Sep 25
BioShock is not all it’s cracked up to be
Excuse me for the overly cliche title to this post; it’s been a long day of coveting Halo 3 and then realizing that I have to wait another four days to get it. To hold me over, I’ve been playing the Xbox 360 hit and Game of the Year candidate, BioShock. If you have not completed the game, I would recommend that you do so before reading any further, as there are limited spoilers as I dissect the many aspects of gameplay and story, including parts of the ending.
When I first booted up BioShock, a game that I had assured myself that I would instantly fall in love with, I was stunned. The first time that you are taken down into the city of Rapture is astounding; the environments are rich and finely detailed, the water effects unparalleled and the voice acting crisp and intriguing. Needless to say, I played the game continuously for a couple of hours before finally putting it down, satisfied with a solid day’s worth of gaming. However, when I went to pick it up again the next day, I hesitated. I felt as if constantly fighting off the endless string of Splicers trying to chop you up into little pieces of Adam-enriched bushmeat had somehow gotten old, and gotten old fast.
I come to my main point; BioShock, with all of the hype and credit that it is given, is not one of the best games ever made. Instead, it is only better than average and should not be a contender for the coveted Game of the Year. Among all its flaws, possibly one of the most prevalent is the lack of replay value. Once you finish this game, you will not, unless you are an achievement aficionado, want to go back and play again. The developer interviews that we all watched and praised were misleading; no matter how many different ways there are to get through a specific room, you will always find yourself sticking to the basics and completing them all in the exact same way. For instance, if there is a rocket turret and a Big Daddy surrounded by two Splicers, of course you are going to hack the turret, enrage the Big Daddy and start pumping lead into him. I understand that there’s a little strategy to that, but not much. The way that this game was hyped, as a first-person-shooter/action/strategy type game is not the way this game turned out.
Going along with the whole idea of lack of replayability, you, like me, may not even want to finish the game because of how repetitive it is. Sneaking around dozens of levels with the same four types of enemies attacking you gets very old very quickly. If the character models were slightly more interesting, this may have no even been a factor, but since all of the characters, disregarding the Big Daddy, look alike we are left with a very bland outcome on something that might have been excellent. Even the Big Daddies and Little Sisters start getting old; at first, what had struck fear and excitement into me eventually elicited from me no more than a shrug.
Additionally, the weapon selection in this game is god-awful. Trying to fight off 5 or more Splicers at once is difficult enough; couple that with the fact that you must cycle through ten weapons or so one at a time when you run out of ammo, and you’ve got yourself a situation that is near impossible to survive. What 2k Games should have done was to create some sort of weapon changing circle, much like those seen in the Mass Effect videos that I posted earlier, to make switching weapons on the spot a breeze. Also, the lack of ammo plays a big role in this game. Whlie playing through the game on the Normal difficulty, I noticed that ammo was scarce and therefore very valuable. In big fights, between you, a Big Daddy and a couple of Splicers, it is very easy to run out of ammo if you go gun-crazy; you very quickly learn that you must be frugal with the little ammo that you receive. If the game had provided you with more ammo, and gave you the choice whether you wanted to run-and-gun rather than zap, hack, gun and dodge, I feel like I would have had much more fun with it.
Finally, BioShock’s story, most surprisingly its conclusion, is very disappointing. When you first arrive at Rapture and are thrown into the midst of a conflict between Andrew Ryan and Atlus, it is easy to become sucked into the captivating story. However, as the game goes on, that element of the story that so captured your imagination and attention tends to disappear, and you are left with a story that seems rough and unfinished. It seems as if the developers were in a fix, and needed to hit a deadline with the game. The ending is so laughable that I was left questioning my decision to buy the game in the first place.
These above issues tainted the overall enjoyment that I received from BioShock. Although the issues that I have mentioned may seem trivial, when combined, they greatly deteriorate the overall experience that one can take away from the game. If 2k Games had, perhaps, worked more with consumers on the game, these issues may have been averted, and the game could have turned out to be even better than it had.
EDIT: My esteemed colleague, lawl, has informed me that in fact there is a way to change weapons without cycling through every single one. Why 2k decided not to tell me this in the introduction to the game, I do not know. I only know that they suck dick at giving directions.
Categories: Editorial, Microsoft, Xbox 36025 Comments so far
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“Although the issues that I have mentioned may seem trivial, when combined, they greatly deteriorate the overall experience that one can take away from the game.”
QFE, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t own the game yet, but I have played it at a friend’s house numerous times. Sometimes I just ask myself as I’m running to my next objective “When will the next Splicer swarm rip me a new asshole?”.
I agree with everything you said. I do think it was a good game, but it was not the flawless, completely perfect creation so many people made it out to be.
I do think that parts of the story were very well done though, because when you meet Andrew Ryan and he tells you what is going on it fit so perfect and not only made sense but was unexpected and delivered just right. But besides that there wasn’t a whole lot, and while it seems like story is what is praised most there really wasn’t that much compared to the amount of time spent doing everything else. There were only a few cutscenes and story points, and I would have liked to see more.
Yeah, the first half of the story was captivating and very interesting. After that, though, it seems like the developers got tired or bored and just tried to end it.
The Little Sister encounters didn’t strike me as anything special. The devs kept touting moral choices, but I kept harvesting them. The animation was just a fade to green, and then your hand grasping this squirmy red thing. Maybe if you actually saw the act, or even the Little Sister’s dead body, it would have had more of an impact. I had no problem harvesting every Little Sister I crossed paths with.
Or maybe I’m just a dick.
Heh, I harvested all of them too. Maybe if they showed you pulling that worm out of their ass, then I’d stop.
I didn’t care either way, so I just saved them all because I saw there was a 100 G achievement for getting through the whole game without harvesting a single one.
“What 2k Games should have done was to create some sort of weapon changing circle, much like those seen in the Mass Effect videos that I posted earlier, to make switching weapons on the spot a breeze”
you do realize you can hold down the right bumper and a circle comes up with all of your weapons. the same happens with the left bumper and your plasmids.
@ SAGExSDX: Check the EDIT at the bottom of my article; apparently I was the only one who didn’t figure this out…
I think it was a great game. I don’t know if it deserved a perfect 10 but it was still excellent. It seems like people are beginning to bash single player games because of lack of replay. I know its next-gen and we are all supposed to be online, but don’t you guys remember all the good times we had on our old systems especially our ps1 rpgs. We didn’t need the replay on our single player games then so why now?
Also I thought the story was excellent excluding both ending cinematics. Your right those blew.
I didn’t find the game repetitive at all but I could understand how some could. This game play style reminds me of another great game RE4. In that game you were constantly attacked by zombieesqe people and in this game you are constantly attacked by mutated people. Whats the difference?
I understand that the game was some what over rated but I don’t think it deserves to be raged on by every body. But that is just my opinion.
Honestly, I don’t think that Bioshock would have benefitted from online multiplayer. With all of the extremely powerful plasmids and weapons, it seems like if they added multiplayer, it would feel very rushed and unbalanced.
I think the difference between this and RE4 was that RE4 proved to be thrilling and chilling throughout the entire game, down to the last boss battle. Sure, killing zombies was repetitive, but it was damn fun. You never ran out of ammo, weren’t forced to check high and low in every location for every last bullet, and could use the Wiimote (on the Wii version) to point and shoot, which actually adds a lot to the gameplay. With Bioshock, constantly running out of ammo and being forced to evade even the simplest of enemies before being killed quite a few times in a row just gets old. I want a game that’s challenging in the right aspects, such as using strategy to kill the enemies, instead of one that requires you to conserve ammunition in hopes that you can maybe make it through the level without having to whip enemies to death with your wrench.
/run-on sentence
QFT. This game is horribly overrated. Its a little fun at first but it gets so repetitive, there is no freakin ammo, the story is alright but nothing phenomenal, and absolutely 0 replay value. Definitely a good game, but by no means one of the best games or GOTY, it is though, my biggest waste of $60 ever. Get Halo 3 for your money’s worth.
QFT as well. This game is so overrated that it amazes me how much praise it gets. I was intrigued by the storytelling elements, even though I’m usually a stickler for gameplay first, then story. I won’t call it awful by any means, but this has suffered from the consumer-reviewer hype machine, and it’s fair to say that it is a disappointment.
Once I get my 360, I will probably pick this game up, but only after it drops in price (and by a substantial amount).
Yeah, if I had a chance to rethink my purchase, I’d pay probably a maximum of $40 for it.
I never had the problem of lacking ammo in the game. I mean sometimes I didn’t have grenades to be launched or shotgun shells but I always had something to take all the enemies out.
Also it wasn’t made to be a run and gun kind of game. If you didn’t like the game for this reason then you shouldn’t play this game in the first place. Not having mass amounts of ammo makes the player think out the choices he/she has to dispose of the enemies effectively. Sometimes you may not have bullets so you have to catch cow pies on fire and throw them at the enemy. Sometimes you have to use enrage, hack turrets, or maybe if you got the ammo just shoot everyone in the face. The game is a great game for the player it was made for. Just because it was first person doesn’t mean it is only a shooter.
Hellraiser, I understand that BioShock was not created to be a run-and-gun type game in the way that Halo and many others are. Perhaps you played on an easier difficulty than I because I was constantly running out of ammo for my shotgun, crossbow and machine gun and had to frequently rely on only my pistol, which does almost no damage later on in the game, to get me through some of the more difficult parts of the game.
Sometimes it seems that having all the strategy in the world, hacking every bot and turret that crosses your path, still does not get the job done. The enemies always seem to have the edge on you, anticipating your moves and attacking in packs. It’s really difficult, without any ammo for any of the decent guns, to move further along in the game.
I played on the normal difficulty and everything went smoothly for me. Also I guess difficulty makes a game suck now a days.
alright, i played the game on the normal difficulty and i never ran out of ammo once. and if you do then just use your plasmids. Its not complicated. Besides now i am running through it on hard and finding all the plasmids and tonics, and i am having no trouble killing enimies or running out of ammo. Maybe your just stupid for playing this game on hard because maybe you are not capable of playing a game that is semi-challenging.
- this post was directed towards backflip
the last post was directed to everyone who is whining about a great game being difficult. if you cant handle it then go play viva pinata.
“Maybe your just stupid for playing this game on hard because maybe you are not capable of playing a game that is semi-challenging.”
Those are some caustic words that you just dropped there, missuh. A more refined vocabulary could nowhere be found.
Maybe you were more crafty in the arts of hacking and planning out rooms than I was, but most of the time I was just so bored with how repetitive the game was that I just wanted to run through the level so I could get to the next one, hence, my massive use of shotgun and machine gun.
/run-on, again
well why didnt u try to use the plasmids. use the telekinesis plasmid to mix the game up. if u use the plasmids, flamethrower, upgrade weapons, and do other things then the game wouldnt have gotten repetitive.
In all honesty, I tried using all of the plasmids and the only two that I found to be particularly useful were the Electric and Enrage ones.
Plus, when you’re confronted with a ton of enemies, what sense does it make to light each of them on fire, do only a marginal amount of damage, and then be left with little to no EVE? On the whole, with the whole game literally revolving around them, Plasmids really turned out to be too weak. They should’ve focused a bit more on them and make them more effective or something.
The game is meant for meticulous gamers that’ll do their damndest to scrounge up every resource that they can, and will use said resources as efficiently, and imaginatively, as possible; after all, you’re trying to survive. Considering what all you complained about (gameplay-wise), you expected this game to be another Halo, but with a story that had a final sequence that wouldn’t piss you the hell off.
Did you even bother aiming for heads? ‘Cause, as I remember, I snuck around the last few areas of the game with a fully upgraded pistol, and had no problem taking care of business- despite the face that I could’ve simply switched to the heavy guns, as I made use of U-Invent stations, and the money I picked up. I just picked it back up on the PC (After being an efficient ninja on a friend’s Xbox 360 version), and am still having no problem. The pistol is my go-to weapon, plasmids are my second choice, and the heavy guns are my last. I even take pictures in the midst of combat.
Aim to learn, and learn to aim.
PS: Forgive me for the necromancy.