Gaming Signal: PREVIEW: Bioshock

PREVIEW: Bioshock

Well, I'm nearing the end of Bioshock and figured I'd post my opinion of the PC game. Hugely fun, immersive game. This is hands down the best FPS I've played since Half-Life 2. The plot was more predictable than I'd like - there is a post in that coming soon - but overall solid and interesting. The voice acting has to be some of the best I've ever heard in a game period. Excellent music, and overall use of audio is outstanding.

The game plays fine on my PC - AMD dual core 2.4Ghz with an Nvidia 7800GTX, WinXP - at 1024x768. If I move the resolution up the framerate dips too low. Visually it looks amazing - extremely well done.

Most of the plasmids and powerups seem like gimmicks and not as valuable as I'd like. The lack of available ammo for the plasmid powers is also a problem. You can't 'head shot' with a plasmid power, and none of them seem to do enough damage to kill an enemy in a single "clip" which is quite unlike every other weapon in the game. Plasmid power also doesn't seem to scale as effectively as weapons or in line with enemy difficulty at the end-game. The powers work fine as an openers. Certain ones (like the electric one) are required for generally moving around the game - others are not so valuable. With all the focus on these plasmids, I found this a bit dissapointing.

Weapon powerups are very valuable and, in my opinion, a 'must have'. Enemy difficulty increases such that the weapon powerups are needed or things will get too harry. The weapon powerups all seem to be good and effective although not all that easy to find - the upgrade stations don't appear on the map and I know I saw one on a revisit to an area just by luck.

The hacking mini-game is optional but really fun. Sometimes it is frustrating when it seems there is too much luck involved in hacking the hardest safes but it isn't impossible. There are ways to control the failure so that it doesn't really have much impact and this allows you another attempt or two at the hardest ones. I found it overall to be well balanced.

I found one issue I consider very lame that looks like a design decision. At one point in the game an NPC makes you give away all your weapons and then take him on. I have no issue with that. But afterwards you get your weapons back - but without your ammo. I thought that was terrible and extremely annoying. Certainly recoverable though - it wasn't game-breaking.

I disagree about the plasmids and tonics - I'm finding them indispensable. Since I picked up the Winter Blast plasmid along with the sneak tonic and the tonic that allows me to do more damage with a wrench, my life has gotten much easier (sneak up, freeze and whack with the wrench for the kill).

And I'm finding that I need all of the plasmids that I've purchased. There's a situation for each of them, and I'm constantly using the Gene Swap machines to get the right combination for the situation I'm in.

I noticed that I'd lost all my ammo when I got my weapons back, which was extremely annoying. I'd specifically been saving it up (by using my freeze/wrench combo above) for the boss fights.

One thing I've found interesting with the game is that there's no penalty for dying. It happened more early in the game than it does now, but I would die 4-5 times to a Big Daddy. When I came back, I had more health, but Big Daddy was as hurt as when I left him.

My biggest kudos for the game are all of the different enemies. While there are only a handful of categories, they seem to be different models (though maybe there are duplicates, and I've not noticed it).

I'm currently going through the Arcadia level. Houdini splicers are and incredible pain!

Posted by Kevin on Tuesday September 04, 2007 at 8:37 AM

The lack of a death penalty is kind of a mixed bag to me. I should have mentioned it though. I thought it was reasonably annoying to have to start so far away sometimes, but overall wasn't crippling. However I've seen other reviewers mention this as a problem to them and I can understand why.

I'm also glad that you found a plasmid combo that worked for you. Maybe my focus on projectile weapons leads to the limited usefulness of plasmids to me, but fit your playstyle great. That's a good aspect of the game really, that it fits how you want to play rather than forcing you to play its way.

Posted by scottsh on Tuesday September 04, 2007 at 9:36 PM

I just finished the game, also. The lack of a death penalty made the game too easy in my opinion. I died a lot at the beginning, though, so it was a mixed blessing :p

I also found I relied on the electric plasmid to set up for kill shots. I am not a quick aimer and this combo helped my set up 'head' kill shots quite easily. Also, telekinesis was much fun...doesn't get much better than to pick up random heavy (or not) objects and smash peoples faces with them

Posted by BobG on Wednesday September 05, 2007 at 8:56 AM

I'm almost finished with the game and am finding it one of the most pleasurable gaming experiences I've ever had.

It took until I was about halfway through the game until I had enough equipment/plasmids/health/tonics to be able to kill Big Daddies without dying at least once.

I took the hacker route, boating up on all of the hacker tonics I could get my hands on. Nothing is more fun than hearing my hacked security bots and turrets blasting away at bad guys in another part of the level and walking by later to pick up their loot.

I personally like the no-penalty deaths. I don't think that games need to be hard to be fun. On the other hand, it's made some parts of the game completely irrelevant. Specifically, security bots. If I accidentally trip a security cam, I just stand there and wait for the bots to kill me rather than waste any ammo or first aid kits to stay alive through the minute-long onslaught. What I've found very funny is when I get Big Daddies and splicers lined up outside the Vita Chamber waiting to kill me when I open the door. While Big Daddies usually lose their agro when you die, they regain it in a hurry if they step on a proximity mine that you laid.

Oh, and I think that freezing is the best answer for Houdini splicers. They don't zip away, so you can whack them where they stand.

Posted by Kevin on Monday September 10, 2007 at 1:54 PM