BioShock 2: On Rapture and Isolation

BioShock 2 is a re-journey through the city of Rapture, the failed underwater utopia, since befallen at the helm of Andrew Ryan, so thoroughly investigated by the game's predecessor. This time, you play as a Big Daddy, and your villain is the all-powerful female psychiatrist, Sofia Lamb, pitting against you many "Big Sisters," (above) while your goal is still somewhat to escape. However, the more I waddle through Rapture, the more I realize that BioShock is in essence not about failed utopias so much as the idea of social isolation.

From the beginning of BioShock 2, we get the sense that we are hated, as we were apparently forced to commit suicide in the distant past through the Plasmid mind control of Sofia Lamb. Once we wake up, we return to Rapture, still despised by the mix of raging splicers, whom we are forced to battle through a series levels, each controlled by a quaint ol' character with a stake of their own in Rapture's lineage. But the point being, the only social contact you have with the world is always plagued by negative reinforcement. Everyone out there is trying to kill you and even your fellow Big Daddies want you dead. And the only sane characters are always separated by a pane of glass, in a different room than you, disembodied - speaking to you through the radio (or even telepathy) - or in hiding. In this sense, you remain constantly isolated from every other character in the world of Rapture, including those of your fellow Big Daddies.

The Big Daddies, of whom you are the foremost, are some of the few characters who actually have a social attachment to another entity: the little sisters. In killing the Big Daddies (which is so integral to the gameplay - they give you Adam, the necessary ingredient for upgrading your character attributes and abilities) you sever the little sisters' connection from their Big Daddies, and forcingly take the little sisters to your side. This somewhat contrived social relationship gives you, the player, some form of companionship, yet it is tainted by forcefulness and fabrication, still leaving you with a lack of genuine friendship.

Yet the little sisters stand at the centerpiece of BioShock 2. You are meant to rescue them - and eventually be united with your original little sister - by exploring Rapture with all of its inhabitants, since impacted by the changes after the fall of Andrew Ryan. However, the times where I truly started feeling something - any sort of emotion in Rapture - weren't the times when I learned about the history of Rapture or its inhabitants' troubled pasts. Those stories are just words - they don't have any pertinence to the immediate. They don't have any impact on my journey - it's all history. On the contrary, what created feeling for me was what impacted me in the present, and that was companionship - from the little sisters, or even the hacked turrets, or the sentry bots, simply by fighting at my side.


BioShock 2 is a game in which you are literally pitted against an entire world of crazed maniacs who really, really want to kill you. Because of this, any sort of companionship means so much more, because of this great negativity oppressing you. This runs more so than other games such as Halo or Call of Duty, because the very nature of your character as a Big Daddy reinforces this, coupled with the physical detachment of being deep underwater. I didn't care so much for the plot - the gameplay was fine, although it turned into a cycle of 'spam projectiles, scoff down medkits, and then scavenge each room like a homeless person' - it doesn't matter why we're going through these levels, does it? We just do it because that's how the levels are designed - to be completed and explored by players. It's not because we really want to find Eleanor Lamb - we don't know her, or have any emotional connection to her; she's a disembodied voice who tells us things that we don't even know are truth. We go through these levels because they exist as levels, meant to be progressed and completed.

Which is disappointing because the real essence of the game comes from that sense of purposeful companionship, between Big Daddy and Little Sister. Yet the majority of the game is spent on killing varieties of monotonous enemies, scavenging resources, and performing the same mini-games over and over in order to survive. We do interact with the little sisters, but their function in the game is to serve as mini tower-defense sequences, not as a physical character journeying with you, sharing your hardships and trials. Yet it should have been more about the gaining of companionship, the triumph over isolation. Because that's what Big Daddies are about, right? The loss of humanity, the severance of emotional ties, the fabricated relationship with a 'Little Sister.' And to regain that true humanity is what the story should really be about.


The highest crux of emotional feeling in the game, being the arcing change from social isolation to companionship, occurs towards the end, when you are reunited with your little sister, Eleanor, now a Big Sister, ready to fight at your side. She comes to your aid in times of distress, actually wards off dangerous enemies, and finally gives you accompaniment through the once desolate and deadly environments of Rapture. When the game ends with your mutual escape, it is a powerful thing. It wasn't about all the environments, myriad of details, or the well-written depth of characters, telling us why we should do certain things. It was that feeling of companionship that made the game - some emotional connection to a character that actually affected us, not a disembodied voice or an array of narrative backstory. It was to about going from being isolated, socially, to having a friend. And that's what BioShock 2 was about in the end: gaining a friend - a big sister.

Creating Satisying Goals

Last week I was climbing up a gigantic piece of granite rock by the name of "Lembert Dome." This experience taught me some things, the least of which is related to game design, which is why I am referencing it.

By the time I reached the final stretch of the hike, the sun was about to set and the peak was still ahead of me. With a little help from my friends, I made it to the top, and learned some valuable lessons about goals and what it means to achieve them.

How does this apply to game-design? I would say that in order to have satisfying goals, you need three elements: Payoff, Originality, and Failure.

1: Payoff
Why do people do things? Why do you endure struggle, pain, and hardship? The obvious answer is because it will be worth it, but the end goal must be gratifying enough that it is worth the struggle. If you know the payoff will be high enough, you can endure many difficulties in order to reach it.
What's the notion behind hiking to the top of a giant dome? The 'explorer' answer is for the view--you get to a see an aerial perspective that is not available from down below. As you're climbing, in the back of your head you know that there is a great view waiting for you, and that motivates you to keep going. This is the reason why you would exert force and endure the pain to reach the peak--because you know that there will be a payoff, a reward for your efforts.
In game design, there should always be a payoff to every task that requires the player to struggle. Why should the player explore a giant underwater, mutant-infested Utopian residential section? Why not just sit in the corner and not doing anything? In order to motivate the player to explore, there needs to be some sort of reward, and in this case it would be extra health, ammo, items, or power-ups. What's the reason for the player to defeat the gigantic cyclops boss in the Earth temple? To gain an extra heart container, advance the story, and unlock new areas of the world. Whether it's fighting a boss, or just exploring a level, there needs to be a reason as to WHY the player should be doing it. If there were no rewards for completing a given task, it would be pointless to do so. In game-design, there should always be a payoff to each of the player's accomplishments, whether they are big or small--the payoff will be adjusted accordingly. The greater the promise of reward in each specific task, the more incentive the player will have to reach it and the more intrigued he or she will be to keep playing the game.

2: Originality
The second item required in achieving satisfying goals is originality. When given the choice of hiking two places, one already hiked and one never traveled previously, which one will a given person choose assuming that both hikes have an equal payoff? Logically, most people will probably choose the hike they had never done before, because it provides a new experience.
When hiking Lembert dome, I had never seen the top before, so it was a new experience for me. If I had already experienced the view before, it would have not been quite as magnificent.
Likewise, with game-design, goals should be new and original in order to be satisfying. If the goal of every level in a game was the same (interrogate the traveling merchant, pickpocket a thief, then eavesdrop on a conversation) then it will become stagnant and boring. When you achieve those goals, it is not as rewarding because you've already done them before. If goals are new and unique (become a Big Daddy, liberate City 17) they will be more fulfilling because you have never done anything like it before. Goals should be original as much as possible in order to provide the best experience for the player.

3: Failure
The last element necessary for satisfying goals is a chance of failure. When reaching the peak of Lembert Dome, I saw the tall granite cliff wall and wasn't sure if I could scale it to the top, especially since it was dark and the sun was setting. Also, since this was an original goal, that added to the difficulty since I was not sure I could do it. If I knew I could have made it to the very top before I even started hiking, that would not have been as fulfilling. Instead, since there was a chance I could not do it, that I could fail, that made it much more rewarding when I got to the peak.
With game-design, an element of failure helps to motivate the player to give her best to complete a task. If a game is too easy, there is no satisfaction when reaching a goal. If you already know you can kill these two-hundred Germans because your health respawns and you quickload when you die 5 seconds prior for each death there is no chance of losing at all. This makes the completion of each goal unsatisfying since it was a matter of when, not how to complete the goal. In contrast, if you don't know how to defeat an enemy and may die in the process, it makes the success much more enjoyable. When the Big Daddy comes around a corner, and you are not sure if you have enough health, ammo, and leeway to destroy him while staying alive, it is very fulfilling when you fire the last bullet into him and he thuds to the ground, giving you a payoff of money and more. When you jump onto the final dragon boss and hookshot your way across several flying pedestals to reach the dragon's neck with only several hearts remaining, it is much more satisfying to destroy him while almost dying than to have beat him without losing a single heart container. It is the chance that you can fail, that you can die, that makes something so much more fulfilling when completed.

Conclusion
When I reached the top of Lembert dome, there was a feeling of mutual victory, thanks to the fact that I had some fellow hikers. In the same way in games, victory is just as sweet when shared with fellow players.
On last stage of Goldrush in Team Fortress 2, when the cart is several feet away from the drop zone for the first time (originality), and there is only several seconds left (chance of failure), victory is mutually satisfying when you push the cart in and get to kill your enemies while seeing the gigantic hole explode (payoff). A shared victory always holds something slightly more than an individual victory, but both still benefit from a payoff, originality, and chance of failure.

Bioshock

Bioshock is an First-Person-Shooter-Role-Playing-Game (FPSRPG) set in the dysfunctional and failed-Utopian underwater world of Rapture--founded by Andrew Ryan--where the player can use either the standard weapon set of pistols/machine-guns/grenade-launchers/etc or powerful tonics called Plasmids that enable the player to preform a variety of magical attacks on their enemies, who consist of mutants, malfunctioning machines, and mysterious creatures called Big Daddies and Little Sisters, who also happen to have Adam, the secret ingredient that gives people even more magical Plasmid powers.

Things I liked about Bioshock:
1. The environments are stuffed with information. You don't walk around boring corridors and lifeless arenas that could pass for any random location or hallway with generic pipes/branches/walls/doors. Everything in Rapture is filled with posters, audio logs, sculptures, propaganda, and anything you can think of that helps reveal back story and makes the city feel more alive. You can literally spend hours just searching the environment and inferring back story from the levels. This makes it much more fun and interesting to be playing in this setting.
2. The combat has strategy. Compare a game like Call of Duty 5 to Bioshock. Call of Duty 5 has only one strategy for every combat situation: shoot the enemy, advance by cover, if possible flank the enemy, if you can't see the enemy, throw a grenade, then move on when the enemy is dead--REPEAT. There's no variety to that formula, no thought, no challenge, and little if any fun. In Bioshock, you are given a variety of weapons and powers, constantly changing environments to use them in, and an array of different enemy types to battle with. These scenarios constantly challenge the player as he or she must decide what, how, and where to use their combat abilities. You can approach an enemy with a variety of plasmids that range from fire, ice, telekinesis, lightning, or even bees. Coupled with the environment, you can use these powers on things like oil spills, water puddles, or lying gas cans, to manipulate the physical world to your advantage. For weapons, you are given the standard melee/pistol/shotgun/machine-gun/rocket-launcher/sniper, but they all work the way they're supposed to. Each weapon has its own highlights and drawbacks, making every weapon useful in a particular circumstance. Even more, you can customize the different types of ammo in the guns adding a further element of strategy. Because of all this, there is no one sure-fire way to approach every combat situation, and you must always be on your feet about how to engage the next type of enemy in the next type of environment. This makes the game challenging and saves it from becoming boring or repetitive.
3. The Audio Logs serve a purpose. System Shock 1 had audio logs; System Shock 2 had audio logs; now Bioshock has them too. In each game, they have been subsequently improved over the last. In Bioshock, the audio logs are genuinely interesting, well-written, and well-voice acted. They still occasionally give the generic "Mr. Suchong, I changed the door code to 5-6-7-8. Please don't tell anyone!" but it works better in this game than the previous ones. Overall, the Audio Logs are a great story incentive to motivate the player to search a new environment for something other than ammo and cash.

Things I didn't like about Bioshock:
1. Switching between Plasmids is cumbersome. So you have these magical powers called plasmids, and you get to put them in up to six available slots from which you can access them during any battle. The problem is you can't remember which slot holds which plasmid, and switching between them with F1-F6 isn't very intuitive while trying to fight off two attackers and a Big Daddy at the same time with all your fingers preoccupied with WASD+Mouse. To make matters worse at the beginning, you acquire enough plasmids fast enough that they shuffle through each slot continuously, removing any previous slot memorization you may have made. Even in Gene Banks (where you can swap available plasmids), you aren't allowed to move around the order you put them in without going through a hefty work-around. The least they could have done was permanently leave the Plasmid Slot GUI at the top of the screen so you remember which slot goes where (like Psychonauts did with their powers). The result is that when combat becomes hectic, Plasmid management becomes unintuitive, something that makes battles a tad frustrating and chaotic at times.
2. The game becomes too easy. The first third or so of the game has excellent pacing and an appropriate difficulty curve that can be labeled as "challenging." However, as the game goes into the second half, it becomes annoyingly easy to the point of boredom. Why?
2.A. During the second half of the game, ammo, medkits, money, and anything you could ever want or desire is littered all over the place. But by this time, you don't actually need any of these items because your character has become so ridiculously powerful. Ammo is easily acquired and stockpiled because you don't have enough time or inclination to switch and use all the different weapons you have. As such, there are some weapons you never touch or use for entire stretches of the game. It's much more preferable to use plasmids--something you can recharge--instead of weapons, which consume precious ammo every usage. Medkits and Eve Hypos become less useful because of new Plasmids that actually recharge these two attributes in a variety of ways. E.g. you can whack at enemies with the wrench to stealth their health, OR, you can hack a vending machine and gain health and eve, OR, you can just pick up any alcohol you find in a container and drink it down plentifully. Finally, because you don't really need any ammo, medkits, or any of this stuff, money becomes useless since there is nothing left to purchase at Vending Machines that you don't already have. This is especially tedious since all the Big Daddies you so valiantly kill drop generous amounts of cash which you can't pick up in the final levels. All of these useless items just remove player motivation to explore new arenas. Even more, it removes an entire element of survival strategy. Games like Resident Evil use ammo consumption as a fair way to have the player conserve and find the most efficient ways to use his or her weapons in every situation. Without this element of strategy, you lose an entire game mechanic in Bioshock.
2B. Most Big Daddies don't attack you unless you provoke them. This sounds good in theory, since nobody wants to find off a monstrous attacker who leaps out on them by surprise. However, this means you get to set up ridiculous amounts of traps and barbed wire in order to take him down while he stares you in the face, oblivious of your plan. After that, all you need to do is fire a single shot at him for the Big Daddy say, "I'm gonna get ya'!" and then he runs through your obstacle course of destruction and falls down dead without you ever taking a second shot.
There are sections of the game where Big Daddies are alone, without their Little Sister companions. I think those times are appropriate for neutrality. I do think, however, that when Little Sisters do come out, they should force the Big Daddies to attack you. It would make the combat much more scary and tense and provide a second gameplay purpose for the Little Sisters.
3. The game is fatiguing. When you enter the next level of this grand city of Rapture, all you need to do is Press "M" and see the gigantic maze of a level that you must now enter--they could have just used the fog of war effect, only revealing the part of the map that you've been to. This wouldn't be so bad if the player had an incentive to explore this level and proceed to advance the story, but the game frequently makes it frustrating to do so.
First of all, since the second half of the game is so easy, often times there is little left to explore to buff up your character. I would walk through levels maxed out on ammo, health, medkits, and upgrades, so then all that there was left to look for was Adam. After you destroy all the Big Daddies in a level (who have the Adam), there are only Upgrade Stations or Loose Plasmids to look forward to, both of which are extremely rare. Because of this, I was in no rush to explore optional places looking for character advancement.
Second of all, many of the story goals have nothing to do physically do with the story. When you enter a level, you are often told to kindly go on a fetch quest across the room, which leads you to another fetch quest on the other side of the level, and these annoying task-hand-offs continue throughout the entire game. Many times you are just told to flip switches, or acquire nameless or generic items to proceed. It was hard to distinguish actual story goals from going around and picking up the next labeled item you were told to acquire. It would have been more interesting if you had to complete goals that were unique or pertinent to the world itself (something which happens only much later in the game). Instead, you just run around searching for Red Keys to unlock Red Doors--except replace Red Key with Electromagnetic bomb, and Red Door with Andrew Ryan's office.
4. The Story relies too much on inference. There are two ways a game can tell you what's going on. For instance, take Half-Life 2. You can infer from the city, background, and setting, that the Combine are the evil overlords who have enslaved the people. You are told directly that you must go to Eli's Lab and get the gravity gun, that you must escape Ravenholm because the Combine are coming, and that you must rescue Eli because you know he is a good guy.
Now, Bioshock on the other hand relies almost solely on inference from the player. Every feature of the world is immediately thrust upon you from the beginning. What is Rapture? Why is it now so decayed and ruined? What are these Little Sisters and Big Daddies, and what is Adam?
The answers are never told to you directly. Instead, you have to infer them from the environment, dialog, and audio logs you find all over the place. However, by putting a large chunk of the story in audio logs, the game takes a huge risk. Often times the player can miss these audio logs, removing a critical part of the background story. Or, the player can pick these up out of order (but the game saves you from doing that, for the most part) and instead get a disgruntled version of the story. Or worse, the player can find these logs and listen to them, but not even pay attention to what is being said because of the blaring alarms, screaming mutants, moaning big daddies, and singing little sisters who are all slowly creeping upon you.
Since so much of the story relies on inference, many key plot points are somewhat muddled and not perfectly clear. You don't know for certain which character is who, and what they are trying to do. So when the story finally reveals itself, you are left in state of slight ambiguity trying to remember who did what and why.

I really liked the first third of Bioshock, but as the game progressed, its complexity dragged it down to a state of lesser enjoyment. All the key components of an excellent game are there, but they don't feel fully put in the right places. Portal is a game that works because of its simplicity. It takes an idea, and fully expounds on it to its highest potential. Bioshock takes tens of ideas, and when trying to balance them all together, doesn't fully succeed in the long run. Still, the game is an achievement worth experiencing, and contains enough fun to make it one of the better FPS games of this generation.

Final Score:
4/5
(Play it)

System Shock 2 (1999)

System Shock 2 is highly regarded as one of the greatest PC games of all time and for valid reasons. It is a hybrid of FPS and RPG elements, set on a somewhat non-linear space station, with an engrossing story, deep gameplay, and an all-around high degree of polish.

Here, I am going to do an analysis of what I think could be improved in this game.

Audio Logs
Once again, the audio logs from the first System Shock return. These are little items that you can find on the ground and listen to for various bits of story info, and sometimes vital information needed to progress the game. The game fixes one problem of the last game by deciding to include all the vital information in a NOTES tab, which is nice, meaning I don't have to sift through countless amounts of exposition in order to find the code to unlock this door.
However, there are still two main problems with the audio logs.
1) To serve as a story device - they don't really work. The logs provide bits and pieces of a larger coherent story, and each level you enter is like another chapter, with the logs being paragraphs of that chapter scattered throughout the level you're in. If you pick up the logs out of order, or don't listen to them intently due to fighting several monsters simultaneously, you don't pick up the full expositional benefit of the backstory.
2) There is a serious problem with picking up audio logs while trying to fight bad guys. Nobody wants to listen to people jabbering about their life story while the said player is fighting several mutants, dysfunctional androids, bio-mechanical mech-warriors, and aliens. It's just totally impracticable.

Level Design
Once again the levels are non-linear in this game. I don't have a problem with this--that is, when it's done right. I do have a problem with this when I am presented with two equal paths, I have no map to guide me, and one leads down the dark road to the end, while the other is a short dead end with much needed supplies, and I don't know which way to go.
This wasn't so much of a problem during the main space ship, seeing as how you could easily backtrack and had a map to guide you, but it was a HUGE problem during the end sections, where you had no map, and one wrong turn meant you may have missed a vital section of the game.
I think the correct way to fix this would be to tell the player either:
"All these paths are equal, and they all go the same way or loop back together, so have fun choosing!" (which is basically what the game executed in the space station, but didn't say it)
(OR) slap a dead-end sign on each wrong way so we know which way to go first. I don't want to be second-guessing myself every turn I make. (which would have helped in the end sections, ALOT)

RPG Elements
There are many ways role playing games let the player level up. One would be the way of KOTOR, where you level up after experience, and get several points to spend on new powers. Another would be in Final Fantasy, where the game automatically assigns points at each level up. Another would be in Quest for Glory, where by preforming tasks such as fighting, you unconsciously get better at them.
In System Shock, it's a little different. There are no levels, but you do receive points in order to level up different attributes of your character. However, these points are few and far between, but they can be spent on whatever the player sees fit at any time he can find an upgrade station.
This works for the most part, but I have one main gripe with it.
Using this system, the player can easily unbalance his character on one path if he sees fit, and never encounter any of the other skills of the game such as hacking, or psi-powers. Games like KoTOR let you choose your class and let you predominate it by about 2/3 of your points, letting you barely grasp the other sections of the game. In System Shock, you might never choose those other sections of the game and thus, you never know what you missed. I would've liked it if certain points could only be used on Psi Powers for example, so I wouldn't have to choose between getting force pull and upgrading my hacking skill. Then I would at least get a taste of the other aspects of the game, even if I don't get to go down that road.

Degree of Difficulty (and other nonsense)
System Shock 2--unlike its predecessor--comes with an in-game tutorial that takes about 30 minutes to complete. This is all well and fine, except for the fact that after the game starts, throughout the first level the game dumps paragraphs after paragraphs of more text information that you need to know in order to figure out what you are doing and how to play the game. I don't want to walk around each corner and then read another page of text explaining the game mechanics. It's boring!
The difficulty curve is once again somewhat odd. The first parts of the game are immediately challenging, where every swing of the wrench and every damage point taken is carefully observed. Then once you get more powerful weapons like LAZER SWORDZ the game becomes much easier until you run into the final stages where health, ammo, and energy is limited. So, I saved up tons of supplies for the final boss fight(s) which to my surprise, ended easily and quickly, with me still carrying truckloads of leftover supplies. I was then rewarded with a short cut-scene telling me I somehow won the game.
Which brings me to another nuisance I encountered in the game: the game lets you carry around "implants" which slowly drain energy (it's like health, but another meter). This is directly linked to the problem of having a limited inventory, since when one of my implants ran out (after about 10 minutes), I lost 3 inventory slots, and my much needed supplies with it. This made me play as if I was on a timer the whole time, as I had to hurry to complete each objective otherwise I would lose inventory items due to my implants failing.
I actually like restricted inventory screens when it's reasonable (see Resident Evil 4), but when my inventory capacity runs on a timer, and there are countless objects around that would double my inventory if I could pick them up (and I wanted to), the restricted inventory just becomes a nuisance.

In conclusion, System Shock 2 is once again a really, really, complex game. It's probably impossible to access all the gameplay functions in one run, since the game limits you to your class choice and then some. Because of this, you won't be able to acquire all the skills, or pick up all the weapons you find, or use everything you researched throughout the course of the game.
Still, despite its problems, System Shock 2 is a great game, and ultimately worthy of being called a "classic."

System Shock 2:
8.9/10

Elements of an FPS

Elements of an FPS (as presentend in numerous "good" shooters such as Bioshock and Half-Life)


The "Safe-Impress the player" Introduction
Start off the game with the player in an impressive enviroment making them amazed at what they just saw. (e.g. the train ride in Half-Life 2 and the opening of City 17, or the reveal of Rapture in Bioshock) You can show danger in this part, but you can't let the player die, otherwise he would get angry and quit the game. (So, that's why I was a little bored in Bioshock. Even though they scared me with enemies on the outside, I knew they couldn't touch me because that would violate the safety rule. Boringness ensues.)

Suggestion: I know I can't die in the beginning because dying that early would be unfair to the player. That removes all sense of suspense and danger. How about keeping the reality of danger there, but make it easy to escape it. For example, after the resonance cascade in Half-Life 1, everything was destroyed. Head-crabs would pop out of nowhere which WOULD ATTACK you, hurting you. But they did hardly any damage and you could outrun them fast. It's better to have that, than just to have nothing and voices screaming at you in the shadows.


Show the Enemy
This is a very simple trick popularized by Half-Life 1. Before confronting the player with a potentially scary or dangerous enemy, first show the player the enemy from a distance where the player is safe, and has a chance to observe the enemy. This is done in the Bioshock Demo multiple times and in Half-Life for most of the enemies. In Half-Life 1, when introducing a new stronger enemy type, they had the enemy contained in a glass pod. To proceed through the game, you had to break the pod, but you had as long as you wanted to to observe the enemy before attacking him.
The seemingly only exception to this rule is when you want to surprise or scare the player with a zombie-like enemy who will leap out of nowhere leaving the player shocked at this new enemy.
(Once again, I wasn't afraid of the giant monster enemies in Bioshock because I knew they were letting me observe them in a controlled enviroment. Safety and lack of supsense ensued.)

Scripted Sequences

A pipe breaks next to you as you walk by; a plane flies by overhead and explodes in mid-air; a wall suddenly explodes and hordes of monsters come through; these are all scripted sequences that will catch the player off-guard (usually) and increase the atmosphere and tension. The only thing they serve is the "cool" factor and they usually trigger when they player walks onto a certain tile. Rarely do they provide any signfigance to the gameplay. There were several moments like this in Bioshock and I was like, "That's great, it looks kind of cool, but I know it has nothing to do with anything."

Scripted sequences are fun when you actually have an impact on them. In the Bioshock demo, there was an enemy below me pounding on a door, trying to get the occupant to open it. I wanted to see what would happen so I didn't shoot him. Nothing actually happened. I think it would be cool if different things happened if you shot him or not, but that wasn't the case here.

Bioshock Demo

Bioshock


(PC DEMO REVIEW)

The Good:

- Presentation: the world, the characters, the story, the setting; they were all interesting.

- The enemies are real people, not clones; they had conversations with each other; they had lives and problems before I decided to hack away at their guts. It almost makes you sorry for killing them.

- You have weapons - you have plasmids - you have enemies - and then you have the enviroment - Each of the four is a variable in an equation that you have to write in every combat encounter. How do you evaulate the answer? That's up for you to decide.

- The enviroment didn't have random junk lying around for you to walk over and pick up. You had to search the place and press use to pick stuff up.

The Bad:

- I thought it was kind of illogical that your plane happens to crash right in the middle of the giant atlantic ocean within 50 feet of a mystical tower that happens to descend into an underwater metropolis. I also thought it was awkward that there was an invisible wall in the ocean ten feet away from the tower so I couldn't swim away, and that the horizon was way too low making the scene look fake.

- I remember in one room there was about twenty things that I could pickup and I just picked up everything having no idea what each did. It was almost like a bad adventure game.

- I didn't get to fight a Big Daddy? : (

The Ugly:

- Scripted sequences no longer make me go "Ooh! Aah!" I lost that after playing Half-Life 2. Now whenever a plane crashes or a pipe breaks, or a door explodes, I just say, "That's nice developers, but I know that's a scripted sequence! I'm not impressed!"

BioShock Demo:

8.5 / 10.0