[dhex]

guardian whatever it is you're looking for, you're not going to find it in games.
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[boojiboy7]

[internisus]

[Predator Goose]

Remember to breathe.
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I can no longer shop happily.

[internisus]

[boojiboy7]

Um, you have a specific ability that is given to you that allows you to harvest the girls. Would you want to go have to equip that ability each time to use it, and then use it, then de-equip it, or just hit one button?

Expediency and such.

Also, in forcing you to be close to them when killing them, they are forcing you to deal with up close what you are doing. Sniping them from a distance and they could just be another enemy.

Seriously, you might want to, you know, play the game before you flip out on the internet about it. Really.

[boojiboy7]

[internisus]

[EmX]

Well, shit. Once you realize how "meaningless" the choice ends up being vis a vis the larger context of the game you might just take out the disc and snap it in half. God help you if you bought it from Steam, Guardy.

[boojiboy7]

Once again, play the fucking game before you decide to hate it, douche.

And don't edit what I say to serve yourself, shitbag.

And stop playing videogames.

PLEASE.

If that is your design decision for a game, to make the player use a one time only use tool by going through menus instead of just pressing a button, basically making him press like 8 buttons instead of 1, I NEVER WANT TO PLAY A GAME YOU DESIGN.

[Predator Goose]

I'm just saying, take a step back, realize it's a video game, and try to sound more calm about it.


Because you don't want to blow your wad and then be out of steam when you realize what happens when you "harvest" them.

Edit: Does this means we're bitter enemies then?
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I can no longer shop happily.

[boojiboy7]

[dhex]

i don't see how the interface itself matters but again, whatever.

the choice itself is a disappointment, or rather the lack of consequence is the disappointment. i don't want to veer into spoiler land but there's really no difference that i can tell in terms of adam outcome. (dunno how it works out further into the game if you've been ripping the shit out of little sisters)

there's also a practical concern, which is why the little sister segment was toned down from the original setup to make them look less like actual little girls - namely that little girl murdering, contrary to the arguments of catherine mackinnon, faces heavy social disapproval.

while i don't like the choice and how it ended up, but i understand why they did what they did.
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[internisus]

[EmX]

The game's entertaining and beautiful enough, even on my shitty GeForce 6600, that I can ignore the fact that it's probably one of the most Xboxified and compromised games since Deus Ex 2.

[Predator Goose]

[internisus]

[BotageL]

I think it's kind of a shitty cop-out to make the girls uninjurable until you've killed the Big Daddy and walk up to do the special kill on them. (This is how I understand it works, anyway; still haven't played the 'Shock yet.) It does make it more, ah, "gamey," which I think is what Guardian was trying to get across. I think it would be more natural (if you will) if killing the girl was a matter of attacking her normally and then looting her like you would any other corpse (though perhaps with a special animation for removing the Adam). In a game like Bioshock that really heavily relies on atmosphere, it would be rather immersion-breaking to suddenly encounter a foe you can't injure with any of your normal destructive means until you've slain the "boss monster."
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[EmX]

The game justifies making the girls invincible by explaining that they regenerate automatically using some kind of stem cell genetic hocus pocus. And the act of harvesting/saving is drawn out enough to be impossible with the Big Daddy around.

[BotageL]

[internisus]

And if the player doesn't feel like he's killing little girls, then what was all that hype about the most important feature of the game? What was all that press about moral dilemmas? A pack of lies.

I'm still going to buy this and have a blast with the action and atmosphere, but I can't believe the people who worked on System Shock 2 castrated themselves so blatantly.

[dhex]

seeing as you can't actually die in the game with the vita chambers (they really should have done that like ss1 where you have to engage and turn on the chamber before you can be revived, but i digress) not being able to shoot the little sisters is a minor thing. plus it explains why they're still around in the first place, seeing as the rest of rapture is filled with insane people who run on walls and teleport and whatnot.

[BotageL]

I think the problem is that the developers created this massive hype around the "big moral choice" you make, then, as usual, it's half-assedly implemented and (from what I've heard) has very little effect on the overall game until the ending sequence. If you don't really have the guts to do your big moral choice right, I think it's better to find a new schtick, y'know?

Now I really want to play Bioshock so I can weigh in concretely on the game. I think I'm going to go see if I can get to that Blockbuster I passed on the road the other day.
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http://www.mdgeist.com/

[dhex]

to be sure, but hype is hype. they are the pretty lies you tell when you're trying to bone the shit out of someone who may be on the fence. they have to be at least somewhat true or else consequences arise (i.e. your facebook entry will be lit the fuck up and you won't be able to nail her friends) but you can definitely get away with short term gains by exploiting this.

plus everyone really really really wanted to believe. i wanted to believe at first too. but it is what it is, and so long as you don't expect zombie kickass jesus you will be well served i think. it's definitely system shock-y in many important ways.

hypothetical musing:
what i think happened is at some point their focus changed, because the early movies i saw the girls were more more "girl like" and it was a bit more ominous. either it got through an early round of testing or got shown to some of the money people an they flipped because visions of legions of dudes with livestrong bracelets bludgeoning children + the off chance some kid uses a wrench to beat up his sister and all he ever had to do was *look* at an xbox through a store window just once and 2k gets a take-two style perfect storm a la the haitians or hot coffee messes.

no one wants that.

and while it's hard to see from the other side of the controller, much less appreciate that kind of position, it's different when you bear some responsibility for the livelihood of your co-workers and their families, as well as your own ass and your own family. that they included children at all and didn't just make them robots who look like children is a step forwards towards a more "adult" medium which is what i presume the spittle-fest is about.
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[taidan]

I think at this point we can all agree the sisters could have been implemented better.

What makes me sad at this point is how its still the only thing people seem to want to write essays about in the mainstream gaming press. It almost makes you wonder the point of trying when these guys can't stop slobbering over and trying the grasp the least interesting aspect of the game.

[Predator Goose]

[Intentionally Wrong]

[internisus]

Man, be realistic. If you ignore hype, you've got nothing to go on.

[dhex]

it's not a reason to abandon all rational controls over behavior, however. feeling very deeply and strongly about something is not validation of the thoughts behind those feelings, as every stalker railing against a restraining order is slow to realize.

i for one like the "look mr. bubbles" thing, actually. it reinforces their fucked-ness.
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[Cossix]

Man I don't know about you guys but I tend to ignore like 90% of all information about video games coming out that I'm interested in. I knew Bioshock was a game by mostly the team that made System Shock 2 but I didn't even know it took place underwater anymore until I played the goddamn demo. I read the initial announcement that said they were trying to do some nazi world war 2 thing and pretty much ignored everything else about the game because developers tend to talk a lot of shit about their games a lot and people get all excited about some thing that was probably an inconsequential feature but it was easier to talk about that rather than talk about how rad seeing a plane crashing into the water tubes in the first ten minutes of the game is.

I mean seriously didn't you guys learn from Black and White?

[Mr. Mechanical]

[Cossix]

Man after Fable came out and everyone said it was so disappointing I looked at the pre-release hype and I was all how can anyone believe the stuff Peter Molyneux ever says?

[Toups]

[taidan]

I did the same as Cossix, ignoring anything about the game after the initial announcement. But the Big Daddies/Little Sistsers were plastered on so many news sites that there were some things that seemed impossible to ignore without completely isolating oneself from the beat of the industry.

Which made me learn that its probably better to isolate oneself from the beat of the industry.

[boojiboy7]

[GcDiaz]

[taidan]

[Cossix]

Yeah and considering he does pretty much pull out the plasmid to rescue the girl (I haven't seen the Harvest animation yet, Daphny did it while I was out running errands or something) I think it works pretty well. It's not like you hit X and then the girl disappears, replaced by a spinning 2D sprite of a Pentagram on fire that restores your health and provides you with enough RAGE to buy your next level of Doomkill or whatever. The rescuing "No no no no no" thing gets kind of irritating, that's the only part of it that bugged me at all.

Maybe if the game were made in twenty years where the game physically creates all the weapons and stuff I carry through its patented "PhysicsCreator" system and I have to pull it off my belt and apply it to the pretend little girl I could see being bugged if it just made you hit X to do it because that would be lazy, but as is all it does is simplify the interface for it all.

If you want to get irritated about something, get irritated about the Quest Arrow pretty much ruining the niceness of the interface. And then stop getting irritated about it because you can turn it off.

[boojiboy7]

[sethsez]

My god, it's like reading one of those IGN reader reviews from before the game is out. "this looks like 5h*t from teh previews 1/10"

Seeing a picture and reading some spoilers does not put you on equal ground with those who've played the thing. Arguing what the game does right and wrong based on nothing but hearsay, and then turning into a whirling dervish of vulgarity and insults when people dare to respond, is exactly the kind of bullshit that infests the worst corners of the internet. Being more well-spoken about it doesn't change that.

Play the game to some degree before you critique it with any degree of definitiveness. This is a game where execution matters, and just seeing a screenshot or a video doesn't convey what works and what doesn't. Though I don't like comparing the games, it is much like Half-Life 2 in that respect.

[SplashBeats]

could we please stop screaming "fuckhole" and "shithead" at each other when we disagree? this thread reads like gamefaqs.