Zero Punction on Bioshock

[Lost tears of Kain]

naznatips said:

No no no, you don't understand PoL. Morality shouldn't be some cut and dry "Oooh I can kill a little girl and become stronger or not" situation. I want to see a game with complex morals. Where what's good or bad may not be so clear after all. Until near the release of the game, I thought Bioshock was offering this. Then they said that it's not their fault that they are f'd up in the head. I don't want games that end in black or white. That's not life. There isn't just good or bad.

Every action should have good and bad effects. Bioshock offers nothing new in the morality department. A solid 5 or 6 games before it had similar choices. In KOTOR for example you could sell a woman to slavery or pay off her debt. However, in KOTOR there was at least some degree of middle ground as you could ignore their plight entirely and go on with your lives. KOTOR still had the 2 ending option: all sunshine and daisies or all evil and murderous. However, at least it was doing something new.

A game being brought to the attention of the mainstream is not innovation. I can't believe you even suggested it is...

Now, on to your arguments specifically, which I didn't answer last time because they were pretty ridiculous.

They don't feel the same at all; I played both and I wasn't thinking of SS2 at all as I was playing. The world was so convincingly unique, and the combat so much sharper than SS2, and the RPG elements so much more secondary than in SS2...

I already said the setting was different. Your right, there were less RPG elements. This made it a much more shallow game than System Shock 2, making it a shooter with hardly any RPG elements at all. I thought this was a step down, not something to brag about.

Many of the design principles weren't even the same between both games. What similarities were there? Let's list them: 1. "Shock" in the title. Wow. 2. Story made deeper via audio logs and posters. Uh oh, that's been done twice before in the history of games... that's definitely a stale convention.

That's been done a lot actually. See: Metroid series, KOTOR, System Shock, etc. There is nothing unqiue about it. It's not even that it's necessarily stale, but it has been handled better in other games as well.

3. Er... they're both shooters with RPG elements? Yeah, but said combat/RPG systems are completely unique and don't feel the same at all, so even that point is moot. 4. Both games contain vending machines and other stations... to support the RPG elements. Can anyone see a way around that one? 5. Sorry, I ran out. 6. Seriously... All out.

Yeah, let's just skip over all these facts: They both use an almost identical ability system. PSI powers = Plasmids. Hell, half of them even overlapped! Projected Pyrokenesis = Incinerate.

The enemies are practically identical. Thug Splicers = Hybrids. Ledhead Splicers = Hybrids with guns. Spider Splicers = Arachnids. Houdini Splicers = Monkeys. Sadly, System Shock 2 actually has more enemy variety than it's modern day clone. As it also has Cyborg Midwives, Worms, Swarms, Cyborg Assassins, and Rumblers. The only Bioshock enemy that isn't a direct clone of a System Shock enemy is the Nitro Splicers, who are boring as fuck anyway.

What else? Oh yeah, the wrench as a primary weapon, hacking, plot delivery, adventure style. By that I mean it moves on a room by room basis, with a lot of linearity and side tracking. Hell, the only actual difference between Bioshock and System Shock 2 is that Bioshock dumbed down the System Shock 2 formula by removing a lot of the RPG elements and making the game pathetically easy. Even without Vita Chambers it doesn't present much of a challenge.

ADAM is identical to Cyber, and both fuel their respective identical super powers. The way you acquire them is different... OMG I found a difference!!! What do I win?

As you yourself said both contain vending machines and a nearly identical style of save stations. Again though Bioshock dumbs it down. The save stations are now free, they are much more comon, and when you revive your enemies retain the damage they took in your first failed attempt.

If you couldn't find the overwhelming overlaps between these games then you have not played System Shock 2, or maybe it's just been so long that you don't remember it. I don't know, but there is very little original about Bioshock. What I don't understand is how this game is a 10 by any scale. Sure, it's very fun, and it's a great game, but it's filled with bugs, it's almost an exact replica of an 8 year old title, and it's so easy a toddler could beat it. Even without the vita chambers it's way on the easy side. With the vita chambers it's challenge consists of "look at me shoot stuff," which basically defeats the whole purpose of making this a deep shooter, and brings it down to the level of simplistic games like Halo.

Naznatips, we are almost complete opposites when it comes to what we enjoy, bringing down bioshock and halo just makes me want to cry, and i guess its a matter of opinion. Then you disagree with me on that ff 7 is among the best of the franchise, and i swear i want to send an enrage plasmid across the screen onto your pc/tv and have the big daddy pop out and drill you O.O

Lol in all that, everyone has a difference in opinion, so to help me not want to freeze you and wack you with a wrench, anything you enjoyed in bioshock?

BTW i dont dislike you at all you got solid arguements, but it all comes down to opinion, and there we are complete oposites at some things