Here Ken Levine: The truth is, for us, BioShock was never a place. It was never "Rapture." It was never, "this location" or "this time." It was an idea. There are things that you can see [in the trailer] that are very connected in a lot of ways but are also very different. For us, we weren't going with branding, we weren't going with a lot of the core ideas. But we said what we needed to say about Rapture. I think if you know our history and the games we've made, that was connected to some previous games we made as well; in some ideas. Not bad, sounds better than the 2nd to me.
Translating from corporate bullshit to normal human....translation complete: "We're gonna milk this BioShock name with tenously connected games for all it's worth as long as anyone still gives a crap about it." Yeah, it looks like it'll probably be a decent game...but seriously, the first BioShock got a lot of hype and was a great game. The second one got significantly less hype, and everybody pretty much forgot it existed quickly. If they're trying to turn this into a franchise, I doubt it'll last.
I felt the first game was good, but highly over-rated. I haven't played the second one yet, but I can't help but feel the flying city thing will just mean more small maps with highly scripted events. If that is the case, I'm not very interested.
People will probably flame me, but BioShock never got my attention. I mean, it's has great graphics and a cool artistic style, but somehow i wasn't interested on it.
Bioshock's art style was the most amazing thing about it. Exploring that city and what happened to it was the reason to play. Before the game came out, they were hyping how each game area has a million ways to go about it etc. But in reality, most just played it through using the wrench and plasmas (and occasional machine gun) and just soaking up the story. The second one looks fascinating, but early 1910 is not as interesting to me as art deco 50s (which is basically a rip on Fallout, which came out as a next gen game a year later). Essentially the first game was a taste of first person fallout as we waited for fallout 3. And the idea of "Rapture as multiple places" Thats what they call retconning in the movie world, where they say something was always the intention when in actuality they thought it up after the release.
I have similar thoughts about it. I actually bought it early on (maybe on the day it came out?) and finished the game rather quickly. I don't know why, exactly, because I didn't really enjoy it very much. It just didn't pull me into the world of the game like HL did (that's the metric by which I judge all FPS games). I also found the gameplay rather repetitive - it just got annoying at a certain point. Then again, I'm rather picky about which FPSs I play - I liked the HL series, Portal, the Halo series was okay (mainly for multiplayer) and... that's pretty much it.
Was hoping for a new IP to be honest but I thought I'd check the trailer out anyway. I have to say I'm not that impressed I don't really like the art style but maybe thats just me on this one.
What blew me away in the first Bioshock was my first encounter with a Big Daddy. I had no idea what it was. So I shot it. The green on the helmet turned red and it charged at me. It was so fast and hit me so hard a flew across the room into a wall. I then proceeded to run around screaming until it murdered me. Like nothing I've ever experienced in an FPS. So awesome...
It's worth noting that Irrational Games (makers of the First and this new game) did not work on the second game. It was handed off to another studio.
First Bioshock, great. Second one, shit. This next one? I don't think it'll end too well. Like someone else said, they're just milking this shit. I only played the second one because I enjoy Bioshock's gameplay. But the story and gameplay for the second was even shit.. Bleh..
That makes two of us. I played Bioshock for about 20 mins and never played again... It looks great, love the opening sequence, but just something about the gameplay feels so shitty to me, just so boring.
IMHO - BioShock 1 was innovative and entertaining. I enjoyed playing it for the first time only in the last 30 days followed immediately by BioShock 2. Having that experience back to back showed just how different BS2 was and in more ways that were needlessly frustrating. Visuals were superb, settings and story were excellent on both games. I did find it interesting that it took half the time to complete BS2 compared to the original. I felt ripped off, honestly. This new game frankly is a breath of fresh air for me. I dont know that I want to see any more Rapture - it left me with a bad taste after BS2. It lost the magic. Something new and fresh (from the originators) definitely has me looking forward to more.
