Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Re: Your socratic method sucks.

[quote name="Lizard_King"][quote name="FABIO"][quote]You're getting your ass kicked by quests I solved almost accidentally while enjoying the strengths of the game, mostly based around using an interesting tool set and environment to fuck with a shooting gallery of enemies. [/quote] Thanks, jhoh =( [/quote] I'm not bullshitting. I found the playground aspect of the game very enjoyable, so things like that did not bother me much, and regular loot scooping took care of most of it. [quote name="Fabio"]How's this: The whole "cartoony 50s fascism contrasting with game's setting" worked in Fallout because it was just a backdrop while the actual setting developed. In Bioshock, <b>it's the entire game</b>. Nothing else happens. Nothing progresses. There is no advancing plot. Nothing but characters telling you that gee maybe unrestrained capitalism wasn't such a good idea over and over and over again. Such a paradise was ironically brought down by drug smugglers, yes I get it. [/quote] That's not really how it happened, but whatever. Since you seem to believe that there are no audio logs in Bioshock, that probably explains a lot of the gaps in your information. [quote] Objectives suffer from the same thing as System Shock 2: you're condemned the entire game to just meander around fixing broken systems until the game decides it's time you met the last boss. Every time you get anything remotely meaningful ("meet this dude"), the game shoves you 2 steps back every step of the way (another collapsed door!). At least in SS2 you had the audio logs to give you a progressing narrative. I guess if you wanted you could go back and piece together Bioshock's jumbled timeline, but who really cares at that point.[/quote] See above on audio logs. They are everywhere, with generally good voice acting and interesting stuff. [quote] There just isn't anything there to keep me interested while I scour several levels for 10 vials of distilled water. I didn't touch the game for a month; whenever I considered firing it up again I remembered that it had me collecting bottled water.[/quote] I see why you don't like it, but instead I found the setting very enjoyable, the individual dramas played out in many of the discrete areas interesting, and the overarching tension of the plot and the metaplot interesting. I guess you never got to the latter point, but whatever. The most important thing that kept me entertained was killing, fighting, hoarding, and modifying my plasmid selection. I liked building elaborate traps and defenses, and virtually all of the boss fights were better than the sum of their parts (even the fucking lame "give up all of your weapons" one). Really, it was up until the last encounter that the game jumped the shark, and the experience in its sum was worth replaying on Hard (which is actually normal in most FPS). Where you see an empty cliche rehashed, I guess I see an interesting spin in a flawed but ultimately great world with above average mechanics. I'm expecting Far Cry 2 to be along the same lines, when I get around to it. Either way, I just wanted clarification on what exactly you were complaining about, since viewing it as a too-clever joke made little sense to me. By all means, continue getting back to whatever it is you enjoy playing. [/quote]