[Kerr Avon]

HulkNukem, on 01 April 2018 - 02:16 PM, said:

Because it was more of the same and shoehorned in characters it pretended always mattered yet never had a single mention in the previous game.

"More of the same" is generally what fans of a first game want. Or rather, they want more of the same but with improvements and enhancements, which wa what Bioshock 2 provided.

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That and the fact playing as a Big Daddy was an absolute joke until the very end when you are fully upgraded.

You mostly didn't feel particularly like a Big Daddy, true, but it wasn't jarring enough to take you out of the game. And when you saw your shadow it did remind you that you were a (early) Big Daddy. Though I was disappointed that when you fall from a height onto a splicer, you don't kill then, even though you clearly do this in the game's opening video.

I was more disappointed that your time out on the ocean floor was so short. You only get to go out twice, and both times it's in a relatively narrow corridor, area-wise.

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It might have the most refined gameplay of the entire series, but the whole thing feels more like an expansion pack than a full fledged sequel, something Infinite, while still disappointing in its own way, managed to be.

If Bioshock 2 felt like an expansion pack, then surely the same is true of Doom 2, Crysis 2, Banjo Tooie, and many other games that were similar enough to their predecessors to merit inclusion in your definition? I never thought of B2 as an expansion pak, as it was full length and built upon the original in so many ways.

[necroslut]

Kerr Avon, on 04 April 2018 - 11:21 AM, said:

If Bioshock 2 felt like an expansion pack, then surely the same is true of Doom 2, Crysis 2, Banjo Tooie, and many other games that were similar enough to their predecessors to merit inclusion in your definition? I never thought of B2 as an expansion pak, as it was full length and built upon the original in so many ways.

Not that I've played Bioshock 2 , but Doom II does feel like an expansion pack to Doom, although a great one. And IIRC Banjo Tooie was widely criticized for feeling just like that when it came out.

Quake is pretty in its own way, but what always struck me as strange (back in the 90's) was people who were so impressed with the realism of Quake 1 and 2 - to me they always looked like Lego figures with confetti blood. Still looks exactly like I remember it looking back then. It works for Quake, but it doesn't work nearly as well for the before-mentioned Sin (which is a much better game in my opinion).

[HulkNukem]

Kerr Avon, on 04 April 2018 - 11:21 AM, said:

"More of the same" is generally what fans of a first game want. Or rather, they want more of the same but with improvements and enhancements, which wa what Bioshock 2 provided.

The reason more of the same didn't work for Bioshock 2 was that the first one told a complete story start to finish. Bioshock 2 extends it out in ways it didn't need it and really felt more like retreading. It would've been 1000x better if they had the game start just before the civil war and take place during as it would've given fresh new perspectives of Rapture, like how Burial at Sea 1 did it. Instead it takes place even later than BS1, but somehow even with all the water flooding in and all the damage that happened during BS1 and since, Rapture still has power and function even when 99% of the people you meet are completely psychotic.
Bioshock 1 also has shortcomings you wouldn't notice on a first playthrough. You notice these cracks more when you replay it or when you jump into Bioshock 2. The biggest one, and I hate admitting this because Bioshock is in my top 3 favorite games ever, is that the gameplay simply isn't all that great. It is totally serviceable and that is all. Bioshock 2 adds onto it in good fun ways, the new splicers, big daddy, and weapons are great, but they are still part of a system that wasn't great on its own to begin with. Going through it all for another full length game can drag on you. This is why Minerva's Den is so perfect, a small standalone Bioshock game you can finish in a couple hours and you'll see more people praise Minerva's Den than they do Bioshock 2.

Kerr Avon, on 04 April 2018 - 11:21 AM, said:

You mostly didn't feel particularly like a Big Daddy, true, but it wasn't jarring enough to take you out of the game. And when you saw your shadow it did remind you that you were a (early) Big Daddy. Though I was disappointed that when you fall from a height onto a splicer, you don't kill then, even though you clearly do this in the game's opening video.

The Big Daddy thing is disappointing because I remember reading articles and interviews beforehand and they talked about how much being a Big Daddy changed the experience. Things like lone splicers might run away from you because they are terrified yet it really never happens or how the drill is satisfying yet you can only use it for a few seconds before you need to scavenge for fuel until you upgrade it later in the game. You also still move and jump like Jack did in BS1, and besides some story elements requiring you to be a Big Daddy you might as well have been just playing as another regular guy. It doesn't feel as tacked on as the Big Daddy sequence from the end of Bioshock 1, but you still don't ever really feel like one of those giant badasses until the very end.

Kerr Avon, on 04 April 2018 - 11:21 AM, said:

I was more disappointed that your time out on the ocean floor was so short. You only get to go out twice, and both times it's in a relatively narrow corridor, area-wise.

The ocean floor stuff is some of my favorite moments from BS2. Really relaxing with no threat so you can just take it all in.

Kerr Avon, on 04 April 2018 - 11:21 AM, said:

If Bioshock 2 felt like an expansion pack, then surely the same is true of Doom 2, Crysis 2, Banjo Tooie, and many other games that were similar enough to their predecessors to merit inclusion in your definition? I never thought of B2 as an expansion pak, as it was full length and built upon the original in so many ways.

Expansion Pack might've been the wrong wording; what I mean is it feels less like an official game and more like a side story by a different developer. Something like Gears of War Judgment, Doom 64, Duke Manhattan Project, Fallout New Vegas, that kinda stuff. (Although a lot of people consider New Vegas better than it's predecessor, thats beside the point)

Don't get me wrong, I like Bioshock 2 and recognize it has the best gameplay of the series, but it's always going to be the black sheep of the family.

[Zaxx]

HulkNukem, on 04 April 2018 - 12:09 PM, said:

It would've been 1000x better if they had the game start just before the civil war and take place during as it would've given fresh new perspectives of Rapture

Bioshock 1 takes place during the civil war so why would you need another game about that subject? I agree on that Burial at Sea was interesting because you got to see how it all started (with lots of plot holes ) but the thing is that the story in the original game really covers everything so even that was unnecessary.

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The biggest one, and I hate admitting this because Bioshock is in my top 3 favorite games ever, is that the gameplay simply isn't all that great.

Play Bioshock 1 Remastered on Survivor difficulty (that's the only version that has this mode apart from the PS3 version), that forces you to experiment with the game's systems, basically it makes your build more important and that's when you'll find out just how great the gameplay is. Sure, the gunplay itself is not excellent but really that was never the point and once you try Survivor you'll understand that. I recommend that setting to everyone who thinks that Bioshock's gameplay is lackluster because just like the 1999 mode of Bioshock Infinite making the game a lot more challenging fixes a lot of its issues. The balance still won't be perfect because nothing can stop telekinesis from being OP as fuck and the wrench build will still make you a killing machine by the end of the game but hey, you can't have everything.

Bioshock 1 and Bioshock Infinite has one big problem when it comes to gameplay: accessibility. Contrary to System Shock 2 the Bioshock games were designed in a way that even a brain dead monkey will be able to complete them on lower difficulties without putting much though into the actual RPG part. Once you take that accessibility away from the player by raising the difficulty to the point where good and bad decisions in character building matter the gameplay starts to shine.

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The Big Daddy thing is disappointing because I remember reading articles and interviews beforehand and they talked about how much being a Big Daddy changed the experience.

It doesn't feel as tacked on as the Big Daddy sequence from the end of Bioshock 1, but you still don't ever really feel like one of those giant badasses until the very end.

You get the power fantasy of being a badass Big Daddy from the game but the thing is that Bioshock 2 is still a Shock game at its heart. That means that it's quite system heavy for a "badass FPS" so if you want to feel like a badass you have to act like one: you have to come up with a good build and you have to use your arsenal effectively. Once you figure out how to do that you'll be an unstoppable beast mowing down splicers and big sisters.

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how the drill is satisfying yet you can only use it for a few seconds before you need to scavenge for fuel until you upgrade it later in the game.

Even without fuel the drill is a useful melee weapon and you can get the drill charge very early in the game. After that it's ownage:

The drill charge is the soul of the combat system because it gives you opportunities to deal good damage while it's also a great tool for simply moving around quickly. Combining it with firearms and plasmids is the key to being awesome at the game really. It's like Infinite's sky-hook.

Honestly I think there is one big flaw connected to Bioshock 2: the way it was released. Instead of focusing on the game's mediocre multiplayer portion 2K should have shipped the game with the Protector Trials DLC because that piece of content quickly shows you the depths of the combat system by giving you an easy to access challenge mode with clear combat goals. For example if you see a challenge that says "complete this trial by using only the drill" then you'll start experimenting and eventually learn how to use that damn drill properly instead of just walking up to splicers and drilling at them slooowly. Did you see in that video how little fuel it takes to murder the fuck out of splicers with that drill charge (and btw. one of the splicers ran the fuck away)?

[OpenMaw]

Blue, on 03 April 2018 - 12:40 PM, said:

I was struck hard when watching the video you linked to how much better Duke 3D looked compared to Sin when ignoring technical mechanics. It's not that I didn't already think that, but to see the video flip between the two so quickly it reinforced how timeless Duke is vs Sin.

While SIN certainly has it's charm I think it's fair to say that just about all the games form that transition point either fall on the "Look really good and hold up quite well" or "Oh my God whatisthat!" side of the line with pretty clear points of distinction. Just comparing all the N64 low-poly first person and third person platformers to their 2D counter-parts, which were at the time being criticized for being technical dinosaurs, they came out very much on top of the totem pole.

Blue, on 03 April 2018 - 12:40 PM, said:

That said, I like that a person could take Far Cry 5 and make a "Quake" style mod if they wanted and there are very clear signifiers that no game since, even Quake 2, have even tried to co-opt. I do think Quake's style is a bit timeless primarily due to circumstance and limitation... but you'd be able to make a game 100 years from now using art inspired by Quake and it would stand out as a Quake inspired project which is a hard thing to accomplish artistically.

That would be a helluva thing to see...

[Kerr Avon]

One thing about Bioshock 2 that disappointed me was how late in the game it was when you acquired the Drill Specialist tonic. This tonic basically makes you rely upon your drill and the plasmids, as it makes your plasmids use much less Eve, but you can't use your ballistic or explosive weapons (the tonic is optional, of course, so you needn't install it if you don't want it). It's an interesting slightly-different way to play the game, but you only gain when you're about two thirds of the way through the game. I wish it was much sooner in the game, though of course it would have to be balanced out as if it was too early in the game then you wouldn't have good enough plasmids to compensate for the loss of the early weapons.

Or maybe instead of being a tonic, it could have been an option when you start a NEW GAME PLUS, so that you started with the same plasmids that you finished the game with beforehand, and were unable to use any weapons in the game. It would damage the story and game-world logic a little, since any story references to you gaining a new (at a given point in the story) plasmid wouldn't make sense if you already had that plasmid, but it would have been a nice addition, a different way to play the game, and if you chose to play this way then you could just ignore the times the story contradicted your experience.

And one thing I wondered about Bioshock 2 was how difficult might it be for players new to the franchise (i.e. someone who played B2 without having first played the earlier game) to grasp the concepts of Rapture, and that city's ways, inhabitants, and situations. The first game has that wonderful scene when you head towards Rapture, and see this beautiful (well, mostly beautiful) underwater city, and you see the old-time style video/slideshow of Andrew Ryan's speech about why and how Rapture came to be. But to people who play the second game first, do they realise that Rapture is (or rather was) a fully functioning city full of tens of thousands of people, and intended to last for decades or even centuries, and not just, say, an underwater holiday spot or research centre that people could enter and leave whenever they choose?

Regarding older games' graphics, it is often the case that 3D games age quicker and more badly than 2D games. Especially in the Playstion/N64 era, when texture-mapped polygonal in-game characters were becoming more common. But there's no constant correlation between aged graphics and aged gameplay. Lots of old games nowadays look terrible, but play great, and vice-versa.

[Zaxx]

Kerr Avon, on 05 April 2018 - 10:16 AM, said:

And one thing I wondered about Bioshock 2 was how difficult might it be for players new to the franchise (i.e. someone who played B2 without having first played the earlier game) to grasp the concepts of Rapture, and that city's ways, inhabitants, and situations.

Well, playing Bioshock 2 before the first game is a big no-no since it spoils the whole story and you also lose the context to a lot of interesting bits and pieces. Jack is actually a pretty important part of Bioshock 2 in the sense that his actions had an effect on people, for example Lamb names him as the primary inspiration behind her idea of getting rid of free will and individuality.

As for understanding Rapture you really don't need that part since the Rapture in Bioshock 2 is even less of a society than it was in the first game. It's just a bunch of splicers and a few kidnapped children to serve as supply for Lamb's experiments.

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Regarding older games' graphics, it is often the case that 3D games age quicker and more badly than 2D games. Especially in the Playstion/N64 era, when texture-mapped polygonal in-game characters were becoming more common. But there's no constant correlation between aged graphics and aged gameplay. Lots of old games nowadays look terrible, but play great, and vice-versa.

Just to stay with Bioshock 1 and 2 for a second thank God for the remasters because the PC versions of those games aged awfully thanks to their subpar original PC ports. Especially Bioshock 2 got the short end of the stick since it had a ton of bugs along with GfWL (even mouse aiming felt a bit janky) and really the original release just felt felt dated with its lackluster texture resolution and 30 fps physics. BS2 Remastered finally looks and plays nice but of course 2K just had to fuck up the release and it took them almost a year to fix it up so the remasters have a pretty bad reputation on Steam.

[OpenMaw]

You know what I want?

That music. I want that music in a really nice high quality recording. The version we have lying around is really compressed. I'd love to hear someone play this theme with an orchestra again. How badass was Duke Nukem that he had an actual orchestra playing his theme?

So awesome.

[Steveeeie]

Commando Nukem, on 06 April 2018 - 08:37 PM, said:

You know what I want?

That music. I want that music in a really nice high quality recording. The version we have lying around is really compressed. I'd love to hear someone play this theme with an orchestra again. How badass was Duke Nukem that he had an actual orchestra playing his theme?

So awesome.

Man, if this version was played during the intro screens of the 2011 release I think I would have crapped my pants and shed a tear at the same time.

[spessu_sb]

Commando Nukem, on 06 April 2018 - 08:37 PM, said:

outube.com/watch?v=TDlB2P1leRM[/media]

You know what I want?

That music. I want that music in a really nice high quality recording. The version we have lying around is really compressed. I'd love to hear someone play this theme with an orchestra again. How badass was Duke Nukem that he had an actual orchestra playing his theme?

So awesome.

That sure is an epic theme. I don't have to even click the link to play and be a be able to hear the music inside my head. But what I would be more happy with, would be if they "professionalized" the 1998 version instead as that to me is the best DNF theme yet.

[mrDUKE!zone]

spessu_sb, on 10 April 2018 - 09:20 AM, said:

That sure is an epic theme. I don't have to even click the link to play and be a be able to hear the music inside my head. But what I would be more happy with, would be if they "professionalized" the 1998 version instead as that to me is the best DNF theme yet.

Bump

[BoowHow]

mrDUKE!zone, on 20 April 2018 - 06:42 PM, said:

Bump

Was this necessary?

[mrDUKE!zone]

BoowHow, on 20 April 2018 - 11:17 PM, said:

Was this necessary?

yup

[OpenMaw]

As with all things Duke Nukem Forever, this is thread is perpetually stuck in limbo. That is, until a mediocre release occurs.

[Zaxx]

Commando Nukem, on 22 April 2018 - 01:14 PM, said:

As with all things Duke Nukem Forever, this is thread is perpetually stuck in limbo. That is, until a mediocre release occurs.

Brace yourself for Gearbox's "collection".

[OpenMaw]

Zaxx, on 22 April 2018 - 05:39 PM, said:

Brace yourself for Gearbox's "collection".

I'm braced like an old man taking a nap.

[Altered Reality]

Zaxx, on 22 April 2018 - 05:39 PM, said:

Brace yourself for Gearbox's "collection".

I'm not expecting it to ever happen. Randy knows that releasing anything Duke-related would be akin to wear a sign that says "ATTACK ME". Sure, what he says may be different, but it's actions that matter. Remember when he promised that Duke Nukem 1 and 2 would be back on GOG "soon"? Yeah. Not attempting to wrestle the distribution rights back from 2K actually works twice in his favor: he doesn't spend any money and he does not get attacked on the Internet.

[Mr. Tibbs]

More DNF talk from Randy:

[CryptKiller]

Good to see indication of something happening.

[PokeThePower]

I outright say I don't agree with Fred's over-selling and still get lumped in? Bah!

Randy under-sells what exists that the Duke community would love to have from the legacy builds, Fred over-sells.

Dumpster dive? PRECISELY!

[Ninety-Six]

Yeah, that's the vibe I've been getting from the standpoint of a neutral observer. Lots of overselling and underselling. And the truth is buried somewhere in between.

Though at least in Randy's case it appears to be a lot more visible. Simply given what we do know from its development, Randy is giving off the impression that he believes because some stuff was faked, then all of it was faked.

Of course it's entirely possible it's only more visible purely given that we can go off what we have and contrast it to his statements, versus the overselling which is based on things we don't have.


I don't know if that makes sense.

Basically what I'm saying is it's hard to trust either sale at this point.

[PokeThePower]

The whole topic is very simple. Fred is totally correct saying there is more of a game in the legacy content than most would have previously thought. Including you know... a playable multiplayer. Several! All pieced together there's more or less a whole (unfinished/unpolished) game worth of content. Randy is correct in saying it's an unfinished hodge podge and to get value out of it would be akin to dumpster diving.

The realistic audience for said dumpster dive is not the same as the audience for whatever the community might possibly make out of the contents in the dumpster. The diving audience would be quite content with what they would find and have more than enough to turn it into something that the *other* audience would also enjoy. Especially considering what was able to be made just off of some video and screenshots.

[Ninety-Six]

Let's hope I can take that sale because that sounds about how it should.

[hiczok]

So Fred is full of shit?

[Jimmy]

hiczok, on 07 May 2018 - 08:58 AM, said:

So Fred is full of shit?

I love that your first post is a 10/10 shitpost. Welcome to Duke4.net

As for Randy, his interest in legacy DNF is whether he can sell it or not. Purely commercial. He says that there's a lot going on behind the scenes, but it seems like mumbo jumbo to me. I feel that he thinks there is no way they can sell the material, so it's not worth releasing and his strategy is to down play Fred and misconstrue Charlie and then up play whatever dumb shit he has planned for the franchise.

[hiczok]

I mean either he is lying or Randy does not know something which I highly doubt.
Licenses are not easy, so if they want to sell it, just do it. paying 50$ is least of our concerns

[Jimmy]

One thing people don't understand about Randy, and I've said this numerous times, is that he's a magician first and foremost. Video games is something he stumbled into. He has always been a magician. Randy Pitchford is literally GOB Bluth from Arrested Development. Once you understand that, everything about him makes sense and his behaviour is 100% predictable. It takes a deeply flawed and insecure person to want to be a performer, much less a magician.

[Bruno Mattei]

So, to address the elephant in the room, why doesn't Randy just hire a couple of guys who are pros with UE1 and finish it? Then sell it for like $20-40 and bam. Easy money.

Then again it is Randy and he's not exactly the brightest bulb in the pack.

[Jimmy]

Because that won't make as much money as whatever modern crap they want to put out.

[Ninety-Six]

It isn't just Randy. 2k is also part of the problem.