Woozie
August 8th, 2008, 10:04 PM
WARNING
This thread could potentially spoil parts of several games for you. If you have not finished the game being discussed, or haven't played it yet and care about the story, then I suggest not reading. I'll never reveal a big story plot, for instance in BioShock (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED): Atlas is Fontaine that was not revealed, and similar things will not be revealed. However if you're super anal about what a "spoiler" is. Like those people who didn't watch Halo 3 trailers before it came out because it showed new weapons. Then you shouldn't be reading.
Thanks.
_____________
Well I'm making this thread like I said I would (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7888349#post7888349), but I figured if I listed all the reasons for why all of those games, then it would be a jumbled mess, and people wouldn't want to read a giant wall of text, and people wouldn't want to reply or have discussions since everyone was all over the place. So instead of listing everything I'm going to do BioShock first, and then I'll do the other games, every few days, or maybe until I milk one discussion for what it's worth, and then move on to the next.
So BioShock, I tend to be more cynical and judgmental about games that I think, get a little too much press. But at the same time, I understand that some games will always have that hype around them, and I don't hold that against them. Metal Gear Solid 4, Gears of war 2, Halo 3, Final Fantasy, they'll always have massive hype, and I understand that. However when a new ip is announced, and it gets so much coverage, and begin to wonder why. I still have the GameInformer issue with a cover story about BioShock, so many years ago. I remember reading the first few pages and then it sort of dawned on me "This game sounds stupid." I tried to see what everyone else saw. Apparently the water graphics were amazing? The atmosphere was great? I just couldn't get it.
Regardless August 2007 rolled by, and I didn't really have anything else to play at the time (Stranglehold was delayed) so I picked up BioShock to give it a go. I saw reviews saying it was a great game, which meant to me it was a "good" game. So I started playing, and the game never really gripped me. And I sort of played the rest of the game very bored, and never felt like I was part of anything big. So let me get into an overview of why I dislike this game without some lame linear story telling method:
HOLY CRAP 2903 WORDS ON ONE GAME? HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN. I have a blog where I posted this thing with images, if that helps keeping the thing interesting. If you want that then PM me or rep me so you can read this in a bearable format. I'll try not to make the other installments so incredible long.
_________________
Gameplay
Gameplay. No one ever praises this game for gameplay, so I figured I'd start off on common ground. This gameplay isn't very good, it's acceptable, but it's not "great" or anything. You have a few weapons, and they all sort of act the same. The weapons are fine though, it's the progression of the enemies and how most of your weapons are eliminated, for virtually no reason. At the start of the game your pistol deals devastating blows to enemies. Two shots in the torso, one in the head, or several in the limbs will take a guy down no problem. But soon after that, your pistol now needs 10 shots for an enemy to die. Then you need to use a machine gun, but then that stops doing anything effective, so you use a shotgun. And by the end of the game you're using flamebullets on your shotgun, and rocket launchers, cause that's all that really works.
Even when upgrading these guns, they still act virtually useless at certain points in the game. But you're fighting the same enemies. So what gives? What's the point of making enemies harder for no reason. If they wanted to make the game harder, why not have MORE drugged up people near the end, or maybe just more enemies on screen. How come there was never a two against one Big Daddy fight scene like in Resident Evil 4 or something? I just got bored fighting these guys, pretty early on, but I had to keep sticking it to them for the remaining 15 hours of the game.
As for Plasmids, I found those equally as useless. After your machine gun stops being effective, so do all of your plasmids. Incinerate adds a nice char look to your foes, and frost can buy you sometime to reload, but everyone else? Useless. They barley do any damage, and it's not like you can set up elaborate traps like the game's trailers lead you to believe, it's not that easy. So the plasmids, the part of the game that was supposed to add "flavor" into the combat, totally fails on that front.
Big Daddies are probably the highlight of the game's combat, but you're still using the inferior weapons, and inadequate plasmids. So Big Daddies just seem like "big enemies" instead of fun bosses or something similar. I give the game props for allowing the Big Daddies to roam around full levels freely, but they didn't seem all that exciting to fight.
Characters
Am I the only one who found almost every character to be completely forgettable and unlikeable? Steinman was super insane, so he was entertaining, a good choice for first important character. Other than that though, it's just Sander Cohen. Everyone else, totally do not care. Tenebaum seemed like some snotty bitch who didn't even like me. Atlas was a cynical dick. Fontatine was over played, and everyone else I don't even remember. Apparently there's some doctor in the game, some chick who gets gassed to death, and a few other celebs show up, and I didn't like ANY of them.
Since I'm surrounded by a world of people I don't care about, I don't really feel like my actions have any importance, so they could've manipulated the story telling in a way to make the game a lot more fun. Even Andrew Ryan, although he had a great voice actor, seemed entirely one-dimensional. This game sort of shows, when everyone in the cast is an *******, people stop caring, didn't Gone Baby Gone teach that to the industry?
Moral Choice
In combination with the whole "I don't care about any of this" the moral choice seemed totally transparent and unimportant. They're little girls? What makes me think they're little girls? Because it's a small child avatar in a video game? Let me give you two examples of how tragic, or shocking video game deaths are supposed to be done. I'll give several examples for both sides to appeal to all audiences.
Example #1
Final Fantasy 7, obviously Aeris (Aerith???) dies in the game at the hands of Sephiroth. This is considered a "shocking" moment in video game history, and a lot of gamers, genuinely felt sad during the cutscene, and developed a real emotional hate for the game's villain. Aeris is in the game for the first twenty hours or so of the game, and after the player has developed relying on her healing ability, and enjoyed her relationship with Cloud, she's strucken down with a sword. They actually missed Aeris being in the game.
Example #2
Similarly, the ending of Grand Theft Auto IV can have Roman, your cousin die. This is also tragic and sad because throughout GTA4, Roman explains how he wants to get away from the life of crime, earn his dollar, and live his life. So in the last events of GTA4, Niko picks to do a deal with his sworn enemy to let his cousin live a happy life (allegedly). That's why it's so tragic when Roman is shot and killed because of these actions. It's an ironic, but depressing fate. Since players got to have a relationship with Roman, whether to loved or hated him, knew he was important to Niko, and felt bad for his situation.
ON THE FLIP SIDE OF THINGS
Example #1
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The player's main character Carl CJ Johnson is forced to return home after his mom dies in a gang drive-by. The player also learns early on, that CJ's younger brother Brian, was killed in a related accident. However the player doesn't see this as a reason to be sad, but rather an explanation of "THIS IS WHY YOU ARE HERE." They feel no emotional attachment to Brian, a small little boy, or CJ's mom, a caring parent, because they know nothing about them at all, and what they've done, who they are, etc.
Example #2
In the first few hours of Crysis around half of your team dies from the alien threat. Unlike in other squad based, story heavy games like Call of Duty 4, you never got to build a companion ship with your fellow soldiers, so they're death, is entirely meaningless.
The same thing goes with BioShock. Maybe I'm sick in the head, but I don't assume something that looks like a little girl, is innocent and needs to be saved. And since I know nothing about this girl, the moral choice reveals that the game is a video game. It EXPECTS you to feel some emotion, and think about what you're supposed to do, but that didn't happen with me. Part of the reason being is that it completely takes you out of the experience. It's not like you have to take out a gun and shoot her yourself, two giant X and Y buttons appear on screen and ask "SAVE OR KILL?" This takes you out of the experience, you realize there's nothing trivial at stake, and you no longer care. So the whole point of the moral choice, is negated.
Story
I've never considered a game with heavy lore to have a "good story." BioShock is exactly that. What's funny about this, is that there's actually another game that's crucified for having a terrible story, but has pretty much, as much depth as BioShock. That game is Gears of War. There's a whole explanation of how the Locust got here, why they attacked, what happened to Marcus, who Dom is looking for, Cole's history in sports, and how life on earth used to be. But you won't find it in the game, the difference with BioShock is that you CAN find all that lore in the game, but you could play the entire game without seeing any of that stuff.
The difference between the two is that BioShock does the old trick of fooling players into thinking that the story is well thought out and "complex" because it adds political undertones that are not often seen in video games, and people assume it's amazing. So pretty much. Rapture is a city of complete freedom. Freedom from moral standards, freedom from ethics, freedom from laws, freedom from nations, governments, and power hungry hooligans. People like Steinman can reign in this town because they can do whatever type of science they wish, without worrying about people calling him a murder or sick freak. That's pretty much it.
Andrew Ryan's whole "A man chooses, a slave obeys" is about how the only way you can be a man is to not follow what people tell you to do. He "chose" Rapture because he is a "man" and looks down upon those who complain about their situation, but don't do anything about it. Maye I'm just some supreme intellect (Which I highly doubt) but to me that doesn't sound very amazing to me. Just because it isn't told directly to the player's face, and they have to think for a moment to understand it, they assume it's the best piece of writing ever. I think the story is overrated, and I've pretty much covered everything story related in BioShock, within two paragraphs.
And the story isn't really about anyone. You're some no name nobody, that you never get to know, you get to find out a super dark secret about yourself, but after that? Nothing. So it's odd that you're seen as some hero, since you could very well be a piece of cardboard with a frowny face on it.
As for the "atmosphere" it seems like they continuously tried to create tricks for the player to make them believe they witnessed something amazing. I found every area to look exactly the same, except for Sander Cohen's section which had some creativity to it to make it stand out. I felt like I was playing the same sequence over and over again with different dialog sequences. And the color palette from "green" to "brownish green" didn't help much.
And on a side note, that's completely unrelated, I thought the Water in the game just looked like Water. Far Cry from 2004 has better Water. Age of Empires 3 has better water, Age of Mythology has better water, the Water in this game is nothing special.
Conclusion.
I found the gameplay acceptable at best, the story to be populated with characters I don't care about, and a plotline that seemed as pretentious as No Country For Old Men. It doesn't have any deep meaning, and everyone's praise for it is sort of sickening. I consider BioShock a very average game. Maybe the seven section out of a ten point scale would be appropriate. But I don't see why everyone was so excited about the game, and loved it so dearly.
_________________
Dear god if anyone reads that you get free rep. I hope SOMEONE read that and has something to talk about.
This thread could potentially spoil parts of several games for you. If you have not finished the game being discussed, or haven't played it yet and care about the story, then I suggest not reading. I'll never reveal a big story plot, for instance in BioShock (DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT PLAYED): Atlas is Fontaine that was not revealed, and similar things will not be revealed. However if you're super anal about what a "spoiler" is. Like those people who didn't watch Halo 3 trailers before it came out because it showed new weapons. Then you shouldn't be reading.
Thanks.
_____________
Well I'm making this thread like I said I would (http://forums.gamewinners.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7888349#post7888349), but I figured if I listed all the reasons for why all of those games, then it would be a jumbled mess, and people wouldn't want to read a giant wall of text, and people wouldn't want to reply or have discussions since everyone was all over the place. So instead of listing everything I'm going to do BioShock first, and then I'll do the other games, every few days, or maybe until I milk one discussion for what it's worth, and then move on to the next.
So BioShock, I tend to be more cynical and judgmental about games that I think, get a little too much press. But at the same time, I understand that some games will always have that hype around them, and I don't hold that against them. Metal Gear Solid 4, Gears of war 2, Halo 3, Final Fantasy, they'll always have massive hype, and I understand that. However when a new ip is announced, and it gets so much coverage, and begin to wonder why. I still have the GameInformer issue with a cover story about BioShock, so many years ago. I remember reading the first few pages and then it sort of dawned on me "This game sounds stupid." I tried to see what everyone else saw. Apparently the water graphics were amazing? The atmosphere was great? I just couldn't get it.
Regardless August 2007 rolled by, and I didn't really have anything else to play at the time (Stranglehold was delayed) so I picked up BioShock to give it a go. I saw reviews saying it was a great game, which meant to me it was a "good" game. So I started playing, and the game never really gripped me. And I sort of played the rest of the game very bored, and never felt like I was part of anything big. So let me get into an overview of why I dislike this game without some lame linear story telling method:
HOLY CRAP 2903 WORDS ON ONE GAME? HOW THE HELL DID THAT HAPPEN. I have a blog where I posted this thing with images, if that helps keeping the thing interesting. If you want that then PM me or rep me so you can read this in a bearable format. I'll try not to make the other installments so incredible long.
_________________
Gameplay
Gameplay. No one ever praises this game for gameplay, so I figured I'd start off on common ground. This gameplay isn't very good, it's acceptable, but it's not "great" or anything. You have a few weapons, and they all sort of act the same. The weapons are fine though, it's the progression of the enemies and how most of your weapons are eliminated, for virtually no reason. At the start of the game your pistol deals devastating blows to enemies. Two shots in the torso, one in the head, or several in the limbs will take a guy down no problem. But soon after that, your pistol now needs 10 shots for an enemy to die. Then you need to use a machine gun, but then that stops doing anything effective, so you use a shotgun. And by the end of the game you're using flamebullets on your shotgun, and rocket launchers, cause that's all that really works.
Even when upgrading these guns, they still act virtually useless at certain points in the game. But you're fighting the same enemies. So what gives? What's the point of making enemies harder for no reason. If they wanted to make the game harder, why not have MORE drugged up people near the end, or maybe just more enemies on screen. How come there was never a two against one Big Daddy fight scene like in Resident Evil 4 or something? I just got bored fighting these guys, pretty early on, but I had to keep sticking it to them for the remaining 15 hours of the game.
As for Plasmids, I found those equally as useless. After your machine gun stops being effective, so do all of your plasmids. Incinerate adds a nice char look to your foes, and frost can buy you sometime to reload, but everyone else? Useless. They barley do any damage, and it's not like you can set up elaborate traps like the game's trailers lead you to believe, it's not that easy. So the plasmids, the part of the game that was supposed to add "flavor" into the combat, totally fails on that front.
Big Daddies are probably the highlight of the game's combat, but you're still using the inferior weapons, and inadequate plasmids. So Big Daddies just seem like "big enemies" instead of fun bosses or something similar. I give the game props for allowing the Big Daddies to roam around full levels freely, but they didn't seem all that exciting to fight.
Characters
Am I the only one who found almost every character to be completely forgettable and unlikeable? Steinman was super insane, so he was entertaining, a good choice for first important character. Other than that though, it's just Sander Cohen. Everyone else, totally do not care. Tenebaum seemed like some snotty bitch who didn't even like me. Atlas was a cynical dick. Fontatine was over played, and everyone else I don't even remember. Apparently there's some doctor in the game, some chick who gets gassed to death, and a few other celebs show up, and I didn't like ANY of them.
Since I'm surrounded by a world of people I don't care about, I don't really feel like my actions have any importance, so they could've manipulated the story telling in a way to make the game a lot more fun. Even Andrew Ryan, although he had a great voice actor, seemed entirely one-dimensional. This game sort of shows, when everyone in the cast is an *******, people stop caring, didn't Gone Baby Gone teach that to the industry?
Moral Choice
In combination with the whole "I don't care about any of this" the moral choice seemed totally transparent and unimportant. They're little girls? What makes me think they're little girls? Because it's a small child avatar in a video game? Let me give you two examples of how tragic, or shocking video game deaths are supposed to be done. I'll give several examples for both sides to appeal to all audiences.
Example #1
Final Fantasy 7, obviously Aeris (Aerith???) dies in the game at the hands of Sephiroth. This is considered a "shocking" moment in video game history, and a lot of gamers, genuinely felt sad during the cutscene, and developed a real emotional hate for the game's villain. Aeris is in the game for the first twenty hours or so of the game, and after the player has developed relying on her healing ability, and enjoyed her relationship with Cloud, she's strucken down with a sword. They actually missed Aeris being in the game.
Example #2
Similarly, the ending of Grand Theft Auto IV can have Roman, your cousin die. This is also tragic and sad because throughout GTA4, Roman explains how he wants to get away from the life of crime, earn his dollar, and live his life. So in the last events of GTA4, Niko picks to do a deal with his sworn enemy to let his cousin live a happy life (allegedly). That's why it's so tragic when Roman is shot and killed because of these actions. It's an ironic, but depressing fate. Since players got to have a relationship with Roman, whether to loved or hated him, knew he was important to Niko, and felt bad for his situation.
ON THE FLIP SIDE OF THINGS
Example #1
In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The player's main character Carl CJ Johnson is forced to return home after his mom dies in a gang drive-by. The player also learns early on, that CJ's younger brother Brian, was killed in a related accident. However the player doesn't see this as a reason to be sad, but rather an explanation of "THIS IS WHY YOU ARE HERE." They feel no emotional attachment to Brian, a small little boy, or CJ's mom, a caring parent, because they know nothing about them at all, and what they've done, who they are, etc.
Example #2
In the first few hours of Crysis around half of your team dies from the alien threat. Unlike in other squad based, story heavy games like Call of Duty 4, you never got to build a companion ship with your fellow soldiers, so they're death, is entirely meaningless.
The same thing goes with BioShock. Maybe I'm sick in the head, but I don't assume something that looks like a little girl, is innocent and needs to be saved. And since I know nothing about this girl, the moral choice reveals that the game is a video game. It EXPECTS you to feel some emotion, and think about what you're supposed to do, but that didn't happen with me. Part of the reason being is that it completely takes you out of the experience. It's not like you have to take out a gun and shoot her yourself, two giant X and Y buttons appear on screen and ask "SAVE OR KILL?" This takes you out of the experience, you realize there's nothing trivial at stake, and you no longer care. So the whole point of the moral choice, is negated.
Story
I've never considered a game with heavy lore to have a "good story." BioShock is exactly that. What's funny about this, is that there's actually another game that's crucified for having a terrible story, but has pretty much, as much depth as BioShock. That game is Gears of War. There's a whole explanation of how the Locust got here, why they attacked, what happened to Marcus, who Dom is looking for, Cole's history in sports, and how life on earth used to be. But you won't find it in the game, the difference with BioShock is that you CAN find all that lore in the game, but you could play the entire game without seeing any of that stuff.
The difference between the two is that BioShock does the old trick of fooling players into thinking that the story is well thought out and "complex" because it adds political undertones that are not often seen in video games, and people assume it's amazing. So pretty much. Rapture is a city of complete freedom. Freedom from moral standards, freedom from ethics, freedom from laws, freedom from nations, governments, and power hungry hooligans. People like Steinman can reign in this town because they can do whatever type of science they wish, without worrying about people calling him a murder or sick freak. That's pretty much it.
Andrew Ryan's whole "A man chooses, a slave obeys" is about how the only way you can be a man is to not follow what people tell you to do. He "chose" Rapture because he is a "man" and looks down upon those who complain about their situation, but don't do anything about it. Maye I'm just some supreme intellect (Which I highly doubt) but to me that doesn't sound very amazing to me. Just because it isn't told directly to the player's face, and they have to think for a moment to understand it, they assume it's the best piece of writing ever. I think the story is overrated, and I've pretty much covered everything story related in BioShock, within two paragraphs.
And the story isn't really about anyone. You're some no name nobody, that you never get to know, you get to find out a super dark secret about yourself, but after that? Nothing. So it's odd that you're seen as some hero, since you could very well be a piece of cardboard with a frowny face on it.
As for the "atmosphere" it seems like they continuously tried to create tricks for the player to make them believe they witnessed something amazing. I found every area to look exactly the same, except for Sander Cohen's section which had some creativity to it to make it stand out. I felt like I was playing the same sequence over and over again with different dialog sequences. And the color palette from "green" to "brownish green" didn't help much.
And on a side note, that's completely unrelated, I thought the Water in the game just looked like Water. Far Cry from 2004 has better Water. Age of Empires 3 has better water, Age of Mythology has better water, the Water in this game is nothing special.
Conclusion.
I found the gameplay acceptable at best, the story to be populated with characters I don't care about, and a plotline that seemed as pretentious as No Country For Old Men. It doesn't have any deep meaning, and everyone's praise for it is sort of sickening. I consider BioShock a very average game. Maybe the seven section out of a ten point scale would be appropriate. But I don't see why everyone was so excited about the game, and loved it so dearly.
_________________
Dear god if anyone reads that you get free rep. I hope SOMEONE read that and has something to talk about.