[QUOTE="Digital_DJ_00"]
Please give your reasons as to why Bioshock is a poor copy of System Shock 2. fatshodan
Alright.
First up, story. The BioShock story is 95% identical to the System Shock 2 story (I'll leave it at that, but I can go into great detail if you like), including the big twist and all the major narrative devices. This means that anyone who's played SS2 can probably guess (I did) what's coming in the opening minutes. That makes BioShock's story absolutely moot. A story driven game where you already know exactly what's going to happen? Heh.
And even if you haven't played System Shock 2, you can't defend it. If someone released a film that had the exact same story as Fight Club or The Usual Suspects, could it be defended - being objective? Even if you hadn't seen those films, it's just not soemthing you can defend. BioShock's story - one of its most central elements - undermines itself.
Then there's the difficulty level. BioShock is pointlessly easy! While hacking, the game pauses, meaning that enemy that's a few feet away will pretty much stand around and wait for you to finish. And if you fail the hack, all you lose is a little health - and it won't actually kill you, no matter how many times you fail. And because money is in virtually unlimited supply, you can just buy more health at any one of the very frequent vending machines.
And then there's the security system, which seems to exist exclusively to help you. Because hacking is so easy, it's always on your side - even though it pretends it isn't. See a turret? Zap and hack. Bam. See a camera? Get caught in it, wait for the helicopter, zam and hack. Bam. All of these obstacles work entirely in your favour. Hacking in BioShock is just a pointless pacing device.
Oh, and with God-mode on by default, even if you do happen to die, well, you can just respawn nearby. While this feature was present in System Shock 2 (and is great when done properly), the game charged you nanites when you died. So, in death, there was a tangible loss. In BioShock, you lose absolutely nothing - indeed, because enemies don't regenerate health, you're encouraged to just wrench rush stuff and die over and over.
And then there's the combat. First off, there are two plasmid archetypes - hurt and distract. All of your plasmids will fall into one of those categories. So, sure, it's great that you have decoy and wasps and zap, but they're functionally all the same. They temporarily prevent your enemy from attacking you. And some are better than others - in fact, balance is completely off on the plasmids. Until you reach immune enemies (which come too late), there's no reason to not zap and whack most enemies you meet. Sure, you can use other methods, but they're simply less efficient. That would be like deliberately shooting someone in the foot repeatedly rather than go for a headshot. Gamers are efficient, and some ways of playing BioShock are more efficient than others.
Do you know how many Psi abilities there are in System Shock 2? And how unique they all are? When playing OSA, System Shock 2 has you building a unique and personalised character with a large roster of unique abilities and you're forced to make choices depending on the type of character you want to play. When playing BioShock, zap and whack, zap and whack, zap and whack.
And even if you don't play OSA, System Shock 2's generic gunplay/wrenchplay is far better than BioShock's because it plays strongly off the horror. You have limited resources and your weapons will degrade, so every encounter is a question. In BioShock, just zap and whack, or fire on full auto - you have practically unlimited health, ammo, eve and cash, so who cares.
And then there's the character building. Roleplaying elements exist specifically so you can build a unique and personalised character and then play your unique character in a unique way. In SS2, you can build a character with strong technical skills and you can hack into those vending machines and you can disable those turrets and those cameras. You'll have more resources to carry around, but your combat skills won't be as developed. Or maybe you want to build a grunt with weapons mastery? You won't be able to get through those locked doors and you'll have to gun down those sentries and cameras, so you won't have as many resources, but you'll use them more efficiently. Or maybe you want to build an OSA who uses stealth and other cool abilities to overcome obstacles. Or perhaps a hybrid - but whatever you do, you're making choices and you're building a personalised character who plays in unique ways.
In BioShock, you don't really have any choices to make. You have enough Adam to buy all the plasmids (worth buying) as well as all the useful gene tonics, and there's no need to make choices about which to use - you can just swap them out at any time! And hell, you don't even need them because the game is so easy! BioShock features all of the character building elements of SS2, but they are so underdeveloped that they are pointless and serve no functional purpose. You aren't building a character, you aren't making choices and you aren't playing a personalised character who plays the game in a particular way. You can already do absolutely everything. All you're doing is, uh... nothing.
And there are other pointless things, like the weapon upgrade stations. There are enough for almost every weapon (there's little functional difference between the weapons, by the way), and each weapon can only be upgraded once, so all you're doing over the length of the game is making your weapons more powerful, one by one, to keep them in line with the inexplicably more powerful enemies. Ever played Resident Evil 4? That game had real weapon-based character development. You could only carry a few and each weapon could be upgraded multiple times, so you ended up with a personalised character who used a few weapons based on your preferences and choices. That is real character development.
BioShock has mediocre combat, functionally superfluous roleplaying mechanics and a self-sabotaging and pointless story. It's System Shock 2 for kids.
i knew this was going to happen - can you guys go to the thread in my sig, read it, then just lie down in a darkened room please
NOW
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