BioShock: Fort Frolic (Frolicking my ass off)

You bitches gotta learn to budget your time! Yeah, i've been busy with console launches and launch game round-ups and March Madness articles for the February issue (lead time for magazines sucks my balls) and pitching features to make sure i have assignments after GT6 comes out and the well of new games dries up and Dragon's birthday and the fact that i'm in a wedding that's dominating my whole weekend but i'm already frolicking my ass off because i played through that shit last weekend, knowing i had a busy week coming up. Deadlines, boys; Hit them.

In fairness, i didn't just play to Fort Frolic on Sunday after playing through Neptune's Bounty on Saturday because of my foresight about a busy upcoming week, i did it because i really wanted to see what happened next. I'm thoroughly enjoying the gameplay, i'm engrossed in the story and i wanna know how it ends. I also find that there's the unavoidable hurdle of reacclimation every time you put the game down for a week and was happy to avoid that now that i'm pretty much settled with my weapons, plasmids and overall strategy. Though, after reading everyone else's posts about Neptune's Bounty, i'm really reconsidering how much i've overlooked telekinesis, especially when battling Big Daddies.

So there are actually three levels between Neptune's Bounty and Fort Frolic; Smuggler's Cove, Arcadia and The Farmer's Market. That seems like a lot but it actually goes by fairly quickly and, with the exception of the new Houdini Splicers showing up, is much less notable than previous parts of the game, at least in my eyes. Sure, you get to see the submarine blow up in Smuggler's Cove, you get to wander the eerily beautiful woods of Arcadia and you get to reanimate some seemingly meaningful chick in the Farmer's Market but it all just adds up to a series of fetch missions that don't really progress the plot. It's almost as if the guys at Irrational weren't happy with how long the game turned out to be and went back to add in this section to extend it. Don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable enough but it feels like a superficial means of prolonging the time before your meeting with Ryan (which, in my mind, has become the BioShock equivalent of Neo's meeting with "The Architect" in The Matrix Reloaded).

This section does introduce crafting into the game and i'm finding it's a mixed blessing. i won't go out of my way to collect craftable items (unless i have to, like the items for the lazarus vector) but, if i'm at a crafting station and happen to have the inventory for some explosive shotgun shells, well, of course i'm gonna make them. Scavenger that i am, there's nothing more annoying than finding pieces that can be collected to make ammo instead of ammo itself. I've found myself really having to scrimp by with ammo in this session and i'm pretty sure it's a result of this paradigm change.

Right now, for me, i can't help but just want to sprint to the finish. There's a part of me that really hopes the formula is similar to the ending of BioShock Infinite; Big reveal, head spin, epic final battle (the blimps), resolution, credits. dunno if i'm setting my expectations too high or too low as a result but i do know the uncertainty is making the wait to finish more of a hardship than it should be. It's like agreeing to wait to watch the series finale of Breaking Bad because your wife is still in the middle of season four.

-joker