Monday, November 18, 2013

BioShock: NB (In the end... our choices, make us.)

“A man creates.  A parasite asks, ‘where’s my share?’”

I’ve started this post three different times, and every time I feel ready to post you guys bring up something else I want to address.  So let me start with the obvious.

Joker, about your rescue stories, I’m pretty sure the pattern is every three sisters.  And I only know this because I’ve rescued six total.  But how the hell did I do this?  Between the Medical facility and Neptune’s bounty it should only have been five sisters? 

Turns out I activated a glitch in the game by accident.  I looked up the Wiki; just to be sure I wasn’t crazy. (POSSIBLE SPOILERS, but the one in reference should be at the top of the page)

Before I found out that I had started this glitch, what was driving me nuts (and probably cost me another hour and a half of playing time) was the sheer worry that I missed saving a sister.  Every time I tried to enter Fontaine Fisheries and battle Peachy it kept issuing a warning that I missed a sister.  Which prompted me to go back through the entire level AGAIN to make sure I got them all.  Three good things did come out of this:
  • I’ve gotten a hell of a lot better at battling Big Daddies.  I fought an extra three battles by mistake thinking that a sister would come out.
  • The Shotgun is my fucking jam.  The frag grenade/proximity mines being a very close second.  
  • I love crowd control. I made all my money back that I spent in the stores/ammo shops since Big Daddies (or Rosies… whoever the hell they are) drop about 60-70 bucks a pop.

Another annoying glitch I found was when I get killed.  If I’m in the middle of firing a gun, and I get killed while pulling the trigger – the entire clip empties if I don’t switch the gun.  Either way you still lose a few bullets because you can’t switch until you completely revitalize at the vita-chamber.  Such bullshit.

Now, for my real notes about this thing:

Joker, I finally share your love for hacking things – that is, once I got the slow-flow upgrade plasmid.  I now hack everything in sight, and it makes the security cameras a complete joke.

My plasmid use is mainly Electro Bolt, Telekinesis, and Winter Blast currently.  I did swap WB for Incinerate when I went to battle Peachy.  That fucker deserved to fry.  Especially when I found out that after I deposited my weapons, the people he sent after me used my own ammo against me.  Once I recollected my weapons, my ammo was almost exactly halved.  I immediately walked back to his body and lit him on fire again. 

I also love how different all of us are in our approaches to battles.  I manipulate surroundings to do most of my fighting, and you absolutely have to in order to limit Big Daddy damage.  Spacing is critical, and setting traps has evolved into my favorite pastime in this game.  First time I laid a satisfying trap was after I killed Steinman, and all the splicers start running down the hall at you.  I backed up, lit a wall of oil on fire as they crossed, and all of them died instantly.  There has been a different way to get around obstacles while saving your health packs, and you feel so much smarter when you find a new way to do so.  This loops back to my wasted time looking for a little sister that didn’t exist.  I battled the Big Daddy in the bar by laying three proximity mines across the floor he was standing – and watched him walk into all my mines.  He was dead within 60 seconds.  Telekinesis is also vital when battling them – if you catch his own mines and throw them back at him you save ammo and get such a larger sense of satisfaction knowing his own weapon killed him.  And I just realized I love playing hot potato with Big Daddy.

Photography is acceptable.  If it helps raise my damage against what I photo, I’ll keep doing it.  Finding more film seems easy enough so far.  It gave me a free upgrade plasmid too.

This game doesn’t scare me much, but it sure as hell creeps me out.  That laughter at the Circus of Value machine still gives me shivers.  Especially if you pause while it’s running – the laughter just trails off into silence.  Yeesh.

The audio diaries continue to be fantastic.  You can feel the sheer hatred between Ryan and Fontaine in their tapes.  Another one I found equally entertaining was the audio diary of Sullivan while he was ‘interrogating’ a suspect in the locked room outside the fishery.  You just hear the guy getting shocked while he was talking, a nice dose of old school mob behavior.

So excited for a new checkpoint – See you guys in Arcadia.
(Side note: have any of you played Skies of Arcadia?  AWESOME GAME.)


SBG

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