Currently Playing in 2019....

I love all 3, I'd agree Infinite is the worst of the 3 in terms of gameplay, as for centrist politics in infinite I disagree, they show religion in a very bad light and tie it to racism, as well as capitalism. The 2 DLC's for infinite are excellently done, great to see Rapture when it wasn't ruined plus despite the hubris, the end of Infinite is still up there with the greatest game endings of all time for me.

I finished Bioshock 2 a while back, easily the best of the 3. I started Minerva's Den and I just can't get into it, I don't enjoy the characters and I think I can spot the plot 'twist' a mile off.

I want the first game to be remade as a walking simulator, the setting had me won but I stopped playing pretty much as soon as the combat started

Sonic CD, courtesy of a spare steam key from Jazzem. What a homie.

Definitely glad it's this version I'm playing. Widescreen, 60fps special stages and a pretty great interface with other extra features. The game looks especially nice on the sharp filter. Quickly got through the game thanks to the save feature (not quite sure if it was as generous in the original), and I'm playing through it more deliberately now to get all the time stones. I know about the other way to get the good ending, but I've decided to just do it this way.

On my tour of classic Sonic games, from 1 to 2 and now CD, CD is shaping up to be my favourite one so far, though I appreciate both CD and 2 were trying to achieve different things - CD being the more platform-oriented one. The feel of CD is just so nice though. I like the look of it and the soundtrack is so great. The music is already great in those other classic sonic games, but in this one it's on another level. Very modern and unique even for today.

Overall, I like the bosses more than the ones in other games.

Will say though, there's a tendency for there to be bits in levels where you're stuck in a looping section, and you have to intricately make your way out - but sometimes the out feels a bit random or overly trial-and-error. These sections ranged from mostly harmless to not-too-fun. There's one that has you sandwiched between a half-loop and a upwardly curved tunnel of bumpers, that for a moment made me think I was just stuck. It was purposeful design, of course, but a bit strange.

That's a relatively minor niggle though. Great game and a great port.

OrangeRKN wrote:I want the first game to be remade as a walking simulator, the setting had me won but I stopped playing pretty much as soon as the combat started

Oh hell yeah. Something like Tacoma set in Rapture would have been amazing.

The combat in Bioshock wasn't that bad, I enjoy it far more than Any CoD single player campaign. Hacking security bots and camera's added some genuinly emergent gameplay to the world, setting someone on fire for instance would make them run for water and if they are standing in water you can electrocute it. Then there's the Big Daddy encounters, where you can use mines and trip wires to add strategy to how you go about taking one down.

To be frank, quitting Bioshock as soon as the combat started is ridiculous. I do not enjoy walking simulators and B1 has many areas where you're left to your own devices to discover the world and its audio logs.

Playing through Prey on new game plus. Typhoon abilities are fun. Decoy warping and then shooting a typhoon in the head, it never gets old

Also turned into a cup

I also detest audio logs

Got Dead Cells yesterday and spend all last night playing it, really fun and challenging game, the combat is top notch.

OrangeRKN wrote:I also detest audio logs

They're kinda essential for Bioshock trilogy, they are really well acted and help the fiction along massively.

Photek wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:I also detest audio logs

They're kinda essential for Bioshock trilogy, they are really well acted and help the fiction along massively.

And theyre better than having to stop and read reams of stuff to get some lore. Having it play while you get on with the game is a much better experience.

Audio logs are worse than text logs (which are still bad) because while both completely break the flow of the gameplay, at least I can read text quickly at my own pace. Audio logs are incredibly slow in comparison. Either I stop playing to listen to the audio logs, or I keep playing and invariably miss them.

They're just bad design and a crutch. It's not how narrative should be handled in an interactive medium.

Unless it's MGS and codec calls, because they are obviously brilliant

OrangeRKN wrote:Audio logs are worse than text logs (which are still bad) because while both completely break the flow of the gameplay, at least I can read text quickly at my own pace. Audio logs are incredibly slow in comparison. Either I stop playing to listen to the audio logs, or I keep playing and invariably miss them.

They're just bad design and a crutch. It's not how narrative should be handled in an interactive medium.

Unless it's MGS and codec calls, because they are obviously brilliant

Audio logs were a fantastic idea when they were used in the original System Shock where they made more narrative sense (seriously who the strawberry float is carrying around those massive tape recorders in bioshock?!) and were a novel solution to the problem of telling an interesting story about a place that's gone to hell.

It's another area where Bioshock lifted from the greats of the past but never really added anything or improved on them. As a one-off experience Bioshock was enjoyable, but it hasn't stood the test of time well.

Gotta love that accent on Atlas though:

"SPLOICERS!"

Brerlappin wrote:The combat really is dreadful in Bioshock. Its not just that the base gunplay is poor (poor feedback, poor aiming, guns just dont "feel" right), but the constant need to play pipemania to hack a turret or sentry bot and thus give yourself any kind of advantage, slows the pace of every firefight down to absolutely glacial proportions. Theres also absolutely no reason why you should have to choose between using plasmids or guns, it jsut limits what you can do. And the "one two punch" of zap em, den wack em, as Atlas would say, is yet again just slowed down by and made fiddly by having to switch between plasmids and guns for your one-two.

Believe me, i say this as someone who finished Bioshock about 7 or 8 times and though of it as my favourite game of all time circa 2007-8. Its just a game that better in nostalgia than in actuality.

I haven't played any of them since release, maybe it's best to leave my memories intact

Brerlappin wrote:I dont know if i prefer his hammy Oirish accent or his hammy Noo Yawk accent for Fontaine.

Careful not to diss Fontaine, remember: you don't strawberry float Fontaine, Fontaine strawberry floats you!

Brerlappin wrote:Honestly if i could mod Bioshock to make it a fun game, my list would be:

Remove all sound effects from Vending machines
Lower the volume of security alarms, bots and turrets by 80%
Let you use plasmids and guns at the same time
Eve regenerates automatically
Remove pipemania and just make hacking a plasmid you buy that insta-hacks everything
The game ends after you meet Ryan

Solid list, I quite liked pipemania at first but it was one of the shittier parts of the game.

I'd suggest that a key thing to change is either a complete overhaul of the shooting mechanics, or to just remove them entirely.

Beyond that most of my changes essentially amount to "make it like System Shock 2 again" and remove all the bad attempts at "streamlining" that they put in, but then I figure I would rather just play SS2!

re: Bioshock 1, any of you have preference on modded original vs Remastered on PC? The game's been on my backlog for ages, part of the reason I've put it off is that there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus on the definitive version.

Kriken wrote:Sonic CD, courtesy of a spare steam key from Jazzem. What a homie.

Definitely glad it's this version I'm playing. Widescreen, 60fps special stages and a pretty great interface with other extra features. The game looks especially nice on the sharp filter. Quickly got through the game thanks to the save feature (not quite sure if it was as generous in the original), and I'm playing through it more deliberately now to get all the time stones. I know about the other way to get the good ending, but I've decided to just do it this way.

On my tour of classic Sonic games, from 1 to 2 and now CD, CD is shaping up to be my favourite one so far, though I appreciate both CD and 2 were trying to achieve different things - CD being the more platform-oriented one. The feel of CD is just so nice though. I like the look of it and the soundtrack is so great. The music is already great in those other classic sonic games, but in this one it's on another level. Very modern and unique even for today.

Overall, I like the bosses more than the ones in other games.

Will say though, there's a tendency for there to be bits in levels where you're stuck in a looping section, and you have to intricately make your way out - but sometimes the out feels a bit random or overly trial-and-error. These sections ranged from mostly harmless to not-too-fun. There's one that has you sandwiched between a half-loop and a upwardly curved tunnel of bumpers, that for a moment made me think I was just stuck. It was purposeful design, of course, but a bit strange.

That's a relatively minor niggle though. Great game and a great port.

Wahey! Glad you're enjoying it And yeah definitely go for time stone method for good ending on first go, the other method is fun but almost certainly requires a guide due to a few obtusely hidden locations.

Brerlappin wrote:

Jazzem wrote:re: Bioshock 1, any of you have preference on modded original vs Remastered on PC? The game's been on my backlog for ages, part of the reason I've put it off is that there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus on the definitive version.
.

AFAIK, there are no mods for the original, or even the remastered version. It's apparently a very difficult game to mod, I've seen a few mods in the wild but nothing that would actually improve the game at all

I was thinking primarily of removing the 30fps lock on animations and physics, as well as anything else that needs fixing. Didn't know about the difficulty of modding it, that's a bugger

Looking over the PCGamingWiki entries for Original and Remastered, they both seem incredibly temperamental D: Talk of lost save files on Remastered is bothersome

Atlas’ Irish accent was done by an Irish dude and Fontaine was a diff actor.

Finally reached the warping section of The Messenger. I'm really very average at this game. Over 150 deaths to reach this point.

Anyway, enjoying the switching between times puzzle dynamic. Just the right balance between thinking and experimenting. The map is classic Metroid. I've found the first music note, but not sure if I'm supposed to continue exploring this specific area?

Coming off the back of Hollow Knight, I think I have very different standards to what opening up a whole world means.

Bioshock's gameplay was always kind of lacklustre. The gunplay is off. And it does lack impact.

I agree about the story pacing as well. The end of the game is rubbish after the reveal. It's a great reveal, but they really should have ended it shortly after that. The world building is fantastic though.

It's a 7/10 through and through.