BioShock: A Defence Comments by Kieron Gillen

Ooh - teh bitterness!

RAWR! :)

I havent read the article as it doesnt interest me, I just wanted to post a benign comment.

No worries... The emo kids just like to hate the good games. It makes them feel special.

Oh dear.

what with EG and SMG? I clearly can't see anything special from that game at all.

I think my main problem with this game is that I cant get it to work on Vista64. Spent £40 on a game where the sound doesn't work!!!!

This re-review is incredibly smug. I can't face reading past page two.

Blimey, that was... defensive.

Well, I think we know what the Eurogamer staffers' GOTY is, then ;)

Dear lord. What a lot of piffle. :)

What he said.

The only people who are digging into Bioshock are people who couldn't bond with the storyline and wanted a straight-line FPS. Hell, the biggest moan they have is probably that it didn't have multiplayer deathmatch. That alone marked it out as more important than most of the FPS games of this year.

Peej

"A backlash was inevitable."

Hmm, really? I never noticed.

Apart from Peej, the rest of you are proving the reviewer right and are completely missing the point as usual.

With all the merits of a good text, which this is, I don't really understand the reason for it to exist.
These kinda detractors always spawn, in a crave for atention "look at me! look, I don't like the critically accalimed game! look, am I not the cool huh?".
They stick to a punch-line - like Halo 2.5 (it's getting old though, everything nowdays is X.5) - and scream, oh how they are damn noisy...!

Seriously, this game requires no defence.

This is just feeding to the haters.

Bioshock is a 8/10 game max. Stop trying to save face EG. I think EG gave it 10/10 because there was no good games all summer, and this was the first hyped game to be released in a while.

"Cutscene after cutscene"? Are you playing an entirely different version of Super Mario Galaxy to mine?

Blimey. You lot REALLY need to pull your heads out of your arses. And that includes you Eurogamer. Get a life.

what's the point of the whole article ?
i'm a huge fan of LGS legacy including System Shock 1 & 2, i'm also a big fan of clever and immersive FPSes (Half-Life 1 & 2, STALKER). I just found Bioshock boring and without class - save for the incredible art direction -, why do you feel compelled to write 3 pages to redeem the game ? will it make it better and less a pain in the ass for me ?

(ps : no it won't)

Gotta agree this is a stupidly smug re-review and what's more the reviewer seems to think he understands the game more than the gamers who complained about it's flaws.

BioShock is inferior to System Shock because it does indeed dumb down a lot of the puzzles, interactions and story. What you are seeing here Mr reviewer is that gamers no longer care about a game that consists almost solely of flash graphical effects. They want consistency and story. The last third of the game is rediculous.

As for your moral high ground about killing little sisters. They go around extracting adam from corpses and have bodyguards that quite happily kill people in fromt of them. Innocent kids they are not! Genetically manufactured collection units is what they are. They are constructed in much the same way as the hero himself. The fact that they look like kids shouldn't give them leave to be monsters!

Hopefully there will be a bioshock 2 and a lot of the complaints will be addressed.

Quote "BioShock is nothing more than Manhunt using a 3D engine that everyone is supposed to believe moves gaming forward in some way"

That's the biggest load of tosh I've seen written in my life as an internet user. Manhunt and Bioshock are like fire and ice. Totally different games.

You know KG is a freelancer, right? He isn't trying to "save face" for his team.

+1 to welshben.

The art direction and audio on Bioshock are fantastic. Those opening scenes are one of my favourite gaming moments. I can't think of many better games off the top of my head (Baldur's 2?). But it's not a "classic game". I played through it once, completed it, will never play it again.

Yes, it was nice to get a free content pack, but all of those features should have been in the game from the off. The tonics were already in but disabled (as seen from the Windows config files), the widescreen fix was to stop everything being so zoomed in, the difficulty option should have been there already (personally I think the vita chambers should have cost loads of cash and not been free). I don't think I should be thankful for them patching what I paid them for and they cut out because it wasn't ready.

I don't know how anyone can need to scavenge for ammo. I had so much ammo I was having to leave it on the ground in front of the invent stations.

If we're going to talk scores it was certainly a solid 8/10.

Holy crap, Kieron Gillen really needs to replay System Shock 2 if he thinks Bioshock is anywhere NEAR the aforementioned game in complexity. And NO it's not because of "flaws". Geez, that's the most uninformed opinion I've read this year I think!

Sure guns broke too quickly. But by having degrading guns, the game forced players to think ahead, to save good weapons for tougher enemies, to utilize whatever was at hand to win in combat. Bioshock removed all that. They even removed all difficulty by not punishing death!! Great progress there.

You began System Shock 2 by choosing one of three different characters to play. Then you went through a sort of school to fine-tune that character. The choice you made had an impact on the game you played. Bioshock removed all that, removed all skillpoints, removed all consequences.. and replaced it with plasmids (basically just another weapon) and "tonics". A cheap replacement as everything in the game was available for the player and changeable, no matter what you did.

And YES, it is f-ing repetitive (Bioshock that is)! FIVE enemy types that come in pre-determined waves, move the same way, die the same way. You died? Resurrect and go at it again!! NO COST!! Like Pipe Dreams-mini game? GOOD! BECAUSE YOU'LL SEE IT 452465243 TIMES. Unless you cop out and just buy your way through. No problem since the game hands you cash like it was candy.

I will end the rant here, but for f-s sake, THINK before you write an article like this again.

You, Kieron Gillon, should replay System Shock 2 (if you even played it before. I suspect you've just READ about it..) and fess up to having been caught in the hype. We all were. The problem is that the game itself insists we were wrong.

Wait, it's written by Kieron Gillen?!

This is his worst piece ever..

Most of the people posting comments here are so stupid it actually makes me angry. With all this hatred I lose a little more faith in humanity day by day, which I get a lot from other mediums anyway, but when it's concerns one of my favourite pastimes, it's a little depressing.

Grow up children, or would you kindly fuck off.

Also : best comments thread EVER on EG

Don't like it don't eat it, or eat less... dude. Complex narratives are clearly not for you whiners.
Go read Harry Potter. Go watch Fanstatic 4. Go listen U2.

mkreku: so what you really wanted was to play SS again. Grab a copy from the attic or something, old-dude.

In a nut-shell, I dare to quote haters:
"We hate the game, because you like it... a lot! The more you like it the more we scream! SYSTEM SHOCK, or something old and annoying"

"or story (F.E.A.R. told a far more unique tale)"

Er, what? Bioshock can be criticised for a lot of reasons, but the story isn't one of them. And what is so unique about F.E.A.R?

Now do one for Assassins Creed, no wait, do one about gaming in general.
The whining about tiny little things is getting a bitt out of hand.

miiiguel: I don't expect an Xbot like you to try to understand that a game can be more complex than Bioshock. Go play Halo, noob.

I confess I haven't read the whole article for fear of spoilers, and that, obviously, is because I haven't finished the game yet.

But from what I have played (and I'm yet to form my own opinions on the latter third pf the game, okay?), Bioshock is undoubtedly one of the finer games released this year. Rapture is beautifully designed and wonderfully atmospheric. The Plasmid abilities are a tad predictable (ice, fire, electricity etc) but then you get something like telekenesis which is perhaps no less predictable since we first played with a gravity gun, but still seems to work wonderfully as a gameplay mechanic.

The story (so far) is great and whilst the gameplay might well be typical FPS fare, for me it's actually refreshing to find a FPS game that's focussed on the single player experience and doesn't waste 50% or more of its time offering up yet another deathmatch-based multiplayer effort that I'll never bother to play more than once.

So whilst my own personal juror may be undecided right now about whether this is a 10/10 game, it certainly doesn't deserve the kind of backlash it's had from some quarters.

So in that sense, I'm in favour of this response from Kieron. Give me a game like Bioshock over something like Halo any day.

"Complex narratives"? - Perhaps if you're a fucking chimp.

You, Kieron Gillon, should replay System Shock 2 (if you even played it before. I suspect you've just READ about it..)
Kieron Gillen not only played SS2, he did the original PCGamer review of it back in 1999.

I think he knows what he's talking about in this respect.

Fuxxakes. It warrants a defense?

Hope there's a more critical look too. Thought the point of journalism was to remain unbiased! :P

An interesting article which, despite being a little too one-sided and waffly, I quite enjoyed reading. :)

But I'd take issue with the dismissal out of hand of the elements that System Shock 2 still has to offer Bioshock. I'm still convinced that a more rigid 'class' system that limited avenues of research would have done wonders for the replay value, for example.

Bioshock is a wonderful game, with an atmosphere second to none, but robbed of the surprises of the first play through it is diminished to a significant degree on repeat plays. For me, at least.

I think Bioshock is pretty grand. I sort of forgot how good it is because I hadn't touched it since I finished it a week after it came out, but I downloaded the new DLC and started again on Hard, and I'm in love with Rapture all over again. None of the criticisms matter to me, Rapture is amazing.

I look forward to the more of these "defence of games Eurogamer staff like" articles in the future.

I personally loved bioshock even tho it is rather buggy, but this article is completely unnessesary and just smells a bit of fanboyism or being paid to defend it in some kind of attempt to boost xmas sales.

Just get over it even the best game in the world not everyone is going to like it, im sure its fairly easy to find a mob of people that hate Orange Box and Super Mario Galaxy but no ones going to expect an article defending the game. Its not like it needed defending cos it sold shit it sold millions.

If you want to defend something thats good do it on something that was a flop sales wise and deserves to be brought back to peoples attention so that it might increase sales and thus get more quality titles like it in the future.

I love and still love Bioshock. (on my second playthrough, going for the BALLS OF STEEL! Ach.)

I really can't fathom how the game doesn't completely immerse the user as it does me, although we're all different I suppose. Even small things like Arcadia Merlot make me smile.

I'd re-read your article Keiron if I were you as they're type-o's a-plenty but otherwise well written. It's very difficult defending something you feel passionate about. You should try reading through a few halo 3 threads and read my 5 pages worth of apologies in there!

Lukus, I bet you didn't even get the main character name, nor who is his mother, or everything else. Even the ppl who aren't into this kinda games admit the story is rich and interresting.

Great article, shame it's needed but... so it goes :)

Haha! Bet away Miiiguel. Yes, better than the typical videogame fare, for which it should be applauded, but hardly complex in a wider context or reference point.

Oh and as for Bioshock's status - I'd say they've raised the bar. The world you're immersed is like no other I have experienced before. Not just in design, but in execution.

Put it this way, I'm 10 hours or so into Mario Galaxy, then the new DLC comes for Bioshock, I replay on hard and I haven't look back since. Mario can wait. People need me.

I agree with the sentiment, but there are some badly worded points.

The little sisters for example, you've been told by your only friend in the world that they are nothing but mindless monsters and you've seen their protector smash someones face in.

You also know that without the Adam they contain you will probably die. If anything mindlessly saving them is as much a video game attitude as harvesting, you're not fully taking into account the situation you're in. Besides, you've just smashed through splicer after splicer without regard once you come to harvesting the little sister, you're already a monster.

Cheers for that but it is people like STKD that riles me up even more.

The little sister's don't attack you like Splicers do.

I can't believe people are getting genuinely angry because someone liked a game that they didn't and felt like writing an article, defending some of the criticisms levelled at it. Argh! EG comments thread in more-embarassing-than-usual shock.

Great and interesting article. I haven't played Bioshock yet - didn't like the demo enough to buy it despite having loads of unplayed games at home anyway. This article surely has raised my interest again though.

The only thing I would like to point out is that Super Mario Galaxy is definetly not tossing you from one cutscene to another. There is the intro and the story (which you don't even have to watch at all) and nothing else. As well written as the article is it's exactly such false statements which serve no purpose other than to prove an entirely different point which make me question wether to believe anything at written at all. It's the exactly the same low level like all the statements about Bioshock that get discussed in this article.

"Thought the point of journalism was to remain unbiased! "

best comment evaaah.

Comment and opinion are always biased. How on earth could they not be?