What are you playing at the moment?

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Finished Bioshock 2 Remastered in about 13 hours, which feels like a lot less than I spent on the original, but comparing play times is a bit hopeless since I played various modes and the DLC in the original (probably played through it several times too).

Still confuses me that, during the end scene, Elanor says I ‘forgave. Always’ when I killed Stanley (I think it was). I would have killed Gil too, but couldn’t find the button for it… (I spared Grace. And all the little sisters, of course).
Apparently that’s considered the good ending. I’m fairly certain it’s the same you get when you spare everybody. So maybe there just aren’t many different endings.

Anyway, pleasant to revisit the game.

[LexW]

Finished Bioshock 2 Remastered in about 13 hours, which feels like a lot less than I spent on the original, but comparing play times is a bit hopeless since I played various modes and the DLC in the original (probably played through it several times too).

Bioshock is about 12-15 hours so it’s similar.

https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=1065

I looked it up because I remembered the original feeling quite short to me!

[Sarfrin]

I accidentally got myself into an arena boss fight in Horizon Zero Dawn and avoided finishing it for days because I absolutely hate that sort of thing. Especially in a game that gives you a whole stealth skill tree to put points into. Then i just though ‘Fuck this’, loaded up an old save before I went into the placee and went on my merry way.

[Similar]

Bioshock is about 12-15 hours so it’s similar.

https://howlongtobeat.com/game?id=1065

I looked it up because I remembered the original feeling quite short to me!

It’s a bit curious. I think I would have guessed maybe 30 hours for Bioshock, but then, I would have thought the same about Bioshock 2, so perhaps my sense of time is just completely unreliable.
I do find that sometimes older games that I remember as being hard aren’t really if I play them now, and I think it’s partly that I often played them on an underpowered system the first time, so things were a bit floaty and sluggish, and they probably did take longer to finish because it was harder to hit stuff and such. And I died more too.

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Played a few hours of Singularity. I did try it about eight years ago, but never got far.
It’s sort of interesting, with the stuff you can age or make younger, and time travel and things, but everything is severely scripted (and the checkpoint save message lets you know every time you’re about to run into a fight). Most of the fights are just a bunch of enemies running at you until you’ve killed enough that the script thinks it’s time to move on.
If cheats were still a thing, I’d just turn god mode on and play through it that way to see where the story went, but it’s not a thing, so it feels a bit like too much work. Which is a shame, because there’s certainly quite a few good ideas in there.

[BillButNotBen]

It’s a bit curious. I think I would have guessed maybe 30 hours for Bioshock, but then, I would have thought the same about Bioshock 2, so perhaps my sense of time is just completely unreliable.

I do find that sometimes older games that I remember as being hard aren’t really if I play them now, and I think it’s partly that I often played them on an underpowered system the first time, so things were a bit floaty and sluggish, and they probably did take longer to finish because it was harder to hit stuff and such. And I died more too.

HLTB’s completionist times for Bioshock 1 are more like 22 hours. And the leisurely paced ones go up to 44hrs. So it’s definitely possible to spend more or less time on them. Bioshock 2 seems to trend a little bit longer.

I guess about 13hrs is pretty standard for an FPS, but if you asked me I’d also guess that I spent a lot longer on Bioshock 1. Of course, I sneaked everywhere. Checked every bin and container. Hacked every terminal. Took everything relatively slowly. Planned out every encounter as much as possible beforehand. Didn’t run and gun at all.
I imagine if I played it again now I’d burn through it much faster, as I’d be less invested in investigating every tiny thing.

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BallisticNG is actually turning out to be much better than I expected. The later tracks are much more interesting and distinctive. Not sure the AI is doing anything interesting, but the game is too fast paced for that to really matter anyway.
I can’t see myself sticking with it for all that long, but for a shortish burst of simple fun high speed racing, it’s good.

[Similar]

HLTB’s completionist times for Bioshock 1 are more like 22 hours. And the leisurely paced ones go up to 44hrs. So it’s definitely possible to spend more or less time on them. Bioshock 2 seems to trend a little bit longer.

I guess about 13hrs is pretty standard for an FPS, but if you asked me I’d also guess that I spent a lot longer on Bioshock 1. Of course, I sneaked everywhere. Checked every bin and container. Hacked every terminal. Took everything relatively slowly. Planned out every encounter as much as possible beforehand. Didn’t run and gun at all.
I imagine if I played it again now I’d burn through it much faster, as I’d be less invested in investigating every tiny thing.

yeah, that’s certainly true for me too, especially with Bioshock 1. This time with Bioshock 2 I didn’t play very carefully (I guess you can sneak some since there’s a tonic for extra drill damage if you catch an unaware enemy, but it seemed a bit off to try to play a Big Daddy as a stealth assassin), and I felt I played quickly, but I still got the achievement for finding 100 audio tapes, so I must have explored a good bit (the game does encourage that too, since you practically never have enough ammo to feel comfortable).
Of course, it also helped that I, despite my generally useless memory, actually could remember things about the levels from having played through them in the past.

[Rath]

I just gave Foundation (Early Access) a go.

I don’t think any game is ever going to fully recapture the simple joy I got from The Settlers 3 and its’ expansions back in the day, but this looked like it might be capable of getting close.

And in terms of looks, it does very well for itself indeed. I’m not too enamoured of the settlers themselves, being all big-head-mode toons, but the buildings and the landscape are quite, quite beautiful. The way the lush grass gently sways in the breeze is so nicely animated I found myself wanting it to be an animated desktop theme.

As for actual gameplay, everything was going rather well, I had started to get my supply chain up and running, my settlers were becoming happier as they went about doing their jobs in peace, they had plenty of wood and stone at their disposal, abundant berries to eat, and all of a sudden you run into a quest objective where you need to fulfill all of their needs in order to promote one of them to a higher strata of society, and one of those needs is Faith™, so all of a sudden this huge eyesore of a building needed to be built, forcing me to divert a ton of resources towards it that could have been better spent on food, productivity and housing, on land that could have been better used for the same, thanks to some completely arbitrary decision that was made along the way somewhere, and suddenly I didn’t want to engage with this anymore.

10/10, will play Uncomfortably Like Real Life Simulator again when fully released.

[ToomuchFluffy]

It’s a bit curious. I think I would have guessed maybe 30 hours for Bioshock, but then, I would have thought the same about Bioshock 2, so perhaps my sense of time is just completely unreliable.

The first Bioshock did have an odd ending section though. Personally - and from what I know that’s somewhat common - I felt that it went on a few hours too long after a point at which it felt like the narrative was mostly done. I suspect that the relatively open maps and various gameplay-possiblities might contribute to the feeling of the game being longer than it really is, but at least personally I didn’t get that feeling with Bioshock 2. But that one did also get through its ending section in a much faster and more straightforward way. I do remember that it started to just slightly drag at that point, but then it was already over.

but if you asked me I’d also guess that I spent a lot longer on Bioshock 1. Of course, I sneaked everywhere. Checked every bin and container. Hacked every terminal. Took everything relatively slowly. Planned out every encounter as much as possible beforehand. Didn’t run and gun at all.

It’s probably good advice for me, since the two times that I have tried to replay it on Hard, I did always get stuck on one or the other Big Daddy sooner or later. I probably will have to try to use the environment to my advantage more.

[BillButNotBen]

Depending on how hard it is to get hold of, what I might be playing is the leaked Goldeneye xbox 360 remake

GoldenEye’s canceled Xbox 360 remake leaks online, and it’s playable

[Similar]

The first Bioshock did have an odd ending section though. Personally - and from what I know that’s somewhat common - I felt that it went on a few hours too long after a point at which it felt like the narrative was mostly done. I suspect that the relatively open maps and various gameplay-possiblities might contribute to the feeling of the game being longer than it really is,

It’s been a while, but I do remember feeling like the Great Reveal must be the ending, or very close to it, and then it just kept going.

but at least personally I didn’t get that feeling with Bioshock 2. But that one did also get through its ending section in a much faster and more straightforward way. I do remember that it started to just slightly drag at that point, but then it was already over.

Bioshock 2 does feel like it changes a fair bit when you get close to the ending. It gets much more hectic, which doesn’t suit the weapons you have quite as well as the earlier game does (nor the low ammo pools they have; you have to switch weapons a lot. I also ran out of energy for plasmids very early on in the final fight, which hadn’t happened at any point in the game before).

It’s probably good advice for me, since the two times that I have tried to replay it on Hard, I did always get stuck on one or the other Big Daddy sooner or later. I probably will have to try to use the environment to my advantage more.

yeah, Bioshock 2 isn’t easy either. I started on Normal difficulty and after about three minutes I thought ‘uh, maybe not’, because I was getting shredded by common slicers, and changed it to Easy. Which wasn’t hard, but not always exactly easy (which also ties in well with the audio logs you find from the scientists working on the Protector project and the problems they had keeping the Big Daddies alive).
I’m not sure I’m right, but I felt like there were fewer opportunities to set up traps in Bioshock 2 than in 1.
You can do it before you harvest an ‘angel’, but especially in the later game, there are quite a few situations where you’re on the move and just run into mobs.
And if nothing else, there’s also often a lot of different directions the enemies come from, so it’s difficult to cover them all.

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Sort of debating whether to play the Bioshock 1 Remaster, but I’m not sure I feel like it.

So I played Just Cause 3 for a bit (I’ve had it for years, but never got around to it). I liked JC 2 a lot, and I don’t know if it’s just my current impatience and lack of focus, but JC 3 feels … shallow. Which is kind of an odd thing to complain about with the JC games, since depth has never been a priority for them, but it just feels like there’s something missing. All the game mechanics have been updated and, I think, generally improved, but it’s a bit like there’s less to do than in JC 2. I did play for some hours, but that was partly to see if I could beat some records people on my Steam list have set, and … that doesn’t really feel like it should be the main reason you play a game (also, I couldn’t beat them).

Not fond of having to do challenges in order to upgrade things, especially not because the game crashed the first time I was going to try to do one.
Also, car handling is atrocious. It was very bad in JC2, and they have changed it some in JC3, so now it goes from Very Bad to Bad. Which is a little less than I’d hoped for (I wouldn’t say Saints Row 3’s car handling is great, but it’s far, far better than JC 3’s).

It’s quite pretty, though, and it does feel like a fairly living world too. And the curious cover version of Prodigy’s Firestarter the game starts with is kind of nice too.

[Det.Bullock]

Odd, I don’t remember having any issues on normal with Bioshock 2.
Do play the DLC Minerva’s Den too, in many ways it’s probably the real ending of the story of Rapture.

[Similar]

Odd, I don’t remember having any issues on normal with Bioshock 2.

To be fair, I don’t think I’m looking for challenges lately as much as stories, so that’s probably part of it. But I did feel like I took a surprising amount of damage from, probably, the weakest enemies in the game (the very first splicers you meet). Certainly more than I expected.

Do play the DLC Minerva’s Den too, in many ways it’s probably the real ending of the story of Rapture.

hmm. I kind of hated it the last time I tried it, but I don’t remember why. It was pretty surprising since people generally seem very fond of it.

Edit: BTW, the Remastered collection is supposed to have some kind of virtual gallery, but I can’t figure out which of the games has it. Does anyone know?

[BillButNotBen]

It’s been a while, but I do remember feeling like the Great Reveal must be the ending, or very close to it, and then it just kept going.

Someone, a Tom, maybe Tom chick did a really cool article with a great idea for how they should have ended Bioshock 1. Actually tying the vita chambers into the narrative.

Personally, after the big reveal, I always dreamed that it could have turned into a much more open Deus Ex / Hub based game. That would probably have been a massive amount of work, but it would have been really impactful (wish that was a word!) to do a sudden genre shift that fit with the narrative shift.

[ToomuchFluffy]

yeah, Bioshock 2 isn’t easy either. I started on Normal difficulty and after about three minutes I thought ‘uh, maybe not’, because I was getting shredded by common slicers, and changed it to Easy. Which wasn’t hard, but not always exactly easy (which also ties in well with the audio logs you find from the scientists working on the Protector project and the problems they had keeping the Big Daddies alive).

I also had some trouble with it early on. I think Bioshock 1 probably has the same issue of Normal difficulty already being relatively hard in the early game before it gets easier down the line (health upgrades especially helped a lot in Bioshock 2). On Hard basic splicers and such were still fairly reasonable, but Big Daddies were a bit much. Specialized ammo helped for a while, but even though I bought as much as possible, it just wasn’t enough. And it’s not like you can dodge the damage. But I have never really tried to consistently use splicers, security bots and such against them, so it seems like there should be a good amount of leeway for improvement. Also, perhaps on Hard it actually makes sense to return to earlier areas, to revisit a Big Daddy once one has more upgrades.

[BooleanBob]

https://www.pentadact.com/2009-04-15-ending-bioshock/

Tom Francis. Tom Chick would have given the ending a snarky 0/5 review and called it a day.

[Sarfrin]

Depending on how hard it is to get hold of

Not hard at all. https://archive.org/details/007XBLA

[LTK]

I’ve been picking through a few Steam demos and I don’t get it. If you’re given the opportunity to hit Steam’s front page before your game is even released, what developer in their right mind then pads their demo with an endless introductory cutscene and dialogue box after dialogue box? What are they thinking?? I’ve played Graven and Narita Boy and in both cases it seems like they were determined to not let you have any fun whatsoever.

Graven, which presents itself as an old-school shooter by 3D Realms, opens with an overwrought cutscene about a priest and his adopted child who gets murdered blah blah blah, and then it puts you on a boat where an old man talks your ear off for five fucking minutes. He even has the fucking gall to talk about patience. When you finally get off, the game consists of hitting zombies with a club in a sewer for fifteen more goddamned minutes until you get a piddly wrist-mounted crossbow that’s needed to shoot down, I kid you not, motherfucking bats. I can’t imagine anyone comes out of this demo thinking “wow I really want to play more of that”.

Then there’s Narita Boy, a pixelly metroidvania. It adds so many filters that it ends up looking less legible than an actual CRT monitor, but whatever, if the game plays well it’s fine. But again, it opens with so. much. fucking. exposition. Once you actually have control of your character, you have to go through like five dozen dialogue boxes and platform through about ten purely decorational rooms before you even get a weapon, which takes about five hits to kill a basic enemy, and by this point all the slack I was willing to cut the game is gone.

If I was an executive at a game studio and I was shown one of these demos, I would probably fire someone. That this is the best they could do with such an opportunity is utterly depressing.

[Sarfrin]

I found a tree in Horizon Zero Dawn that had leafcutter ants crawling up and down it for no discernible reason. I can’t think of anything cooler I’ve ever found in a game.

I also had a quick go on The Falconeer. It’s an amazing achievement for a solo dev but it also shows in places. I spent a good 5 minutes trying to land after the opening mission because it gives you absolutely no indication of how to do it. Or it does (apparently) by showing you the button in the very bottom left corner of the screen, welll away from any HUD elements and the thing you’re looking at as you try to land. It doesn’t tell you what the land button is in the controls and it also doesn’t tell you that you have to press the button before you get too near to the perch or it won’t work. I’ll persevere, but I damn near refunded it out of sheer frustration at something that should be very simple to show the player.

[Similar]

Do play the DLC Minerva’s Den too, in many ways it’s probably the real ending of the story of Rapture.

Trying to replay it to see if I like it better this time (not sure I finished it the first time, either), but it’s extremely crashy. The remasters have a tendency to crash a fair bit, but Minerva’s Den seems to be especially bad (and I apparently don’t have it nearly as bad as some people, even). Saving every two minutes gets pretty frustrating because I do want to see how it ends.
It’s really shabby work of 2K (maybe that’s the reason you get the original game too if you buy the remaster).

So far I don’t hate it, but I do think it feels a lot like a mod by someone who just got the toolkit for the game.

[Baines]

I’ve been picking through a few Steam demos and I don’t get it. If you’re given the opportunity to hit Steam’s front page before your game is even released, what developer in their right mind then pads their demo with an endless introductory cutscene and dialogue box after dialogue box? What are they thinking??

The easiest way to create a demo is to just package the beginning of your game as-is.

Arguably the issue is more why developers pad their games in general in such fashion. Why does an action game start with 10 minutes of movies and dialogues, followed by 10 minutes of prep and setup before you are ever really allowed to “play” the game. Why do some games have cutscenes between levels that are twice as long as the levels themselves?