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Bioshock's Launch Aftershocks
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Aug 28, 2007 09:28 AM
from the lots-of-grumbling dept.
from the lots-of-grumbling dept.
It should come as no surprise that the level of hype BioShock reached in the last month has had some aftereffects. The game itself is really good; few are disputing that. There were, however, some problems. Next Gen has a few words with Ken Levine on BioShock's troubled launch looking at the broken Big Daddies, the allegations of a rootkit, and the 'widescreen issue'. There are other issues still floating around, of course: despite rumours Levine has now confirmed there will be no PS3 version of the game, and one problem may just be starting as big media finds out about the Little Sisters. 'The Boston Patriot-Ledger ... argues that BioShock is "testing the limits of the ultraviolent gaming genre with a strategy that enables players to kill characters resembling young girls." Despite the shock-inducing lead, the article goes on to give a more or less accurate description of BioShock's choice between saving and harvesting the creepy Little Sisters ... The conclusion tries to draw a link between BioShock's violence to a stabbing death allegedly inspired by Grand Theft Auto, but the connection is pretty weak.' To close on a good note check out 1up's profile of Levine's career, or download the BioShock score ... which is beautiful.
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Ken Levine On The Background of Bioshock 23 comments
GameSpy has up an interview with Ken Levine of Irrational Games. While Levine has spoken previously about Bioshock's ideology, this piece discusses a number of the elements that went into creating the game. He touches again on objectivism, but expands on the title's connection to its spiritual predecessor System Shock 2 and the process of actual developing the game. "Sterling: Segueing away from storyline a little, what sorts of hardware limits did the team encounter from pre-production leading up to this point of near-completion? Ken Levine: As a credit to my programming team, honestly, I didn't hear much about them. There was some hesitation on the part of some of programming team in pushing a level of physical simulation in the world, in part because they knew how much work that was. To their credit, I'll say, not only did they do it, they knocked it out of the park, because I've never seen this level of simulation ever in a shooter."
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BioShock Installs a Rootkit 529 comments
An anonymous reader writes "Sony (the owner of SecureROM copy protection) is still up to its old tricks. One would think that they would have learned their lesson after the music CD DRM fiasco, which cost them millions. However, they have now started infesting PC gaming with their invasive DRM. Facts have surfaced that show that the recently released PC game BioShock installs a rootkit, which embeds itself into Explorer, as part of its SecureROM copy-protection scheme. Not only that, but just installing the demo infects your system with the rootkit. This begs the question: Since when did demos need copy protection?"
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Well Don't That Beat All. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that is a terrific attitude. 2K Games went up 10 notches on my Classy Scale.
Re:Well Don't That Beat All. (Score:4, Insightful)
The other thing to note is that the DRM is dictated by the publisher, not so much the developer (though in this case they became the same during Bioshock's development). Personally I haven't had any problems with it at all.
None of this retracts from the fact that Bioshock is one of the best games ever made. It has gorgeous art direction, intriguing morality, wonderfully diverse gameplay, and a sense of tension I haven't seen for ages. I spent most of Sunday playing the game and dreamt about it all night. That's something I haven't done with a game in a very long time.
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It still doesn't change the fact SecuROM [wikipedia.org] is a rootkit. No amount of reinstalls allotments will change that.
I mean, most people bitch that by itself Steam is evil incarnate, but its quite a saint compared to what Starforce a
Re:Well Don't That Beat All. (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Well Don't That Beat All. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Well Don't That Beat All. (Score:5, Informative)
The ONLY reason it has been referred to as a 'rootkit' is because SecuROM used a NUL character in their registry key, which the MS-provided Rootkit scanner flags as suspicious. By the way, it also flags some keys for MS software as 'suspicious' on a clean install, so how is that for reliable?
Stop perpetuating misinformation that you have heard second hand from unreliable sources. You look like an alarmist for doing it.
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Re:Well Don't That Beat All. (Score:5, Insightful)
--Inigo Montoya
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Re:Well Don't That Beat All. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Obligitory (Score:2, Funny)
Morality Shock (Score:5, Interesting)
Harvest or "Save" the Little sisters. The guy helping you out says you should kill them to harvest all the "Adam" you can get, this lets you essentially level up faster. Or you can Save them as their creator would like and get some huge reward later on. She has gained some morality after turning little girls into monsters.
The theme is that you are in a fallen paradise city. The residents have gone insane and most are trying to kill you. You're forced to make moral choices on surviving, or dying. The city itself has fallen in disrepair and most residents will most likely die in a few years anyway.
I've not noticed anything "considerably" broken with BIg daddies. I just see them as spawning and searching out the sisters. If you already got all the sisters in the level, then the big daddies just go on looking. It adds texture.
The other moral issues in the game are gene modifications. Most denizens are mod junkies and have become twisted because of it. They were all once normal humans who took a little too much drugs. Some of the doctors in the city have gone a step further by doing horrible surgeries on people disfiguring them and killing their nurses in the process. It adds to the flavor of the story in which you are stuck in a Hell and are trying to find a way out.
As far as "preservation of life" vs killing them goes. As far as the main character knows, they cant be "cured". They're trying to kill him, so he's gotta eliminate them first. The morality here is perhaps death is the better alternative. Either that or live life being disfigured and insane.
Bioshock has gone through some serious blood and sweat in it's creation. I give them huge artistic credit as well as taking us to a level of morality so few are brave enough to go. There are many things that should be spoken about, but are not.
Re:Morality Shock (Score:5, Interesting)
After I'd "rescued" all the Little Sisters from a level, I tried following around a Big Daddy just to see what would happen. It approached one of the crawlspaces, banged on it thunderously, then seemed almost to sigh when no Sister emerged from it to shepherd. I actually felt bad for it. Maybe there's some other spawning/AI problem, but I haven't noticed it.
Yeah - I don't recall anyone making an issue of it when Max Payne featured a character gunning down "Valkyrie" crazed addicts. And nobody particularly weeps for the zombies in Day of the Dead.
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Re:Morality Shock (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously in gaming terms the correct thing to do is to electrocute the water, zapping all 3 and inflicting high and/or lethal damage on the spot, saving me from the potential danger these 3 splicers represent. After all, this is a shooter, and your primary interaction with anything in the world is to well, shoot it.
So of course I zapped'em. Then something strange happened, I felt a twinge of remorse.
The game had done such a good job of immersing me into the setting, a dying city filled with desperate people fighting for survival over the remains. I, as the player had been taken from normal society and thrown into Rapture. I had climbed down into the sewage to scavenge through the remains of the 3 splicers, when I realized that I was standing where they stood, doing the exact same thing they were. I'd attacked them in the same way they would have attacked me given the chance. Hell, I'd even attacked them with a plasmid I had spliced into my own DNA, just like them. It was an interesting thing to notice and I laud Bioshock for managing this, intentionally or otherwise.
Any emotional interaction with a shooter has been incredibly rare, aside from this, they had done another "Mr. B-b-b-bubbles...". The only other game I can think of that has brought on feelings other than rage or fear, was HL2:Ep1, where my instinct was not to blast Alyx in the face with my pistol at every turn(unlike the HL1 scientists), but I had actually wanted to comfort her after a scene exiting a Combine railcar.
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Re:Morality Shock (Score:5, Informative)
Also, I blasted through killing everyone, and later found out that I missed some items that I could have gained if I hadn't been so quick on the trigger finger.
Theres more to it than that, but it involves certain plot points, and I wouldn't want to ruin it for anyone. Your post makes it seem like you're still relatively early in the game, so I hope you enjoy it.
As far as the Big Daddy issue, that had to do with the figurines that came with the collectors edition, nothing in-game.
I have to say that the game was excellent. I'm already tempted to replay it.
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Put it all to the side (Score:5, Interesting)
The gaming community needs to "lean" BioShock higher. We need to stop focusing on the (lack of) a rootkit. We need to stop complaining about the install limitations (in all honesty, who is installing this game on more than 5 machines anyway)? In particular, we need to really fight against those focusing on the "child killing" aspect. (Which, to be frank, is completely disturbing in-game and meant to make the player feel awful).
We need to focus on the art of the game, and try to forget all the tangential stuff. Yes, I know, it's hard for Slashdot folks. "Rawr rawr DRM... rawr rawr install limitations... rawr rawr never going to support this company again." Just put that to the side if you can. We NEED to support games like this. otherwise it's back to horrific Madden clones and movie-licensed drek.
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Is BioShock just "an FPS, but better along all dimensions"? (Imp
Re:Put it all to the side (Score:4, Interesting)
I felt many distinct emotions in this game: Fear, Surprise, Empathy, Pity, Rage, Aggression, Sadness, Regret and Shock(From the dialouge, like "Don't you fucking judge me!").
Doom maybe had me on Fear and Surprise, but no other game has given me the spectrum above.
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Re:Put it all to the side (Score:4, Interesting)
Quake 4 came out a little later and I bought it, but played it a few months later. It was far better than Doom in many ways. You felt the horrors of these aliens capturing people and converting them to mindless soldiers through painful methods. Still not horrifying or engaging of a story.
Vampire the Masquerade was older than Doom and Quake, yet the scenes and imagery struck me a lot harder. The one scene with the blood king or whoever you had to fight in that pit of blood and severed bodies. You could almost smell it. The imagery was used strategically and not overkill as it was in Doom. It left you in the game wondering what else you'll see, and not wanting to go on, but having to so you can stop the images.
Bioshock brings you forward into a new light. The story is very real. It's engaging and drawing, you want to go on. You want to turn each corner to see what is out there and what you'll find. THe journals are interesting and I listen to them. THe dead bodies you may find are tastefully done to not overkill. They serve some emotional purpose. Like the couple who died in each others arms. I just stopped there to look at them, and threir journal crying over the disfigurment the doc did to their daughter. It was troubling and disturbing. You WANTED to find who did it and set him on fire. If anything, ujst to give their spirits rest.
People who dont want to play this game because of copy protection I can understand. If it were a mediocre game I'd fully understand. X3 had a wretched copy protection scheme and was an "ok' game. Easily skipped and wont be missed. Bioshock is not so easily ignored.
In the end of it all. I'm probably 45% done playing Bioshock and I'm still very much engaged in it's story. When I need a break, I play Persona 3, which is also hard to pass up.
I've played countless games in my life. Bioshock will be added to the "always remember" category.
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Re:Put it all to the side (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't play enough FPSes to comment on whether the actual mechanics are innovative or not, but I'll take a stab at some of the things that I found nifty. They mixed in RPG-ish character upgrades, that you can buy using Adam. This Adam is obtained through either saving or harvesting the Little Sisters, which the summary touched on. You get less if you save the sisters. Theres also the Plasmids, which are magic or psychic like abilities. You can stun people, set them aflame, freeze them, and shock them. You can do nifty things like set a person on fire, so that they jump into a pool of water to douse themselves, then shocking them while they're in the water for extra damage.
Really, theres no one thing thats completely revolutionary about Bioshock. It just has the right settings, the right mechanics, the right plot, the right amount of tension, etc. in the right places. Its a very well put together game.
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Re:Put it all to the side (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Put it all to the side (Score:5, Interesting)
> We NEED to support games like this.
I'll support them when they support me (=us gamers). Tit for tat. I have already cooperated first, and that didn't remove the silly copy-prevention mechanisms (and please don't say the word 'publishers', I'm not an idiot). I'm all out of cooperation.
See you in the bargain bin.
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I have BioShock on the 360 and it is a seriously amazing game however I am fortunate not to have to deal with the rootkit and install limit. I would never purchase this game for the PC. I would simply wait until a cracked copy
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- By saying that you would have pirated the game instead of buying it you are actually making the publishers point that a copy protection is necessary more valid.
- The only limitation this enforces on you is to uninstall the game first before reinstalling.
- 99% of the people who need to install the game in more than 2 machines are basically pirating it.
Re:Put it all to the side (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that it might not be 5 machines. I installed it the other day under my profile, answering yes when it asked if I wanted to install it for all users. I activated it and played with no problems. When my 19 year old son went to play it under his profile it wanted to be activated again. So it's asking for 2 activations on the same PC. There are 3 more user accounts on that PC too, though I doubt if my wife will be interested in playing it.
That makes we wonder, is it a per user profile or per machine activation? Why ask to install for every user on the PC and not activate it for all users? I called 2K Support and they didn't have the answer either. I can't be the only one running multiple user profiles on the same PC. Also, both of our accounts have admin privileges so it shouldn't be a permissions issue.
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Re:Put it all to the side (Score:5, Insightful)
Without that I would have bought it following the first round of post-release reviews. I just finished putting together a new gaming system, and would love to have this game.
However, I'm not going to put up with this crap. There's other games, they might not be quite as spiffy or have the same storyline, but they're still fun. I'll play those instead.
I'm not interested in shelling out my cash for a game that could well turn into a paperweight (and a poor one at that) somewhere down the line when the activation server goes away. Or when I've installed for the Nth + 1 time, or whatever. When I buy a game, I want to know that that game will continue to work. I *still* periodically install MOO2 and play it... and I've had that CD for 10 years now. If MOO2 was protected like this game is I would have had to have quit playing it years and years ago.
As for 5 installs... I've installed Oblivion around 4 times in the past month. I'll be installing it at least once or twice more in the next week or two. Why? Because I'm going through that many OS installs dealing with intermittent issues arising from hardware conflicts in my new build. (and MS is slower than hell shipping Vista) If I'd gotten BioShock, I'd be looking at around a month of intermittent gameplay, then viola, no more activations.... yay! Now I get to play phone tag!
Screw that.
When they provide me a product that doesn't self-destruct, I'll provide them with my cash in return.
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Re:Put it all to the side (Score:5, Informative)
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My impressions (Score:2)
The first 15 minutes, were absolutely terrifying. Not to ruin it for anyone, but if you are able to play it on a surround system (and
Under the sea....somewhere. (Score:2, Interesting)
In some of the fights, I encountered AI that got stuck at times and sorta ruined the combat scheme. I remember a big daddy getting stuck twice, making it easy to pick them off.
On the other hand, I was constantly scooping out the environment, seeing if there was some advantage I could use that corridor I just walked through in entrapping a
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You're damn right, the rootkit is I imagine is there to collect piracy stats subversively.
Bioshock's launch was NOT plagued with bugs! (Score:3, Informative)
The game is 99% perfect! There is a very small widescreen issue. There is a bit of a DRM issue. A couple of AI bugs (which personally I have not witnessed, so as far as I can tell, how widespread they are is perfectly anecdotal). Show me another top-tier game launch recently that has has LESS bugs than Bioshock. I'm not hearing about bugs which are causing blue screens, or crashing X-Boxes or losing save games.
I find it disheartening that with how incredible this game is, and how relatively PERFECTLY the launch went, that people are trying to focus press on what is wrong with it. People are making mountains out of molehills on this one.
Bioshock is an amazing game. All issues and bugs reported on it are vastly overstated. Just play the game and enjoy it for god's sake. If the press wants to focus on something negative, go write a story on Iraq.
In short, there's no story here. Move along.
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Want attention? Write controversy about a game. (Score:4, Insightful)
Was there really anything wrong with the launch of their product? Not really.
Was there really anything wrong in this game that we haven't seen before in games like the GTA series? No.
Having used a lot of other software and games that couldn't even install, crashed to desktop faster than a Microsoft Minute, I'm surprised that websites use words that try to stir the pot to make issues out of nothing. Really, Bioshock has set the bar for games. It's intriguing, well designed and written, and its plays really well. Could it be that the media websites need money for their click through ads by making mountains out of mole hills? It does come at the price of the developers integrity. That is in my opion, the bigger issue.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Some percentage of users are probably experiencing show-stopper bugs. Let's take the forum rants with a grain of salt, though: users with a chip on their shoulder are a thousand times louder than satisfied customers. Myself, I have encountered two obvious bugs, both of them AI pathing problems - no crashes. It seems to me that Irrational shipped a product which was QAed to satisfaction on some platforms, they just didn't QA for as many platforms as they should've - strange, cheap cards, MB's, RAM, bloated a
Double standard, much? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, it's not like there have ever been great movies that make you uncomfortable, right?
Lolita?
Solaris?
Satyricon?
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, her Lover?
Trainspotting?
Requiem for a Dream?
American History X?
Hotel Rwanda?
Yeah, certainly none of those are anything but sordid entertainment - no actual value to any of them.
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I fully agr
Product Activation (Score:2)
Steam doesn't bother me, BTW, since there's no restriction on the number of times you install anything, or the number of times you upgrade your video card. But, if this activation thing gets popular, it won't be long before
damn (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be a law that says the game's outer packaging has to carry a big label if they do this sort of stuff.
Re:damn (Score:4, Insightful)
Securom is a third-party and fairly widespread technology used to protect games. It seems the latest incarnation of it requires authentication via the internet. I don't want this to spread to other games, nor will I buy them if it does.
My issues against it is this:
I've paid fair and square to play this game whereever and whenever I want, no matter how many times I want to install it.
I don't even like the thought that its possible for someone else to interfere with that, let alone the fact that:
1) I have to have an internet connection just to install the game
2) That I have to seek their permission every time I want to install the thing I already paid for
3) That they get informed every time I install the game and from which IP I'm doing it from (technically a privacy concern)
4) I'm at the mercy of the continued availability of their authentication servers. If the company goes bust, has technical server issues, or just decides to stop supporting BioShock, I can no longer install it.
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Little Sisters (Score:4, Interesting)
Then I reached the point were I had to make the decision to kill or save the first little sister. They make that really hard on you and I had to stop playing for a while. Of course the kill does not happen on-screen and is only implied. It is also not a direct kill: You remove a sea-slug from her that was controlling her. It is inplied that she cannot survive that, but that she might have effectively been dead as a person anyways. The game plays very well with ambiguity here. Oh, and you cannot hurt the little sisters with weapons or in other forms. So no bashing or shooting little girls here.
All in all, I think there is no ethical problem here with the game design. The player cannot rush through this (long cutscene which is non-interruptable), and has to make a choice with as much time as he/she likes for it. I think, there is also the option to ignore the little sister (and possibly come back for her later). Supposedly the game gets very hard later one if you do that. Of course poeple that only see the pictures may come to the wrong conclusions. Those that actually play it should not. At least I see very little risk of that happening.
Levels are really large, and no loading in them. Comparisons to levels in System Shock 2 are fair, if the medical level in Bioshock is typical. And the levels are dense. You do not run through them fast, it is more a careful advancing. It also really does not feel like a console game, the demo is misleading here.
Summary: This game is a milestone and a gem. If you are into shooters with RPG elements and a creepy setting, get it. It will define the genre for the near future. And this time, I hope they got the marketing right. This thing really deserves to be a huge success. If it has, the hole genre will benefit and more interesting shooter-RPG hybrids should crop up in the future.
A note on hardware: It is playable with a 7600GT, but you have to turn down most settings. It runns completely smooth with almost the highest settings in 1280x1024 in a GeForce 8800GTS (Athlon X2 5600+, 2GB RAM), where I just disabled the high-quelity shaders (and I do not like the glossy look they give everything anyways).
I'm pretty sure you mean... (Score:2)
I mean, your an adult, I'm an adult. Were all adult's here. Its time we started spelling good.
Re:No bioshock for me (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:No bioshock for me (Score:5, Informative)
The whole OMG ROOTKIT thing was nothing more than a publicity stuff. Yes its DRM, and yes it sucks, but its not a rootkit. And you don't get it if you buy it off of Steam either.
Sadly, I've noticed that Slashdot is very VERY bad about spreading disinformation and hyperbole. It'd be nice if the stories could be substantiated and checked for accuracy, especially considering the number of people who take anything posted on Slashdot as The One and Only Truth.
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I remember my brother telling me that it installed a rootkit, and being super pissed off, then researching and finding out that, no, its not a rootkit, just a Windows service that does some tricks to make it a pita to uninstall. After that I did the scan and came up with nothing.
I'd classify it as DRM/malware, because it seems like its particularly nasty to get out of y
Fallacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Similar to "Tu quoque" logical fallacy.
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