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Bioshock Previews Abound
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Jun 08, 2007 02:51 PM
from the darn-creep-and-underwater-to-boot dept.
from the darn-creep-and-underwater-to-boot dept.
The much-anticipated spiritual successor to System Shock 2, Irrational Games' Bioshock, is finally starting to emerge from the depths of secrecy. The 360/PC title is due on store shelves at the start of August, and a bunch of sites now have previews available for perusal. Eurogamer, CVG, IGN, Team Xbox, and Gamespot all had hands-on experience with the title recently and now can report back. From Gamespot's writeup: "As you investigate Rapture's sprawling, doomed infrastructure, its crumbling art deco facades, and leaky corridors, you'll uncover the secrets of what went wrong. Stepping out of the diving bell, you'll see signs of a struggle ... We'd barely set foot onto the first platform of the city proper before running into a splicer, which is one of BioShock's common enemies and one of Rapture's former residents. As Atlas will quickly fill you in, it seems that overuse of Adam turns the subject into a crazed monster that fiends for--what else--more Adam. Imagine a crazed junkie dying to get his hands on a fix; only this junkie can throw fireballs out of thin air and move large objects with his mind. And those are just the basic enemies." For a more visceral experience, 1up has a video preview of the game, which looks as creepy as it sounds.
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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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Live GTAIV Demo Dominates Take Two E3 Event 55 comments
The Take Two event was dominated by a live demonstration of Grand Theft Auto IV . Though little more than jacking a car and a bit of driving was shown, it seemed to make an impression on journalists at the event. Other titles shown at the conference include Civilization Revolutions, Bioshock, and All-Pro Football 2K8. From Joystiq's take on the GTA demo: "Two Rockstar devs take the stage. The music is a placeholder, so they ask that we not mention it. They've never shown a game to an audience this large before it's release. They remind us that it's a work in progress, so we'll be nice. Something tells us it will impress regardless. The titles shares all key players from earlier GTA games. This consistency should ensure that the title meets expectations. With GTAIV, they're looking to "create the defining next generation action adventure." They show Niko starting in Star Juntion (Times Square). This is not a rags to riches story, 'it's a rags to slightly better rags story.'"
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The Shock That Almost Wasn't 57 comments
According to a senior designer on the 2K Boston (formerly Irrational) game Bioshock a number of publishers turned them down when the company brought the title to their doorstep. "Ken (Levine) spent years pitching the game to publishers but no one was interested, incredible as that seems now. I joined Irrational in December 2004 and my first job was to get a publishing deal for the game (I worked as the Business Development Director for the first six months). I remember pitching the game to one publisher who later told a friend of mine that it was 'just another f-ing PC FPS that's going to sell 250,000 units." Just in case you didn't catch it over the weekend, there's a demo for the game up on Xbox Live. PC owners hold tight: a PC demo is coming, and hopefully before the game launches on the 21st.
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PC Bioshock Demo Now Available 96 comments
Dr. Eggman writes "Valve announced today that their digital distribution system, Steam, is now hosting Irrational Games-turned-2K Boston's soon to be released title, Bioshock. The game will appear on Steam and the US August 21st and in Europe on the 24th. If you don't enjoy pipes, perhaps you'd like to utilize the tubes at 3DDownloads, Worthplaying, FilePlanet, or Gamer's Hell."
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The trailer tops out at a little over 300 MB... It's coming down at a whopping 23KB/sec...
All you punks need to stop downloading it so I can get some faster speeds!
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Can't wait (Score:1)
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I definitely mirror your sentiments about no SS3 though ----- maybe someone will come up with a way to retrieve the license from the copyrighted aether. In any case, I've been watching the title for some time now, and am pretty excited to be read
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Believe it or not, my sister and I used to play coop multiplayer on easy difficulty.
If you're thinking "but wait, SS1 didnt have that feature" you'd be right, she controlled the guns and torso, and I handled movement, navigation and some non-weapon equipment. We were pretty young, and playing it solo seemed too daunting (also this was a lot of fun).
SS2 was pretty awesome too, if you snuck up behind me in the dark and moaned "Killl meee" a
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was looking good until... (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll also have your genetic powers, of course, but again, these are strictly rationed and it's vital that you make every strike, every last bullet count, as you never know where the next ammo or Eve pick is going to be."
great. so yet another game where i run around not using stuff thinking 'im REALLY gonna need it in a minute so i wont use it right now' and replaying sections over and over to get the ammo usage down. THAT IS NOT FUN, NOR IS IT A GOOD FIRST RUN THROUGH A GAME.
on the 2nd run through you know where there will be some more stuff, but that kind of makes the 1st play a bit crud. Can't we have an intelligent replishment system, so that it gives you *enough* when needed, not just slotted in as fixed items on a map?
I played through one FPS (cant remember which) and used 1 grenade the whole game, thinking "gonna need all of these in a minute" and didnt. got the end and felt cheated.
sytuggling for ammo is a boring as running around a black room with a torch. walloping things with large metal objects is soo Half-Life 1.
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so you need to resort to spannering them in the head. when should i do that? just conserve ammo all the time and run around with a spanner? Sounds as boring at gravity gun based levels in HL.
If i use too much ammo/special sauce, will i have enough power to kill a particular enemy? if not, how many savegames do i have to go back to fix this? or do i try and use spanner all the time and finish the game with 1,000,000 bullets?
dunno just bores me, want some kind of common ground between
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I preferred melee weapons to firearms in System Shock 2. My main use for a pistol was shooting out security cameras, and I spent most of the game looking for upgrades to my pipe wrench. They had some pretty cool melee weapons as you got through
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Though ultimately things like that are difficult to balance and lead to similar effects to the one you mention. I prefer it when a situation calls for thought despite being well armed and equipped. Big Daddies being hard enough that they can take you down even if you are pumping non stop shots in to it. Only by
Shodan wuz here (Score:1, Interesting)
I can't imagine a System Shock spiritual successor without a Shodan spiritual successor to be in it.
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SIMILAR ROLE!?!?
A mad scientist type can't compare to the semi-erotic, M-M-M-Max Headroom-like, deranged AI that we all know and love.
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Re:The 360/PC title? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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