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Bioshock
Ok for those living under a rock these past few months, a game by the name of Bioshock has been in development these past five years now. The "Spiritual" success to the System-Shock franchise, one of the most well regarded "dead" franchises in gaming. Put together by the same people who wrote the story for the absolute mind-**** of a game by the name of System-Shock two.

The buzz the whole way through development was pretty positive, the only negatives come from folks who were worried that it was being done for both the Xbox-360 and the PC at the same time, and worried it would suffer from "consoleitius" which many good games suffer from when they are made in essence stupider and much easier to give console gamers a chance.

The first reviews are in!
http://www.gamestats.com/objects/707/70 ... icles.html
Suffice to to say, THIS gets my hopes up, Four pubs have rated it five out of five stars, or ten out of ten. PC Gamer and Eurogamer have pegged it at 95% or better, and IGN has it pegged at a 9.7 out of ten. Granted a few of these have had issues of ahem "improved" scores. But when the first eight pieces all peg the game at @#@$ outstanding I have high hopes, very high hopes.

If 1Up and Gamespot peg their reviews in the same area, we know we a serious must have on our hands here.

Anyone else waiting as eager as I am for Bioshock?

I'm with you there. I've been looking forward to Bioshock since I first saw the Official Xbox Magazine article.

It looks nice but I'm not buying it unless someone implements a decent co-op mode.

Starglider wrote:It looks nice but I'm not buying it unless someone implements a decent co-op mode.

The 360? Forget it, the PC? Two months tops before we have a co-op mode. But who knows how good the game will play with a co-op mode.

Circuit City is $50(360)/$40(PC), but remember to take their ad and PM somewhere since since CC is evil.

I've preordered it, for us it comes out on Friday. I'm getting the CE with the Big Daddy toy.

Also FYI, I'm not sure how, but Steam has Bioshock online and available to buy, you can pre-order now and it will be available to play on Tuesday at 0001 GMT. Price is 49.99$

Mr Bean wrote:

Starglider wrote:It looks nice but I'm not buying it unless someone implements a decent co-op mode.

The 360? Forget it, the PC? Two months tops before we have a co-op mode. But who knows how good the game will play with a co-op mode.

You're joking, right? How long has Halo for the PC been out and there still isn't a co-op mode? Same with Morrowind and Oblivion. The freaking game pauses for various actions, that alone is going to fuck with any attempt to take it online.

PC mods are a fantastic thing, especially when there is a sweet mod toolset made by the dev team (which I've not heard of for Bioshock at all), but suddenly adding any sort of online component, much less a fully featured co-op mode? Yeah, right. If you honestly think there's going to be a co-op mode in two months, I've got a pre-order for Duke Nukem Forever I'd like to sell you. You should get that game just before the co-op mod comes out.

Hotfoot their was a co-op mode done within two months of Oblivion's release (March 20th 2006) it WORKED... minus a few things, the second player could only play as an NPC, if you talked to anyone, the game crashed, if you looted anything as 2nd player, the game crashed, if you died, the game crashed, and it was only usable over LAN because of latency issues.

Needless to say it never went anywhere because the people working on it never got over those base stumbling blocks.

(Linky http://csusap.csu.edu.au/~mloxto01/, mod was usable in May of 2006, game was released in March, the project for all intents and purposes died in late July)

And Hotfoot, how hard have people been trying for Halo for the PC, if no one works on the mod, then of course it's damn well never going to get done.

Wasn't there an offical co-op patch released for System Shock 2? Might we see the same thing here?

Mr Bean wrote:Hotfoot their was a co-op mode done within two months of Oblivion's release (March 20th 2006) it WORKED... minus a few things, the second player could only play as an NPC, if you talked to anyone, the game crashed, if you looted anything as 2nd player, the game crashed, if you died, the game crashed, and it was only usable over LAN because of latency issues.

Admittedly, I did not know about this mod. However, given the massive list of things, that, you know, didn't work, I find it odd that you consider that it did, in fact, "work". Sure, it technically allowed two people to interact in the game world on some level, but it had so many insurmountable issues that actually playing the game through from beginning to end is impossible.

Needless to say it never went anywhere because the people working on it never got over those base stumbling blocks.

And Oblivion had a phenomenal set of mod tools that were available on release, plus an entire game that had come before it which people had direct experience with. Bioshock has neither of these, and yet people will magically create a co-op mod in two months? Much less one that actually works, instead of "kind of sort of might work one day"?

(Linky http://csusap.csu.edu.au/~mloxto01/, mod was usable in May of 2006, game was released in March, the project for all intents and purposes died in late July)

Maybe it was because they realized that making the code for a multiplayer game is a large project? Especially when you're talking about a nominally pure singleplayer game that pauses everything during anything that involves talking, cutscenes, inventory management, etc. Granted, Bioshock doesn't pause nearly as often, but it still does pause for several activities.

And Hotfoot, how hard have people been trying for Halo for the PC, if no one works on the mod, then of course it's damn well never going to get done.

My point was that co-op code was in the original game, it already HAS a multiplayer component which would say to me that it would be much easier to do a mod for since all the essential factors already there. You know, rather than relying on modders to craft a highly complex code that has to interact with code they may or may not be easily accessible depending on how things are packaged. Remember that just because something was made with a certain engine doesn't mean that is has everything underneath completely unchanged.

Drooling Iguana wrote:Wasn't there an offical co-op patch released for System Shock 2? Might we see the same thing here?

Unlikely. All my sources indicate that the people behind Bioshock seem to think that co-op for SS2 just wasn't popular/important enough to warrant working on it at all for Bioshock. A pity, co-op has been getting more and more a deciding factor in games these days, especially more superficial shooters like Bioshock.

Hotfoot wrote: Admittedly, I did not know about this mod. However, given the massive list of things, that, you know, didn't work, I find it odd that you consider that it did, in fact, "work". Sure, it technically allowed two people to interact in the game world on some level, but it had so many insurmountable issues that actually playing the game through from beginning to end is impossible.

It was possible, as long as Player 2 was there for just the combat, ala-Halo co-op.

In all seriousness I should have clarified, my two month statement was a general rule of thumb on how quick something like co-op mode could be slammed together. I did not mean to imply that one could totally sync the whole game and have perfect bug-free co-op ready to go within two months of a game's release.

Hotfoot wrote:And Oblivion had a phenomenal set of mod tools that were available on release, plus an entire game that had come before it which people had direct experience with. Bioshock has neither of these, and yet people will magically create a co-op mod in two months? Much less one that actually works, instead of "kind of sort of might work one day"?

Oblivion has a phenomenal set of mod tools true, except the stumbling problem was with the ENGINE, there exists no sort of mulitplayer code in Oblivion, no synching software, all that crap had to be written from scratch. And they still managed to bang together something semi-workable within two months.

Bioshock on the other hand had plans for multi player(Axed earilier in devolpement, no indications how much code if any was done) and a plan for a Co-op mode(According to the dev diarys, killed 1/3 of the way through the project. There defiantly was code written for it) If Bioshock is anything like most games, that code is most likley going to ship with the game. Bioshock, while not as mod-friendly as Oblivion say, will have a basis to build from, existing code that needs to be updated, reworked and implented.

And that basicly Hotfoot is where I'm making my two month statement. Something Alpha can be knocked together in that time frame, I do not mean to imply that it's going to be 100% ready to go, perfect in all features.

That I expect around the nine to eleven month mark. I should have made that clear I did not expect Gold-standard co-op within two months, but I do expect it within the year.

Come on. Bottom line, even Half Life 2 doesn't have a fully featured co-op mode yet and it's been nearly three years since release and has numerous skilled modders working on several different projects. All of them, by the way, have gotten much further than the Morrowind Project, but they still don't have the entire game as playable.

The only thing Bioshock has going for it is that it's running the Unreal engine, but even that's not a guarantee, especially if it doesn't get attention from modders, and let's face it, it's a niche game.

First off, no one's doing the HL2 co-op because everything is waiting on Steve's mod or whatever the super-major HL1 co-op mod was to do it for them.

Second, I conceded the point re:Unreal engine and possibility of it becoming niche. However given the reviews so far have been almost internationalist style happy with the quality of the game, that has to be a point in it's favor for drawing in freelance mod teams.

Mr Bean wrote:First off, no one's doing the HL2 co-op because everything is waiting on Steve's mod or whatever the super-major HL1 co-op mod was to do it for them.

No, you missed the point. There are several mod teams working on HL2 co-op. A few have even made decent progress, but it's taken a long-ass time to get this far. Rosy predictions of less than a year for fully featured complete co-op is a pipe dream, pure and simple.

Second, I conceded the point re:Unreal engine and possibility of it becoming niche. However given the reviews so far have been almost internationalist style happy with the quality of the game, that has to be a point in it's favor for drawing in freelance mod teams.

It may help, but remember that a lot of the attention is also coming from 360 users and reviewers, which automatically reduces the chances of pulling modders from the player base.

Conceded on both points Hotfoot, I was un-aware there was other teams working on HL-2 co-op for this long and still unable to do it. My impressions were in error it seems.

Back to the game itself

Update!
Gamespy, various Xbox-360's mags and more importantly 1up have posted their Bioshock reviews as well, Which it's landed another 10/10.

Everyone major game network but Gamespot has their reviews in and ALL of them are giving this game outstanding reviews. Might we actually match the hype this time around?

Given how short it seems to be, it would have to be a fantastic game to live up to the hype. So far, all I've seen is the magic system, the hacking system, and some crazy physics. The little weird things do sort of add up, and I think the hype is a bit much.

The interaction and decision making had best be something truly significant, right now it just seems like "lol, easy game and kill little girls or don't and do hard mode maybe lose, lol".

Also, anyone else find it strange that a direct lightning bolt only stuns someone, but a lightning bolt into the water will kill multiple people over a long period of time?

must get bioshock...

Does anyone else think the plot is, well, retarded?

JLTucker wrote:Does anyone else think the plot is, well, retarded?

How so? I think it's silly in the extreme, but it appears they meant it to be faily silly with some dark overtones. How do you think it's retarded?

JLTucker wrote:Does anyone else think the plot is, well, retarded?

Let's see.
-Underwater city in 1946...
-Human (or human-compatible) stem cells from sea slugs...
-Advanced computer systems and "hacking" with 1940s vacuum tube technology...
-Intact underwater city structure after a year of no maintenance...

No, JLTucker, I don't think so at all. It would make for an excellent 1930s sci-fi film.

You're talking about the setting, which is weird for sure and I'm not a fan of that art deco style, but that's more reason for me to try out the game.

Would you prefer another future game about collecting credits in a city that was designed by Apple?

I think the art deco and 'Metropolis' feel of it is pretty damn awesome. The Demo is downloading right now, but well. Darnit, it's been given the highest possible reviews everywhere. IGN's '9 publication average' is a 98 percent, and PC Gamer UK gave it the 3rd highest rating ever (right below Half Life 1 and SMAC).

If it's up there, I think it'll be fantastic. Just like the System Shocks, but moreso. Of course, I'm ignoring http://www.sonydefenseforce.com/?p=83, a fine journalist who doesn't like bioshock on the 360 or PC since it doesn't have blue-ray and isn't on the PS3.

Nephtys wrote:http://www.sonydefenseforce.com/?p=83

To conclude, let this game cook in the oven just a little bit longer and wait for the superior PS3 version. Cleaned up textures, animations, AI, extra weapons, Home space, standard HDD and Blu-ray will make this flawed game into a perfect gem.

Will it even come out on the PS3 or does he pulls everything out of his ass?

Edit: looked it up and Bioshock is Xbox360/PC only. This just made the article even more hilarious