Bioshock

[Gumba Masta]

I know at least one of you has played Bioshock and I was wandering what your impressions ahve been on the whole objectivists Vs. colectivists backdrop was and if you thought that having a giant drill as a main melee weapon was FUCKING AWESOME!?

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I like the first game but haven't played the second because their hardware seems to have a bad case of the gremlins.  I got a new comp and my bioshock game refuses to install on it for no discernable reason and a friend of mine got the second game and his 360 snubbed it.  He got the game replaced and it STILL snubbed it.

So, sorry guys.  Make your games work and THEN we'll talk.

[Gumba Masta]

Did you press yes when it asked you if it should install the game?

[The Late Andrew Ryan]

 

I know at least one of you has played Bioshock

Hmm... I wonder if he could be talking about me?   
The first one was an excellent game but it really dropped the ball when it came to actually explaining the philosophies behind it in any meaningful way unless you actually looked at the backstories and the audio diaries. For the average player the entire thing was just an excuse for a nice setting, dark scenery, and a badass monolouging antihero.
The second one did a slightly better job, except it really didn't give any positive advocacy whatsoever to collectivist thought. Seriously I thought that it actually succeeded in making collectivism sound even more nonsensical than it normally is.
"Ryan: White is not black, Doctor Lamb -- down is not up, and straw is not gold. Look around you. Rapture is no miracle - it is a product of reason, impossible unless one and one are two, and A equates to A.

(crowd murmur, tense, some agreement)

Lamb: And yet... alone, each man is a prisoner to bias. Dream, delusion, or the pain of a phantom limb -- to one man, they are as real as rain. Reality is consensus... and the people are losing faith. Take a walk Andrew. It is raining in Rapture... and you have simply chosen to not notice."
Ryan gives the logical response and then Lamb simply appeals to emotion and the fact that men aren't perfect.
At any rate, I thought that Andrew Ryan was an incredibly badass character so I adopted his name as my SN.
And yes, the drill is incredible I hardly use anything except for it. If you upgraded the wrench fully in the original game it was f***ing unstoppable with electrobolt, sometimes I wonder if the only reason why they made you a big daddy in the second one was so that they could somehow give you an even better melee weapon... If in Bioshock 3 you're a bigdaddy with a light saber drill then I think we'll know...
Also, spear gun rocks.

[Virgil0211]

I know at least one of you has played Bioshock and I was wandering what your impressions ahve been on the whole objectivists Vs. colectivists backdrop was and if you thought that having a giant drill as a main melee weapon was FUCKING AWESOME!?

My girlfriend got me a double-pack of the game packaged with Elder Scrolls IV for Christmas. I just now got around to playing it (after playing through Mass Effect 2 about 5 times, and I'm still not finished. I love that game. =P). I've only gotten a little bit into the game, but the story seems really cool from what I've seen of it.

If you upgraded the wrench fully in the original game it was f***ing unstoppable with electrobolt, sometimes I wonder if the only reason why they made you a big daddy in the second one was so that they could somehow give you an even better melee weapon... If in Bioshock 3 you're a bigdaddy with a light saber drill then I think we'll know...
Also, spear gun rocks.

Thank you for the protip, Mr. Ryan.

I would just like to remind everyone of the awesomeness multiplier relating to lightsabers. The mere mention of lightsabers multiplies a games awesomeness by 2, the presence thereof by at least 100, and the usability thereof by over 9,000.

Edited after LTH's post: Thank you for protip number 2, sir.

The only thing I'm finding frustrating is the hacking puzzles. I mean, the early ones with the turrets are fine, maybe even too easy, but the vending machines are such a shift in difficulty that it catches you off guard. Hell, one time the puzzle had all of the 'bad' squares lined up around the opening of the tube in such a way that the only way I would've been able to get around it would have been to immediately change the V> pipe with a ^> pipe as soon as the puzzle began.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

In addition to upgrading the wrench, take lots of pictures of houdini splicers to learn the ability to turn invisible when you stand still.  You can catch everyone off guard and one shot them easily with it.

[The Late Andrew Ryan]

Thank you for the protip, Mr. Ryan.

Try uprgrading your hacking tonics, and I find vending machines and safes are the things worth buying out/autohacking
Plasmids: Security bullseye, enrage, electrobolt 3, Hypnotise big daddy 2, telekenisis
Physical/combat tonics: Wrench Jockey 1 and 2, sportsboost 1and 2, bloodlust
Congratulations, you can now beat bioshock on survivor difficulty.

[Virgil0211]

Try uprgrading your hacking tonics, and I find vending machines and safes are the things worth buying out/autohacking
Plasmids: Security bullseye, enrage, electrobolt 3, Hypnotise big daddy 2, telekenisis
Physical/combat tonics: Wrench Jockey 1 and 2, sportsboost 1and 2, bloodlust
Congratulations, you can now beat bioshock on survivor difficulty.

Arigatou Gouzaimasu, Ryan-sensei.

/gesture respectful_bow1

[valvatica]

I still have to get around to playing the first Bioshock... I feel so behind.

I spent a little too much time with TES IV and haven't even done everything. Hint: I had the slider on the hardest difficulty ever since the beginning and never changed it. Now THAT's a challenge. I mean FFS, the bears were a pain in the ass. Bears! The Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines were especially fun on the hardest difficulty though 

[VectorM]

I still have to get around to playing the first Bioshock... I feel so behind.

I spent a little too much time with TES IV and haven't even done everything. Hint: I had the slider on the hardest difficulty ever since the beginning and never changed it. Now THAT's a challenge. I mean FFS, the bears were a pain in the ass. Bears! The Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines were especially fun on the hardest difficulty though  

I think someone would love Fallout: New Vegas on the new Hardcore difficulty  

Now on topic. When you look at it, both games are more or less caricatures of the mentioned philosophies, ESPECIALY in the second one. I mean, dear God, I am anti-collectivist to the bone and I still found the portrayal of collectivism in that game to be ridiculous.

You just can't really use what these games show as criticism to any of the philosophies, it's just WAY, WAY too over the top. I mean, fucking gun vending machines. This sounds like the arguments WE use to joke with each other - "If we let everyone have guns, there would be vending machines for them everywhere, lol". Kinda like when the Christians say "If you allowed gay marriage, people would then start marrying their daughters and their dogs"  

Another thing is the reason Rapture fell (from what I understand...).

It basically happened because of the plasmids, that were EXTREMLY addictive and gave people X-Men powers. How exactly does that show the failure of objectivism? You can make the argument, that a statis society would Ban and regulate that stuff, but we all know that stuff simply DOESN'T work. Didn'T work with alcohol, doesn't work with drugs and it will definitely not work with plasmids that can turn you in to a super hero. No matter what society you have, that situation would be a disaster.

So, awesome game, but the whole objectivist/collectivist thing is an excuse to have scary shit happening around and it makes a retarded concept look intelligent. I m sorry, but I don't buy the Big Daddy/Little sister thing at all...the drill is the best melee weapon ever though

[AHPMB]

I don't know if I'll play it.  I felt the first game didn't really need a sequel.  While I wasn't all that interested in their interpretation of Ayn Rand, I thought that their meta-exploration of freedom in a game was really interesting.  That whole, "Would you kindly thing" was really smart, and it seems like, not something they'll be able to replicate.  It saddens me that it was the weakest idea in the game, choosing between saving the little sisters and killing them was the thing that every plagiarized in later games.