[wpham]

Still waiting for a PC demo : (
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last.fm

[wpham]

Hey, the PC demo is out!

What the shit, when did demos get so big? 1.8 gigs? This is going to take a while : (
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last.fm

[wpham]

I just played through the demo. I would like less circle-strafing shootouts (I am reserving my circle-strafing shootouts for the next Unreal Tournament) and more scripted encounters that can endure a player's attempts to break them without disturbing the narrative.

I was really surprised at how smoothly the game ran compared to wrestling with an Oblivion reinstall for an hour or two.

[wpham]

During the "waterslide" part of the demo I felt like I was in a lot more danger than I actually was, with the water rushing all around me and things creaking and breaking.

I actually don't have insane expectations for this game, so I'm just going to go ahead and download it overnight off of Steam or whatever. If it turns out to just be a really well-scripted FPS, that's fine, I haven't played one in a long time.
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last.fm

[wpham]

[wpham]

I'm at Arcadia now, and, um, wow. I'm incredibly tired -- pretty sure this is the longest amount of time I've ever put into a single-player FPS in one sitting (not counting first-person games of other genres). Beyond a minor 15-minute hiccup where I wandered blindly around the Medical area, the game hasn't really slowed down.

I'm really enjoying the codependent development of level design and weapon design. You get powers and weapons when they begin to become useful, and the introduction of such doesn't seem to ever trivialize the game. I also haven't run into any issues of obsolescence. The pistol remains the most efficient way of killing frozen Slicers, the one-two shock/wrench combo still works, and there is almost always water around to group-kill Slicers.

Although, there has been one part where I went "...what the hell?", and that was the sudden intrusion of Pokemon Snap into my grenade-catching, Slicer-freezing, robot-hacking frenzy.
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last.fm

[wpham]

[wpham]

I have some issues with the latter half of the game -- most game objectives after a point fall under the category of "find item A, B, and C," the final boss is depressingly easy, and the good ending isn't as cinematic as I'd expected. However, the storyline itself is engaging, and the narrative remains tight throughout the entire game.

It's hilariously awesome how powerful the wrench becomes with the right tonics; after getting SportBoost and Wrench Jockey/Lurker, the only time I used any other weapon was against Big Daddies.
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last.fm

[wpham]

I ate every snack food thing that I came across and avoided every bottle of alcohol because of their negative effects. Also, because I had to budget ADAM, I never picked up the tonic that removes those negative effects. I might pick it up on my second play-through on Hard, since there's so much alcohol in the game.
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last.fm

[wpham]

The "drunk effect" is basically a throwaway graphics filter. It's much less impressive than the water, and the water is nice but not revolutionary.
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last.fm

[wpham]

But the "drunk" effect lasts, I don't know, a few seconds? It's worthless and not really immersive at all compared to spending a few minutes in Fort Frolic.

Try the full game!

I mean, I'm drunk right now and it is absolutely nothing like being drunk in BioShock. What I meant by my comparison is that the water is a little bit like real water, so the connection is a little less tenuous between reality<->game.
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last.fm

[wpham]

[wpham]

Bioshock feels very, very claustrophobic compared to the first three Metroid games.

And yeah, the gameplay in the second half is incredibly weak compared to the first half. During the escort quest I wanted to just pick up the Little Sister and throw her into whatever hole she needed to go into; the various uninspired fetch quests (build a bomb, build a Big Daddy suit, find X, get Y) are an extreme let-down after how the first half tries to give you the sense that you are an intruder here, these powerful people want to kill you, and you are basically alone.

I still think it's a good game, but Dracko gets it right: