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Opinion: Phil vs... Bioshock
In the first of a regular, wrath-filled series of Monday columns, CPC contributor Phil Hartup directs his ire at Bioshock. Not quite the masterpiece everyone claims it is, apparently.
All these elements combine to make a game that
feels dated, simplified and console-like. Feeling console-like is fine for a
console game, but PCs are the superior gaming system with a superior control
interface, and there is no reason for PC users to have to be subjected to a
substandard experience, apart from the laziness of developers. The terms ‘RPG’
and ‘FPS/RPG’ are thrown around lots with reference to Bioshock, as if having
RPG credentials might excuse the moribund combat elements, but there’s nothing
to commend Bioshock as an RPG at all. You play a character that isn’t you, fair
enough, but you do this in Quake and Tomb Raider, so does that make them RPGs
as well? Maybe if you want to get into the semantics of the term it does, but
in established gaming terminology an RPG demands a little more than a couple of
plot twists and the ability to equip weapons and spells. Sure you can tinker
with enhancements and weapon upgrades in Bioshock, but that doesn’t change the
fact that you spend nearly the entire game walking through a succession of
rooms and corridors killing everybody you see. Maybe this passes for ‘role-playing’
in the Xbox age, but compared to games such as Deus Ex and STALKER, all of
which far more ably fit into the FPS/RPG genre, Bioshock is rather superficial.
Let’s not forget the real peanut in the turd that is Bioshock’s gameplay
though: the difficulty. Bioshock is a game where you can’t die. Not only are you
a gun-toting, computer-hacking, psionic power blasting supermutant freakmaster,
if you do manage to die, you also get to respawn close to the point where you
died without penalty. This takes away any notions of challenge or character
realism from the game and drowns them in a bucket of stale pee.
The second major selling point that was rammed down
the throat of the public by the hype machinery that preceded Bioshock was its
story. It was said there was a moral aspect, different endings, the capacity to
choose your fate and so on and so forth. This, again, might be new to an Xbox
360 user, but the PC has had multiple endings to games with a greater degree of
sophistication than this for years. The difference in the case of Bioshock seems
to be that the moral decision is whether or not you kill a bunch of cute little
kids. That’s not really much of a moral decision though; it’s more like ‘Press
This Key To Be Evil’. Even the Jedi Knight series – hardly a haven of
sophistication – presented the possibility of a change to the Dark Side in a
subtle, more gradual way. You might pick up a few Sith powers to make life
easier as you went along because they kicked arse and it was a tough game, but overuse
them and, before you know it, you’re pimping round the universe in a Star
Destroyer with a Vote Palpatine bumper sticker. Deus Ex also found you taking a
different path in the game depending upon how you carried out objectives. There
was no big glaring screen with the Good or Evil clearly spelled out; you were simply
judged on how you acted. You could say you were a good guy, but if you left a
trail of corpses in your wake the game would respond accordingly.
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I think the game sucks. Not only is the gameplay uninspiring, but it also installs the SecuROM DRM rootkit on your PC, and it won't run on the Radeon X800XT, a GPU which plays cool games like UT2k4 with all options and 4xAA in 1920x1200 at 60fps. It's a lot of hype to market the 360 and new DX10 cards, most of which plainly suck in terms of cost/performance ratio. The only thing 2K forgot to do is to make this game "Windows Vista only", otherwise it would have been the ultimate shallow upgrade bait.
Comment by gustep12 at 3:27am 24th September 2007
Hey I loved D3, what atmosphere, loved the tech. Bioshock is pretty good what I've seen of it, but these games ALL have the same problems. - Everything runs on rails, simple minded bot AI - HL2, even the wonderful Deus Ex (possibly one of the best FPS ever), even Stalker sticks you on the rails. Bioshock does have excellent atmosphere, but have you played The Darkness? that really gives Bioshock a run for its money - single open ended areas, amazing detail, incredible atmosphere. And the Darkness is so interactive and clever - how about just stopping and watching the TV in the subway for awhile, plus its a game where savepoints actually work.
Comment by Lucien at 11:14am 16th September 2007
Have you actually completed the game? All drippy corridors? What about Arcadia? To be fair, it is an underwater city, what did you expect? Mountain ranges and forests? Plus, the level design is excellent with the ambient sound design adding to the atmosphere. Occasional port hole? What about the huge windows in just about every room and the huge glass ceilings? You can't aim down your gun sights? You could bind the middle mouse button to that function. Or did you forget? Only iron sights on the pistol and machine gun. You are right about the Splicers attacks. However, you're contradicting yourself here. you call them a horde of maudlin zombies yet you want them to build a flanking manoeuvre on your ass. They are spliced up nutters with one thing on their mind! You failed to mention the voice acting. 'tis superb, no? This game is a work of art... hang on, I get it now! You are taking the piss and actually enjoyed this game. And your rant is actually designed to cause debate whilst you sit back and cackle evily. edit: Since I went to post this I had to log in and now you've changed your veiw of the aiming down the sights. I do believe that you have only played the demo and not the whole game...
Comment by lord_midas at 5:27pm 10th September 2007
The game explains why the main character injects himself without question, as PCG pointed out, its all about 3 words.
Comment by ackack at 2:16pm 13th September 2007
Good shout Once I've got a spare couple of hours I'll be busting open that box and having a go at medal of honour.......goddam annoying that theres no internet coverage in my area (Australia in the dark ages).....as original medal of honour was were I lost my multiplayer virginity !!!
Comment by akoli at 2:08am 13th September 2007
...as I quite enjoyed it. Paid £25 quid, got some decent gameplay, good graphics and no crashes or authentication issues (it ran fine on Vista 32 HP, an 8800GTX and E6600 CPU with 2GB of RAM). Bioshock is old news in the world of FPS though, how about a game of Medal of Honour Airborne, anyone?
Comment by mr121469 at 2:06pm 12th September 2007
I have HL 2 and i HATED IT!!!!! yes u may well want to beat me with a spoon , but it was so boring, i'm not a massive FPS fan but god did it pain me to play. Bioshock however has really caught my attention, the beautiful design and atmospheric ambiance is just awesome. i can't honestly say the last time i have enjoyed playing a game this much. i reckon its worth the score. truly a game the developers loved.
Comment by typhoon1377 at 9:29pm 11th September 2007
fantastically well said. I'm in total agreement with you here. great game, but nowhere near the 96% average it's been given, especially when it's compared to the quality games that have already been around in existence HL2 et al.
Comment by sotu1 at 1:14pm 11th September 2007
At last someone who sees the truth. I was put off the second the character decided to randomly inject a strang blue fluid in his arm without knowing what is was. I would never choose to do that in an RPG unless I knew it was going to give me UberPowers+2. [Originally posted by Thorian at 4:34pm 10th September 2007]
Comment by Thorian at 10:53am 11th September 2007
Ouch, my bad. Played my way through and never realised. Given the range most of the fighting takes place at though it's not such a serious oversight in the development though. The big thing I missed was the ability to lean around corners. In a game where the level design is all corridors and rooms, and thus almost every single encounter is preceded by a corner, I thought the lack of an ability to peep around them was a big loss. [Originally posted by Grotmonkey at 4:31pm 10th September 2007]
Comment by Grotmonkey at 10:48am 11th September 2007
mainly because you can indeed look down the sights of your gun. try pressing 'Z'. makes you wonder what else you glossed over. it isnt a bad game at all. it is emminently playable, and a beautiful game to boot. although, suffering at the hands of the crappy copy protection for two hours did kind of dent my enthusiasm to play the game. [Originally posted by rickykemp at 4:20pm 10th September 2007]
Comment by rickykemp at 10:47am 11th September 2007
The HL series is still by far the best story driven game out there! [Originally posted by beer_puppy at 4:15pm 10th September 2007]
Comment by beer_puppy at 10:44am 11th September 2007
I would have liked to see another difficulty level, better AI, penalties for death and not to have ended the game with 2000 spare Adam thinking i could have done the entire thing without using any. Maybe also an inventory, people who i could interact with without killing and commerce that wasn't based on vending machines. But i have to admit it lasted longer than most games, an entire bank holiday weekend! plus i think i will replay it on the evil story line at some point soon. I had fun the entire time, there was no grind, the story was great, it generally made seance why i was doing something and had some nice twists. This was a great game, maybe it didn't have features we have seen in other games, but i can't think of a single game that i havn't thought wouldn't it be nice if it had feature x from game y. Also 'would you kindly' pay attention to the latter story line it tells you why 'Mr X' does what he does without question, its alot better excuse than most games :) [Originally posted by Fizzzl at 4:07pm 10th September 2007]
Comment by Fizzzl at 10:42am 11th September 2007
"does.... Gordon Freeman in Half Life [have depth]? Or Jack Carver in Far Cry?" Well yes - for starters, they both actually have names. Freeman in particular has quite a backstory- while he is silent, the reactions of other characters in the game tell you a lot about who he is. In HL1, Freeman is spoken of dismissively, while in HL2, people you meet in the resistance are in awe of you. They react to you as a character, rather than a POV. [Originally posted by Sifter3000 at 4:09pm 10th September 2007]
Comment by Sifter3000 at 10:39am 11th September 2007
Well done Phil, for being able to see the truth. A good game, just vastly overhyped and not what we were promised.
Comment by G_Man_007 at 8:28am 11th September 2007
While I believe that Boishock may not be all that it has been hyped to be it is however a dam slight better than the crap we have been getting of late. EA seem to see fit to produce unfinished games and patch them continuously from release to death and in general most games producers are trying so hard to be different that they are all the same! As far as FPS’s are concerned what do we have to choose from since HL2? So perhaps the review should be based on the current climate of games as opposed to games in general? It is a great game with great atmosphere – yes it has its flaws but don’t we all? I give it a solid 87%!
Comment by zz_zulu at 8:17am 11th September 2007
I've played a few hours on this game and found it enjoyable ...have only just unlocked the majority of my slots for plasmids and looking to have fun with cyclone traps etc ...might even try to get some action shots of splicers getting catapulted ....either way I like this game I dont believe the graphics are that great and theres not much more depth or playability than the majority of FPS....although I found the sound effects and the basic storyline very similar to the suffering .....or is that just me ..
Comment by akoli at 3:33am 11th September 2007
God, who cares if the game wasn't revolutionary? I mean, I enjoyed it and I got 20+ hours entertainment from playing it and that's all I wanted and expected.
Comment by tommo1975 at 9:29pm 10th September 2007
I've said my piece in my blog but ultimately I like to play games slowly to take everything in now, after a lifetime of rush-rush-rush to the end of SP first person shooters. Extreme overhype of long-awaited product is still a bigger problem in the film world, but the publisher's still guilty as charged re the technical aspects, whatever we think about the game. I'm one of the lucky ones if the game just worked first time. That's as much as I can comment on without going off and finishing the game first.
Comment by KHenry_07 at 8:50pm 10th September 2007
Well it pays to explain these things. Wouldn't want people to see one oversight, then a mention of a server eating posts, and suspect some sort of vast conspiracy. Or even a small conspiracy. Or maybe one man gone evil by too much time clubbing beefy cyborgs with a wrench.
Comment by Grotmonkey at 8:35pm 10th September 2007
i was just joshing ya! i know it was an honest oversight.
Comment by rickykemp at 8:30pm 10th September 2007
We've added a little note to the bottom of the article in honour of the correction, so the eating of the comments is neither here nor there in that regard. It's a pain in the arse that on the day a feature pops up of a sort which would benefit from comment the server gets worked over by the minions, but the blog system needed fixing.
Comment by Grotmonkey at 8:18pm 10th September 2007
I really liked bioshock - and don't really think the game deserves this rant - how many games come out today that are so well optimised , 2k did a great job in that respect and deserve credit ....
Comment by philheckler at 8:13pm 10th September 2007
you sure my missing comment is nothing to do with me pointing out the reviewer's mistake of getting a detail incorrect?
Comment by rickykemp at 8:09pm 10th September 2007
Make the long story short - Well done Phil for taking the courage to comment on a poor game that had somehow managed to get good reviews!
Comment by fgdgfd1 at 7:08pm 10th September 2007
[We're doing some server upgrades this afternoon, and the website appears to have eaten some comments - apologies for that, I'll try and add them back in later. Alex from CPC]
Comment by Sifter3000 at 5:38pm 10th September 2007
[Alex from CPC here - some work is going on with the servers so it seems to have lost some comments - I am reposting them here. Sorry about that!] Re: Character depth \
Comment by Sifter3000 at 4:54pm 10th September 2007
At last someone who sees the truth. I was put off the second the character decided to randomly inject a strang blue fluid in his arm without knowing what is was. I would never choose to do that in an RPG unless I knew it was going to give me UberPowers+2.
Comment by Thorian at 4:34pm 10th September 2007
Ouch, my bad. Played my way through and never realised. Given the range most of the fighting takes place at though it's not such a serious oversight in the development though. The big thing I missed was the ability to lean around corners. In a game where the level design is all corridors and rooms, and thus almost every single encounter is preceded by a corner, I thought the lack of an ability to peep around them was a big loss.
Comment by Grotmonkey at 4:31pm 10th September 2007
Right on, and no Half-Life 2 didn't deserve to score more than 90. And while I'm at it those responsible for Deus Ex 2 should be hanged by the balls until dead.
Comment by Cybersciver at 4:52pm 10th September 2007
I would have liked to see another difficulty level, better AI, penalties for death and not to have ended the game with 2000 spare Adam thinking i could have done the entire thing without using any. Maybe also an inventory, people who i could interact with without killing and commerce that wasn't based on vending machines. But i have to admit it lasted longer than most games, an entire bank holiday weekend! plus i think i will replay it on the evil story line at some point soon. I had fun the entire time, there was no grind, the story was great, it generally made seance why i was doing something and had some nice twists. This was a great game, maybe it didn't have features we have seen in other games, but i can't think of a single game that i havn't thought wouldn't it be nice if it had feature x from game y. Also 'would you kindly' pay attention to the latter story line it tells you why 'Mr X' does what he does without question, its alot better excuse than most games :)
Comment by Fizzzl at 4:07pm 10th September 2007
I would have liked to see another difficulty level, better AI, penalties for death and not to have ended the game with 2000 spare Adam thinking i could have done the entire thing without using any. Maybe also an inventory, people who i could interact with without killing and commerce that wasn't based on vending machines. But i have to admit it lasted longer than most games, an entire bank holiday weekend! plus i think i will replay it on the evil story line at some point soon. I had fun the entire time, there was no grind, the story was great, it generally made seance why i was doing something and had some nice twists. This was a great game, maybe it didn't have features we have seen in other games, but i can't think of a single game that i havn't thought wouldn't it be nice if it had feature x from game y. Also 'would you kindly' pay attention to the latter story line it tells you why 'Mr X' does what he does without question, its alot better excuse than most games :)
Comment by Fizzzl at 4:07pm 10th September 2007
"does.... Gordon Freeman in Half Life [have depth]? Or Jack Carver in Far Cry?" Well yes - for starters, they both actually have names. Freeman in particular has quite a backstory- while he is silent, the reactions of other characters in the game tell you a lot about who he is. In HL1, Freeman is spoken of dismissively, while in HL2, people you meet in the resistance are in awe of you. They react to you as a character, rather than a POV.
Comment by Sifter3000 at 4:09pm 10th September 2007
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