Joined: 3/15/2007
Posts: 131
I'd sort of been semi-following this game for a couple months after having read about its awesome E3 exhibition, but after the X06 demo and the big daddy trailers, I was hooked. I preordered the limited edition (which comes with the soundtrack, a making of dvd, and a big daddy figurine), and picked it up the day it came out. For those of you who don't know and are interested, the basic (ha) backstory of Bioshock is thus (no spoilers): Following the Great Depression, an industrialist named Andrew Ryan decided to create a capitalist utopia, a place where like-minded people could go to escape what he saw as the increasingly socialist american governmant policy. He built an underwater city, which he called Rapture. The place was home to thousands of people: musicians, actors, scientists, doctors, models, philosophers, politicians, and other industrialists called Rapture home. In explaining his choice to build the city on the ocean floor, he said "It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the ocean. It was impossible not to build Rapture at the bottom of the ocean." In the late fifties, however, there was a scientific breakthrough. A type of sea slug was discovered that exuded almost pure stem cells. A man named Fontaine invested in it early, and developed a monopoly on the substance, which came to be known as Adam. Using these stem cells, it became possible to alter the human body in amazing ways, curing diseases, healing the crippled, and, as was soon discovered, create weapons. On new years eve of 1959, escalating tensions in Rapture flooded over, and the city, once an imagined 'capitalist utopia', became a nightmare: a city at the bottom of the sea, leaking and falling quickly into disrepair. Very quickly, the transportation system into and out of Rapture, a series of bathyspheres, was shut down, stranding every inhabitant inside a claustrophobic prison. Basically. anyway, if anybody is still curious about the game there's a lot more to be said about it, and that information is easily found on wikipedia or the official bioshock website. I was wondering if anyone else had played the game here. It's been receiving near perfect scores in magazines, and I am here to attest that it's extremely fun, and one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had playing a game since Half-Life 2
Player (68)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjaví­k, Ísland
I was going to buy the game, but changed my mind when I found out what kind of retarded digital restrictions they put on it. You know, getting only 2 activations, and after you've used them up, you can't install it again, that kind of thing. I simply won't support something like that. I've heard it doesn't work on most graphics cards anyway, mine included (even though I can run Doom 3, Half-Life 2 and Quake 4 extremely well).
Joined: 4/30/2006
Posts: 480
Location: the secret cow level
The DX10 extensions don't work unless you have a GeForce 8k series or a Radeon HD2k. I'm finding out that playing this without dying is really friggin' hard. I'm abusing the crap out of the quickload.
Former player
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
It's a super short game either way, so it's no huge loss. I think the average completion time for the game was something like 6 hours, which is nothing for such a hyped up game.
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Minimum requirements: "DirectX 9.0c compliant card with 128 MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550), *must support Pixel Shader 3.0*" So that's a no for me, then.
Joined: 3/15/2007
Posts: 131
I have a 7900 GS, AMD athlon 64x2, and 2 gigs of memory, and it runs pretty much perfectly at max graphic settings. While I have heard of the problems with installation, it's pretty easy to avoid them. The problems occur when you try to install the game on more than two (soon to be five with a patch) different systems, or if you format without uninstalling the game. It is a little short, but it really depends on what kind of play style you develop. If you choose to charge in and annihlate everyone with the shotgun and grenade launcher, then it is going to go by pretty fast. But if you take things slowly, taking in the atmosphere and listening to the recordings scattered about, it can take twice that long. The replay value is pretty high, too.
Former player
Joined: 8/12/2004
Posts: 651
Location: Alberta, Canada
I'm passing on it, as I try to avoid buying games with copy protection similar to what the game has. Last time I had that specific version of SecuROM on my computer (from C&C3) the service that it installs kept throwing kernel mode errors. Then the game didn't want to uninstall because I had notepad and IRC running, and wouldn't let me do so until I closed them. After I uninstalled the game SecuROM itself wasn't removed, and it used a shady method to try and keep me removing it when I tried to do it. So I had to go and download tools that would normally be used to remove trojans to get rid of it. If a company is going to treat me like a thief, and straight up break my OS with a method of copy protection which doesn't even work. Then they sure aren't going to get my money.
Player (68)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjaví­k, Ísland
The sad thing is that there's already a cracked version floating around that doesn't have any of that crap. So the pirates win and paying customers lose. It's like 2K Games made a great game, and then took a big dump on it, thus ruining it for everyone. *sigh* It looks like a great game, too bad I will never get to play it.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
I hate companies that spend that amout of time and energy on anti-piracy. As you said, its the paying customers who loose, seeing as how the pirates tend to find a way anyway.
Has never colored a dinosaur.
nesrocks
He/Him
Player (246)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
Player (105)
Joined: 1/30/2005
Posts: 564
Location: Québec, Canada
Joined: 3/15/2007
Posts: 131
Halamantariel wrote:
Attention all Bioshock fans! http://www.flickr.com/photos/49503033361@N01/1188544475/
looks a lot like the injector for plasmids.
Joined: 8/2/2004
Posts: 98
I have it and I love it. Too bad it won't hold a candle to CoD4 or Crysis though. Oh, and there's nothing accurate about the 2 activations only. 2 at once, yes, and when it came out, but if you uninstalled it you got that activation back. Plus, they changed it so you get 5 now. Still have to uninstall to get one of those 5 back, but there you go. There are plenty of other reasons (instability, widescreen issues) not to buy it though.. I know I didn't.
-Oz. If practice makes perfect, but nobody's perfect, why practice?
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
This might be a problem too: "The SecuROM content protection system has also caused reported problems with running systems software such as Microsoft's Process Explorer and other games that use similar content protection systems. Microsoft's RootkitRevealer software tool also identifies SecuROM as a rootkit due to insertion of null keys into the registry that cannot be removed via normal means such as Registry Editor. These registry keys remain on the system even after BioShock and SecuROM are uninstalled. SecuROM currently provides no support for completely uninstalling the application. The Bioshock demo also installs Securom DRM management software. The Securom software remains on the end users system with no option for uninstallation, even if the demo itself is uninstalled."
Former player
Joined: 8/12/2004
Posts: 651
Location: Alberta, Canada
Yep, the null keys are part of what I meant when I said it was hard to get rid of. To be fair. It's possible that 2kgames didn't want to put SecuROM in the game and was forced to do so by their publisher; that happens alot. However, then it probably wouldn't have it on the Steam version as well, so who knows. It's good that it's actually reached the media that this has been going on, and people are starting to kick up a fuss. A lot of people are still sore over the Sony audio cd rootkit from the past, and are angry that they didn't learn their lesson from it; even if it's not really the same thing. (SecuROM is Sony)
Former player
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
2k just needs to put a txt file in the installation folder. "'Would you kindly' remember to uninstall your copy of Bioshock if you wish to be reimbursed one of your activations?"
hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine
Joined: 4/30/2006
Posts: 480
Location: the secret cow level
FODA wrote:
another FPS? bored
it's an FPS with upgradeable skills, crafting, plus you can manipulate the enemies in different ways.
Player (68)
Joined: 3/11/2004
Posts: 1058
Location: Reykjaví­k, Ísland
Ozmodiar wrote:
I have it and I love it. Too bad it won't hold a candle to CoD4 or Crysis though. Oh, and there's nothing accurate about the 2 activations only. 2 at once, yes, and when it came out, but if you uninstalled it you got that activation back. Plus, they changed it so you get 5 now. Still have to uninstall to get one of those 5 back, but there you go. There are plenty of other reasons (instability, widescreen issues) not to buy it though.. I know I didn't.
The point is that you shouldn't need to "activate" the game at all. But okay, Half-Life 2 did that also, and I'm not terribly bummed about that because I actually found Steam easy to use and convenient. The problem comes when you have a limited number of activations. What kind of a genius thought about that in the first place? I mean seriously, I will bet everything that whoever who initially thought about this sceme has never played a game or used any piece of software in his life. If everyone followed Bioshock's example, if you had a bunch of games and software, and you wanted to format your hard drive and re-install your OS or setup another one or whatever, you would first need to spend hours just uninstalling old games and other software just so you could activate them again in the future. It is retarded, it is stupid, it is completely crazy and insane. Don't support this. Don't buy the game. Fuck them.
Joined: 8/13/2007
Posts: 29
@Above's line of thinking. *Computer Crashes and it is impossible to uninstall stuff* Well, that would make you up the creak without a paddle.