Bioshock Official Thread**Possible Spoilers**

[Howard]

Don't spoil anything for me... But before I got into the Bathysphere to Fort Frolic I got a warning that I might find it more difficult cos I didn't rescue all the little sisters in the previous level, am I screwed?

Also I've pretty much done a 50/50 split of harvesting/rescuing of them so far

[noTHINGface]

Crap - spoilers, thanks.

[Odc]

Spoiler

Is Cohen an optional boss? It's just that as soon as he revealed Medical Expert 2 I turned around and shot him in the face and then proceeded to kill him. I just got the impression that you could continue with the game without killing him

[BlackDwarf]

Cohen isn't optional... However when you kill him determines whether you get an achievement or not. You can chose to leave him alive in Fort Frolic.

[Odc]

Ah, lucky that achievements don't matter on the PC then

[Ferral]

No, it is down to personal choice with the little sisters. If you harvest them you get more Adam. I chose the rescue route and have been getting quite a few gifts for doing so from Tenebaum. It just means that a little later you won't have as many of them in the nursery.

If you don't do anything at all with them as you can pass them by without them bothering you then you would be in trouble. You really have to get the newer versions of the Plasmids the further you go in as they become less effective.

As for Cohen I left him be in his own little world. Make sure after you finish off the tasks he gives you and has shown up to go up to his room. It is in the back area of the foyer with the lift on the left and stairs on the right. Head up the stairs to the storeroom and his room is on the right and ready for picking.

[Howard]

Cool.

OK I've just got to the "Hephaetus" (sp?) place, how far in am I? 30%? 50%? I can't find any "chapter" lists or anything that might hint at this without spoiling it.. I really don't want to know what happens Lol

[sp3n]

No, it is down to personal choice with the little sisters. If you harvest them you get more Adam. I chose the rescue route and have been getting quite a few gifts for doing so from Tenebaum. It just means that a little later you won't have as many of them in the nursery.

There is the same amount of little sisters in the nursery, however they react differently depending on how you have treated them. On my first play through I harvested every one of them, when I got to the nursery they were very scared of me and said things like "Thats the one who hurts us!".

[Odc]

Just got to the nursery. Great plot twist

[b0ned0me]

Whats everyone actually make of the game? Thread seems to just be going on about the protection system etc but no real comments on the game itself.

I'm just getting stuck into Fort Frolic at the moment. My impressions:

• Game itself is very good. Enemies, levels, visuals, sounds, weapons etc. are very polished. A really classy well-executed piece of work.
• should have been called System Shock: Origins - there are a lot of things about this game that bring back fond memories. Hope they release an SDK/editor and some dedicated fanboy rebuilds the SS games with this engine.
• A LOT easier than it should be - the Vita chambers make the game too cheesy since you can just keep battering away at a challenging enemy without any adverse consequences - there's no real fear of loss. Plus the amount of ammo/hypos/cash means you rarely find yourself in desperate situations. I'm playing this on hard and its easier than SS2 on easy.
• Controls feel a little sloppy - seems hard to get a good headshot in. I guess this is because everything is designed for thumbstick aiming.
• The UI is all over the game like a spackling of diaorrhea on the Mona Lisa. Some of it comes back to the limitations of the console controller, some of it's just inept. All the menu screens are massively annoying. "Navigating away from this screen will lose your changes" or whatever it says - WTF? Put 'save & continue' and "discard & continue' buttons on that screen, and stop popping it up when I haven't made any changes. Or just design a decent menu structure instead, like nearly every other game. "Saving content. Do not switch off the machine" - thanks for that tip, I'm usually in the habit of unplugging my PC without exiting the game or shutting down XP. What's with giving me a detailed breakdown on when you're loading a level, and when you're saving the fact I've arrived in a level? Just STF and do whatever's necessary before I can start playing. Then there's the keymappings. For some reason I get the occasional BSOD every few hours. When this occurs, the options not only reset to 1024*768 but also to the default key bindings. WTGRMFH is that all about!? And if they're going to ram the default key bindings down my neck by continually throwing away my preferred settings, at least TRY to make them sensible.The camera sitting in the weapons menu between two of the big beefy 'go to in a hurry' items that really can't be substituted for by a camera when you hit the wrong button - WHY??? Then there is the 'Search Again' button that can't be remapped and had me wasting hypos left right and centre until I stopped using that tonic.
• The research system is inspired. In SS2 it just required a lot of patience and endless running back and forth. In Bioshock it's a lot easier to use and forces you to take risks in order to gain bonuses. Shame that any real sense of risk is nerfed by the Vita chambers.

Summary - Bioshock is a fantastic next-gen console game. It happens to play on the PC as well, but it's not really a PC game. Once I've finished it I'll try playing it a bit with a 360 controller - I have a feeling it will work better.

It's great to see that companies can still come up with such great, original games.
On the other hand it's depressing to see that the design platform of choice nowadays is 100% console - no effort whatsoever has been made to take advantage of the different capabilites of the PC (other than the SecuRom nonsense). Coincidentally the Unreal engine supports slightly better visuals on the PC, but other than that you're effectively playing a bigger, more expensive Xbox360 with a keyboard and mouse. I've thought for a while that my current system is probably my penultimate games PC - soon I'll upgrade to a C2Q, and by the time that becomes obsolete the replacements for the PS3/X360 will be the only things worth having for games.

[Ferral]

I'm seraching the appartments at the min and lo and behold come across Cohen again. Took the ammo from under a record player and he got annoyed so I ended up killing him! Quite amusing really. Just mainly looting the appartments as I beleive you have to use the lift to get to Fontaines suite.

I think I need to go back to the first 2 levels to see If there are any little sisters there or does anyone know off the top of their heads to save me a wasted trip! You actually fight the first Big Daddy and rescue a little sister after you get to the level after the medical pavillion.

Way I am seeing it is the levels you have are the ones you can get to via the bathysphere. So going on that I think I am around three quarters of the way through at the min.

[djfluff]

Anyone know what happens if you save some of the girls ?

[s_kinton]

All the menu screens are massively annoying. "Navigating away from this screen will lose your changes" or whatever it says - WTF? Put 'save & continue' and "discard & continue' buttons on that screen, and stop popping it up when I haven't made any changes. Or just design a decent menu structure instead, like nearly every other game. "Saving content. Do not switch off the machine" - thanks for that tip, I'm usually in the habit of unplugging my PC without exiting the game or shutting down XP. What's with giving me a detailed breakdown on when you're loading a level, and when you're saving the fact I've arrived in a level? Just STF and do whatever's necessary before I can start playing.

These are my only gripes about the game, other than SecuRom.

The menu pop up "Navigating away from this screen will lose your changes" is just stupid and confusing, especially when nothing has been changed.

The "Saving content. Do not switch off the machine" is a classic console slogan, they just left it in the PC version.

[Howard]

I'm not as bothered about those as I am about the Mouse Lag

[Odc]

Mouse lag? I've not heard any problems about that

[s_kinton]

I'm not as bothered about those as I am about the Mouse Lag

I've not experienced or read of any mouse lag at all. Have you tried lowering your graphics settings and checking your frames with Fraps?