As you'll recall from my Painkiller topic, I never got into FPSes until less than a year ago. That makes Bioshock only the second "true" FPS
I've completed and I still thought it was piss easy.
The root of Bioshock's problem is there is no penalty for dying except that you might have to run back through a few rooms, and enemies take cumulative damage, and this shoots both of the game's kneecaps off. Find yourself up against a Big Daddy? Well, just bang your head on him until he kills you, run back in, and bang your head on him some more, and sooner or later you'll finally kill him. And hey, if you're really lucky the resurrection chamber is in the same room as him! It also means the game is totally unscary because you're immortal up until the final boss which is the only point in the game you can actually die, although you probably won't. And there's so much ammo, recovery items, and money around, and there's vending machines around every corridor so everything might as well be infinite and/or free.
Speaking of spook factor, maybe it's just because I'm a sadistic* little bitch, but much of this game is unintentionally goofy. The game uses the Havok physics engine, which I can't figure out why programmers keep using because of how dodgy it is. I often found corpses tapping their heels on the ground, swinging their arms or legs over edges, or even waving at me, like they were actors paid to lie on the ground like they'd just been slaughtered, but getting bored and hoping I would leave the room soon so they could go take their smoke break. I got the good ending, but I watched the bad ending on YouTube and had to resist breaking out laughing at it.
There's no in-game timer so I don't know how long I spent on the game. Maybe 20 to 25 hours. You spend most of it following some guy's orders through a radio, but anyone with the correct human chromosome count knows he's going to backstab you towards the end of the game. There's little to get excited over, because every time you think you're about to get somewhere something blows up or Ryan gases somebody, and it's almost more surprising when you're able to accomplish something than when you get sidetracked. I guess the first moment anything really made me raise an eyebrow was about halfway through the game when I completed this artist's statue by placing photos of his pupils' corpses in frames, and he came down some stairs throwing confetti everywhere and talking like he was about to cry. Then nothing happened again for a few hours, until the obvious double-cross plottwist, and I found myself being helped by the Little Sister mother. Then I do two fetch quests and an annoying escort mission, and I'm at the final boss.
The game has a Hard mode, but the most I can imagine it doing is giving the enemies more HP and sending me back to resurrection chambers more often.
I guess it's worth mentioning the game is based on the writings of Ayn Rand. Personally, I've never read an Ayn Rand book, but judging by Crawl's criticism of her and some Wikipedia readings, she had this philosophy about how you have to be special to be anybody, and selfishness is good, and things like beauty and morality are all opinions and if somebody with buck teeth and lazy eye thinks they're beautiful than they are. Yeah, that's all in the game, and criticized by it (although I hear the lead designer for the game isn't entirely against Objectivism). I also detected some hints of Orwell, but maybe Rand also wrote about some authority always watching everyone and executing people who oppose him, or the "All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others" mindset.
* What's a word for finding humor in something intended to be serious?
The root of Bioshock's problem is there is no penalty for dying except that you might have to run back through a few rooms, and enemies take cumulative damage, and this shoots both of the game's kneecaps off. Find yourself up against a Big Daddy? Well, just bang your head on him until he kills you, run back in, and bang your head on him some more, and sooner or later you'll finally kill him. And hey, if you're really lucky the resurrection chamber is in the same room as him! It also means the game is totally unscary because you're immortal up until the final boss which is the only point in the game you can actually die, although you probably won't. And there's so much ammo, recovery items, and money around, and there's vending machines around every corridor so everything might as well be infinite and/or free.
Speaking of spook factor, maybe it's just because I'm a sadistic* little bitch, but much of this game is unintentionally goofy. The game uses the Havok physics engine, which I can't figure out why programmers keep using because of how dodgy it is. I often found corpses tapping their heels on the ground, swinging their arms or legs over edges, or even waving at me, like they were actors paid to lie on the ground like they'd just been slaughtered, but getting bored and hoping I would leave the room soon so they could go take their smoke break. I got the good ending, but I watched the bad ending on YouTube and had to resist breaking out laughing at it.
There's no in-game timer so I don't know how long I spent on the game. Maybe 20 to 25 hours. You spend most of it following some guy's orders through a radio, but anyone with the correct human chromosome count knows he's going to backstab you towards the end of the game. There's little to get excited over, because every time you think you're about to get somewhere something blows up or Ryan gases somebody, and it's almost more surprising when you're able to accomplish something than when you get sidetracked. I guess the first moment anything really made me raise an eyebrow was about halfway through the game when I completed this artist's statue by placing photos of his pupils' corpses in frames, and he came down some stairs throwing confetti everywhere and talking like he was about to cry. Then nothing happened again for a few hours, until the obvious double-cross plottwist, and I found myself being helped by the Little Sister mother. Then I do two fetch quests and an annoying escort mission, and I'm at the final boss.
The game has a Hard mode, but the most I can imagine it doing is giving the enemies more HP and sending me back to resurrection chambers more often.
I guess it's worth mentioning the game is based on the writings of Ayn Rand. Personally, I've never read an Ayn Rand book, but judging by Crawl's criticism of her and some Wikipedia readings, she had this philosophy about how you have to be special to be anybody, and selfishness is good, and things like beauty and morality are all opinions and if somebody with buck teeth and lazy eye thinks they're beautiful than they are. Yeah, that's all in the game, and criticized by it (although I hear the lead designer for the game isn't entirely against Objectivism). I also detected some hints of Orwell, but maybe Rand also wrote about some authority always watching everyone and executing people who oppose him, or the "All people are equal, but some people are more equal than others" mindset.
* What's a word for finding humor in something intended to be serious?
