completed yesterday, when my new pc arrives i'll be playing through it again to get the other ending (and i'm going to bang the difficultly up from medium to hard).
I'll post a quick post about the thoughts I have on the game; there's a lot of material that you can drill down into I just simply don't have the space or the time so please contribute your own musings if you have any.
I'm very glad i bought this and enjoyed in very much. Its an experience I'd recommend to everyone. Nice atmosphere, great sound design, great gameplay, and some nice art... really nice art. I do have some criticisms too, I'll spoiler them up appropriately as this is a great game and I don't want to spoil it. I would highly recommend the PC version, the 360 version was a lot crappier than the pc version, that's for damn sure but its still good if you don't mind the fact that people will be playing the same game but getting a better experience elsewhere
In terms of system resources, if you have or can hold out until you have a good enough spec pc to play it I would recommend that. I've completed it with an 'underspecced' pc, essentially a AMD64 4000+, GeForce 6800GT and 1GB DDR2. I got stutters (I was playing on high mind) and imo its not as good. Watch a gameplay video on gametrailers.com . If your framerate is preventing you from doing the kind of fun gameplay you see in that, you'll have to compromise your graphics because it makes it a lot better. At first i had a real numbness to this game, as i mentioned, the UI is really detached and i think the mouse aimer has a lot to do with the fact (big loose targetting has the feel of a poorer console game where you don't have the accuracy of a pc game). Its something you get over though, I got into this game.
Now onto the game, its got a really great setting and feel to it. Like System Shock 2 (great game, i'm going to post a copy with some graphics packs and what not when i get chance, like i did with quake), there's a real craftmans ship to the worlds and things like sound design really play up the game. If you've got a decent sound setup, there's a real art to this game. You hear screams, moans and all sorts of freaky shit in the background (freaky germans singing about the lord is an example). Okay, so the bad guys look like... well on the GFW podcast i listened today mentioned a bad guy from Dick Tracey which is hilariously true and there's an unfortunately limited number of enemy models, but they are lovingly crafted.
The concept is really great scifi stock, a failed utopia set in a retro-future, with an array of messed up and deeply disturbed characters and beautifully designed environments that present the (something i'll come back to) illusion of space and openness. Here's where i'll take a bite, spoilers...
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So you "crash" over the ocean only to surface in a blaze of fire... your quickly channelled (this happens a lot, hence my illusion comment) into a light house and from there down into rapture our under water utopia and object of beauty and horror. There's a pretty grand introduction, the propaganda machine of Ryan Industries blares out as you are guided into the belly of the beast. Immediately on arriving you hear from your narrator/insider, Atlas, who for a big part of the game pre-twist channels you through your game to the inevitable 'climax' of meeting Ryan himself. This ultimately turns out to be the big twist of the game and only a midpoint of the game. I've been careful with my words using the word channel, climax and illusion. This game is ultimately about these. One of the first things I noticed when playing the demo was our protagonist has branded tattoes on his arm. I'm of pretty hardened gaming stock and immediately came to the conclusion that the main character had amnesia and we were in for a big twist. This was pretty obvious, it wasn't badly done or anything, its just that this is such standard game cannon that you can pretty much guess the plot to games. I figured he was either a) a prisoner/ejectee from rapture b) he was genetically modified/grown c) he was a soldier programmed and sent in to assasinate ryan. Turns out b and c were about right. I don't think i was really being astute with that though, right? What is revealed, and brilliantly done with that great 'would you kindly?' scene in Ryan's office, is that you are fontaine's child that essentially has been grown, programmed and purposed solely for the destruction of Ryan. You were sent outside of rapture, you hijacked the plane and you crashed it, from then on, Atlas was actually Fontaines guise to get you to do his evil bidding (and he's pretty comic book evil). Atlas' family was made up, and you never actually meet. Its all the manipulation and conditioning, and your character is actually being forced/guided to do things. This very much sums up the game. Despite the initial sense of openness, you are being channeled to kill people, follow a linear path through the game and So that covers the linear nature of the game and how you are being controlled. In many ways this is a real shame preventing a really rich and unique experience. Now onto the player choices, the big one being should you harvest or save the little sisters. It didn't take much choice on my part, I didn't kill a single little sister and even reloaded at the scene where the little sisters are guiding you through the corridoors in a very linear, staged way because one of the little girls died. I've heard that if you kill a few of the girls, then your bad and will be for the entire game and you'll get the 'bad ending'. There were a few places in the game where you had choice, you don't have to kill certain people, you don't have to go and search every area, etc. but in the ultimate assessement, the game is just as linear as say, Half-Life Episode One. Where you do have variation is on how you decide to power yourself up and tackle enemies, there's a lot of traps, explosions, etc. so you can really kill people in creative ways. There's extensive use of ghost scenes and flashbacks, these are very F.E.A.R. which are very Max Payne, which are very System Shock II, etc. Back to the story, now irrespective of how you go about getting adam (this is the substance\genetic material that little sisters harvest from dead bodies, which in turn is turned into eve which gets you and powers your plasmids/implants), the little sisters always help you out after you kill ryan. This is kind of annoying to hear, it really takes a lot out of the game since like your character you have this illusion of choice, openness, etc. when actually your being channelled down a single linear path. Anyway, you then build yourself up as a big daddy so little sisters will follow you around. In terms of what you get, its just a one way path into sound like a big daddy. You get a helmet but the skin is just the same and you still see your jumper when you hold your gun out. A shame really, but anyway. So you make your way through the game and finally get to a very dissapointing boss battle. It doesn't belong in the game, its a very standard boss battle against a super powered fontaine. It seems very rushed and you can't help but think there was a real pressing need to finish the game. Last up was the end fmv. I really thought it was dissapointing, it was actually pretty crap I thought. The little sisters give you control of the city and you surface and let them go. They then grow up a normal life, graduate, get married, etc. and then as you lay dying on your deathbed, they hold your hand and there's a commentary about getting the family you never had. I really thought they could have done better here. I can't believe with so much depth and investment into an artform, the setting, the characters, etc. and they have a crap end of game boss and an ending that doesn't really work. Its almost as if they just had to finish it immediately and whipped it up in a fraction of the time. The other ending apparantly has you surfacing in a submarine/diving bell and then a splicer runs out implying that you've unleashed an evil on the top world and lost your humanity by harvesting the little sisters. Similarly, I don't like it if that's the case. The rest of the game is identical except for the little sisters in the hideout talk about you as the person that hurts them. I dunno, I think an ending say, replace the boss fight with something more suitable to the game then a) turn on the little sisters and join fontaine and become his lacky, running rapture into further ruin b) kill fontaine and become the big bossman; with scenes of riots, murders, bloody rebellions, shock troops, etc. as you sit in your ivory tower c) become the leader and attempt to turn rapture around d) destory rapture and everyone in it including yourself e) run away. I mean those are off the top of my head, but i would have thought any of those would have probably been better than the ending we got. I think the fmv was really cheap too, too short. There's some of the standard silly, silly gaming stuff, like Ryan's personal diaries lying around in a pub or other such stupid things, or the revelation that before rapture fell into darkness there just happened to be dead bodies lying around, etc. Silly stuff. Anyway, I don't want to really hang on the negative... tis because the game is so good that these standard video game moments, that would be fine in most other games, just don't cut it. It would be like having a shit dungeon in zelda, putting it next to such great level design in the other dungeons make the "weak" one appear weak, when really its head, tits, arse and feet above everything else. |
In terms of the technical, AI is pretty decent. The spider splicers are pretty impressive since they run all around the 3d space available, crawling around walls and rooftops, and dropping behind you. They also do run away and I noticed them healing themselves to get back their health. I've seen that in a couple of games but not nearly as well done. You get idiots talking about awfully basic scripted AI in say, halo, this is more like the leagues of F.E.A.R. sure its still basic rules, but written very well so the AI is able to pull off some very reasonable enemy behaviour. Really, the spider splicers are the most effective and impressive.
Level design is superb. There was a worry it was going to be all the same, but there are distinct zones that feel very different. The leader of the pack is the brilliant Fort Frolic... its such a brilliant piece of level design. Your running around doing tasks in this great environment. Just great stuff. The other area that stands out as great amongst the great is the big daddy production areas.
The hacking minigames I enjoyed, its a nice break in pace and if you don't power up your skills you'll get a quick frantic bit of puzzle going on. The powerups, character development and the research concept all work great too... i found myself running round frantically to get photographs of the enemy types to get myself powered up against them. Fun stuff that take this game beyond a mere FPS.
Its a great game, but because its a great game that invokes a lot of awe and accomplishes so much for the concept of games as art going through the game it makes you notice some flaws. These are flaws that would have made this game so awesome.
They needed a nintendo attitude towards delays on this one, I can see why it was released now, but i can't help but think with more time they could have made this big, grand and open. The 'illusion' of choice is central to the game, and ultimately its implementation.
ps. posted this same post at three forums, but this seemed appropriate since i've been playing this game for the last few days.
sorry. that looks bad in review. I meant the movie was stupid not the reaction.
...and so is "Sunshine" 
And like I said many many times before, just quoting a few fancy science theories and using "big" words not even knowing what they mean in a twisted imagination run wild movie packed for ignorant masses ain't Sci-Fi. At least not for me and I don't even care what definitions others come up with. The word has "Sci" in it and the move doesn't! And as far as "Fi" goes -- the best fiction out there (again, IMO) all have this nice flow to it that makes perfect logical sense within the set constraints. This movie isn't even a fiction for me. It's just stupid. And, sadly, there's nothing fictional about stupidity!