Why are you not playing Bioshock?

[Popcorn]

So I played it, and it turns out it's the most overrated game since Psychonauts. Spoilers hereon:

There are good things, obviously. The art direction is awesome (though it does brush a bit too closely to 'cartoonish' for my liking), the writing is great (my favourite character was the manic cosmetic surgeon), the acting is uncommonly good, and the Big Daddy/Little Sister dynamic is, at least in aesthetic terms, completely, captivatingly strange.

But this thing has more flaws than a plastic gemstone. The combat is shallow and repetitive, and I began to loathe every encounter-- especially with gun turrets, which, for some reason, really rubbed me the wrong way, the only way to deal with them apparently being to run directly into their fire in order to get close enough to attack/disable them somehow. The RPG elements are dumbed-down versions of the far deeper systems they borrow from System Shock and Deus Ex. The hacking, at first fun and clever, was beginning to make me feel faintly ill by the last few hours of gameplay. The missions too frequently dissolve into tedious fetch quests-- it's tremendously insulting, after having passed numerous bottles of 'ionic fluid' and wondered idly why I can't pick them up, to be told that I now have to go back and find them all again.

Despite its strong cast and wonderfully demented writing, the progression of the story's a load of bollocks, too. So it turns out Master Miller is Liquid Snake? No shit, that possibility didn't cross my mind within the first five minutes of the game. My character's backstory, with the game's endless explanations for my current physiological demeanour, is convoluted and deus ex machina-esque. Worse, the game's tendency to wrench control from the player to demonstrate plot-centric moments is jarring and unnatural: did these guys learn nothing from Half-Life? The 'wound you kindly' thing was clever, and an innovative take on the unique relationship between the game and the player, but how much more affecting would it have been had you been in control when you beat Ryan to death? It opens up design issues, of course-- like, how do we make sure the player actually follows his instructions?-- but I don't think these would be impossible to solve with a bit of clever design. Instead, they took the lazy way out.

By far my biggest disappointment, though, is in the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. These were far and away my favourite thing here-- the image of the monstrous protector and innocent child is a powerful one, and well-characterised ("What's wrong, Mister Bubbles?"). But their enigma never comes to anything satisfying. So it turns out the Sisters are just genetically-modified children and the Big Daddies are just genetically-modified guys in suits. This isn't nearly as creepy or ethereal as I would have liked. Early on, my mind was racing with ideas as to what this curious duo might be, what they're for, why they're here; the reality never measured up.

The 'moral dilemma' is completely shallow, too, as it is in apparently every game that attempts to involve it. Being asked to do the 'right' thing with no indiciation of whether or not you will be rewarded is an interesting situation to put the player in, but it doesn't pay off. I saved them all and got rewarded with extra Adam; it just felt hollow, superficial, lacking in any genuine moral ramifications. Genuine moral ramifications are hard to do in games, of course, but I'm sick of being promised them without delivery.

I remember thinking somewhere near the beginning: man, it'd be cool if at some point in the game you became a Big Daddy. And that happens, but nowhere near to the extent I was hoping for-- you just don a Big Daddy diguise and play a shitty escort mission. I was imagining something altogether more sinister, a kind of Hansel and Gretel-type scenario with the witch turning children into gingerbread men, or like the human wax figures in House of Wax (though I should defend my integrity at this point and clarify that House of Wax is a terrible movie). I wanted to be forced into becoming a real Big Daddy, trapped inside the grotesque diving suit by some malovelent force for some horrible purpose. I wanted that to explain what it was the Big Daddies were and where they came from-- that they were just ordinary people turned into lumbering monsters, forced to live out the rest of their days protecting demon children at the bottom of the sea. But it was not to be.

The ending sucked, too. Both of 'em.

[j-man]

It's okay. The Orange Box is out now.

[Opa-Opa]

I need a new video card to play... well... everything. Any suggestions? I'm thinking of getting one of those fancy GeForce 8600 Fatality from XFX...

Was Psychonauts overrated? I didn't even think it was rated!

[Popcorn]

Was Psychonauts overrated? I didn't even think it was rated!

Are you kidding? I'm the only guy on earth who doesn't want to drink its piss.

[Esrever]

I think what he means is Psychonauts is highly regarded by the few people who ever actually played it.

(Except for himself. Because he's CRAZY.)

[Isuka]

If you aren't interested in switching to Windows Vista any time soon, I'd recommend you a graphics accelerator with good DirectX 9.0 support Opa. A GeForce 7900/ 7950 GT or GX based card'll be fine (alternatively, a Radeon X1900/ X1950 GT or Pro are also good), but that one you said is OK too.

And I didn't really like Psychonauts either, but I just played one level and kept talking with the rest of the camp so maybe it doesn't even count as playing. I'll try it out throughly from today.

[Tsuyoshi-kun]

I think what he means is Psychonauts is highly regarded by the few people who ever actually played it.

(Except for himself. Because he's CRAZY.)

Even myself, a person who doesn't even like most Dreamcast games, am vastly enjoying Psychonauts. I should've bought it a LONG time ago.

[Light Speed]

I felt that Psychonauts would have been a fairly generic platformer, but what made it stand out was its art style and superb level design. I constantly looked forward to what each persons mind would look like because they were all unique and cool. The Godzilla one and the Conspiracy one come to mind as being the neatest. That and this was the first platformer I've really played since the genre fizzled out in the late 90's.

As far as Bioshock goes, I never ended up playing it again after that hour I played it when it launched. I killed the first boss then quit and never went back due to school and then getting into Eternal Sonata. I started over on Friday and got about 3 hours in. So far it still feels like an lousy shooter with an awesome atmosphere and an interesting story. Your abilities don't seem strong enough to deal with the Big Daddies. As of right now I could probably take on the basic Big Daddy that only has the drill hand, but every time I go up against a Rosie I just get owned. You aren't fast enough to strafe his rail gun shots and you just can't damage him fast enough or stun him long enough to take him out before he takes you out. Every time I take one on it just becomes an endurance challenge of how many times can you run back from the Vita chamber to finish him before you get bored. Everyone keeps telling me you get way more powerful and to keep playing so I'll finish it, hopefully before Assassin's Creed.

Oh and Eternal Sonata is a gorgeous game that is really reminiscent of Tales of Symphonia (for obvious reasons) and has a sweet combat system that comes off as simple. but gets harder and more powerful as each chapter of the story ends. I'm about 17 hours in now and it's quite enjoyable. My only qualms are as of right now there really is no reason for Chopin to be in the story, you could take him and the musical references out and you would never know the difference, this might change as the story comes to a close though. Also, the way the story unfolds is kind of aggravating since its mainly combat followed by a massive cutscene consisting solely of dialouge to advance the plot. Several of these cutscenes end up lasting a half hour, my controller has turned off from being idle for too long 3 or 4 times now. The cutscenes aren't even terribly interesting because it's just them talking and usually repeating themselves several times in slightly altered ways. Fans of Tales of Symphonia should check it out though.

I'm not sure how that turned into a 3 game review, but it seemed more interesting to write than my econometrics homework, so whatever.

[Isuka]

Eternal Sonata does sound a lot like Dawn of Mana, only actually fun.
The first thirty minutes of DoM are pretty great; excelent music, a cinematic feel, impressively detailed character models... and fucking repetitive boredom thereafter.

And just to aid a little in your homework:

I killed the first boss then quit and never went back due to school and then getting into Eternal Sonata.

Fix'd.

[Opa-Opa]

I think what he means is Psychonauts is highly regarded by the few people who ever actually played it.

(Except for himself. Because he's CRAZY.)

I'm crazy because I never played it. But I'll be fixing that soon.

[SDHawk]

I tend to agree that Pyschonauts is, by and large, crap. Certainly the writing and general set design concepts are clever, but roughly just about everything else ranges from mediocre to terrible in actual execution. It felt a lot like an adventure game trapped in a platformer's body. A really bad platformer's body. (Which isn't to say that I like adventure games, I generally hate most of the genre, but the general ineptness of Psychonaut's gameplay pretty much mirrors why I hate the genre to begin with- the developers are incompetent with anything other than writing and visual design)

[Light Speed]

Do you have any support to your claims of inept gameplay or are you just trying to start a flamewar? Because all you said was that everything, but the writing and set design were crap. What makes them crap? If I remember correctly (been a couple years since I played it) the controls were quite responsive and there were some neat psychic abilities.

[Popcorn]

Do you have any support to your claims of inept gameplay or are you just trying to start a flamewar? Because all you said was that everything, but the writing and set design were crap. What makes them crap? If I remember correctly (been a couple years since I played it) the controls were quite responsive and there were some neat psychic abilities.

No, I agree with him. The platforming is terribly generic, with absolutely nothing new or interesting about it, and the level design is bland and confusing. And frequently, I found, strangely depressing. It was all rather dark. Like, visually dark. That level with the damn fish. The damn fish.

And I think accusing someone of 'trying to start a flamewar' because they don't detail their reasoning in every claim they make is more likely to cause a flamewar than the alleged 'crime' would have done in the first place.

[Light Speed]

Well, I'm pretty sure you at one point explained why you thought Psychonauts sucked and thats fine.

He just seemed to claim the game was crap with no real reasoning behind it around a bunch of people that want to drink its piss, like he was just saying it to start shit. I suppose I could have left that little flamewar comment out though.

[Rlan]

Pop: Sounds like you completely swooshed over the Camera. Taking pictures of different kinds of enemies and turrets / cameras makes you gain new powers and abilities, including insta-hacking. May have made it more fun for you.

[Esrever]

Sometimes a game just rubs you the wrong way! I, for example, think Ico is lame... a somewhat interesting story and atmosphere burdened with excruciatingly boring, irritating gameplay. But I know Pop, and a lot of other people, love it to death. I just don't happen to share their intense love of empty rooms and bloom lighting.

I love Psychonauts to death, but I love it because of it's incredibly imaginative premise, visual style, story and humour, and the way it merges all those elements into the environments and gameplay. If you don't give a crap about those four aspects of the game -- or worse, if you actively dislike them like I think Pop kinda does-- the rest of the game is probably not unique enough to win you over.

[Zeta]

Sometimes a game just rubs you the wrong way! I, for example, think Ico is lame... a somewhat interesting story and atmosphere burdened with excruciatingly boring, irritating gameplay. But I know Pop, and a lot of other people, love it to death. I just don't happen to share their intense love of empty rooms and bloom lighting.

Ditto. Shadow of the Colossus was fantastic. Ico had potential but was boring as fuck and the setting was so damn bland.

[SDHawk]

There was a bit of discussion about it within the thread so I felt like chipping in my reasoning for disliking it along with pop's (which I guess he didn't actually state in this thread but I'm fairly certain he's probably discussed it in prior threads).

Anyway, the vagueness was largely due to the fact I haven't played the game in quite some time, so citing vivid examples of my point is somewhat difficult. If I had to dig a little further it pretty much comes down to what I stated before: execution. It's all off. Probably because of what's also one of the game's strengths: variety in stages.

They all come off as so different but in playing them they end up using very much the same core game system and it just comes off as cheap. Probably what sticks out in my mind the most was the monster chapter where you're destroying the city and the game compensates very little for your new scale and plays much like any other level. There are small buildings to destroy, but they ultimatley feel like destroying any other small object in the game. The other example I can think of is the ball rolling ability you get that just feels incredibly sluggish and nothing at all like rolling on a ball, especially in the racing portion towards the end.

Basically, every time they have a creative new idea in terms of the gameplay they don't implement it very well and it just comes off as all wrong when they generally have quite a lot of potential. The core platformer mechanics that are left, while competent, are also incredibly stale within the genre.

Probably not the greatest argument for my point, but hopefully it should at least be a little clearer as to what I actually disliked about the game as opposed to looking like a jackass making a vague comment to piss people off.

[Popcorn]

Pop: Sounds like you completely swooshed over the Camera. Taking pictures of different kinds of enemies and turrets / cameras makes you gain new powers and abilities, including insta-hacking. May have made it more fun for you.

A few people have told me things like this. "Oh, you didn't get the Decoy Dummy? Oh, you didn't get the Security Bullseye? Oh, you never used the Electric Gel on the Big Daddies?" I don't like it, this suggestion that I somehow 'played it wrong'. The game is one that purports to give you options, and then you get punished, seemingly, if you don't go for the right ones. Like the purchasing of plasmids and other biological upgrades. They give you no indication of how well they're going to work until after you've bought them, so you just have to guess. It's like how lots of Western RPGs ask you to choose a 'character type', like a soldier or a mage or whatever, without you having the experience you need to know how useful (or not) either option is actually going to be in practice.

[Isuka]

Sometimes a game just rubs you the wrong way! I, for example, think Ico is lame... a somewhat interesting story and atmosphere burdened with excruciatingly boring, irritating gameplay. But I know Pop, and a lot of other people, love it to death. I just don't happen to share their intense love of empty rooms and bloom lighting.

... I haven't even started SotC yet, and Fumito Ueda already left me FUCKING BLIND!
I dig it, the atmosphere here truly is everything, and with some exceptions like jumping off a cliff, falling a long distance and not dying, the gameplay is quite accurate in emulating what a kid can actually do. I'm still impressed by the unbelievable amounts of textures and details they were capable of shoehorning in a single CD-ROM... but the goddamn bloom, OH SHI-.

[Popcorn]

Sometimes a game just rubs you the wrong way! I, for example, think Ico is lame... a somewhat interesting story and atmosphere burdened with excruciatingly boring, irritating gameplay.

Ditto. Shadow of the Colossus was fantastic. Ico had potential but was boring as fuck and the setting was so damn bland.

Banned and banned, incidentally.

[Esrever]

I'm not sure how Popcorn posted that after I banned him for disliking Psychonauts.