Date Completed: 1/21/2010
Thoughts: I bought this game when it originally released, swayed by the great demo and word of mouth. I tend to be easily talked into buying video games. So I got the game and played through it for a while. I got a little past the part with the crazy artist: Sasha Cohen. I can't remember now why I stopped playing specifically, but I remember that while I thought the mood it established was great, and I enjoyed the 50's touches, I just wasn't that drawn into the game play. I didn't like how ammo was so easily used up and so hard to get back. I used the wrench almost exclusively and found myself taking advantage of the fact that when you die and come back, any damage you did to the enemy is still done to them so you can literally just throw 1000 lives at the game and defeat all the enemies with numbers.
Fast Forward two years later I had mostly ignored the game since. When I got my new XBox I'd lost my save, and that had sapped out a lot of my desire to go back to it. But nothing gets me interested like hype, and the prospect of a sequal coming out in February motivated me to give it another go. I honestly wasn't really expecting to do much more than putter around for an hour and move on to Brutal Legend or some other game, but something happened. I kept playing. At first I just wanted to get back to where I had been previously, but before long it was clear that goal no longer would do it. I was going all the way. I rescued all the little sisters this time, wheras last time I harvested them because I read that I'd get more powers that way. That turned out to be inaccurate. Whatever Adam you lose from saving the little sisters you make up in the care packages Mother Goose drops off for you. I finally got to experience the Bioshock I'd heard so much about. The gameplay, graphics, mood, it all drew me in. For the three days it took me start to finish to complete the game I was completely sucked in.
Now I'm glad I finally gave this game the attention it deserved, and Bioshock 2 goes from being a game I wasn't planning to get to now a day one purchase for me.
To do on this game: Well, I could probably go through and beat it on hard, or I could go for some of the really difficult achievements like beat the game without ever using a vita-chamber, or collecting all 150 audio books. But more likely I am done with this game unless I decide to replay it some day down the road. I may try and snag a few other achievements I'm missing, but beyond that, my next visit to Rapture is almost certainly going to be in Bioshock 2.
Isn't it interesting how that can happen, how the exact same game can elicit complete apathy at one point and totally grab you at another, and for no apparent reason? BioShock didn't do this for me, helped in no small part by it being the first 360 game I really played, so the experience was that much more new and exciting for me. But that is one of the reasons I hold onto all of my games; you never know when that switch is going to get flipped inside you that makes you suddenly get into a game that didn't do much for you the first time, and you certainly wouldn't get the chance to find that out if the game wasn't laying around anymore for you to retry it in the first place.
ReplyDeleteTrue, and with the advent of achievemnt points I've been more likely to go back and finish games, as you know. Crackdown for instance, I gave up on that originally because I couldn't find some of the last boss hideouts. I picked it up again last year because I was trying to get some easy achievement points, and while I was doing that, I accidentally finished the game. I just picked that one up from where I left off though, there was no story I had forgotten that I needed to catch up on. Bioshock was not the same. I knew I'd have to play it through again.
ReplyDeleteBorat was in Bioshock?
ReplyDeleteOhhh... you meant SANDER Cohen...
On another note, I see all we need is for Shenmue I & II to be ported to the 360 -- chock-full of achievements -- and you will finally beat them!
Well let's not go crazy here Jon, the game still has to be fun.
ReplyDeleteAnd LOL @ Sasha Cohen, I was just looking at that going 'I don't think that's the right person, I'm surprised nobody mentioned it in the comments' And there it is. Good job.