asgaard

BioShock 2 review

Sat, 30 Mar 13 19:58:20 +0000

The first thing I'm going to say about BioShock 2 is that it's encumbered with "Games for Windows Live", and due to this, my steam copy was unplayable until I downloaded a third party DLL to disable GFWL, which was just giving me unhelpful error messages. Maybe I was unlucky and for everyone else it works fine, but a quick glance at the Steam forums suggests not.

I like BioShock 1. A lot. I also like BioShock 2, because it's much the same.

You [minor spoilers] play as a Big Daddy called Subject Delta. Your little sister is Eleanor Lamb, who just so happens to be the daughter of Sofia Lamb, who filled the power gap left by Andrew Ryan. Ryan was something of a literary masterpiece, which makes it doubly unusual for him to be encountered in a game. Sofia Lamb has turned Ryan's libertarian dystopia into something that's equal parts strange communist religion and insect hive. She has done this roughly in the same way Ryan built the place originally; she appeals to the shortcomings of their daily lives with a huge overhaul which turns out to better two ways and worse in about a million. She goes a bit crazy in search of her ultimate selfless utopia, and decides that (other people's) consciousness and desires are overrated.

The problem with sequels is that it's hard for them to live up to the original, regardless of how good they are. Especially when there's nothing in the original that really demands a follow up story. And this is the case with BioShock 2. Sofia Lamb is a strong character, but she can't live up to Andrew Ryan. It's unfair to dismiss her on that basis, because she's still 10 times better written than most game and indeed film and book characters. Her voice acting is also superb, with her presented as a fiercely intelligent woman who believes resolutely in what she's doing, for whom the ends justify the means. She is strangely charismatic, but not in a glossy political way. She wants to make the world a better place. She's thoroughly insane, but not a cartoon villain. But Andrew Ryan was all of that too, she's just a communist.

That's not to say all the writing is great, it is occasionally undermined by bits that make you say "uhh, what?", but most of it's solid. Ryan hasn't completely disappeared - he's still present through his audio diaries, but you get a much more 'personal' side of him. Behind the propaganda, he's depicted as a man becoming more and more weary as things go wrong around him. Sofia Lamb's existence being one such thing.

The core experience is largely unchanged. Atlas has been replaced with someone called Sinclair, who gives you helpful hints via the radio. Sinclair is a great character; unlike Atlas, it's pretty clear he's not entirely honest, but there's something likeable about him anyway. You originally hook up with him via our old friend Dr Tenenbaum, but then Tenenbaum seems to disappear off the grid, which is a bit of a missed opportunity.

In terms of game-play there are a few changes. Our stock early guns still get partly obsoleted by opponents' unlikely ability to absorb bullets more effectively as the game goes on, but on the other hand, we get an uber-powerful speargun which provides us with hilarious weightless rag-doll physics. The plasmid/weapon system has been streamlined so you can use both at once, but this means switching plasmids is a pain, because your mousewheel only switches weapons. This might be for the best, with the right plasmid selection you do become ridiculously powerful. Hint: if you get Insect Swarm and Summon Turret, you might never have to fire another bullet (spear) again...

The game's conclusion and morality dimension is played out much better in BioShock 2. One of my problems with 1 was that there were basically only two endings, and although I spent three quarters of the game being 'nice', I still got told I was more-evil-than-Satan, which just didn't gel at all. BioShock 2 handles the ending better, and gives the player more varied opportunities to affect it. Although there are changes of pace, unlike the first game, BioShock 2 keeps it together all the way through.

BioShock 2 experiences and Games For Windows Live

Sun, 24 Mar 13 16:38:43 +0000

Download from Steam.
Run BioShock 2
Steam pops up and tells me "this is a CD code you'll need to enter". Guys, I bought it from Steam. The whole point of CD codes was to stop me from copying the CD ... ah never mind. Enter CD code. Expect BioShock 2 to appear.
BioShock 2 does not appear. What appears instead is an ugly Windows dialogue box telling me to enter my CD code so something called SecureROM can "activate" my copy. This is marketing speak for asking some remote server which may disappear at any point for permission to play the game I legally own.
It activates and launches BioShock2. At which point a big "Games for Windows live" browser appears at the top of the screen. It tells me to create an account, which boots me out of BioShock and into Internet Explorer (not even my default browser). Realise I already have a Microsoft passport thing, let's use that instead. I go back into the game.
Games for Windows live asks me to sign in and accepts my existing details. Then it makes me enter my CD key (AGAIN!).
Games for Windows live tells me there's an update. It won't let me play until it's updated. It runs something and asks me to quit.
I quit and then some install process runs.
Restart game. Windows live asks me to sign in. It hasn't remembered my password, despite being told to.
Windows live tells me there's an update, tells me I can't play until it's updated... deja vu. Download and restart game.
Windows live pops up and asks me to sign in. It has remembered my password this time, but hasn't auto-signed me in like I told it to.
Windows live tells me to wait while it downloads my "profile".
"Games for Windows(R) - LIVE Client has stopped working." BioShock 2 still running, Windows live browser still open inside BioShock.
"There is a new terms of service for Games For Windows Live, you must accept this before I can let you go on any further".
Generic windows live error message, probably because it crashed.
Restart BioShock2. At this point Steam tells me I've "played" 22 minutes.
Windows Live has remembered a profile called "LissomLawyer33". When I click it it seems to have my email address. I have absolutely zero idea why it's called me LissomLawyer33.
Windows Live error message. "You will now be returned to the title screen [yes]"
Do some Googling, remove GFWL from Control Panel => Programs and features (Look under Microsoft)
Download newer GFWL from xboxlive.com, despite not having an XBox, nor understanding what this has to do with XBox.
Same problem - starting to consider looking on the Pirate Bay now...
Eventually find a DLL that removes GFWL, from Timeslip.

45 minutes after thinking "I'll play some BioShock 2", I am now playing BioShock 2. I am grateful to Timeslip for using his (or her) free time and considerable skills to create the DLL, but the fact it is necessary for me to use a third party DLL to be able to play the game is mind boggling.

BioShock review

Mon, 18 Mar 13 20:42:50 +0000

BioShock is a pretty weird game. I'm massively out of date because I'm talking about the first one. I've never played it before; I had some technical issues with it previously, and I've only just got around to it. I had another go, and after getting sound to work, (bizarrely by plugging in a microphone,) I don't regret it.

You are [someone], you find yourself in a strange underwater city called Rapture, and in general FPS fashion, some Irish guy called Atlas starts talking to you on a radio and decides you should save his family for him since he's useless and depends on the help of random strangers. He introduces you to Rapture and points out the crazy drug induced psychopaths who want to kill you, then advises you get drugged up yourself because it gives you superpowers. Your character happily obliges by dramatically plunging needle after needle into his arm with no apparent regard for the fragility or cleanliness of the average hypodermic needle that you might find lying around a ruined city. And as luck would have it, it's impossible to not follow Atlas's quest because all the other doors are locked.

Despite the lazy setup it's quite engaging. Rapture is wonderfully developed; it's a city founded by a man called Andrew Ryan (the partial anagram of Ayn Rand is probably not coincidental...), an extreme right wing libertarian type who wants to get away from pesky government regulations and run a truly free-market capitalist utopia. Rapture is founded on the principle that a man should be entitled to monetise the sweat of his brow, his own property, and indeed the city's oxygen supply.

Unsurprisingly for a community founded on personal greed, it goes bad and things end up in a bit of a mess. The game's back story is fed to you by Atlas and through the perspective of other characters via audio diaries they helpfully leave around, incriminating themselves in all sorts of things. It's rare to play an FPS, no scratch that, a game, with such a well delivered and intriguing plot. It's also rare to play a plot-heavy game which manages to convey its story without breaking the player from the game with cutscenes.

The core gameplay itself is fairly standard FPS stuff with a hint of RPG. You wander around fairly non-linear trying to satisfy fairly linear goals while picking up ammo and supplies that have been helpfully scattered around for a maruadering invader like yourself to pick up and utilise against Rapture. You also get drug induced super powers.

The combat itself is a bit clunky and a bit fast, it plays too much like a Quake 3 deathmatch to pretend it has any real tactics behind it, but on the other hand, ammo is in fairly short supply so you do have to be a bit careful. The exciting part of the game is upgrading your superpowers which you do by harvesting something called ADAM, which seems to involve murdering small children. Supposedly this presents a moral quandary for the player; you can either rescue the small girls and receive less ADAM or kill them and receive full ADAM. The little girls, however, aren't really little girls, but are instead strange monsters cultivated inside small girls by a nutcase German (of course) scientist, and they're rather creepy. Quandary averted.

Like most games that start off so well, BioShock does go downhill a bit towards the end. To increase the difficulty, it does the standard lazy FPS thing of making enemies soak up damage more readily. It just seems a bit ridiculous to unload a full Thompson clip in someone's face for them to go "Ha ha ha!" at you. Then there's an escort mission. Then there's a multi-stage boss fight, i.e. you kill him. And then you kill him again. And then you kill him again. This is lazy and frustrating. Aren't we past this yet? And for some reason the final boss more closely resembles Darth Sion (sleeps-with-vibroblades) from Knights Of The Old Republic than anything you've seen up to this point.

The story strays too far into cliched cartoon baddies who put on a cliched evil voice when they talk to you. The masterfully created Andrew Ryan, who was essentially a naive and deluded person trying to make the world a better place, gives way to a standard evil bad guy trying to make the world a worse place. This is what we call "Star Wars morality", and it works quite well when we're 9 years old but less well thereafter.

The ending, unless you were either lawful good or chaotic evil, makes absolutely no sense and is a bit of a letdown. Again, the binary good/evil state is at odds with Ryan. Especially considering how hard I worked on the escort mission to keep my companion alive in the face of zombie bullet sponges.

In any case, for most of the game, BioShock's gameplay is solid and its world and setting are very strong. Its world is most obviously comparable to that of the Fallout universe, partly because depending on your point of view it either nods towards or directly plagiarises it, but also because it's a solid atmosphere with a strong retro art direction.

Most games struggle to forge their own style. BioShock doesn't.

Probably 8/10. The 2 points knocked off for the story degradation towards the end, the fact the game overuses darkness for "atmosphere", which gets annoying after a while (and makes screenshots look rubbish), and how annoying it can be to switch between weapons/plasmids/ammo in fights.