retractingblinds on 27/3/2013 at 07:24

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I was actually cringing at the moral choice presented with throwing the ball or not. Oh god the doe eyes on that lady. Ken Levine sure loves his straw-man extremist criticism.

zajazd on 27/3/2013 at 08:56

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Aren't you guys tired of the shooty shoot genre?

I thought Bioshock was terrible, but I love good lighting and sunlight in games - I will probably play BI on god mode just to enjoy the visuals.

mothra on 27/3/2013 at 09:57

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I finished it yesterday evening.

This is a game torn somehow. I get the feeling it started out as a mirror of bio1 with its different ideologies and factions but somewhere in the middle
of the developement (and the game) it started to be all about Elizabeth and all of the socio-political surroundings got pushed into the background or alltogether forgotten.
I do not complain because when there is one thing I love in the game besides the art it is Elizabeth . While still being "odd" with her big cartoon eyes and having too
many idle animations play and back and forth makes her look creepy sometimes she (and DeWitt to a lesser extent) are the star of the show and boy, did they make her good.
Some of her "emotional" scenes get destroyed by switching back to game mode ... "look I found some money" in an instant later.
But I applaud their decision and when they succeed (and they do often) it pays off.
Columbia suffers for it with less interesting political figures and factions that come across as the typical comic book villains, the tonics are just like plasmids from rapture but without the "explanation"
and justification, they are just "there" for the player and in no means explained or rooted in that game reality.

So what is good in life ?
The art, design of scenes, the little reveals the way they made that window reflect on a thing in the environment, the way some audiologs give you a sweet bitter taste in your mouth, the serenity and calm
of some locations to explore without having to worry about respawning splicers. THE SCIENCE COUPLE. God I love them. They are not a couple btw.
The little b/w movies, the telescopes ...just to look around :D
The commentary by DeWitt and little snippets from Liz, the dialogues, the "speeches". The "toggle walk" key :D
Liz in a fight helping you (yes it makes here teleport across the map sometimes but it was still nicely done)

(you will think by the long next "bad" section that those outweigh the above but they do NOT, it just impossible to described the above without "experiencing" it, without being there and steering DeWitt
yourself through those little gaming marvels, those moments where everything falls together in just the right way -even the combat I critizise below - and ...be...just...happy/sad/jaw-on-floor)


What is bad ?

The upgrades. (no need to explain you will see and experience how crap they are - ALL of them)

The combat.
Don't get me wrong, the first encounters are pretty ok, typical gross-out bioshock stuff but then you just get the feeling of enemies for enemies sake and gross for gross sake.
Where do they all come from ? Where do they get their weapons from ? Why would somebody do this to themselves ? They are just "there" so the player can shoot them.

Apart from that get prepared for the most elongated, boring, ridiculous drawn-out, level-reusing fights in a lifetime.
BULLETSPONGE enemy difficulty on hard.
Arena fights with locked doors "must-kill-all-before-can-open-door" stupidness.
Let's make challenge by doing the same exact fight AGAIN only this time with DOUBLE the enemies and give everybody body armor.
Let's give enemies the exact same weapons you have that can't hit shit in a distance but let them snipe you from across the map.
Your weapons doing no damage at all without any upgrades but not being able to use your upgraded ones because of too long fights without any fkn ammo.

Seriously I had guys in cloth without any armor or helmets that could take 2 rocketlauncher hits or more than 1 headshot. Healthbars a long as from Vienna to Alaska for little shit trash mobs.
Progression being just MORE GUYS with MORE GUNS and MORE BOSSES and then EVEN MOAR BOSSES and MOAR MOAR MOAR MINIONS.

In the end I just wanted to get THROUGH. I ran past encounters. Just ran through to that progression triggering button I had to push.
I did not want to explore anymore in the end. Just get THROUGH. And then another fight you have to do. And ANOTHER.
And "get those 3 keys to open the area" and have "3 bossfights" along the way that play exactly the same way.

And at last the CONFRONTATION. Now let's just have more fights over a few levels before the confrontation. Ok, done that:
the pieces of the puzzle will fall together.....and then...ANOTHER drawn-out completely out-of-place "MUST-PROTECT-THAT-SHIT" fight sequence.
I just wanted to get THROUGH. And then the end. It was over, i was THROUGH....

and I started the game again in 1999mode :D

Bakerman on 27/3/2013 at 11:32

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Something I forgot to mention that really frustrated/fatigued me at around the halfway mark. Basically, the entire storyline is a Babushka doll of fetch quests. Almost every single thing you do is a detour around some obstacle. I enjoyed the subversion when you start entering alternate timelines to complete your impossible fetch quests - at least that showed a bit of initiative from the characters - but they were still fetch quests.

mothra on 27/3/2013 at 12:59

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QFT

But then again, the main mission is a fetch quest "get the girl and...", I just did not expect the "...wipe away your debt" part to be about fetch quests as well :D
In this game even fetch quests have fetch quests in them so your comparison to babushka dolls is dead on.