Interesting. Which in this case is me going ‘I’m not sure how I feel about this.’
The rumours were true: The next BioShock game is officially in the works from Cloud Chamber Studios, a newly established team at 2K Games made of up several developers involved in the making of the original BioShock and both of its sequels.
Details of what this next BioShock title will look like are scarce but, in a press release announcing the news, President of 2K David Ismailer promised the game would continue in the series’ tradition of “powerful narrative and iconic, first-person shooter gameplay.”
The complex feeling is because while I liked Bioshock: Infinite fine*, I’m not really sure if I would call it a video game. Or if it is one, it was one of the old-style ones where there was no significant variation to the plot. You had one ending in that game, and you were going to get there eventually, and it didn’t really matter what you did in the meantime. Which didn’t make it bad, but it did make it weird to my sensibilities. And still does.
So I guess it’s great that they’re making another title in the series, but: will they be going down the same road as the latest entry? Because if they do, they might as well make an actual movie this time. Fewer demands on my time that way.
Moe Lane
*I obviously had no problem with the game’s apparently controversial (to some) take that violent Commie revolutionaries are just as much assholes as are violent white supremacists. In fact, I found that observation refreshing. And some of the reactions to it, amusing.
I played the first one, and felt that something important was missing (though I could never put my finger on what). Didn’t play the other two. I’ve heard good things about the second one. Read a plot synopsis of the third one. And my reaction to the summary of the ending was to essentially roll my eyes and be grateful that I didn’t spend any money on it.
Bioshock 2 is better than 1 from a gameplay perspective, but has a worse story (still not awful though). It has a great DLC story (Minerva’s Den) that is absolutely worth playing.
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Bioshock Infinite is very mixed. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my time with it but its combat is very grindy, the story is not very well constructed and it has very pronounced political/cultural angle that I found libelous. The only game I’ve ever played where, when I was done with it, I was actually angry. I played it a second time to see if it struck me the same way or if I just over reacted, but it still made me mad. The story DLCs are interesting but really drive home the point that Ken Levine was out of ideas and just began repeating himself. I know people who worked on it and tales of its development have further soured my opinion of it as the years have gone by.
‘s really the main problem with Bioshock .. it’s a “runs on rails” game, and the rails become a tad .. obvious.
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*Especially* when they decided to (stupidly) emphasize the FPS experience (and dump the decent Bioshock mechanics to steal FPS mechanics from Resident Evil or whatever ..) …
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If I wanted to play a pure FPS, I’d play Resident Evil .. Bioshock Infinite tossed all the ‘goodwill’ they’d earned for telling an interesting story and dumped it, and forced learning a new (and f*ckin’ stupid) mechanic system) along the way.
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Mew
Commies are (bleeps) is the first thing I’ve heard about Bioshock Infinite that makes me interested in playing it.
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Re: junior, Bioshock 2 was pretty horrible. The story wasn’t exactly bad, but it wasn’t good, and it absolutely trashed continuity with the first one, and internal consistency with itself. The power level is inexplicably much higher than the first one, despite this making no sense. The gameplay actively kicks willing suspension of disbelief in the crotch. The example that drove me absolutely nuts was that enemies infinitely spawn wherever you’re not looking–regardless of if there was any reasonable way for enemies to appear in the blind alley you’ve just cleared and are walking out of.
If you’re hoping of a game where you get to fight commies, you’re gonna be disappointed. I mean, yes, you do get to shoot commies, but they are cast as sympathetic but misguided idealists fighting actual racist capitalist exploiters.
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Have to disagree on your Bioshock 2 take. While I found the story lacking compared to the first game, I found the gameplay to be much improved, and the Minerva’s Den dlc is just awesome.
Tastes differ. I absolutely hated the gameplay of 2. I finished it, but was tempted to quit in disgust on a number of occasions.
The DLC might be brilliant, but I spent enough time and money on the game, thanks. (For those who haven’t played it, it’s a short game. And I bought it used.)
Bioshock (First and Greatest) for some reason just rang perfect to me for some reason. The setting. An art deco underwater city. I do not think I have to explain to anyone here that Objectivism sounds like a great idea, until you realize Rand/Ryan are crazy. Music pitch perfect. The level design was amazing and worked really well. You truly got a feeling of people living and working there. The gameplay is almost an afterthought.
I still cannot understand how anyone could play the game the first time through and actually sacrifice the Little sisters. I did it the first time with the save option, then thought, I wonder what happens the other way. It is horrifying how they portray it. I felt… dirty.
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The second one. Hmmm. It seemed to be trying to take the flip side of the philosophical coin from Objectivism with the kind of commie, touchy feeling bad woman. They tried to spend more time with the back story of the Little Sisters and Big Daddies. I think this is another case of mystery being better in some cases than a prosaic explanation.
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Infinite. They pissed me right off at first with the Racist, Patriotic, Racist, Religious bad guys. Columbia is cool looking, but for some reason was not as next door to reality as Rapture.
And that is without getting into the story. It’s a mess is the best thing I can say for it.
Your comment about the Little Sisters was the exact thing that the developers were looking for. If you looked at the Little Sisters and thought, “That’s an innocent little girl! I could never hurt one of those!”, then you were strong enough to resist the urge to view the Little Sisters as mobile sources of a very addictive substance.
If, however, you gave in even once to the urge to kill a Little Sister, then you obviously didn’t have that attitude. And the addiction would get you in the end.
The developers screwed it up, though, by making the rewards for sparing the sisters more valuable than what you got for not doing so. This made the “spare” option better from a purely practical point of view instead of only doing it for moral reasons. IMO, the only advantage to sparing the sisters should have been the good ending.
Out of curiosity, are any of you in the Playstation tribe enjoying Titanfall 2 for the first time?
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I can only look at those 80K+ player counts with envy. (And that’s not even counting those playing the campaign!) Maybe it’ll be coming to Xbox’s Games with Gold after this success.
I can only hope. Player counts on XB are generally just a bit North of 1K. I’ve helped enough noobs on Frontier Defense to know we’re still getting new players from Apex, but Skill-Based Matchmaking means I don’t see them outside of that. (shrug) l don’t enjoy pub-stomping, but I are a lot of “awesome but impractical” weapons I’d love to rank up that are borderline suicidal to use in the current environment. Heck, I’ll even run Holopilot and mostly leave my Titan on auto while running Softball/Wingman. I’d still most likely keep a positive K/D, but it would be sporting.