Gaming Bioshock 2 review

Thanks for the link! interesting site...

This might take more than just over 1 line to say: it appears to, and between the sequel and the original it does. I played the original and the expansions a few years before HL2 came out. Furious to install the sequel, play it through and find nothing of interest on the Gman. Black Mesa east looked promising, but in 5 mins you get hoofed out and the new story takes over again. The old story is just a premise for the new one to take off from. The episodes drip some more info in about him, episode 2's long cutscene giving more about him than hl2 and ep1 combined. You can't go from the ending in the monorail car of HL1 and your 'choice' to work for the man in the suit, to the same man in the same suit fob you off at the end of HL2 that you'll have to wait a little bit longer to know anything about him or what he's up to. A brilliantly original ending (HL1), an awesome cliffhanger, left, more or less, hanging.......

 

was there not a vita-chamber equivalent in system shock 2? nobody seems to mind them...
although ..my memory is hazy and the mechanics of it have slipped my mind.

 

nope, you had one life and checkpoints dotted around, if you died it dumped you back there with the same status that you first triggered it.

theres a reason for these baby'ish gameplay mechanics, go read the conclusion to the crysis warhead run in the gaming section, i cba to copy pasta it all in here.

 

There was the med-bays, yeah. You activated them once and then they preserved that status. They broke the game in an equal way sometimes but...

1) They were player activated within the game, not automatic
2) They only preserved your status at the time
3) They were irregular (and sometimes easily overlooked)
4) SS2 was more oppressively scary, so the medbays fitted in a bit more as a game device. BioShock isn't scary though. It's an action game, so all they do there is take away the challenge.

SS2 wasn't a perfect game either though. Weapon degradation, anyone?

 

that was a a brilliant mechanic, do you spend points in maintaining weapons or forage for new ones? resort to psi ops or melee.

its only downside was requiring a degree of intellegence, kinda the whole point why i moved to pc gaming to begin with.

But oh noes! innovation and intellegence dont sell games anymore! quick! lets recycle a 15 year old idea and release it to the masses, they've never experienced anything like it before so they'll lap it up like an excited dog licking chocolate off its masters balls

 

Oof. Let's not have this debate.

Firstly. It would have been OK if it was so aggressively paced.
Secondly. If people love it so much why do they complain when it shows up in other games, like Far Cry 2?
Thirdly. It wasn't something that was at all explained to the player - something the developers explicitly regret...

 

I didnt even know it had it in there, perhaps itwas buried underthe rest of the **** that was the so called "gameplay"

An interesting fun fact. I agree with it adding to the tension which is why I liked it so much.

you're right, lets not. if warrior finds this thread...oh god.

 

I pirated it to see if it was any better than the first.

Nope.

 

To be honest I had my doubts about a second bioshock, but with me enjoying the first game I figured they wouldn't let it down with a bad sequal, glad I was right and preordered the game without knowing anything about it except you play as a big daddy, only played half an hour so far but I very much enjoyed what I played so far, what I played seemed much better than the first, especially being able to go outside into the sea, was awesome .

 

Wow, shame on you.

 

Shame on you then.

 

Uuuurhn.

Uuuuuuuurghn!

Urhn.

 

i didnt play the first one, but the 2nd one (just played for a little over an hour) didn't feel... "special".

it's just another shooter with great settings (i wont say graphic coz it kinda suck - no AA, texture is "meh", walking through water gets the splashed effect, but not if u stand right below it?, etc...) decent gameplay, and good story.

i couldnt see whats the big fuss was...

 

You think I care? I removed it after about an hour anyways.

It's not like theres a demo for the game, and clearly I can't go by your review, since you gave it an 8/10! So what do you suggest I do? Throw down $50 and hope for the best? Yah right...

I'm not some thieving jerk who doesn't pay for any of his games. I pre-ordered Bad Company 2 a week ago.

 

I enjoyed Bioshock 1, even with the flaws it was well worth the money and offered hours of decent gameplay. I've just started the second and the review pretty much sums up my expectations of it, solid but nothing groundbreaking.

 

YAY go on bud im with ya

 

yet earlier

Stealing games makes you a douche bag, and boasting about it only makes you an even bigger douche bag - end of story. It only helps undermine PC gaming's already perilous position - if you don't like the sound of a game, just don't play it - it's why we write these things called reviews after all. No one's making you click that "download torrent" button.

Back on topic though - I appreciate the new stuff in Bioshock 2 but can't help but think I've seen it all before. Look at Mass Effect 2 - they gutted the gameplay from the first game to great success, yet here it's unchanged and just feels like, as someone's already said, an expansion pack. the execution is still very good though, and the gameplay with the plasmid/weapon combos is still good fun, but I'm struggling to find the enthusiasm to play a game I feel I've already played. Also the graphics are bit rubbish outside of the water effects - a serious case of laurel resting me thinks.

 

So did a lot of other places, they're just opinions and they're no less valid than your own. In fact, they're probably more valid since you've only played the game for an hour.

QFT & sig'd!

 

Really? Second link on a google search is to a (totally illegal -- something I wouldn't suggest anyone use, ever) torrent that still works. Be warned, though, if you find there's a point where you can't solve the puzzle, it might not be possible to solve it. At one stage, after going crazy trying all the options, I downloaded a walkthrough and found that the solution that was supposed to work doesn't. Had to abandon it at that stage. Amazing game nonetheless.

http://www.google.com/search?q=I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream game download , btw.

 

Yes, but I don't pirate games. Also, I'll admit, I haven't been actively looking for it for a couple of years...

Ahem.

No company is under any obligation to give you a demo. Just as you are under no obligation to buy or, for that matter, try - rendering your opinion moot. If you want to try it then, yes, I can understand your position, but that doesn't make the matter of stealing any more moral.

Yes, all companies should give a demo ideally. Likewise though, all restaurants should ideally let me taste the recipes before I order from the Specials menu. In reality though, they don't and just like I don't go in licking all the food and ruining it for everyone else, you shouldn't go in stealing stuff and undermining the market. You take a gamble, always. All you can do is educate yourself to make it less of a gamble.

And yes, lets not call it pirating and letting it sound all romantic, lets call it what it is. Stealing. Not the idealised kind of stealing either; you aren't Robin Hood. It's just cheap, nasty, chavy and ugly pilfering. There are a handful of people who, yes, may steal it and then buy it, but I'm going to play the odds and say you aren't one of them.

You can pirate it if you want, of course, but don't go around on your high horse afterwards and don't go boasting as if you've dodged a bullet. All you've really done is weakened the market and acted like a douche because you could have easily read the review (or, if you were seriously unsure, metacritic) and then tried one of the earlier games in the series on the cheap. That way you would have known and you would have strengthened the market.

But, no. It's more likely that you're the type of person who'd pirate the original Crysis, play it for a few hours and not finish it and then come online crying about how the next game is going to be consolised - as if you're non-paying opinion counted for anything more than pixels.

I can understand stealing some types of media, but games? No. Does the level of content and effort against the cost and risk really balance out enough to make your postion tenable?