Amoveo
Registered: 01/26/09
Posts: 68
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| Posted 02/10/10 at 02:45 PM | Reply with quote #1 |
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More than the original I feel like I am a scavenger, a looter. This could be just me altering my playstyle, but I find myself more desperately searching every nook and cranny frequently finding myself full of ammo.
To clear out my resources (and thus not waste things around) I then search out little sisters and engage in resource draining show downs partially so I can pick up more ammo.
Is anyone else having similar thoughts about the resources in this game or are some of you finding yourself wanting for things?
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LouisF
Registered: 07/07/09
Posts: 117
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| Posted 02/10/10 at 04:47 PM | Reply with quote #2 |
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I have elaborated on the scavenging in another thread so I won't reiterate, but so far it hasn't bothered me too much. Perhaps because, for now at least, the resources remain necessary, as is juggling between the various tools ; it's the good kind of balancing act. Now if only they were distributed in rarer but larger quantities...
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callguinness
Moderator
Registered: 02/28/09
Posts: 36
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| Posted 02/11/10 at 01:01 PM | Reply with quote #3 |
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The "consumables" (cigs, chips, coffee, alcohol, etc) serve absolutely no purpose and should have been cut from the game.
I wish splicers didn't drop anything, actually. Ammo should be more scarce, at least on Normal. The game doesn't know whether it wants to be survival horror or straight up action. |
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LouisF
Registered: 07/07/09
Posts: 117
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| Posted 02/11/10 at 01:03 PM | Reply with quote #4 |
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"The game doesn't know whether it wants to be survival horror or straight up action."
Damn right.
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BinarySwan
Registered: 07/05/09
Posts: 39
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| Posted 02/12/10 at 01:22 AM | Reply with quote #5 |
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Quote: The "consumables" (cigs, chips, coffee, alcohol, etc) serve absolutely no purpose and should have been cut from the game.
I disagree on this point as they provide some clutter that adds a bit of extra body to the world around you although not as effectively as Fallout 3. They need not have a gameplay purpose but if a player were so inclined they could easily load up gene tonics that maximize the benefit of these items, providing a more readily available source of health and eve.
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callguinness
Moderator
Registered: 02/28/09
Posts: 36
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| Posted 02/12/10 at 12:32 PM | Reply with quote #6 |
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Yes, of course they're good props. I would just argue that no player would be so inclined to rely on them as anything more than a tedious way to regenerate little bits of health between battles. There's a good reason most action games have auto-recharging health now.
There are too many actual good tonics and somewhat limited space to equip them that I don't know why anyone would ever use the one that gives you a food bonus. If you're low on health you're also going to head to a vending or med machine, not some ashtray that may or may not have a cake that restore 1/30th of your health.
Also, I am in an airtight helmet, yet 10 seconds after emerging through an airlock from the ocean floor I'm munching on chips and smoking a cigarette. That's some great immersion-enhancing, roleplay enabling right there... |
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chesh
Registered: 01/20/09
Posts: 8
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| Posted 02/12/10 at 12:41 PM | Reply with quote #7 |
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I'm playing on hard and find myself leaving food alone, and noting where it is -- if I can take a few minutes and get half my health back, for free, rather than using a first aid kid, I'm much less likely to die in the next big fight.
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Tellurian
Registered: 02/13/10
Posts: 13
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| Posted 02/13/10 at 04:46 PM | Reply with quote #8 |
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I too had the impression that this time around the game was more about resource management than before.
Still, being low on ammo never really was a problem. And initiating "Sister Protects" could oftentimes actually result with MORE ammo / supplies than before.
In general I would say that the game was quite consciously more actiony than the first part. Sister Protects, Big Daddy / Sister fights serving a bit as the "30 seconds of fun over and over again" here.
Which is not to say that those parts worked in any way disconnected from the rest of the experience of the "explore'm'up".
The diverse munition types of the game come in such gratuitous supply that I oftentimes found myself hounding over the sight of a Sister Protect again and again for scrapes and leftovers of ammo that I had in sufficient supply by the last time of hounding through.
Especially drill fuel...
Rewards wise, audio diaries and rare gene tonics of course are the meat of the exploring part. Ammo and supply caches too of course, but since there never really was a huge shortage of anything, discovering yet another cache somewhere didn't serve much as an reward.
Unlike the level design itself oftentimes... Environmental storytelling at it's best.
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lucasrizoli
Registered: 09/15/09
Posts: 11
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| Posted 02/14/10 at 09:05 PM | Reply with quote #9 |
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Quote: Originally Posted by callguinness
I would just argue that no player would be so inclined to rely on them as anything more than a tedious way to regenerate little bits of health between battles. There's a good reason most action games have auto-recharging health now.
I dunno. I don't like auto-recharging health: it's something for nothing. Though the consumables might not be the best way of doing it, there should be some way for the player to gain small amounts of HP without just sitting and waiting. (Though there is a tonic that allows the player to gain HP and EVE while sitting still in water.)
Quote: Originally Posted by callguinness
Also, I am in an airtight helmet, yet 10 seconds after emerging through an airlock from the ocean floor I'm munching on chips and smoking a cigarette. That's some great immersion-enhancing, roleplay enabling right there...
Yeah, that is odd. It didn't really strike me until you pointed it out.
(Also, weren't the big daddies' organs supposed to be fused to their suits? Was there not a diary from Suchong that explained this in the first BioShock? How was my character able to remove his helmet and shoot himself in the head? And why didn't Lamb use another control-big-daddy plasmid on me later in the game?)
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LouisF
Registered: 07/07/09
Posts: 117
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| Posted 02/14/10 at 09:17 PM | Reply with quote #10 |
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Quote: Was there not a diary from Suchong that explained this in the first BioShock?
Exactly, and that's what made me feel so odd about playing dress-up in the first game, which really seemed to be there for the "cool" factor more than anything else. So out of place.
As for the shooting... I don't know, I assumed that it was "possible" (if not probable) that a single pistol bullet could have reached the skull straight through the helmet. It's still a stretch though. And pseudo-science is always relative.
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CrashJordan
Registered: 02/14/10
Posts: 6
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| Posted 02/14/10 at 10:56 PM | Reply with quote #11 |
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I'm exactly the same, I search every desk, draw, box, or corner everywhere I go, looting everything. I think that's half the fun in Bioshock, there's so much to see, do and gather, you're always entertained.
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Bus
Registered: 08/26/08
Posts: 164
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| Posted 02/15/10 at 01:52 AM | Reply with quote #12 |
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The breadth of the weapons works against my enjoyment. I find one gun and just stick with it. For me, it was the rivet gun because I liked the aesthetics of it. And so, I constantly found myself running low on ammo for it while I also had a huge exhaustive supply of fifty different other types of munitions that I would have gladly given up to be able to stockpile more rivets.
I don't know how much it applies to this topic but I had way too much damn ADAM. True, I "dealt" with every Little Sister and always did the maximum amount of gathering but I ended the game with 600 ADAM still left with nothing interesting to spend it on. And that was after buying every plasmid/gene tonic slot and filling every gene tonic slot with some gene tonics in reserve and buying all the health/eve upgrades. I was truly taken aback by this glut of resources I had received.
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LouisF
Registered: 07/07/09
Posts: 117
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| Posted 02/15/10 at 02:22 AM | Reply with quote #13 |
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I have just finished the game (liked the ending), and that last section was a bit of a drag. Not that it should have been a bore to slog through (the skirmishes were enjoyably savage and straightforward), but taking the time to see and search everything just out of principle when I was clearly loaded up to the rim with resources basically amounted to a waste of time while I should have been enjoying the final sprint to the finish. It just didn't feel like a climax, but I can't fault the game for my self-imposed compulsive behavior. Second playthrough will definitely be quicker, brasher, all about dealing with the readily available materials, and I shall adjust my "role-playing" accordingly.
One last thing I have to criticize about scavenging is how it can sometimes spoil the thrill of exploration not only by distracting from the real highlights of the environments (the death scenes, the shrines...), but by plainly having you stare at the ground about 50% of the time. This was clearly brought to light by briefly playing as a Little Sister: this short segment is exhilarating, not only because of its fantastic art direction and broader significance, but because all the information is presented clearly, in short bursts, at eye level. Playing the rest of the game, one might get the feeling of having to wrestle with the protagonist's physical proportions and kleptomaniac tendencies to access some of the most valuable content, and that can sometimes impede on its dramatic impact. This is clearly the sole point of view of someone who enjoys a more contemplative approach from time to time, and probably not the type of player that 2K had in mind when designing the game, but the amount of deeply-rooted obstacles standing in the way of someone who would like to fully drink in this impossibly detailed world remains astonishing.
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lucasrizoli
Registered: 09/15/09
Posts: 11
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| Posted 02/15/10 at 03:49 AM | Reply with quote #14 |
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I agree with you on collecting while playing a little sister, LouisF. That section felt cheapened somehow by the little stashes of money.
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