Tuesday 19 August 2008

BioShock's Too Hard! Cry! Complain!



Slowly worked my way through BioShock's Hard difficulty a few days ago. Having the last 40G points absent from my pointless 360 game-complete roster was something I was no longer prepared to tolerate. I'm not one to complain (heh), but Holy Moses! What a total spam-fest! Very little has been done to make the game in the least bit enjoyable for the first few hours. Instead, it's just a values hike on enemy endurance that leaves the user locked in a respawn energy leaker drudge, with weapons that wouldn't bruise a peach. Thanks a lot!

Try and fight one of the child mech warder Big Daddies and you'll piss ALL of your ammo away, and find yourself having to make endless distance jaunts from the nearest (infinite continue) Vita Chamber, to the scene of your latest defeat. That's if Mr Bubbles and co haven't wandered off to do something more productive. Hard also exposes the sheer lack of imagination ascribed to enemy attack patterns - the dive duds Daddies for instance will do little more than repeatedly charge crush you at near teleport speeds. This leaves you longing for a super jump Plasmid that never turns up.

This anti-fun holds fast right up until you get the camera and are finally able to do some damage research on Rapture's mutant parade. You'll get a middle portion of fun, challenging gaming before the goal posts are again moved for the last third and your again left with attrition inch warring.

I regret bothering. Hard difficulties, when done correctly, allow for a a denser, considered gaming experience. Barely explored weapon sets gain new uses and value as you try and puzzle out the best tool for each job. Not here though. No sir. Your most crucial weapon here is limitless patience.

1 comment:

Patrick said...

couldn't agree more, i heard all these amazing reviews for bioshock, and what a let down it has been. Now, i OWN at fps, online and off. Halo, call of duty, f.e.a.r., wolfenstien, whatever, i always play on the hardest difficulty setting. Then i met bioshock. It starts off nice, good atmosphere, plasmids (oh cool varied attacks!) then i pick up a gun, and first off i notice (pc) the aiming is outta control, so i have to fix that. So here I am trying to aim at enemies that jump in the shadows and any mouse movement sends me 180 degree spiraling...excellent start 2k. After that i notice that hey, ya know, you don't get much ammo in this game. I'm talking like i feel like i found the holy grail when i see 6 pistol bullets, or GASP shotgun or machine gun bullets. So the guns must be powerful right? fuck no! These guns barely hurt the peon enemy (ill get to big daddys in a minute) and you will miss...frequently, while it takes about 4 seconds for one peon enemy to kill you. 90% you will spend with your melee attack for lack of ammo, so no worries there i suppose! Then there's the big daddies, which force you to die over, and over, and over, and over, because nothing you do will put but hardly a dent in these lumbering motherfuckers. which is great, because you have no ammo throughout the game (i think the guns are for show maybe?)