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It had a few weird things like wanting you to drink and smoke for good health and also to kill a child to gain more points. I don't know why that added crap like that, otherwise it was fun. It's a fun game with some twist and turns that keep it interesting through out. I did none of it and still enjoyed the game.
As far as the action is concerned, it is made all the more awesome, enjoyable and exciting by having this surreal enviornment around you. The only thing I am finding a tad difficult is cycling through plasmids and weapons. I think I may be about a quarter of the way through the game and if it ended right now I would feel it was worth every penny that was paid for it.To the technical aspects, I am playing off the actual disc and had no problems loading or running the game on my computer with a Vista(64) OS. This paradox of the crumbling utopia within the visuals alone is worth the game if all you did was walk through it. I'm not big on games with action over substance or over atmosphere and so I am pretty particular about which games to pick up and it's hard to tell if I will like them until I start playing them. What I like is that when you die you are revived in a kind of hydro tube. You will even find some places that are beautiful to look at even with all the carnage around you (like the cemetary and Tea Garden.so far the coolest visual area to me).
I have yet to see how they may or may not impact my character in the game, but I will be playing it again to see how it turns out differently. Combining that with the very surreal and amazing background sounds and music makes for a very memorable game experience.All of the rooms and enviornments are in beautiful detail. While I have had to re-do a few areas a few times, it's been nothing that I got tedious or bored with. I have had no issues with the DMR as of yet so I have no comment except that it has had no impact on me thus far. Just an amazing game on so many levels and I can't wait to finish it.
Done correctly, this game and storyline could be a great movie in the 'Blade Runner' tradition. I truly found myself thinking about some things even after I have stopped playing. Just the whole idea of Rapture as utopia and a vision is very, very interesting. The effects of the water from what I have seen are the best 'liquid' visual of any game I have played. The 'saving' and 'lives' feature it nice and I like how they incorporated it into the environment. I do have a quad core and 6Gs of Ram with a 1G graphics card so it is humming along at the highest settings and looks georgeous (I think that's the first time I have said that about a game). Again, as a non-gamer I can sometimes get stuck for hours trying to beat a particular boss or foe.
Finally, the other really intriguing issue is with some of the choices you have to make. While you can imagine the beauty of what Rapture once was, you get to see it in an eerie, deteriorating state. For me to like an action game, atmosphere and visuals have to at least be 50% of the game. There are a lot of little things in the game to help if you get stuck trying to figure something out but I have not had to use any yet. For me it's more of an 'experience' rather than about finishing tasks, challenges, levels, etc. There are pretty regular saves in the game. The only other game I have played that even begins to compare (for me) is the Half-Life series.
There is a little directional arrow on the screen which can help you get to where you need to go, but just following it can keep you from finding a lot of cool things as well as the other things you will need like money along the way. I'd be happy just walking through it visually with no action at all. Players looking just for a shooter/action game could be disappointed, but anyone who loves amazing enviornments and getting immersed in original imagery concepts should just love this game. The enemies are that much more interesting because of the enviornment from which they are coming from around you.Playing on 'medium' difficulty, it has not been too hard. Now onto 'Bioshock':I'm perhaps only a quarter of the way through this game and I am already compelled to write a review (it's that good).
I'm not going to get into the plot of the game (as it's been in plenty of other reviews), but it was very strange starting off with a plane crash into the water after the recent crash of Air France 447 recently even though this game was created long before that accident.Visually the game is a feast of originality and eerie beauty. Otherwise the action itself would feel pretty normal. Cycling through just plasmids or just 'regular' weapons is easy, but when you want to quickly go back and forth between plasmids and mechincal weapons, that is more difficult.As others have said, there seems to be a lot of different ways to do things. The concept of the art deco underwater utopia is as cool in idea as it is in looks. While I enjoy playing games, I am not a 'gamer' per se; I don't drive through games at a quick pace and it does take me time to get through them (and I love being immersed in atmosphere and soaking it up slowly).
The city and environments are top rate and I feel completely immersed in them. What's nice is that when you revive the state of the game and the enemies are at the level where you left off, so if you are having trouble getting through one you don't start them off at full levels when you revive and this really keep it from getting frustrating like some games can be.Without reading anything before playing the use of the weapons and the plasmids (as well as the whole game and the story) is kind of a mystery starting out, but that's half of the fun of it all.
However, here is where it went south. You basically get this choice to RESCUE or HARVEST. (up until that time I was a shot gun grunt) So I finish the game and am about to open up the submarine into the sunlight and it yells at me ". And it was clear why. - the game told me to do that. You start gaining all these cool magical powers that are awesome. And practical ARMMEGEDON ensues because you harvested the little girls.
I felt completely betrayed. This is going to make your next level really hard. Well - you can't program in to 'suggest' that the only way to get the game done is to do BAD things and then not allow the end to be positive ----- fundamental flaw in the design. And I see why and can see why the comments /suggestions were probably added late - every one probably wanted to be a good guy and they weren't harvesting little girls and they weren't getting magical powers. Are you sure you want to continue. At the right times it was spooky and knowing who to trust was an (exciting) issue. Make sense to rescue right.
So eventually I started doing the (somewhat revolting) harvesting of the little girls. and we got the leadership we were to expect from you. and the programmers noticed it and threw in those suggestios - so the audience, who inherently wants to be GOOD, weren't experiencing the awesome / magical part of the game. The visuals were great. But then the game starts telling you as you level up that you haven't harvested enough energy. you nasty cruel harvester.
The cartoonish aspects are kind neat and in that regard the game has a lot of personality. This game is somewhat long.I was not all that impressed with the graphics. Sure, there's some neat water effects but it's overdone. And that splits this game really into two as your character changes dramatically (and graphically for the worst). The story is overall good.
I also dislike the darkness of the settings. Perhaps this is a joke on the part of the programers but the way I was able to fix it in-game is to actually turn sound off, turn fullscreen off.You start by surviving a plane crash. I'm surprised they didn't leave the second part for a sequel. There are some twists in the story and surprises.
Then you swim to a lighthouse and take an elevator down. But it's really the gameplay that is disappointing. One of the twists I found particularly touching and that is who you become toward the end. Neither is constantly picking up stuff and listening to long monologues.
Some people like that sort of thing, I didn't: the art deco retro style. The voice acting is absolutely superb. Gameplay itself and graphics don't make it very immersive.I rate it high in personality and audio but poor in graphics, entertainment value, and replayability.Then there's of course all the annoying "security features" that companies make us pay for and that limits what we can do with the game for which we paid. But I really disliked the style of this game. Then there are the tasks of upgrading weapons and yourself. But shooting at them is not at all fun. The mechanical weapons are boring, the biological ones more interesting.
But overall, the experience was rather underwhelming.There are some known problems with this game in Vista: no sound and no full-screen. Then there's that aweful music from the 30s or so. Now you're taken to the underwater city of Rapture where a character convinces you to fight against the ruler of the city. I'll grant that the movement of the enemies is neat; they jump and flip and crawl on the ceiling. You'll mostly walk through hallways or corridors as opposed to large expanses, which is what one would expect of a recent game.
I didn't like most of the scenes: wharf, rotten garden, which does become nice once you save it; theaters, lots of rooms, hospital rooms, etc.- quite a bit of variety. There's only so much fun in pressing the "E" button every other second. The fire on the water looks very nice.
I found that there are too many characters though. And I didn't find that the overall look was all that impressive. As a shooter this game is just horrible.
But they are all dark and dull-looking which nullifies all the variety. Here's a game for which I had high expectations. There are also too many goals to accomplish: there's the main goal of the story, the minor goals of each "mission", and two additional overall goals of collecting souls and blood, so to speak.
Ever since Doom I all action games have emphasized darkness and it's tiring.
It was easy to load with Vista 64 on a new state of the art PC. The game is so cool in every way.
It was definitely worth the wait. Although there is an obvious plan to the plot, you can explore so many areas, customize your abilities, make moral decisions, etc.
It's like being on the haunted Titanic, and not the crappy movie version. I've waited a few years to be able to play it as my previous PC couldn't handle the newer games.
I'm a big first person single-player shooter fan, and this is the most original, visually stunning game I've ever played. It runs great.
It could be different each time you play.
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