Joline
Registered: 01/09/10
Posts: 20
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| Posted 01/09/10 at 03:03 PM | Reply with quote #1 |
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| Discuss the Fort Frolic section of the game here. |
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John
Registered: 01/08/10
Posts: 2
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| Posted 01/14/10 at 11:40 PM | Reply with quote #2 |
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This has been my favorite level so far (I'm doing my first playthrough, which I mentioned in another post). I was just starting to get bored with the game. Nothing really ever seemed to change. The enemies were always the same, they always shouted the same lines, they had the same attacks, they wore the same masks. The art style has been the same throughout the entire game, with only minor variations in the setting. Each new character acts the same as the last one it seems. So I'm ready for a change.
Well, Fort Frolic isn't the change I wanted, but it's just as good. While it continues to repeat content I've already seen it freshens it up. The art has been my favorite thing about BioShock, so it makes sense to have the level center around an insane artist. Suddenly all of bizarre details of the environments make sense in the bigger picture, and become more frightening. This was also the first level where I didn't encounter all of the little sisters before finishing all of my quests. So I had to take time afterwards to explore and find them myself, which I enjoyed a lot.
My experience so far has been an inverse bell curve. The beginning was excellent, but as time progressed I gradually got bored with the unchanging content and themes. But now everything's exciting again, not as exciting as it was at the beginning, but I'm enjoying it much more than I did in the middle. I hope my enjoyment continues to increase, I guess I'll soon find out!.
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CrashT
Registered: 08/19/08
Posts: 327
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| Posted 01/23/10 at 07:29 PM | Reply with quote #3 |
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An early version of this level was used for the very first footage of BioShock released, so for me this has always been the iconic BioShock level. When I think of BioShock in my head I'm seeing this level.
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MostEisley
Registered: 01/06/10
Posts: 18
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| Posted 01/25/10 at 09:44 AM | Reply with quote #4 |
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Agreed. ^^^^
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Nelson
Registered: 03/18/09
Posts: 95
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| Posted 01/25/10 at 12:47 PM | Reply with quote #5 |
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| This level is my favourite, too. Mostly because I love Sander Cohen's character. I've always been fond of the histrionic homosexual stereotype when played well and without malice. I'm hoping to get this far in playing through the game again, but honestly the Farmer's Market has me down. |
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Loberto
Registered: 01/14/10
Posts: 10
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| Posted 02/04/10 at 03:58 PM | Reply with quote #6 |
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I would just like to go on record stating that "Cohen's Materpiece" (from the soundtrack) is an excellent piece of music. It makes me pause to listen to it whenever it rotates through on iTunes. That is all.
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oozo
Moderator - Another World
Registered: 03/04/09
Posts: 95
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| Posted 02/10/10 at 05:14 AM | Reply with quote #7 |
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Hm, looks like we were loosing a lot of the posters and/or players to the sequel already - too bad, because for me, it's still the first play-through and the reflection of the first half of the game really profited from the insightful posts.
Well, some impressions and random thoughts about Fort Frolic:
Of course, it's hard to deny the fact that this is both the best and most iconic of all levels (so far? or in the whole game?).
Jordan Thomas' name has already been mentioned somewhere in the forums, and even though it seems to be unclear as to what and how much exactly he contributed to the Fort, it's clear that the man responsible for The Cradle (to this date one of the best levels in any First Person-game) hasn't lost his touch.
Even though it's well explained on a narrative level, I can't help thinking that they pretty much lampshade the fact that the level is unique, and intentionally so: Being cut off from the ramblings of Atlas and Ryan places the level in a world all on it's own. The fact that I still got the impression of only seeing bits and pieces, but never the whole things story-wise is less frustrating in this light, too.
Heck, I can't even help thinking that the whole purpose of getting that far was to see that level, in all its plushy glory.
A thought taken from Destructiod: it is Rapture's leisure zone, and as such, it has all the freedom in the world to get rid of functionality, of the mundane every-dayness of fisheries etc. (in this sense, it makes of course sense to let it be followed up by the factory-vibe of Hephaestus, even though the latter can't but feel extremely pale in comparison).
Still, they made a brilliant move in creating a villain that feels both like the embodiment of this world and like somebody who has shaped this world to his own musing. Sander Cohen is very much a cartoony character - the exploding piano could come both from the Batman's Joker and Wile E. Coyote. (Looking over the Destructiod screen-shots, I can't help feeling bad about not having been able to take in all the luscious glory of the scene - I mean, I have adapted some sort of stealth-behavior where I tried to make sense of the scene from afar, so I could neither make out the dynamite nor do I remember the dancing shadows on the curtains... there's so much going on, but it's also the first level I actively wish to play again.)
Or more precisely: Sander Cohen couldn't be anything other than high-level camp, and they played that card brilliantly. When he dancingly walks down the stairs in the grand finale, with all the lights and waltz music on (while simultaneously sending out the Splicers to get you) - that's one of the great moments of videogame-history, I'm tempted to say.
All the better for having infused him nonetheless with a healthy dose of creepiness, up to the point where it was completely out of question for me to kill him at the end of the level - not actually so much because he was a sick bastard, but because he put tasks on me that where obviously wrong, but that I couldn't second guess at any point: because the game didn't want me to do so.
My enjoyment of the whole Cohen-thing was not even diminished by the fact that I didn't really get why he wanted all those people dead - guess they were former disciples-turned-doubters or anything, but really: for me, the thought of Cohen doing something "pragmatic" is out of question, so I guessed he did it just to watch me kill people, because, you know, it's a sight to behold.
That said, there were still details that clicked not that well into place at times:
I mean, why can the guy in the frozen tunnel deep-freeze me without any trouble at all in the beginning but still goes down with two hits of my almighty wrench only seconds after he has given me the time to thaw again?
...I guess that's a problem for all FPS (or any game which let's you power up yourself sufficiently): it's getting damn hard to have boss-fights that are not anti-climatic after a while.
Either you send ridiculously powerful Eldritch Abomination after the hero, or you risk him taking out your guy with ease - especially when they are, as in Bioshock, more or less human. For a while now, all sub- and real bosses where just a matter of infusing 3-4 health packs into myself and fire whatever weapon I happened to carry in that very instant. It's more chaotic and less satisfactory than I could wish for.
At this point, I'm playing the wrench-monkey cart: hiding via Natural Camouflage till the splicers turn away from my, then going after them via the Wrench Lurker and taking them out via my more-than-I-can-count wrench-power ups. Heck, even if can't take them out this way, attacking me is pretty much suicidal because of the electric sparks shooting out of me when hit... it turned the whole gameplay on the head for me, but I really prefer playing that way - even though even waves of Splicers stop losing their dread-factor.
I also happened to take out one of Cohen's targets unintentionally, so the back-story for the artists brawl with him were lost on me completely (at least it was not a game-breaker or something)...
One thing that still has me jumping, every single time: the statues coming back to life. Or, for that matter, the Splicers playing dead in the next level... so cheap a horror-trick, and yet, so efficient...
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Bus
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 164
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| Posted 02/10/10 at 07:01 PM | Reply with quote #8 |
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Quote: Hm, looks like we were loosing a lot of the posters and/or players to the sequel already.
In my case, it's the sheer glut of new games. When will game companies space out releases to allow games to breath? Between Mass Effect 2 (still haven't finished), Bioshock 2, and Heavy Rain plus my social multiplayer commitments, it's like a second job staying up to date with the gaming world to avoid losing out on the initial conversation.
Quote: I mean, why can the guy in the frozen tunnel deep-freeze me without any trouble at all in the beginning but still goes down with two hits of my almighty wrench only seconds after he has given me the time to thaw again?
I sorta ignore the loss of agency here because I a) like how close Finnegan gets to my character and the way the scene unfolds and b) I like the anticipation of walking down that hallway of frozen splicers not knowing which is him. They probably could have done this better though. It does seem odd that he would freeze you, let you thaw, and then hide in plain sight. But then, he lives in Rapture and is thus pretty crazy.
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