BioShock is getting Game-Of-The-Year (GOTY) class reviews and judging by major E3 06-07 awards it has won so far, it's clear that this is a game to watch for. But do you have pure faith in this game? Do you absolutely believe in BioShock? Here are 10 reasons to make you believe:
1.Crysis Quality Graphics: BioShock after Crysis is the game that durig E3 06 was the biggest contender for best graphics awards and while Crysis rightfully won most of the tech awards, many praised the BioShock even when it was using Unreal Engine 2.5. Now, designers have completely shifted to Unreal Engine 3 and the result is a sight to behold. We have the textures that are amazingly realistic, great real-time light and shadow effects that are top-notch, the particle and special effects that are beautiful and complicated and finally, the amazing models for enemies and other characters that give more than life to those little sisters and big daddies.
2.Sound Effects To Match Call Of Duty: You are trapped in an underwater city, you are alone and then you suddenly hear frighteningly heavy footsteps. Then voice of a small girl is heard. You follow the child's sound, only to find an monstrous Big Daddy. The designers have put unbelievable effort into making all the required sound effects. Big Daddy's heavy grunts in one hand Little Sister's cries, screams and many other reactions are just for this encounter! Sound of the water or broken elevator door or unusual noises of environment are followed by classic 40s music and great voice acting from game's few but important talking characters.
3.Rapture, The Living City: We have seen so little of BioShock and the under water city of Rapture but the few locations that we've met so far are more than interesting. The thing to remember is that Rapture is here for us to exploit and there are more than enough tools to do so. From mechanical guard posts to moving water in city's corridors, Rapture has everything you need to enjoy the game but its definitely not the place you want to end up by yourself.
4.Remember SWAT4's AI: Ken Levine mentioned in an interview that SWAT4 was a good experience for them specially in terms of crafting a perfect AI for all NPC characters. For for BioShock, they have outdone themselves and that title's unmatched AI. It's not just enemies and allies anymore, these creatures live here and not all of them want to kill you. A good example is Big Daddy who just wants to protect the little Sister and will do anything to achieve his goal. The Sister has her own varied and unique responses from hiding behind that Daddy to running for her life; "This is living".
5.The Choice, Fighting for Freedom: Many games promise freedom but only a few achieve this feat. BioShock is not just a game with freedom, it IS the freedom. It is the whole point of the game. When you are in trouble (Be it an angry Big Daddy or a bunch of deformed Rapture citizens) there is not just more than one way out. The possibilities are endless. In a very simple example shown in the "3 Ways video" (It's old now but in case you missed it before, watch it here http://gamevideos.com/video/id/12480), the designers showed 3 different methods to handle the situation. Now imagine, not only every creature and object inside Rapture is a tool for you, you also have all your other power-ups. Ultimately the fate of Rapture and all of its inhabitants rests in your hands. Will you exploit those little Sisters or help them? The choice is yours but so are the short and long term consequences.
6.Deus Ex!: Named the best PC game of all time by CVG, Deus Ex was the game that perfectly mixed RPG and FPS into one entity. It had augmentation and other up-grades for player's body and many other unique abilities and weapons. BioShock has Plasmids that have a similair functionality to those augmentations and are removable and can be up-graded. Though instead of experience points you need Adam and creatures of Rapture would kill for it. Would you do the same and kill a little Sister to extract Adam from her body?
7.Half-Life Had A Great Story: A FPS game, told entirely from eyes of the game's hero Dr. Freeman, simply revolutionized story telling in video games and allowed player to experience everything from his or her own eyes. Now in BioShock you end up in the under water city with a fallen civilization. You don't know what's going on and what caused all this but to get out, finding answers might be the first logical step. And this the thing beyond Gordon's adventure here is that BioShock is a completely non-linear game and you as the player create your own story and every time you start over it's a new experience. The ending of story? It's in your hands.
8.Falloutish Art Direction: All of the technology in the world alone can't make art. Only an artist's mind is able to create real art. BioShock has such a unique and exquisite art direction that few games can match. Exotic locations of the underwater city and the classic and old feel of the world are more than nostalogic. Remember how original Fallout mixed post-apocalyptic future with 50s mood and feel? BioShock is doing that miles under the sea and is using the state-of-the-art technology of 2007 to do so. As a tribute to the timeless classic Fallout, you can see the Vault Boy in BioShock as a cute easter egg. Just don't expect to find a Vault after you follow that Vault Boy to Mens Room.
9.System Shock's Atmosphere: If you ever tried the incredible original System Shock game, you how much a good mood and atmosphere can help the game experience. Irrational made System Shock 2, a game that virtually every gaming site and magazine has chosen as the scariest game of all time and all of them agreed that it has the best mood and atmosphere ever seen in a game. Now, not only BioShock is the spiritual sequel to that game, its coming from the same team and many are already claiming that it has surpassed System Shock 2. All of those elements from graphics and AI to story and characters to voice acting and sound effects make BioShock's atmosphere so unforgettable.
10.Shooter 2.0: While original Doom came after Wolf 3D, it is still considered the father of all FPS games. It was Doom that showed many now routine standards to developers inclduing level design, controls, multiplayer and AI. After Doom, many other great FPS games have come from Unreal series and id's own Quake to Half Life and GoldenEye. They have all improved different aspects of FPS games but recently many have started complaining that FPS is a genre that hasn't changed that much since it's birth (Much like fighting games that are mostly the same as the arcade days). Now, BioShock doens't have multiplayer (Yet) but other than that its a totally different and unique experience from all those previous games. And it's different from Deus Ex, System Shock, Half-Life and many other classics while has many similarities to them. When Irrational (Now broken in two thanks to 2K Games' dumbness) started working on BioShock years ago and before 2K Games became its publisher, they promised that this title would be "Shooter 2.0" compared to all those games that were shooter 1.0 to shooter 1.5.
In the end, BioShock is game that makes you think. Thinking about your options, goals, actions and their consequences. This is not an puzzle adventure but big guns are not always the best solution here. Your ultimate weapon is your brain not the controller or mouse & keyboard.
If you still are not fully convinced then go and buy a lame yearly sports title from EA or something. If you have become a true believer, then welcome to Rapture. This is Red, signing out.
"The Arad-based (Romania) indie games developer Predict Edumedia are today very happy and excited to announce that their turn-based roguelike/dungeon-crawler/RPG "ARHAEKON", is coming to PC via Steam Early Access in Q2 2024." - Jonas Ek, TGG.
PlayStation tweets: "Helldivers fans -- we’ve heard your feedback on the Helldivers 2 account linking update. The May 6 update, which would have required Steam and PlayStation Network account linking for new players and for current players beginning May 30, will not be moving forward.
We’re still learning what is best for PC players and your feedback has been invaluable. Thanks again for your continued support of Helldivers 2 and we’ll keep you updated on future plans."
Now, will gamers take all this fervor and aim it at the likes of EA, Ubisoft, Take2, and others who have way more invasive and problem-causing apps for Steam games?
Sony is like a whipping boy for the industry and it's just lame at this point. This is like my Activision account I use for Call of Duty. I'm not a 'fan'' of Activision but it's free and it comes in handy. The PSN account would come handy if they decide to do cross saves and I'm sure some other stuff too. I have an account for practically everything, including this site. I need a Microsoft account to play some PS5 games. No one has been able to explain what the big problem with a PSN account was.
They dont want one because they cant trust them with all the times Sony got hacked which makes no sense cause steam got hacked so does everythinv else in this world. Been with playstation and i never had a problem security wise. PlayStation doesnt hold SSN and you dont have to put you credit card on it either. Pc users just wanna cry, its a PlayStation game they should be happy Sony putting games on pc to begin with. Also funny they dont trust Sony but yet would play there games when on pc.
Yes, people have explained the problem with a PSN account...there has been 15 million articles on it and surely you read a few and saw some comments...it is because PSN is not supported in a lot of countries meaning people in those countries can't create a PSN account and therefore would be unable to play the game at all.
On PS5 even crossplay doesn’t work with all PC accounts. I have plenty of PC friends where the invites never go through and theirs aren’t received. Crossplay without a unified account system is always a nightmare, none of us should be punching in friend codes in 2024.
They shouldn’t have tried to change this post launch but they should have had it in on day 1.
@redknight80. If the main complaint is that people in over 150 countries cannot create PSN accounts then Sony needs to get its programming/logistics/legal team to make it available. If that happens, the next time Sony releases a multiplayer game on Steam with a PSN account requirement would this stop a repeat of this backlash?
Christopher with all I do respect, your bias is showing heavily, be positive, congratulate people and ask for them to do more, no need for this passive aggressive bitterness
He has literally failed articles based on whether or not it will upset Sony fanboys lol. We know where he stands and it's not neutral.
You are the one showing bias. Christopher is 100% right here, all this HDII and PSN linking is a gigantic hypocrisy.
Much need for it, because I know no one is going to turn any of this attention anywhere and it will just die out until the next Internet band wagon pops up. Gamers are proven to have power, they will then squander it rather than utilize it where it matters.
I’d argue there’s a better softer approach they could do, just make it optional with bonus for people who did it like some free cosmetics and make it required only for cross-play and cross-save purposes. That way the people who can do it have bonus incentives and people in countries without psn can still play without problems.
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The difference is EA, Ubisoft, Take2, etc didn't release their games and then down the line implement forced account linkage under the guise of "security". Gamers know from when they buy EA and Ubisoft games that you'll need an account with those companies. Also when was the last time a company delisted an extremely popular game from over 100 countries?
It was listed on the game as a requirement and it was a decision by arrowhead so that people could get into the game. In future companies won't be able to make such decisions and you will simply be left unable to play the game.
Actually, all of them did this by adding their apps to existing games once they released their apps. So, no, they're not any different.
Thank you! I have a PS account, but bought this on PC. I just hate having to do stupid stuff like this just to get into the game I bought.
You should try getting a resident evil MP working not as bad as making a sony account but its right up there i tried with a fake dump email holy spam batman. I never finished the account creation
Yet this "power" hasn't changed any of the actually greedy stuff these greedy companies do...
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 remakes are likely off the table forever, as new claims from anonymous Activision devs bury your hopes for good.
"Tony Hawk himself purported that plans were in place until Vicarious Visions’ obligations to Activision’s mammoth FPS game franchise, Call of Duty, got in the way"
Same what happened to Raven Softworks sadly
We'll never get Singularity 2
The article says it was too ambitious for them to remake 1-4 in a single package for the deadline they had, not that remakes of 3+4 are too ambitious to be made in general. So they cut back to 1+2.
They were going to remake 3+4 later but unfortunately they got diverted to the Call Of Duty mines.
If Microsoft want to prove that they have had any sort of positive influence on Activision whatsoever, I'll be expecting Pro Skater 3+4.
Just let Toys For Bob remake the maps. The mechanics are already perfect.
This is kinda pathetic on Activision. Hire someone else to do a remake if you have to. Not every dev needs to be working on cod
Yeah, on top of that who wants to buy COD every year? Seriously.. any good MP game should easily be good for 2-3 years before needing a sequel if it has enough content or a few updates here and there.
All this stuff only makes me want the game even more. Hopefully, all those long time "BioShock on PS3" "rumors" are true. I am not a PC gamer nor ... . Anyways, well written article. :)
I hate you MK_Red, I really do. Just when you think you can't look forward to a game any more already, someone makes an article like this. I was a little disappointed that you didn't go over the level of customization you can put into your (various) weapons, including around three types of ammo for each gun (for different types of enemies) etc.
Also, I think it would've been cool to add the level of interaction with your environment. Examples of this are: using puddles of water to increase electrical damage on enemies, light a teddy bear on fire and then throw it at others etc. And I've already told you my views on multiplayer, so I think that about covers it! Overall, very good article and it only makes me anticipate the game even more.
Good job, it was a very well thought out article.
thats some good writing MK
number 3 and 8 are what drew me in :D
Next gen graphics, AI, story, etc... OH YEAH BABY! My 360 is definitely delivering the goods!