strategy of constantly bum rushing my enemy right after death.

Winky also pointed out that some of the design decisions seem to be console-biased ... a trend which is becoming more and more pervasive for PC games.

Anyway, it is a great game - and with the Big Brain upgrade for the CheapBox++, plays great now. I really wish they would release an editor and SDK for it though, because I'd love to try some different concepts with it.

I've also got a rant on BioShock's story. how it falls in line with Valve's notion of a narrative (and that's not a good thing) coming forth, but I feel I should finish the game first.

Game Play: BioShock

I downloaded BioShock Sunday morning in the hopes of getting a few hours with it this weekend. I had downloaded the demo from Steam and since we had an In-Law weekend, I wasn't getting to Best Buy anyway, so I went ahead and downloaded the full version as well.

So it seems that despite myself, I'm getting used to Steam as a delivery method.

I can tell that BioShock is largely the game that was promised - if not completely overhyped. Which is good, because this is the kind of shooter we've needed for a while. This is the kind of shooter that Doom III wanted to be and is the first shooter that really rivals Valve's accomplishments in terms of setting mood and environment. What's quite excellent about much of BioShock is not the set pieces where there are predetermined portions of animation (although those are quite good and often very spooky) - BioShock best delivers when it offers somewhat random moments. Like when I got ambushed heading for a teddy bear by a spider slicer.

See, statements like that aren't possible with lesser games.

There's some interesting mechanics at play here, but I'll save that for a later post. Foremost my concern with the game is that it is totally bring the CheapBox++ to its knees. High detail will, in fact, crash the game more often than not. This digg thread sums up much of my experiences - long load times, erratic jumps to desktop, etc.

If Oblivion hadn't been guilty of the same, I'd be much more inclined to blame the software over the hardware - but the similarity is too much. Reducing the graphics load in either situation seems to smooth things out. So I might pick up some more RAM in the near future to see if that helps the old box out, or perhaps finally look into upgrading the CPU.

What I'm not going to do is buy a new video card, or invest in a new chassis or anything like that. Pretty much any component approaching the price of a 360. I'm somewhat pessimistic towards the future of gaming with it if Oblivion and BioShock can tear the heck out of it. However, RAM is cheap and I've wanted to try and put a proper Pentium in it for a while ... so if that isn't too expensive, we'll wait and see.

All Work And No BioShock For Valve

On Next Generation:

BLOG - CVG spoke
(http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=170914) to Valve head
Gabe Newell who said, "We had to ban BioShock from our offices. Nobody gets
to play it until Orange Box is done - that's our reward to ourselves as a
company; ...

Read Full Article, Valve: "Work first, BioShock later."

BioShock's Potential Controversy

On Joystiq:

We knew it was coming. Any game that features little girls as an enemy was
bound to eventually draw the attention of the mainstream media. That
attention has been brought by the *Boston ...

Read Full Article, BioShock's Little Sister killing gets mainstream attention

I bet this doesn't have much traction in the long run. The article in question carries forth many of the now average stock fearmongering tactics ... basically linking to similar stories with poor science and scare tactics. The opening paragraph refers to the "ultraviolent gaming genre" to let you know of its slant in the beginning.

For the record - if a little girl was in fact some kind of lethal mutant ... I might indeed pull the trigger. I bet the Patriot Ledger might as well.