Originally my first big post on game design was going to be about the rule mechanics of Rogue- Likes, but I don’t know when I started to think about BioShock again and I’m still waiting for my copy of Baroque to arrive. For those that don’t know BioShock was a FPS released last summer and pretty much gained the praise of every game reviewer , and woe to the people who didn’t like it. A few months ago an article on BioShock was posted on Eurogamer.net defending the game against its critics, well it’s my turn to attack.
General impressions on Bioshock fall into two camps, people who were swept in by the story and visuals, and those who got hung up on the gameplay. By now you should have guessed that I’m in the latter. BioShock to me is just an average shooter with shiny visuals and a dark story .
The gameplay of BioShock quite frankly fails to impress, the gun mechanics feel straight out of Quake and I never felt any weight to these weapons. Contrast to Stalker one of my favorite shooters of 07, when your using an assault rifle it feels like your using an assault rifle. Shooting enemies elicited the same responses we’ve seen in every FPS to date. For once I want enemies to get stunned slightly if shot in their limbs, or momentary stop when a shot gun connects. The plasmids (aka magic spells) of BioShock never seemed to reach a state of being powerful, and some were simply useless compared to other ones.
I’m going to stop things here for abit to discuss one of the comments fanboys of Bioshock used regarding plasmids. The same statement I heard over and over again that it’s up to the player to use multiple plasmids and to limit themselves on purpose for fun. NO, NO, NO, one of the basic rules of balance on game design is that there should never be a single item that is always better then everything else.
Take the fire plasmid of BioShock for instance, this attack will cause burn damage and distract enemies once they have been hit by it. Another plasmid that lets you shoot bees does minor damage and has a small chance of distracting enemies. Now tell me if you were in the same situation as BioShock, which one would you have ready to use at all times?
I would have preferred customizable plasmids, take the fire plasmid again. I would have liked the ability to make it travel along ground , or explode in a huge fireball once it hits. Or allow me to create flames around me. Many fanboys say that it’s up to the fans to create the fun of using plasmids, but that job is for the designers. Psi-Ops gave the player multiple powers and allowed us to use them anyway we choose. Whether it was using telekinesis to use a soldier as a bullet shield, or mind control someone. General plasmids that could then be fully customized would have been better, or keep the ones in now, and make the upgraded versions truly different with each upgrade.
Then there are a lot of little things in Bioshock that just add up to more then just annoyances. Alot of these have been mentioned on Zero Punctuation and more humorous then I could do. The one I’m going to be discussing is the interface. Bioshock’s interface doesn’t do the job quite frankly. Why can’t I set up which weapons are next to each other when using the mouse wheel? Is it really that game breaking if I want to keep the shotgun and rocket launcher next to each other? There is no easy way to check on what items , plasmids, and ammo you have on you. I did not like the plasmid/gun system, in which you can switch between guns and plasmids to use. I never got to the point that I could pull off crazy plasmid/ gun combos. Such as using the cyclone trap and freezing an enemy in mid air. The problem with the interface may not be a huge deal for most gamers, but I find I get hung up on bad interfaces alot, which explains why I’m not playing any of the Dominions series.
Now for the biggest issue game balance, in which BioShock falls right on it’s face. For those that didn’t play this, Bioshock does not have a permanent death system instead when your health hits 0 you are sent to the nearest re spawn chamber. The problem with this system is that reduces any sense of tension or need for skill to play BioShock. It’s hard to become scared at mutant splicers when death just means a 1 minute run back to the fight. By balancing the game on this notion, actual game balance is thrown out the window. There is no need to see if an encounter is fun or not when the player can repeat it X amount of times until they pass it. A patch allowed you play the game without the re spawn chambers, but the damage was done at that point. With every fight, encounter, and enemy balanced towards this notion (with exception to the final fight) just removing this ability isn’t enough. I can’t remember the # of times I walked into a room when a gun turret set up way in the distance turned on and killed me before I could react. There are several set fights which are more about getting a few shots off, then dieing and coming back repeating the process until the end. The first half of Bioshock is pretty good, then enemies seemed to have been buffed up and bullets no longer phase them. When a shotgun only does about 1/4 off of someones health in point blank range there is a problem with balance.
If you haven’t noticed yet, I have not once mentioned the story in my critique of BioShock. I believe that gameplay should be solid. One of my favorite games was Killer 7, a game that had an amazing story line and very minimalist gameplay. The reason I’m not knocking Killer 7 is that the gameplay was self explanatory. I didn’t feel that when I die it was the fault of a bad interface or crappy mechanics. Fighting in BioShock reached a state of repetition and the majority of the fights started to blur into each other. The best moments relating to story in Bioshock was the entire Fort Frolic section where we basically saw the culmination of the madness that is now in the minds of everyone in Rapture.
I guess maybe I was expecting too much from BioShock, I was hoping for Stalker meets Psi-Ops which I have been working on an idea along those lines but that’s for another blog entry.
