Bioshock
So, I picked up a new video game today. I probably shouldn't have spent the money, but I've really been wanting a new one lately, and I can't afford a brand new one, like Madworld (which is what I truly yearn for), so I went out and got Bioshock. I traded in that piece of shit Devil May Cry 4 for it (Capcom is good for ruining their franchises every game or two) and got what was a Game of the Year, so it should be good. I at least think it looks very interesting.
I'm not a big fan of first person shooters, but I love things that expand genres, and this expands the genre in very interesting ways that, interestingly enough, don't change the basics of FPS gameplay at all. It's a tad more like Mirror's Edge or Metroid Prime, where it may be first person but it would be folly to label them a shooter just because you have a gun (sometimes, at least), because other aspects are far, far more central. The game is very narrative, and it's actually more like playing a non-RPG version of an Elder Scroll's game (as in, the way you interact with enemies). You don't just find some dudes and shoot until they die, and frequently fighting could get you killed. This isn't saying it's a hard challenge, like an FPS gives you, but that sometimes you just need to avoid the combat all together. That's always great for aptmosphere, especially since you never know when someone will pop out and try to kill you. Adding to this, you can always hear enemies talking and doing things long, long before you run into them, so you have to hunt around and try not to be seen first. You never know how many there are, either.
This game feels more like a survival horror than something like Dead Space could pull off. It's genuinely frightening and nerve wracking, and not because an enemy has arms growing from stupid places or looks dead, but because it's dark, you don't know where they are, and they're always one step ahead of you. You feel painfully vunlerable. It's pretty awesome. I'd probably have to stop playing the game because I'm a wuss, but knowing I'll just revive somewhere nearby, and that most of the enemies I'm actually quite capable of handling keeps me from freaking out too badly.
This game interested me from the first time I saw a video, thanks to Penny Arcade, more than a year before its release (when all the 'sub-normers' heard about it and decided to co-opt it, then found out it wasn't for them and got pissed) because I loved the look of the place, and the idea that it wasn't just a shoot-em-up. It was an exploration game, and you needed to interact to get through it. The deco art, the underwater city... all of it was great.
Plus, I have to love a game with the basic plot line "Ayn Rand is a bitch". Which is basically what the game is about. Suck it, Objectivists!
I have a mix of nostalgia and disapointment, though, from the fact that the game is basically cribbed from an old episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Naturally, these ideas would both have had their own antecedants, but hear me out on some of the big similarities. In this episode, a rich Objectivist is building an underwater perfect city to be free from laws and morals, only for his friends and investors who believe in his vision of a Utopia of ambition, hard work and elitism, and it's all done in an art deco style. Then he blackmails Mr. Freeze into trying to freeze the surface world and kill them all off or something, I don't remember the specifics of the plan, but the start was so similar that I immediately was like, huh... I've seen this before.
Still, hell of a fun game so far.
I'm not a big fan of first person shooters, but I love things that expand genres, and this expands the genre in very interesting ways that, interestingly enough, don't change the basics of FPS gameplay at all. It's a tad more like Mirror's Edge or Metroid Prime, where it may be first person but it would be folly to label them a shooter just because you have a gun (sometimes, at least), because other aspects are far, far more central. The game is very narrative, and it's actually more like playing a non-RPG version of an Elder Scroll's game (as in, the way you interact with enemies). You don't just find some dudes and shoot until they die, and frequently fighting could get you killed. This isn't saying it's a hard challenge, like an FPS gives you, but that sometimes you just need to avoid the combat all together. That's always great for aptmosphere, especially since you never know when someone will pop out and try to kill you. Adding to this, you can always hear enemies talking and doing things long, long before you run into them, so you have to hunt around and try not to be seen first. You never know how many there are, either.
This game feels more like a survival horror than something like Dead Space could pull off. It's genuinely frightening and nerve wracking, and not because an enemy has arms growing from stupid places or looks dead, but because it's dark, you don't know where they are, and they're always one step ahead of you. You feel painfully vunlerable. It's pretty awesome. I'd probably have to stop playing the game because I'm a wuss, but knowing I'll just revive somewhere nearby, and that most of the enemies I'm actually quite capable of handling keeps me from freaking out too badly.
This game interested me from the first time I saw a video, thanks to Penny Arcade, more than a year before its release (when all the 'sub-normers' heard about it and decided to co-opt it, then found out it wasn't for them and got pissed) because I loved the look of the place, and the idea that it wasn't just a shoot-em-up. It was an exploration game, and you needed to interact to get through it. The deco art, the underwater city... all of it was great.
Plus, I have to love a game with the basic plot line "Ayn Rand is a bitch". Which is basically what the game is about. Suck it, Objectivists!
I have a mix of nostalgia and disapointment, though, from the fact that the game is basically cribbed from an old episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Naturally, these ideas would both have had their own antecedants, but hear me out on some of the big similarities. In this episode, a rich Objectivist is building an underwater perfect city to be free from laws and morals, only for his friends and investors who believe in his vision of a Utopia of ambition, hard work and elitism, and it's all done in an art deco style. Then he blackmails Mr. Freeze into trying to freeze the surface world and kill them all off or something, I don't remember the specifics of the plan, but the start was so similar that I immediately was like, huh... I've seen this before.
Still, hell of a fun game so far.