BioShock patch/DLC this week News

This patch is also supposed to include a true widescreen mode for the 360 and PC versions, which oddly isn't mentioned in EG's article.

I thought I read something about an extra difficulty, where Vita Chambers didn't work. That may be what the secret achievement on the Xbox list is about?

Hey, how about five new enemy types to break the monotony? No, wait that would F-ING DOUBLE WHAT'S IN THERE NOW!! So how about adding something other than the main storyline (linear as hell) to break the monotony? No? So how about adding some choices that actually have consequences? Or would that disrupt the entire philosophy of the game?

Overrated piece of wonderful game.

"This patch is also supposed to include a true widescreen mode for the 360 and PC versions, which oddly isn't mentioned in EG's article."

And rightly so. Actual news FTW. Rumours and speculation FTL.

Last time the 360 patch wasn't properly tested, and many versions (including mine) used to freeze for 3-4 seconds every 20 seconds or so. Hopefully this time they will test their patch properly.

Toothball, yes, that's what I heard too. Finish the game without dying...?

No, the widescreen thing isn't a rumour, it's definitely been confirmed for this patch by the developers as I read their comments on another site (I forget which one though).

What is true widescreen? Isnt it 16:9?

BioShock used a cropped 4:3 display to "fake" widescreen so that widescreen owners actually got less visible playing area than 4:3 owners. This patch will add a proper widescreen mode, i.e. one that is the 4:3 screen area plus an extra 20% or so in total at both sides.

Can't wait for this. One of my favourite games and an excuse to play it again is always welcome.

Good. It'll give me a reason to play it again and find all of the audio diaries and get the Hard-Mode Achievement.

i suppose southpaw sticks are out of the question? I hate lazy dev teams making great games I can't play...

Darren: Never mind that the developers did develop the game for 360 primarily and 720p resolution.

But yeah, let's say that this new widescreen mode is 'true'.

Aye... very tempting to play this again. I can be an evil one this time around too.

Maybe they´ll patch the ending to actually make it...good? (not end so abrubtly)

How about a patch to make the combat interesting?

I can' t seem to bring myself to finish the game. I'm just totally bored with it.

@dan_dare "i suppose southpaw sticks are out of the question? I hate lazy dev teams making great games I can't play..."

I second that. I doubt that they'll add it in via a patch though as I have not seen any previous game do that. Mass Effect also an offender :(

For goodness' sake. 'true widescreen'. It's like 'true HD' or 'the real next gen'.

Is a few degrees of FOV actually going to make any difference to you? Don't come complaining if the framerate suffers in your fancy new fish-eye mode.

waiting for the new widescreen to continue the game from the middle...

Gives an excuse to get myself another 1000/1000 game then...just need the hard mode.

Eh Biker Bob

1. You havent unlocked the last achievement
2. It has nothing to to with the secret achievements surrounding Cohen.

No offense but you should check the facts before posting totally wrong stuff.

When they remove the install routine that only lets you install 5 times on pc, I`ll be happy. I dont like renting my games.

The lack of left hand support is criminal. No dev has any excuse for not including such a thing.

I hope this isn't the kind of DLC that just adds extra widgets to the normal game flow. I am not really inclined to play through again purely for the addition of some extra plasmids and so on. An extra chapter of some sort would get my interest (though I wouldn't expect that to be free).

@ mkreku: Sounds like you should just get a different game instead. How about Transformers? I hear that's fairly free-form and somewhat varied?



Seriously, who gives a shit. Bioshock might have been linear and not quite as good as the frankly stupid hype that led a lot of idiots to believe it'll be the best game ever. But, like Fable before it, it is still a stunning game, and after buying all the big 360 releases this year it's the one that has left the biggest impression on me.

@ Darren: "BioShock used a cropped 4:3 display to "fake" widescreen so that widescreen owners actually got less visible playing area than 4:3 owners. This patch will add a proper widescreen mode, i.e. one that is the 4:3 screen area plus an extra 20% or so in total at both sides. "

No. What you see in the 360 version is the PROPER aspect ratio as per 720p. The PC version just shows a little bit more. I can't remember the exact reasons for why the PC viewpoint is expanded, but the devs have repeatedly stated time and time again that what you see in the 360 version isn't cropped, it's how it's supposed to be. We aren't getting any less, it's just that the PC get's more.

Although quite why people are so hung up over it I really don't understand. I can't even say it 'hardly' affects gameplay, because it just doesn't at all.

will they be adding decent enemy ai?

1. I can' t seem to bring myself to finish the game. I'm just totally bored with it.
2. How about a patch to make the combat interesting?
3. Maybe they´ll patch the ending to actually make it...good? (not end so abrubtly)
4. Hey, how about five new enemy types to break the monotony? No, wait that would F-ING DOUBLE WHAT'S IN THERE NOW!!

@TWIMC

Oh, give me a break!
Should I call a waaaaaambulance for you guys?

1. Either you're a lying PS3 fanboy or you wouldn't know a great game if it smacked you in the head.
2. Yea, because killing splicers & big daddies in 25 unique ways via a plasmids and firearms mixture is not as interesting as killing the same enemies over and over with a gun in the jungle.
3. If all you have to complain about is the ending of a terrific game...good for you :)
4. Is that "new" math or something?...since there are 5 differently powered enemy splicers plus turrets, bots and big daddies. If each splicer was a different looking monster with the same powers, would that make you feel better?

from x360a.org: the secret 100pts achievement is about finishing the game on hard mode without using the vita chambers and without harvesting one single liitle sister. Not that hard if you use the quicksave, but interesting nonetheless.

Which means bioshock is now worth 1100pts, and the limit is 1250... Maybe there will be some other significant update in the future to give us those extra 150 achievement points?

Eurogamer seem to have forgotten to include the inane hyperbolic wank about Bioshock that normally appears beside any mention of its name here? Have they finally played beyond the first hour or two and noticed it's not actually especially good? Or been bitten by the grossly over the top copy protection on the PC version???

Completing the game without dying will be a shore. It wont be too hard cause of the quicksave system but it wont be fun to get either. Dissapointing!

Mentalist(air), it's not going to be fish-eye view though... more like we don't have to feel like we're looking through a pair of binoculars.

And really, it's more than a few degrees (more like 15 or something I think), and it makes a difference. Especially if you plan to use Triplehead2Go... Vert- widescreen doesn't make any sense on the PC.

The guys over at Widescreen Gaming Forum has a funny take on it: http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/for...

@Mentalist(air) > the 'correct' FOV setting doesn't affect the frame rate at all (well negligable anyway) as my A/B testing shows. Most of the stuff is still being rendered even in the lower FOV.

As for this:

"in your fancy new fish-eye mode."

You sir don't understand at all the problem or what a decent FOV for 16:10/16:9 actually does, if anything it makes it 'perfectly flat' along the lines of the 4:3 version. What we have the moment is in fact 'inverse fish eye lens' effect so you should be up in arms about it, what we want is 'natural' not 'fish eye lens' which would be raising the FOV very high for no good reason.

When you've coded your own 3D engine and had to mess around with projection matrices and aspect ratios get back to us, until then stop being ignorant and misinformed.

---

Now, it IS wrong to say 'give us widescreen support' because the game does support it technically (it's about the resolution/aspect ratio which the game does do) however the problem is not the aspect ratio it's the field of view, and more importantly 2k's stupid statements that idiots believed while those of us who actually understood the problem were left shaking our heads in disbelief. 2k only added fuel to the fire by stating it 'was by design', it cleary and most definitely was not by design unless it was designed by monkeys (which I'm started to think it was).

Every other Unreal Engine 3 game shows the same default trait, take the 4:3 'natural' FOV and keep it the same when moving to 16:10 which fucks up the entire reason we use Widescreen (slightly more natural layout and better peripheral vision which increases immersion), UE3 basically flaunts the laws of physics and science and attempts to set it's own fucked up standard of cheaply using the same FOV for all aspect ratios. If you ever tried playing UT3 or Bioshock on a triple screen set up you would see exactly what the problem is, for those more in tune to the problem such as myself, we can see straight away on a regular single widescreen monitor what the problem is and it is a problem and affects the feel and comfort of the game more for some people less for others but it's there and it simply shouldn't be like that in 2007 with so many widescreen users around.

For reference Crysis and Half Life 2 (just 2 of many examples) do it 'the proper way' by adjusting the FOV to take into account the Aspect ratio so that both versions appear very similar and natural.

Now if anyone truely believes that Bioshock's widescreen FOV is the 'correct one' then the argument would still hold because if so then 4:3 users are getting shafted instead. (not that this is the case, 4:3 is pretty much spot on as the weapon position and natural field of view shows).

It really is time that those who don't understand widescreen and FOV just stfu and stop adding their 2 cents to every debate on the topic, they just look stupid and in time will realise how ludicrous and uninformed they have been... see you in 4 years when the penny finally drops (and if you are a widescreen user NOW and don't think there's a problem with UE3 games in general then even more shame on you).

The end of the game should have been:

Get in the big daddy suit.
Escort the little sister.
Go outside, underwater, moving between the 'streets' we saw in the opening crawl.
Fight an Octopus and some scuba (or possibly gilled) splicers.
Fight and defeat 'The Boss' (spoiler free) who is also clomping around on the sea bed in a big robot suit thing.

Thats what should have happened, not the utter balls that actually went down.

If they could patch that I'd be happy. (Is only half-joking...)

Great... I've been thinking about playing again!

meet the almighty scuba splicer... That would be fun.

SPOILER ALERT


I was kinda disappointed by the good ending (didn't get the other one yet), because it doesn't really "complete" the Tennenbaum storyline. It's a very interesting character, and you never really get to know what's going on with her. Or maybe i didn't understand. Anyway, i'd love a "Tennenbaum files" expansion, because i'd love to know what becomes of her.

afghan - would it have to be an octopus? Or would you settle for a shark? Or possibly a Giant Enemy Crab...?

I was bored of BioShock during my second play through, and stopped playing. Hopefully some new DLC will give me some interest again. o_O

I think the new Achievement will be for finishing on Hard without using Vita-Chambers. There'll be a new option to disable those. Seems too hard, though (and too boring).
If it was any difficulty without using Vitas I'd go for my 4th playthrough.
Game of the decade.

I thought BioShock was great. Will be glad to play through it again to see the new content. I don't know about the widescreen thing. All I know is that it looked great on my widescreen TV, and that's enough for me.

I'm a bit annoyed about that new Achievement, if it really is for finishing it on hard without using vita chambers. BioShock was one of only three full-price games that I had all the Achievements for (the other two being Condemned and Oblivion). Now I'll have an Achievement missing. There's no way in hell I'm going to bother putting myself through the insanity of trying to finish it on hard with no vita-chambers!

Does it make it work on Shader Model 2 cards?
My god, that was such an annoying problem. Every other game in the universe works with Shader Model 2, but oh no, not this one.

Bulbatron, yeah..., don't really understand the widescreen deabate, and the - "I know better, and it's like a cosmic-ray that comes at 100ghz and do 1223 lines per milisecond" kinda stuff... I just know the game looks awesome in my HD wide TV, but if it's going to look even better, count me in.
Achievement: I just hope, hope, hope!, it's on any difficulty setting, otherwise I wont do it. Hard is too hard without the Vitas. (or maybe there'll be some ultra-powerfull plasmid ?)

Agreed, I 'm about two thirds of the way through, and I'm bored too. I really loved system shock 2, but playing this just feels like more of the same but without the need to revisit previous areas to heal and resupply. I prefered SS2 it had a greater sense of internal logic and place.

Agreed, the lack of a lefty mode is criminal. I play all fps left handed, a throwback to learning to play on goldeneye and perfect dark 64. I can play the other way OK but it takes a while to settle in, and for the first 10-20 minutes if I panic in a fight I end up looking at my feet. very annoying.

It's fine if I'm just playing bioshock but when I'm switching back and forth between that and Halo3/COD4 multiplayer (which both have good options for controls, though not perfect) its very annoying to have to constantly retrain my reactions.

I never use the vita-chambers, I just save regularly and reload if I die. I don;t like the regenerating thing, I'd prefer old-school checkpoints, though they do break the temporal continuity, and mean that you have to recollect audio recordings, which is a pain.

It doesn't make the game any harder though, in fact it can help to conserve ammo. As usually when you die you do so becasue you've fired shots that have missed, this way you redo the section til you get it right.

Each to their own though.

Yeah, the option to disable vita chambers is welcome. To me Vita Chambers = God Mode = not challenging nor fun.

Giant Enemy Crab FTW!!!!!!!

Ive beeb wating for the new contents and patches before starting my 2nd playthrough on hard

rhinoxious, I heard that argument sometimes before, but I think you're not correct. It does make things much harder, because when you respawn at a Vita-chamber you foe (usually a BigDaddy) already got some shots, and therefor he has less health. If you save/load averything resets to a previous point in time. Believe me, I finished it on hard (I did on notmal the way you said, just because...), and I couldn't ditch the vitas... . I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it's waaaaay too demanding.

For those that don't quite understand the widescreen thing, let me try and explain it another way... Imagine a fullscreen 4:3 image on a widescreen tv (so it has black bars at each side). What they did was to effectively zoom into the centre of that image until the sides of the 4:3 image reached the sides of a widescreen tv/monitor - thereby cutting off the top and bottom of the 4:3 image. Normally, with a widescreen image you would see everything the same as on a 4:3 screen, but with some extra image to each side.

The side effect of doing this is that it feels to some players that you're playing the game looking through a zoom lens. That can have the knock-on effect of causing some people to get motion sickness when playing (eg. the PC Zone reviewer made a point that he was physically sick several times during his play-through due to motion sickness, even though he'd never suffered from it when playing any other game).

The developer claims to have done this on purpose, although it would also seem to be something to do with how the Unreal Engine 3 deals with creating its default widescreen image as several other games using it have been shown to do exactly the same thing.

Does it totally ruin the game? Not for most people. But for those who are sensitive to the slightly odd perspective, it would be nice to have the option to change it.

What I don't understand is why some people have fought against adding this option, given that there are people who have claimed that the perspective has caused them to be physically sick - it's only an option after all, so it's not like anything is being forced upon those who aren't affected by motion sickness.

The claims that it was done on purpose were pure lies.

rhinoxious, I was really pleased that BioShock allowed you to save any time. I find checkpoints so annoying sometimes. You think you're doing really well, then BANG - you're dead and you have to repeat a whole load of it. I just think it wastes time and isn't fun. At least when you can save any time, it means you can have a break at any time, so you are always only playing because you are having fun, and not just because you have to reach the next checkpoint before being able to do something else.

Perhaps games should have an option at the beginning, so that you can decide whether to enable saving any time, or stick with checkpoints. And then once the game proper is started, it can't be changed unless you start a new game.

It would be interesting to see how many people who want checkpoints instead of 'save anywhere' actually take this option.