T w e n t y S i d e d
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I’ve been waiting for this episode. The Big Daddy transformation was a cavalcade of lazy plotting, supported by a layer of contrivances, and glued together with a few pounds of sloppy videogame logic. I think it actually undermines the earlier themes about free will. Now that you’re no longer a slave and you’re free to think for yourself, the game requires you to do something dumber and more illogical than anything that you did while you were supposedly under control of others.
This section of the game very nearly wins the title of “Most Obnoxious Plot Door”, a title which currently belongs to Neverwinter Nights 2. But BioShock gets off the hook because this plot door only takes about thirty minutes, not five hours.
It’s a shame we had to cut this sequence in the middle. We point out the rest of the flaws with the Big Daddy Quest in the next episode. Then there’s one more mini-episode after that one where we wrap this series up. We’ve already selected our next game, so your pleas are futile.
Enjoy!
In Defense of Crunch
Crunch-mode game development isn't good, but sometimes it happens for good reasons.
Free Radical
The product of fandom run unchecked, this novel began as a short story and grew into something of a cult hit.
Bowlercoaster
Two minutes of fun at the expense of a badly-run theme park.
Why Batman Can't Kill
His problem isn't that he's dumb, the problem is that he bends the world he inhabits.
Good to be the King?
Which would you rather be: A king in the middle ages, or a lower-income laborer in the 21st century?
The one thing I’m glad about for this was that I didn’t get the helmet until the end. The lessining of your FOV (which was bad to begin with) just killed me. It was a good thing I was playing on easy or the escort quest would have been rough.
This whole thing was stupid. You undergo a transformation that your told will scre you up but your fine for the big boss fight. And don’t get me started on the contrivence of the escort mission.
Actually, like most things he says, the screw you up bit is basically just Fontaine trying to scare you. Since you don’t go through the mental conditioning (which would be hilarious if you did) you’re fine overall. Except for your voice box, but you’re a silent protagonist anyways.
See, I actually thought it was a pretty good twist until the good ending was, well, all cheery and happy. When I found that out I figured the good ending was going to be me cursed to an existence under water, and while I freed all the Little Sisters I was still bound to wandering the halls of Rapture alone. Meanwhile the new form could have basically been like “I AM A PLASMID WIELDING GOD!” for the Evil ending.
I was only disappointed afterward when the good ending turned out to be sunshine and lollipops and completely unfitting to the feel of the game as a whole. I wanted something melancholy and depressing, dammit! That doing good means sometimes we fuck ourselves over so that someone else doesn’t have to take it up the ass!
It also made all that Big Daddy stuff, well, meaningless.
Exactly what I thought. I was hoping for a depressing ending. That “Lone BigDaddy roaming Rapture in melancholy” was precisely what I wanted.
Yeah, this sequence was probably the downright stupidest in the game. I still remember that I was utterly at a loss for words when my character was forced to do downright idiotic, self-destructive things. Hell, we built a bomb for that other door, why can’t we build one for this one? I know the conversation probably went something like “hey wouldn’t it be cool if you became a Big Daddy yourself”, but Irrational did the worst of jobs justifying it in any way.
I know why Josh is dying so much:He is sober.That one small part where he got drunk he was doing much better.
And our suggestions arent futile,unless youve decided what all the spoiler warnings will be from now up until you quit,or the internet quits.
Oh,and about that combat stuff:Even the games that are nothing but combat(original doom,duke nukem,serious sam,painkiller)know to mix things up from time to time before the levels become too stale.
This episode reminded me of The prestige, the movie.
SPOILER ALERT:
In the movie at the end you discover that the machine Tesla invented (something very similar to a vitachamber) is making clones of the things that are inside it. Hugh Jackman makes a trap so one of the clones he makes of himself as a trick is always killed soon after the illusion and you are somehow left to wonder who died, if he was the real one, or the clone, or if both were real and so on.This could easily happen with vitachambers, as you can’t really know what could get out of them.
Anyway, vitachambers are really, really broken on some many levels, from game mechanic, to theoric concept. It could still be ok, that the machine senses somehow that you died somewhere near and create a copy of you, but why the copy has the exact same things you had when you died (like the clothes, weapon, the elmet of the big daddy…), and why it gives you only a little amount of health, not all of it?
Just like: “You died of heart attack, the vitachamber can make you live again, but with broken legs”
And if it can recreate anything out of thin air, why can’t it create things?
I have to admit, I was a little impressed by Hugh Jackman’s character in The Prestige, who put himself through all that spoiler-tagger stuff for the sake of basically having the coolest magic trick.
I was more impressed by the other guy.Angier did sick things to others(sort of),but borden did sick things to himself(again,sort of).
Of course, the moral quandary in question becomes infinitely stupider, if you consider that he could have just used it once and that would have put him on even footing with his opponent.
Or he could have used it on say, food, money, literally anything else and stood to make massive profits, huge differences to people’s depression-era lives etc…
Yes,yes,but all of that wouldnt be cool.
Also, if only Ryan could use Vita-chambers…
Why are there so many of them?
Why wouldn’t he just have one in his room or office?
He does have one, nearby. It’s turned off when you get there. They never explain it, but the implication for me was that he didn’t want to live with all of his failures (most importantly a son who was born to be a slave).
The whole system was supposed to work for everyone eventually, but Ryan was just the test subject.
I think Atlas also turned off his Vita Chamber before he revived.
(Which was supposed to be why Atlas was yelling at you to put the card in the slot now, now NOW! So that he could shut down the machine.)
I think you are being a bit too hard on the game in some places here. Yes, the “turn into a big daddy” thing seems pretty much inexcusable. But for example the fact that the vita chambers only resurrect you* is explained and even a pretty big plot point**.
I know you are of the opinion that the player should not need to actively look for information to have things make sense (and I somewhat disagree), but I am quite sure that in this case you did in fact come across this information. It’s just that you were probably too distracted by talking to each other to notice it.
Of course your criticism is what makes these videos worth watching, but the feeling that a significant amount of it is somewhat misplaced does make it a bit less enjoyable.
* Of course it should in theory also resurrect Ryan, and it is suggested this doesn’t happen. It would be nice if the game contains a hint somewhere that Ryan just resurrects after his “suicide” and decided that what’s left of Rapture isn’t worth fighting over, and therefore leaves for the surface. That would also explain why he was so willing to die.
** Of course this doesn’t automatically imply that the explanation given by the game makes any sense (although it is in fact not too bad by most standards), nor is it explained how the vita chambers work at all.
Actually the explanation only adds problems IMO.
Alice: Why is it built?
Quetzalcotl: Because Ryan wants to live forever and since you’re sort of his son it’s effects carry over to you.
Alice: Ok, so even though Ryan only stays in one room he has set up what I’m guessing is very expensive machines (since they can reanimate people and all) all over Rapture within short distances of each other. Also he must have built it himself since no one else knows how it works and it doesn’t seem to revive anyone else, which makes a lot of sense since being more or less the dictator of a falling undersea country leaves a lot of leisure time.
Alice: How do they work?
Quetzalcotl: Well… science magic. Probably the same science magic that lets a glass city leak without bursting on the bottom of the ocean.
Alice:Why can’t anyone else use it?
Quetzalcotl: Because Ryan is a jerk?
Alice: This seems to be the case which somewhat undermines him as an understandable anti villain or a master genius for that matter since I very much doubt that Fontaine could lead a rebellion against the man who just made them all immortal. The fact that he’s rich while they’re poor and that he’s a jerk sort of stops being important when you cure death and subsequently saves everyone’s life.
Alice: Why don’t the splicers break them? I mean Fontaine seem to understand what they do, surely making your enemy mortal is beneficial.
Quetzalcotl: Maybe he learned of them only after he went into hiding?
Alice: Then why don’t the splicers destroy them, even if they have no idea what they are they’ve destroyed everything else and they do attract a lot of attention don’t they?
Quetzalcotl: Why do you hate me?
Edit: By what standard is that a good explanation?
Actually, quite a bit more is explained or, at a minimum, implied regarding the Vita-Chambers.
Sinclair Solutions created them for Ryan Industries, which took them public shortly before or as everything was going to hell in a hand-basket. From the marketing surrounding the live stations, they were never billed as resurrecting anyone from the dead, and from the obscurity of information it seems unlikely that surviving Splicers attached much more significance to them.
It’s not as though anyone ever killed Ryan and watched him spring back out of a glass tube, and most would-be witnesses won’t survive to tell anyone they saw Jack do it. Or be believed, given the cavalcade of mental disorders most Splicers display, given the incredible nature of what was witnessed.
Even Dr. Yi Suchong literally calls bullshit (“They keep saying ‘quantum entanglement’ this and ‘plasmid reconstruction’ that, and then POOF! Dead people come back to life! *sputter* Bullshit!”) in an audio log on the subject, which elaborates on the resurrection function, and notes that Andrew Ryan sprung the whole ‘only my genetic frequencies’ bit because if it did work he didn’t want just anyone who got killed popping back.
For how the Vita-Chamber slaps you back together with all your gear, we know that teleportation is among the miracles performed by ADAM/Plasmid science thanks to the presence of Houdini Splicers. For why you only come back with partial resources, the Vita-Chamber is not in fact creating an entirely new body, propaganda posters notwithstanding, it is re-vitalizing the borked up one it fetched.
This also explains why we don’t wind up cluttering the floors of Rapture with dozens of spare Jack corpses.
As far as Ryan’s suicide, that is ‘explained’ in two unspoken parts. The Vita-Chambers perform their miracles on subjects within a given range, which appears to be limited to prevent multiple Vita-Chambers from trying to grab the same corpse. Thus we have no spare Jacks or Andrews stumbling around Rapture. A quick tour of Ryan’s office reveals that the only Vita Chamber present in that area is shut down, presumably by Ryan himself.
It can be re-enabled by the player, but Ryan is already dead and the Vita-Chamber does not appear to respond to people who are actually dead with a nine-iron in their brain so much as it does people who are in the process of dieing.
One remaining question: how does a chamber know when a resurrection-eligible corpse is being created in it’s vicinity? We can perhaps stretch our credulity a bit to accept the words ‘genetic frequency quantum entanglement’ in a world where sea slugs lead to vendible genetic mods that allow you to shoot fire, turn invisible and teleport.
With all of this we must be very careful not to think too hard about the opening to Bioshock 2. though that doesn’t go utterly unexplained, it does rather shake the gently swaying gossamer thread of logic spun thus far.
There was another question on my list, but it’s fallen out of my head.
At any rate, this is all very soft science fiction, but I appreciate the fact that the writers thought about it and included many little details that come together to alleviate or lampshade the essential impossibility of their favored mechanic, including their own character’s admission that it sounds like the complete bullshit that it is.
Life after death just hasn’t been the same since System Shock.
“Quantum Entanglement” is a pretty good catch-all buzz phrase, for science geeks I think they covered their bases (Lazarus vector, plasmids etc), taking current science and magicking it up. The steampunk nineteen-forty-sixty aesthetic is what makes it more difficult to swallow, you can reanimate trees and corpses but you still use tommy-guns and your trains aren’t mag-lev?
I guess they needed one point of difference from half-life and they already did the future + civil destruction thing.
Well, remember, a lot of the outright insane super-science is a relatively new thing in Rapture, and revolves around biology more than industry.
The trains aren’t mag-lev and they still use tommyguns because that’s the tech they had when they came down and built the city to begin with. Ryan’s techniques for creating an underwater city were themselves amazing advancements in architecture, structural engineering and oceanics, and the city’s aesthetics were set by his vision: that of a mid-1940s Objectivist/Futurist with a Plan.
Hand-held lightning bolts, teleportation and resurrection of the dead only came about after, and as a result of, the populace partaking extensively of ADAM, this sort of living snake-oil which both facilitated and destroyed wild technological progress in all directions.
Existing infrastructure and industry didn’t have much time or opportunity to evolve once ADAM happened. What advances occurred revolved directly around the new bioscience, it’s requirements and consequences.
By the time of Jack’s arrival, new development and production have more or less ground to a halt while Rapture drowns. The seeds of new cultural aesthetics are present, but the catastrophic failure of Rapture’s civilization prevents anything from taking root and growing.
Ok so Sinclair solutions created the vita-chambers? Then how come you don’t see Sinclair running around immortal? Did he really restrict it so that he couldn’t use it? That seems dumb.
The point about destroying them still stands though. Maybe the splicers had no idea what they were but they’ve destroyed everything else so why not a glowing thing made of glass? It seems to grab attention and looks really fun to smash^^.
And it doesn’t explain my biggest complaint in that Ryan is to dumb to realize that if he didn’t restrict it’s use he could end the rebellion. Ok he doesn’t want his enemies to use it I can understand that but if he made everyone immortal then who would his enemies really be?
The vita-chambers were a bad idea in every aspect. They undermined the lethality of the setting the made no sense in story and were so exploitable in a game sense that they ruined all challenge. Maybe the equivalent worked in system shock (I haven’t played, I wasn’t yet playing games 94 and rarely anything but consoles in 99) but there’s nothing good about them in Bioshock IMO.
“For why you only come back with partial resources, the Vita-Chamber is not in fact creating an entirely new body, propaganda posters notwithstanding, it is re-vitalizing the borked up one it fetched.” Actually if it works via quantum entanglement it is creating a new body. Quantum entanglement is an information thing and they way it works in most sci-fi is that it “takes a read” of all your particles sends the information at the speed of light dissolves you and builds a new identical you at the destination. Now the identical you that it builds would be a corpse so your point still stands but I liked to clarify since this essentially means that whenever someone teleports they essentially die and give all their memories to a clone. It gives Star Trek a whole new feel^^.
There’s a whole thing about teleporting/cloning/killing in the excellent China Meiville book, Kraken. I’d heartily recommend it.
I think there’s a plot nugget in there somewhere that explains how the Vita Chamber in Ryan’s office is deactivated and he dies because he’s out of range of the closest one.
It’s an overly convenient plot detail that the ONE place in the game where you’re out of range of a vita chamber is the one room you can’t actually die in.
Actually that’s not true…you could probably kill yourself with explosives and I guarantee you’d respawn at the next farthest vita chamber.
Someone should test that. Kill yourself while standing over Ryan’s corpse just to prove he did die in range of a vita chamber.
I love how at this point in the game everyone feel the same way I did during the ENTIRE game… Never even made it up to the big villain switcharoo because the game made me feel that me being there was pointless and stupid also I don’t remember using healthpacks? Vita chambers didn’t care did they?
Josh – Too sexy for this game
Rutskarn – “offended” by your puns
Shamus – Totally a Valve fanboy
Mumbles – Insulting people’s beliefs. One religion at a time.
Kevin – Funk Daddy
A thought occurs, why can’t you just put the helmet in your pocket, like you did with that one large bomb?
Somehow, I was waiting for something like…
Shamus: Oh, NOW you’re offended?
Ruts: Yeah, man, that really stings….
Or something like that.
EDIT: Given the point in the episode where the punctuation started, I was also waiting for something to the effect of, “Yeah, who’s your daddy now?”
I’ve insulted so many religions I had to watch the episode to know what you were talking about >_>
I’ve always wondered, do you or anyone else on the Spoiler Warning crew ever watch these episodes? Probably a silly question but one I’ve had on my mind for a while.
I know Shamus and Josh watch all the episodes. I wait until there’s a lot of comments on the video and then watch! Don’t know about Ruts, though.
I wonder if he ever watches them, and then hates himself after the episode due to his puns.
He probably watches whenever he needs a good cry.
Actually, I watch them whenever my alternate personality takes over, then start a flame war in the comment thread.
valve sux u butthurt fanboi
I like your alternate personality because he’s a fan of DOUBLE RAINBOWS ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SSSKKKYYY
@Notskarn: u mad?
I really hope they selected Half Life 2. That wouldn’t be as tedious as this game has become.
Just hope it’s not ME2 – for some reason, I want to see something else. Though it would prbably be a neat ‘one mission per episode’ thing.
The only problem with Half-Life 2 is that there might not be as much to discuss story-wise. It’s a great game to play and okay to watch, just.. there isn’t much to talk about beyond “yep, it’s good”.
I think that if they actually go that way, they will surely find all the game’s faults. And proceed to die a little inside themselves.
Which would make for an awesome viewing, incidentally. Remember how folks were looking forward to seeing Mumble’s illusions of Rupture’s grandieur shattered?
Now imagine that done to Shamus and Rutskarn and Josh!
It’s only fair, after all…
There must be loads you could comment on about HL2.
It’s not a perfect game after all. It does have flaws.
The key point is that Bioshock compares badly to it in certain ways, not that Bioshock is bad and HL2 good.
Airboat level refutes your claims of HL2 being good.
I liked the airboat level.
I didn’t. The buggy was iffy to drive, but the airboat was terrible. They need to ban driving in all FPS’ except Halo.
The wartog is an horrible thing to drive. And no one in the army seems to have a license, since they don’t know where is front nor back…
Mafia 2 is a pleasure to drive, at least at low levels.
Sometimes I drive around, listen to the music and watch the city only for the pleasure of it.
Except when something snaps in the heads of the AI drivers in Mafia 2 and they go veering off the road.
Funny example: There’s a mission in chapter 8 or 9 or something where you’re supposed to follow a guy in a car. The AI crapped out and a truck shoved the guy I was following off the road so he died, and I got mission failed.
It wasn’t fun, but it had its moments of good suspense and a nice atmosphere.
I can think of quite a few things to comment about HL 2 (yes I know I’m the only one who dislikes the game). Also just because the story is somewhat anemic doesn’t mean there’s nothing to discuss, most of Bioshock has been around the set-pieces and how railroaded it is. And ME seemed to show that spoiler warning can be interesting even if they don’t hate everything^^ (still my favourite by the way).
I actually found Half-Life 2 way more tedious than Bioshock. Yes, even this level was better than the airboat level, the dune buggy level, the third time I had to kill a helicopter with rockets, etc.
After having just beaten it I agree, but probably only because it’s far far longer. The sewer levels (both around the time of the airboat and when you’re going through the wartorn city 17) were super boring and fatiguing to me. Heck, the airboat level would have been too if not for the interesting industrial scenery (it was still far too long though). If bioshock had given you some kind of sneaking or puzzle centric level, or maybe even just a talking companion (other than the escort quest that’s coming up) instead of just pure combat then it might have been more interesting and a little less tiring.
“…your pleas are futile.” That’s a clue! Let the speculation begin.
It’s Star Trek: Elite Forces!
Wrong.
Its Barbie Horse Adventure
Also wrong!
IT’S DEADRISING 2!
Man, I’m totally wrong.
I think it’ll be Tetris.
Nah, it’ll totally be E.T. The Extraterrestrial. On the Atari.
OMG SHAMUS TURNED INTO A PUNDIT RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! :P :P
I loved Josh’s freudian “we’ll find the Bethesda, err, 2k Marin programmers” slip.
Well, you know, I can see why he wants to murder both of them. :P
Calling places random greek mythology characters is pretty pretentious but at least Hephaestus made sense, he’s the god of technology and blacksmithing and that place was technologically advanced and filled with steel.
But in what way is a big daddy making facility anything like Prometheus? Calling Ryan’s home or whatever for point Prometheus would’ve made some sense since Ryan brought Rapture to humanity but I can’t imagine how big daddies are in any way analogous to fire.
For the ancient greeks, the fire was a metaphor for the knowledge of gods. Just like the fruit of The tree from the garden of Eden.
Fire, for them, was what made humans something more than just animals (actually ancient greeks nailed this better than the catholics… speaking of religion), in fact Prometheus did what he did, because he pitied the humans for the miserable condition they lived in, and came in their aid, giving them the knowledge.
So we can say that Andrew Ryan really stole the knowledge of the gods, by re-inventing dna, and being a megalomeniac as he is, the comparison is easy.
Yeah that’s what I was getting at. Ryan being prometheus. But point prometheus isn’t Ryan’s house it’s where they make big daddies, I can’t see anything Promethean about that.
The big daddies are enforcers and only one symptom of Adam which is only one symptom of Rapture thus I don’t think it makes much sense calling the place point prometheus. Big daddies aren’t fire they’re steel swords, sure you need fire to make that but it’s only one application.
Maybe not so much fire, but the gift of fire brought about humanity. It was the next big step on the humanity living adjustment scale, and maybe that was a wish or whatever for the Big Daddies, to be the next big step.
That being said this naming convention feels like it’s tacked on for the player rather than the actual Rapture society. I mean, there is this huuuge welcoming banner that says “NO GODS OR KINGS”, religion in all forms is prohibited… and then we celebrate the ancient Greek deities? It may not seem like much but we are meant to believe, in this game at least, that Ryan was trying to wipe out pretty much all traces of religion from the awareness of the citizens (in part 2 there are mentions in the whole surface horror tour). So what did he expect people to say when a kid started asking “why is Hephaestus called Hephaestus?”. If they started explaining the whole “god of the forge” thing the issue of “but if gods were a lie to harm us, like uncle Ryan said, why do we name parts of the city after them”. It may be a fairly small inconsistency but myself I couldn’t help but notice the conflict.
I always interpretted that as meaning that the citizens of rapture were akin to gods. But yes, I guess you have a point. Surely if religion is banned mythology would also be, then again people don’t really “believe” in mythology anymore.
You’ve already selected your next game? Okay, let me guess: Plants vs Zombies. You’ll be nagging at Josh for not planting enough sunflowers. Oh dear.
Two rows,you never need more than that.Theyll be nagging at him for using the explosive mushroom when he has the corn cannon.
It would be a perfect game for Rutskarn to recuperate and work on more corny puns, though.
No need for him to go around peeing on everyone else’s front lawn, though.
really, the ‘random plasmid swapping’ always seemed more of a balance issue to me, considering there were certain plasmids that were just far more effective than others.
i see josh using the mr. freeze plasmid (ice to meet you, etc) quite a bit, but it gives them an entire separate health bar while they’re immobilized, that doesn’t matter at all once they’ve thawed (barring more applications). i always used lightning; although it has a shorter duration, it doesn’t give them temporary hit points and swinging a wrench into them during the jolt does a healthy amount of bonus damage.
likewise, how often did you find yourself needing say, enrage, or target dummy? i think there’s a plasmid that just calls a big daddy, too? quite a few of them that are highly conditional. if you had players with tighter spreads of plasmids (example, i only used lightning, fire, and telekinesis the entire game), they’d have an obvious benefit if it started randomly choosing. instead, all of us get to have the ‘challenge’ of suddenly having call big daddy manifest to swap us out of our weapon reload animation, so that something we were attacking can kill us.
I mostly only used fire and electricity too. They just seemed to work where so many of the other plasmids never had the desired/advertised effect. The random swapping was really annoying.
Don’t forget the BEES!
I went through Bioshock using Target Dummy and Insect Swarm instead of electricity and fire, maxing out the crossbow, etc. and it worked pretty well – I think it’s more that you have no reason to switch from the plasmids they give you for free, not that the others are inherently bad or conditional.
Target Dummy is the best plasmid ever. I basically had full ammo the entire second half of the game because Incinerate! 3 plus Target Dummy equals free kill.
Regarding the Big Daddy transformation: Explained, but extra awful, even moreso than the Vita Chambers.
There’s just no good reason for it. The rescued Little Sisters can leave presents, work mechanisms, lead you through vents, and run all these little errands for Mama Tenenbaum, but they can’t open a series of doors without you being dolled up in a diver suit with your throat torn out, reeking of whale piss?
Really.
Hate escort missions.
So much.
But developers love escort missions. And they are the ones making the game…
We are screwed.
The worst one imo?
Jedi Knight 2.
The bit with the R2 unit on Bespin was horrendous and spoilt an otherwise good level.
You think that one’s bad? It moves in a straight line. You can get in front of it and it stops, and you’re a jedi. Just shove it back and get on with the business of killing. You should be able to clear each room before it gets back from the farthest point in the previous room to which you can shove it.
So while not fun there are loads of worse escort missions out there. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy watching Josh fail repeatedly at it.
What’s fun is turning invincibility on and running through the mines before the R-2 hits them. Although half the time they blow you into that bottomless pit conveniently located right outside the hallway…
And honestly, that escort mission is a short one. I found the mission with Lando more difficult, he keeps getting in the way of my saber slashing.
Every time someone mentions escort missions I have to mention Dead Rising. It’s an entire game where all the side quests and a third of the main quest is escort missions. And yet, it works. It works well. I have no clue how they pulled that off, but I enjoy it anyways.
I´d say it´s the exception that confirms the rule!
On the other hand, which Dead Rising? The first or the second? I´ve only played the second, and while the only annoying thing about the escorting is when you have to pay someone ridicolous ammounts of money so you can save them, or that you can´t knock out and carry in your shoulders that annoying idiot that thinks that walking at turtle speed with a broken leg is “being a real man”, I heard the original´s survivors were so stupid you´d pull out your hair so often you´d go bald in a couple of sessions.
It’s not like money is in short supply in Dead Rising 2, though… you’re in a casino.
(the guy who won’t let you carry him is fairly annoying, but you can put him in a wheelchair. Or blow his head off with a shotgun and tearfully explain to the other survivors that he “didn’t make it”)
Dead Rising works because you don’t have to keep the escortee alive.
Normally an escort mission is infuriating because, when the moron you’re escorting decides to do a suicide run towards largest number of bad guys, or jump in front of your rocket launcher, or just meander as slowly as possible across the map so that he gets torn apart by hedgehogs, you get a ‘game over’ screen and have to restart the bloody mission again. And again. And again…
With Dead Rising, you can actually beat the idiots following you around to death with metal bars if they get too annoying, and all you miss out on is a bit of XP (sorry, PP) and maybe a ‘save everyone ever’ achievement.
The game carries on even if they die – that’s the part that Dead Rising does very, very right indeed.
(also, at least in Dead Rising 2, the survivor AI is moderately intelligent. A bit. Sort of. Sometimes.)
On the subject of Valve games, I feel the need to point out the end of Half-Life. Everything after the Gronarch was absolutely terrible; worse than this ending for Bioshock, IMO. Dull, repetitive filler. And the last boss, without giving spoilers, was one of the most annoying I can remember. That whole end sequence, three(ish)-hours of marring an otherwise good game, is what has kept me from getting Half-Life 2.
The other Valve games I’ve played (L4D, L4D2, Alien Swarm) have all been good though.
You shouldn’t worry about that. Without spoiling things, HL2 has quite a good end-game, refreshing and actually impressive.
I find the ending to Episode 2 a little lackluster, however. I got sick of killing Stalkers after the first one.
Unfortunately the combine nexus feels far too much like an ending… then the game continues and has a better ending. I feel like that really should have been cut… it made sense story wise I suppose but it ruined the pacing up to that point for me.
Good and without an ending!
I´ve got used to understand that, when someone says “Half-Life this or that”, they are really talking about Half-Life 2. Everyone knows that the first Half-Life ending levels sucked. Isn´t even a trope named by those levels?
Xen Syndrome, according to tvtropes. They also claim that everyone should know this by now. Google vs. my self-esteem; I need a rematch.
I didn’t mind the Big Daddy suit making section as much as the running around the apartments level before it. Yeah, it’s completely stupid and the voice box modifying machine is terrifying *shiver*, but I think I’d already hit my frustration quota for the game by that point. I was so sick of endlessly spawning splicers and never having a moment to rest between fights. Also, why do they suddenly have so much more health in that level? It’s one thing to face different stronger enemies in a new area, but the same guys with extra health and new immunity to stuff that killed them before is just annoying. I think that was the point I just started running through the level trying to dodge as many splicers as possible.
I don’t remember the helmet cutting off my view like that. I must have just blocked out the memory.
Rutskarn has a valid point, surprisingly enough.
Shamus and Mumbles have totally Bogarted his Pun-stylings. What’s poor Ruts gonna do now?
It’s not like he has his own semi-popular blog where he can.. oh wait.
I’m certain ‘skarn has a plot for Rut-venge on Shamus and Mumbles in store for the last episode. Or the next series.
All I know is, when he goes off, it’s going to be like the Puns of the Navarone.
Dudes don’t wear camisoles? Shit, I need to clear out my closet…
With the Little Sister operated door, do they even try to justify it with a genetic lock or Adam-operated switch or something? To be honest, if I had to justify this horse shit, I’d have flooded the next section and said that was why you needed the gear. Or done poison gas so I wasn’t tempted to make a timed underwater escort mission later. And I’d make sure all Big Daddies in the current area were midgets or giants, if there were any at all.
Shit, no wonder Charlotte kept looking at
meJohnathan funny in Castlevania…Catholic here. Purgatory is, indeed, where you have your sins “burned away”, although the term we use is “penitence” or “purification”; so I don’t think there’s anything to get offended over. I mean, if you saw what people generally characterise my religion as around the Internet…
Assuming you hadn’t bought enough indulgences to avoid it completely, of course.
Assuming indulgences still “worked” like in the XVI century, of course.
Yeah, I prefer the Catholic Church’s older stuff. Before they signed onto a major record labour.
Indulgences are no longer bought, but you can still get them – either plenary or partial – under certain circumstances. It generally involves a pilgrimage to certain sanctuaries, perhaps on particular holidays, and praying there for the good of the Church. Of course, unless you’re a saint or die immediately afterwards you’ll probably rack up some sin not long after, so it’s a wash.
We Catholics usually put our stock more on “prayer for the souls in Purgatory”, specifically the prayers made by our loved ones after we die, to help with the purification process.
The selling of indulgences for Catholics is as out of date a religious practice as the burning of witches is for Protestants, and nearly as deplorable.
But not nearly as fun!
I am glad I didn’t play the drinking game for this episode. I have to say the whole section of this and the previous episode look like massive barrels of NOT FUN.
I think that I had become immune to the main plot by now. About two thirds of my time in this level was spent hunting for audio diaries and looking at set pieces. Actually, now that I think about it, that was most of the game for me.
“Go do stuff.”
“I can haz exposition?”
The darkspawn blood thing was exactly what i thought of at the same time as rutscarn haha
Jeez Shamus, everything you say is blurted, strained, and makes you sound like you have a chronic head cold. No wonder you don’t like talking on the phone.
I’ll get to work on that right away. (eyeroll.)
JOHNNY TOPSIDE!
Oh thanks you. I will be beyond happy when Bioshock is done. This SP looked good at first, but now my mind keeps thinking of things that will knock me out until the episodes are over. No offence to the crew, i’s just the flaws you point out with the game are getting to me from watching.
On a positive note, did all SP commentor suddenly have the urge to see a SP on HL2? I had mine when i read the post text below the video.
I’m off to think of ways to stop the thinking….
Play the drinking game. That’ll stop the thinking.
agreed, with the amount of time these guys have spent talking about valve I think that the next one has to be HL2
I doubt it,because then theyd constantly argue about who will be playing the game.
Hmm, I have to say I preferred the Fallout 3 Spoiler Warning, because it was more open and they could pick and choose a bit about what they wanted to do and when (plus we got to see Josh abuse the hell out of the games mechanics).
Also, it was more chaotic. As Bioshock is a linear game, (and it’s “evil” path through the game isn’t really that great) the only acts of Chaotic Stupid that we witness are when Josh zaps himself with electric traps. And Chaotic Stupid is the ONLY way for Spoiler Warning to roll :)
I’m surprised nobody commented on the fact that just before you enter the batysphere Fontaine is all laid back and cool, explaining to you how he “took the charity angle”, then just the next minute he’s this psychotic guy hopelessly throwing explosives at the batysphere you arrived in, insulting and threatening you. On top of that he’s supposed to be controlling Rapture like Ryan did. Considering he and his people had to somehow operate under a constant threat from Ryan he must have also discovered/created an entire “hidden” system of moving and operating within the city, these two things combined should have made him a powerful character. Instead he goes at you splicer-style.
Basically, what the hell happened to him during that loading screen? His transformation from the mob mastermind type of villain into a “drunk on plasmids” lunatic (right around the time he locks that door behind himself even his voice sounds, to me, hysterical) is completely unjustified, like we’re missing a cutscene here or something.
I hope it’s HL2, or KOTOR. Since both are some of my favorite games of all time.
We've already selected our next game, so your pleas are futile.
Oh. Uh, in that case, can I suggest that in the incredibly likely scenario that that game isn’t Pathologic by Buka Games, that the game you guys play after that one be Pathologic by Buka Games?
I must admit it; I am a complete KOTOR fanboy. It is one of only 2 games that I would consider myself a fanboy of.
SO FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DO A SERIES ON IT!!!!! I don’t care if it is “dated”, I think that you guys could have some really interesting commentary on it.
But for Christ’s sakes… avoid KOtOR 2. I enjoyed the gameplay, but the plot has holes big enough to drive a semi through. Which would be your sort of thing, I guess, but I would never force that onto anybody. Well… nobody I liked, anyway…
EDIT: I haven’t been able to play KOTOR for years. It has something to do with my video cards; after upgrading my computer once I have never been able to get it working again. Does the game only work with a specific one or two video cards? Does anyone know?
Please let the next game be LOTR: The Third Age.
Then we can all watch Shamus agonize and Josh gouging his eyes out.
Oooh… That’s loads better than my idea…
Although seriously, Third Age is one of my more favorite games. Why? Because it is the ONLY videogame my Dad can or will play. With it’s Co-op mode, that game gave me a lot of good memories with Dad, my brother and me.
(And besides, that game isn’t even for the PC!)
FINALLY! THE FINAL EPISODE IS TODAY! SOON OFF TO BITCH AND MOAN ABOUT OTHER GAMES! YAY!
I am a Catholic, and after all the scandals in the Church recently, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the Pope doesn’t know what Purgatory is.
All is forgiven.