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Well I wrote a lengthy impression of my first few hours into this great game, but three misplaced keystrokes sent it to oblivion. Since I'm now at work I can't type it again. Maybe later. But I was curious if anybody was thinking of playing this game, or if anyone actually is.
My wife surprised me with it yesterday, and I'm really liking it so far. The battle system is fun, the music is gorgeous (save the boss music, I'm sick of this glam rock phase Uematsu has gotten himself into), and the graphics are enjoyable to see.
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quote:Originally posted by erosomniac: We picked this up yesterday, but haven't had a chance to sit down and play it yet.
I'm drooling in anticipation, though.
Are you going to play it in Japanese with English subtitles or with English dubbing? I'm doing it the former way, but I've heard some of the English dubbing and it's pretty good surprisingly!
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I have a hard time taking most English dubbing seriously - even the good stuff - so probably the former. We'll see, though; I have a special schoolyard crush on Tara Strong.
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I played the demo and found it pretty bleh. I didn't even like it as much as the Eternal Sonata demo, which I thought was okay but definitely didn't sell me on the game. I did recently pick up Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 for PS2, but I loved Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2, so I had more background to go on.
Overall, though, on the CRPG front I skew strongly toward Western RPGs rather than JRPGs or MMOs (added: Mass Effect and Too Human are the two games I'm looking forward to the most now that BioShock is out). A JRPG has to have either a very interesting/unusual story (DDS) or an interesting battle system (Baten Kaitos, the Fire Emblem series) for me to finish it.
Glad you're enjoying it, though. It's nice to see the 360 broadening its library.
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Honestly, I'm mostly interested in it because it's a decent RPG on the 360.
How is Persona 3? I enjoyed DDS 1 & 2, but am hesitant to pick up P3 because I remember the original Persona so fondly and don't want P3 to ruin my memory of it (either by being worse or by being the same and showing me that the original game sucked, I was just young).
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I don't know, I've been too busy playing BioShock to start it. I finished BioShock last weekend and have returned to Psychonauts to finish it. I imagine I'll start P3 in another week or two, since I'd like to have a hope of finishing it before Mass Effect consumes my life. Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: I don't know, I've been too busy playing BioShock to start it. I finished BioShock last weekend and have returned to Psychonauts to finish it. I imagine I'll start P3 in another week or two, since I'd like to have a hope of finishing it before Mass Effect consumes my life.
A friend of mine got Bioshock, and says its quite fun. At a glance the game looks kinda dumb to my eyes. Am I missing something? Is it more then just a weird themed FPS?
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I'd like to know too, I've heard from countless sources that it's "the" greatest fps of all time. But from what I've seen, it doesn't seem that great.
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It's got quite a bit more depth than the typical FPS. I'm really enjoying it a lot. Definitely the best FPS I've played in a long time.
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quote:Originally posted by MEC: I'd like to know too, I've heard from countless sources that it's "the" greatest fps of all time. But from what I've seen, it doesn't seem that great.
It's not the greatest FPS of all time. That's a stupid label to put on any game anyway.
It's a very well crafted, well executed game, with superb sound design and music, superb visual and level design, superb voice acting and delivery of key information, and a level of unease of which I haven't experience since playing the Alien vs. Predator series.
It's still an FPS, with some "magicka/Plasmids" thrown in, but there's other things like the Research Camera etc.
It's dangerous to overhype anything, but needless to say, Bioshock is making me feel things I haven't felt in a long time while playing a game.
If you're still on the fence, download the demo, that was enough to convince me of forking over my $50.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: A friend of mine got Bioshock, and says its quite fun. At a glance the game looks kinda dumb to my eyes. Am I missing something?
That depends on what you like in games. BioShock is a shooter at its core, but it comes from the System Shock lineage. Its RPG elements are much lighter than its predecessors, but nevertheless you gain a wide range of new abilities and choices over time.
You know how it most shooters as you progress you get more guns, and then more guns, until finally you have eight or nine different weapons of varying power and utility? BioShock does have a number of different weapons, but each is customizable and upgradable. More importantly, however, you also gain extraordinary abilities that give you an incredible amount of tactical flexibility in how you choose to approach a given situation. I'm not going to spoil all of these abilities for you, but there are quite a number of them, and game is robust enough to handle most of the ideas you come up with. There were only one or two places where I thought "gee, I wonder if I could," and it turned out that I couldn't. Almost all of the time, I could, and was left with a "wow, that was extremely cool" feeling.
For example, in one of the gameplay videos that's online, the player is engaged in a battle. He shoots a tank of pressurized hydrogen, which begins to leak, and the leaking hydrogen immediately combusts, resulting in flame spurting from the cylinder. Using telekinesis, he grabs an abandoned teddy bear from nearby, lights it on fire by maneuvering it into the flame coming from the cylinder, and launches it at the nearest enemy. The impact lights the enemy on fire. Another enemy on a high balcony tosses a grenade; the player catches it telekinetically and tosses it back. Now, diverging from what's shown in the video, if there had happened to be a pool of water nearby, the first enemy would have run to douse himself off, at which point the player could simply have fired a blast of electricity into the water using another special ability, and fried the enemy.
The game is pretty graphic and extremely creepy at points. It's extremely atmospheric, has a solid* story, good characters, and excellent voice acting. The scenery is gorgeous; in particular, the water effects are absolutely incredible.
I'll note, though, that you're enjoying Blue Dragon, which looked dumb to my eyes at first glance (i.e. by playing the demo), so it could be that we simply have different tastes (obviously, that isn't a criticism). I loved BioShock, and will be playing through it again on hard mode to see the other main ending. Game of the Year, in my opinion -- an opinion that I don't even expect Halo 3 and Mass Effect to change, much as I'm sure I'll enjoy both of those games.
BioShock is a work of art. It is to shooters what Planescape: Torment is to CRPGs.
*Added: By "solid," I mean a lot more than "adequate" or "non-lame." I should have used stronger language. It's not Planescape: Torment on the story front, though it's certainly in that ballpark. It's definitely got a better story than any JRPG I've ever played -- a list that includes genre highlights such as Chrono Trigger, FFVI, and FFVII. It's interesting, the characters aren't cookie-cutter (not even the ones that seem so, like Andrew Ryan), and at times it made me think pretty hard. That's definitely saying something for a game that's a shooter at heart.
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Twinky: Thanks for the extensive review. I'll probably borrow it from my friend before I commit any money to it, I hate that games cost $60 nowadays. Bioshock in terms of how it plays sounds quite a bit like Half Life 2, which I certainly enjoyed.
------ I'm another few hours into Blue Dragon and it just keeps getting better. I love expanding my characters and having trouble deciding which class they should expand further into. I find myself figthing battles just for the sake of trying new techniques, it's really cool. I got home yesterday and my wife looked guilty while she was filling out some work related paper work. I asked her what was up, and she said, "I ended up playing Blue Dragon all day and not getting anything done, I'm sorry!"
What sucks when that happens is that while *I* play she has to keep being told to move along and not get distracted. Wives who play video games are a double edged sword.
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If you've been able to get your 360 online, there's a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace that gives you a pretty good overview of the beginning of the game, though with a bit more in the way of special abilities than you actually get by that point normally.
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quote:Originally posted by twinky: If you've been able to get your 360 online, there's a demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace that gives you a pretty good overview of the beginning of the game, though with a bit more in the way of special abilities than you actually get by that point normally.
The 360 is still offline. I either have to pay $100 for the wireless adaptor, or I have to move.
Would you be surprised if I said I am opting for the move option? Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Just made it about 15 minutes into the 3rd DVD, what a cool game! I love the aesthetics of the world, and though robots usually make me bored REALLY quick, I am actually enjoying this game alot! The boss music doesn't even bother me so much anymore. So many small details in the story are just a bit different than I am used to seeing and that's good!
Spoilers!!!
Sure there is the whole two guys are friends with the same girl so who is going to end up with her, but these kids are actually mature about it, if you can believe that! They discuss the situation openly, and they remain good if not better ones. The hero seems like he ISN'T going to end up with the one chic his age in the group!
Yes there is a kidnapped maiden in distress cliche but it plays out differently. I mean the bad guy tosses her over a ledge and the heroes have to catch her, and THEN go looking for the bad guy.
I'm annoyed with the whole RPG, OH NO! We've lost all our powers! But having the villain play them this entire time, and ultimately the heroes hard work is what is going to make the villain a billion times harder to beat is an awesome dynamic.
Introducing a battle dynamic clear up at the 3rd DVD is certainly different then I am used to, but it's nice to not have all the rules stamped out in the first few battles, and all changes from there are just expansions of the existing rules.
/Spoilers
I'm very pleased with the game thus far. I wish there were more musical tracks, thus far they have all been mostly very fun to listen to, but they replay alot of them and that kinda makes me sad. I might finish the game today if my brother does not end up coming over today. Yesterday I couldn't stop playing because I kept telling myself, "OK just one more save point and I'm done." Ultimately that plan worked, just a few hours later then when I first said it.
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It's nice to see the 360 broadening its library.
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I finished BioShock last weekend and have returned to Psychonauts to finish it. I imagine I'll start P3 in another week or two, since I'd like to have a hope of finishing it before Mass Effect consumes my life. ![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
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