BioShock polished-up

By Robert Purchese Published 7 September, 2007

Behavioural stabilisers.

Irrational Games has released a little update on Xbox Live for its watery masterpiece BioShock.

It should fix lots of the stability problems some of you are having with the game, particularly when loading autosaves. The audio in the title menu has also been sorted out, and computer-controlled characters should now behave around health stations.

There you go, then. It isn't the secret plasmid pack we were all secretly hoping for. Or the Super Ted costume we were promised for our birthday. Never mind.

BioShock is a brilliant game you should buy. Head over to our review to see why.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (65) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • bengray66 #1 4 years ago

    Im pretty sure i got this update two days ago? On the spot reporting! :-)

  • Hunam #2 4 years ago

    Is this the update that breaks peoples Bioshock?

  • jack_klugman #3 4 years ago

    Yes, I believe it adds the random freeze frame/bullet time feature.

  • Restart #4 4 years ago

    A PC update wouldn't go amiss right about now. I'm getting rather bored of being unable to play it ever since I bought it.

  • Bertie Verified Senior Staff Writer, Eurogamer.net #5 4 years ago

    Im pretty sure i got this update two days ago? On the spot reporting! :-)

    I pride myself on two-day late stories. Should be another up any minute!

  • Sebo #6 4 years ago

    I can't wait till all the really good games come out. Bioshock is boring the hell out of me.

  • mattigan #7 4 years ago

    THe Health Station thing, does it mean that splicers will actually try to use health stations? As I played through the entire game on Hard and only one Splicer tried to use one despite them being generously scattered around, of course, I promptly shot said Slpicer in the face (with exploding buck), so that might have discouraged the others, only I dont thing the AI is THAT clever!!
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/07 @ 15:42

  • Gurgeh #8 4 years ago

    "Yes, I believe it adds the random freeze frame/bullet time feature"

    You need to clear the X360 cache if you are getting freezes - there's a post about it somewhere...

  • TonyCocaCola #9 4 years ago

    I actually hacked a health station and had a splicer use it. I bet he was well gutted as i followed him for about a minute as he ran looking for it, then he died. Poor blighter.

  • Avenger1324 #10 4 years ago

    They do sometimes use health stations, and it is funny seeing them try to use a hacked one, but usually you can kill them so fast they don't have time to go find one

  • bengray66 #11 4 years ago

    i dont think a health station will save them from a wrench in the head to be honest.

  • Raya #12 4 years ago

    >BioShock is a brilliant game you should buy.

    If you like repetitive missions and dull game play. Final boss fight! - snore..

  • mattigan #13 4 years ago

    To stop it freezing, apparently you need to clear the game cache, you do this by holding LB&RB just after the game starts to boot untill you see the R2 logo, this clears the Bioshock HDD cache and stops the problem, alledgedly!
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/07 @ 16:27

  • tjlazr #14 4 years ago

    I'll try that cache clearing tonight, it was really beginning to grate my already frayed nerves.

  • mattigan #15 4 years ago

    Don't forget to post if it actually works as I'm sure there are plenty out there who would like to know! I don't have the problem myself.

  • Luvbeers #16 4 years ago

    Now my autosaves don't load at all... in fact none of my saves load!

  • miiiguel #17 4 years ago

    I was playing yesterday, and I was kicked out of Live, tried to reconnect and it said "new updatade available, update or don't come playing BioShock to Live anymore!" (free quoting of what it actualy said). Updated, reloaded, everything back to the normal ultra-awesomess.

  • silver-jon #18 4 years ago

    NO SPOILER, BUT MAY ANNOY SOMEONE WHO'S NOT YET FINISHED IT


    Finished Bioshock last night. Excellent game but for the ending (imo). Got the bad-guy's ending after being about 93% good all the way through. And I still don't really get what it meant.

    Anyway, faintly amused by those who say it's boring, repetitive, etc. It's a slower paced FPS with a story, phenomenal atmosphere, structure, and design. Not everything can be ninjas on mo7orbikes, duel-wielding SMGs. Just sounds like you're the "too cool for school" brigade. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

    Either ways it gets 9/10 for me.

  • menage #19 4 years ago

    Can't they fix the freaking subititles for god sake. They finish way before the actual talking does. I can't see how anyone would miss that.

  • Katsumoto #20 4 years ago

    Hopefully PC patch soon to follow. I'm struggling through it but the constant crashing is a real niggle. I also agree re: the subtitles. I can't hear anything that's said over that radio and the subtitles are shit so no help either

  • Leolian #21 4 years ago

    I want them to fix the widescreen. Missing 30% of the action here!

  • sanctusmortis #22 4 years ago

    What widescreen issue? Looks fine in 720p...

  • finty13 #23 4 years ago

    Mine was working perfectly until I got that bloody update which has almost ruined the game for me with the constant game freezes which are particularly annoying during big daddy fights. Sort it out devs, please.

  • morriss #24 4 years ago

    I had suddenly noticed that Splicers now ran to Health Stations. I hadn't correlated the two, however.

  • IAmBatman #25 4 years ago

    > Missing 30% of the action here!

    Oh stop being a prick, you're missing nothing.

  • Ford_Assassin #26 4 years ago

    bioshock has only started freezing on me since this update :( does clearing the cache lose your saved game?

  • Arcadiian #27 4 years ago

    No, Ford.

  • immateriaux #28 4 years ago

    "BioShock is a brilliant game you should buy."

    You really need to qualify that with "on the XBox".

    Its a bit of a travesty on the PC.

  • Wayne #29 4 years ago

    "Can't they fix the freaking subititles for god sake. They finish way before the actual talking does. I can't see how anyone would miss that. "

    I'm with you on that one! For sure!

  • Ford_Assassin #30 4 years ago

    cheers arcadiian

  • UncleLou #31 4 years ago

    "BioShock is a brilliant game you should buy."

    You really need to qualify that with "on the XBox".

    Its a bit of a travesty on the PC.

    Well, it worked just fine on mine. Finished it without a single glitch, hitch or crash.

  • Katsumoto #32 4 years ago

    you're one of the lucky ones it would seem Lou :) Or theres just a very vocal minority on the forums. I put my random crashes down to a shitty pc but it turns out even people with super-uber quad core rigs are getting crashes when high detail shaders are turned on. Bah

  • Laserbream #33 4 years ago

    FOV fix please! I don't think I can finish it on hard with the upgraded crossbow taking up 50% of the screen.

    Edit: oh the shite bad ending serves you all right for killing little girls :)
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/07 @ 20:43

  • pauleyc #34 4 years ago

    Its a bit of a travesty on the PC.

    Why, exactly? Never had any problems with it (save an initial 10 minutes spent registering the copy). Although the subtitles issue is quite annoying.
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/07 @ 21:30

  • yagisencho #35 4 years ago

    > Missing 30% of the action here!

    >>Oh stop being a *****, you're missing nothing.

    For me, the artificially-narrowed FOV the artists/designers chose was forgivable, but annoying. What's the point of even having widescreen if you then effectively place horse blinders on the player? If they want to convince the player that Rapture might be a real place, then removing 16-25% of the natural field of view isn't the place to start.

    On the other hand, given the overall theme of the game, it does sort of fit that they would place this sort of limit on the player. But given the game's audio fidelity, I just don't buy that argument.

    ***** BEGIN quasi-SPOILER *****


    Oh, and for those who killed the Little Sisters, you deserve whatever you get. It's the single aspect of the game where they gave you a real choice, and you chose poorly. Unless you're evil, of course.


    ***** END quasi-SPOILER *****

    Forgot to mention, played start to finish on a quad-core machine running on Windows Vista 64-bit, with nary a glitch or crash. The only trouble I ran into was with SecuROM and AVG (which was fixed by AVG within days of the game's release).
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/07 @ 21:44

  • immateriaux #36 4 years ago

    @UncleLou

    I was thinking more of the way they stole in the "limited activations" without any word of warning, nevermind using Securom ... at least other games have been courteous enough to give a heads up on the box about the latter, 2K did nothing.

    But what I think is "a travesty" and really worrying is the fact that, per user account on a single PC, you could initially only activate the game twice - so "administrator" gets one activation, "user" gets the other and that's it, shows over. Okay, now it's been changed to five such activations* after people rebelled but to go do that without a hint of warning, on box, on EULA, in manual, during setup stinks to high heaven for me and sets a precedent for PC gaming I don't like at all :(

    (* which I still think is too few btw)
    Edited by 1 at 07/09/07 @ 22:33

  • VMerken #37 4 years ago

    Yup, so true.

  • sharpfish #38 4 years ago

    "I can't wait till all the really good games come out. Bioshock is boring the hell out of me."

    Same here... Totally over hyped.

    Gameplay *IS* Dull... even by FPS standards. It has a lot going for it (premise, theme, story) but the gameplay feels tacked on and inconsistent.

    And I think it's probably a far better game on 360 as it seems tweaked for that, the PC version (not just bugs) has a lot of issues that scream ' console port ' which is something none of us expected from former Irrational and spiritual successor to SS2.

    And even when it does feel soild, consistent and isn't bugging ou in the sound, control or stability areas, the gameplay is almost non existant. It's a first person shooter where the shooting is as boring as hell, they seem to think the 'tapes' (story) and 'cool theme' will pull it through but for a lot of people that lack of actual FUN is a big factor. A lot of FPS games suffer from that but none were as overhyped as Bioshock.

    If you do think it's the best game ever than congratulate yourselves on your low standards and or limited gaming experience.

  • Pulsar_t #39 4 years ago

    The latest PC patch does break a thing or two, most notably the texturing on NPC's take ages to load properly sometimes.

    And yes, Bioshock might as well be the most overrated game of all time!
    Edited by 2 at 08/09/07 @ 07:58

  • menage #40 4 years ago

    "Gameplay *IS* Dull... even by FPS standards. It has a lot going for it (premise, theme, story) but the gameplay feels tacked on and inconsistent.

    And I think it's probably a far better game on 360 as it seems tweaked for that, the PC version (not just bugs) has a lot of issues that scream ' console port ' which is something none of us expected from former Irrational and spiritual successor to SS2.

    And even when it does feel soild, consistent and isn't bugging ou in the sound, control or stability areas, the gameplay is almost non existant. It's a first person shooter where the shooting is as boring as hell, they seem to think the 'tapes' (story) and 'cool theme' will pull it through but for a lot of people that lack of actual FUN is a big factor. A lot of FPS games suffer from that but none were as overhyped as Bioshock.

    If you do think it's the best game ever than congratulate yourselves on your low standards and or limited gaming experience. "

    Don't you just love superior PC gamers. I love em.

    I would play this over every other junglethemed, squadbased, WO2 game anyday. I don't give a crap if it's not the best FPS, for me this an adventure/FPS, same as the Darkness. Best game ever. Probably not. One of the most well conceived, beautiful, mature and downright interesting games, yes.

  • Dizzy #41 4 years ago

    "If you do think it's the best game ever than congratulate yourselves on your low standards and or limited gaming experience. "

    System Shock called. It wants to kick you in the gonads.

  • Darren #42 4 years ago

    I have two Xbox 360s, one is a repaired launch model with an Hitachi DVD drive, the other is a new one I bought last week, built in October 2006 and with a Samsung drive. Using the same 120 GB HDD, BioShock runs fine with the update on the old one but stutters every time I encounter an enemy on the new machine yet it worked fine on both machines pre-update. Clearly there are differences between Xbox 360s which means that it's blind luck as to whether the update works or not. My advice is that if BioShock works fine then don't update the game otherwise you'll likely end up with the annoying hitches.

  • spookyzombie #43 4 years ago

    I'm having the same problem as a couple of other guys on here. Bioshock worked absolutely fine UNTIL this update. Now it freezes constantly.

  • ph101 #44 4 years ago

    i thought consoles were ment to be stable

  • morriss #45 4 years ago

    For the 1 millionth time, clear the cache and you won't crash.

  • Darren #46 4 years ago

    @Morriss - The cache clearing trick didn't work for me and using the same 120 GB HDD the updated game works fine on my old Xbox 360 but judders on my new one.

    How difficult would it be for developers to automatically clear the cache as part of the game's loading sequence or better still have the 360 automatically do it whenever it's turned on or you quit to the dashboard? It's absolutely ludicrous that people should have to manually do it in order to get the game working properly when it's a stupidly easy thing to fix. Right?

  • mkreku #47 4 years ago

    I thought Bioshock was pretty good.. for like 8 hours and then it ended. Since there's no multiplayer or replay value, that sucks. Back to playing my 100'th+ hour of Gothic 3 instead (Yes, I know it's buggy but I don't give a shit).

  • Miths #48 4 years ago

    "Its a bit of a travesty on the PC."

    "Why, exactly? Never had any problems with it (save an initial 10 minutes spent registering the copy). Although the subtitles issue is quite annoying."

    Never noticed a single problem either with the PC version, and I took my sweet time getting through it - good performance, no crashes, no glitches, no bugs that I noticed (though I'm sure there could have been a few minor "irregularities" going on here and there - with the AI for instance, but not big enough to get my attention).
    And I was even playing the game with a hex edited dll file and some minor other dll location changes to get it to run on Windows 2000. Lazy f...... developers :).
    Edited by 1 at 08/09/07 @ 19:36

  • X201 #49 4 years ago

    I only had one crash with the PC version and that was when I tried to jump behind a pipe in an obscure corner of the map.

  • TheUnionFrag #50 4 years ago

    But does it fix the annoying limb-spasming!!?

  • Pulsar_t #51 4 years ago

    But does it fix the annoying limb-spasming!!?

    No.

  • immateriaux #52 4 years ago

    @miths, it was the limited activations stuff on PC version got my goat, I answered in more detail a few posts up from yours...

  • le_Matt #53 4 years ago

    bioshock is such an overrated game its not even that good, honestly sonic rush was well better

  • le_Matt #54 4 years ago

    lease dont hurt me....i was joking...ahahahha it was funny i know....errr yeah

  • smelly #55 4 years ago

    yeah.. i agree.. 50 quid on something you can beat in 8 hrs? no ta.

    overrated shite

  • UncleLou #56 4 years ago

    Tip for smelly: don't talk about games you haven't played, parroting something you've read on the internet. It makes you look like an idiot.

  • menage #57 4 years ago

    "yeah.. i agree.. 50 quid on something you can beat in 8 hrs? no ta.

    overrated shite "

    Like length has something to do with qualilty. And for the record, anyone who finishes this in 8 hours isn't really "getting" it. Rushing through a game is missing the point I think. As with any game. I've been at it for more than 15 at least. And I havne't even tried being the bad guy yet.

  • SNKMat #58 4 years ago

    Bioshock>>>>>>>>>>>>> >You

  • wellzy4eva #59 4 years ago

    "Tip for smelly: don't talk about games you haven't played, parroting something you've read on the internet. It makes you look like an idiot."

    Any game that gets great ratings is bound to be ripped into by people, same as with movies, see WOW, any Zelda, half life or bioware game for examples.

    It's not worth fighting any more, just keep nodding and smiling at them, then play the good games they will never know whilst they play movie tied in franchises like Fight Club :D (http://ww w.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/9...

  • Darren #60 4 years ago

    I completed BioShock yesterday and absolutely loved it. I spend 35+ hours playing it as well but that's because I spent my time exploring every area of the map, getting every Big Daddy and doing all the research, collecting as many plasmids and tonics as I could find, locating all the diaries, etc. If anyone claims they can do all of that in 8 hours then they're lying. ;)

    I'm now going through the game again to see the alternative ending and rescue all the Little Sisters plus hopefully get the rest of the Achievements. BioShock for me is a 10/10 game and it would be even if the experience DID only last 8 hours. I consider The Chronicles of Riddick on the Xbox/PC to be a classic and that only took me 7 hours to finish.

  • morriss #61 4 years ago

    The game took me around 20 hours +. But then again I did did 48 out of 50 Achievements.

  • spidermanalf #62 4 years ago

    "yeah.. i agree.. 50 quid on something you can beat in 8 hrs? no ta."

    Who on earth pays 50quid for a game?

    Its 32.99 in Morrisons! And 39.99 in Game! Pc version is even cheaper!

    It just annoys me when people mention the full RRP just to justify a point.
    Edited by 1 at 10/09/07 @ 09:55

  • BigE0n #63 4 years ago

    For those people asking why the developers dont automatically clear the cache on game start... Well what would be the point of the cache?

    The old xbox and the 360 cache game data not just the stuff for the current level but many other ingame assest are cached, thats why you should always set the system clock to the current date if you turn off the outlet power to an xbox or xbox 360 then use it, otherwise the system will try and reload the cache fresh.....

    For anyone having an issue try changing the system clock back a year and see if that forces the cache to clear?
    Edited by 2 at 10/09/07 @ 16:09

  • MikkyX #64 4 years ago

    Is there any on-screen indication that you've cleared your cache? I decided to play safe last night and do the cache clear button combo as soon as I'd installed the patch - game went in, bumpers went down and didn't come back up until the title screen had appeared. I reloaded my save (Olympus Heights), played for a little while, walked over to a security turret and............ froze. The game, that is, I didn't hit it with Winter Blast.

    First time it's crashed and this is AFTER the patch has been applied. Truly quality QA there :(

    Think I might wait for a patch to correct this patch before I bother trying to finish it......

  • gnarl #65 4 years ago

    "Any game that gets great ratings is bound to be ripped into by people, same as with movies, see WOW, any Zelda, half life or bioware game for examples."

    Love WOW, Zelda, Half Life, and most Bioware games. This I found dull and strung out. The plot, FPS game play, RPGplay and general variety were generally lacking. The animation an art-style beautiful. Overall, a horribly missed opportunity of a game.

    Bioshock has no real choices, immersive decision making (apart from one decision) or dialogue compared to KOTOR or other RPGs. It's FPS game play is simplistic compared to Farcry, FEAR, Dark Messiah etc. Despite the raving of many sources, it just doesn't deliver like it could have, at least to myself. I envy those that did manage to enjoy it so very much.