Thursday, October 1, 2009

BlogoShock

Level 5: The Modern Frankenstein

Ken Levine had said that in retrospect he wished he had placed the dramatic confrontation with Andrew Ryan later in the game, as there is a fair amount of gameplay between that point and the final encounter. Good news for me, however, as I reached that point and knew I still had some wrench-bashing left to do.

I've completed the game now, as you may have surmised from the loadout post. A credit to 2K Boston's gameplay design is the way my abilities kept up with the steep difficulty. I poked around a little bit just after finshing to confirm there was no New Game+. (PS3 only it turns out.) Saw a few remarks about the difficulty in the game, especially people referring to Hard (which I played) as forcing you to play the game differently, using the environments and luring splicers into turret traps. Well, you know, that is true, but after concluding the run through, I'm pretty glad I did. I had a rocky start as you'll recall, before I adopted the kitchen sink approach.

By using everything at your disposal to kill enemies and clear areas as quickly as possible, I believe you really are playing the game the way it was meant to be played. Towards the end, also, Damage Research 2 and the defense boost you get from the *cough*cough* evened the playing field right before what was probably the toughest segment of the game, the obligatory escort sequence. (Don't get me wrong, it was cool. At least I wasn't dragging Eva's knocked out ass through the jungle...)

But I think I got just about everything out of this playthrough. I obtained (or had the option to buy) every plasmid and tonic in the game, bought every health and EVE upgrade, maximized research damage on all enemies except perhaps turrets and cameras, found a metric fuckton of audio diaries, and rescued all of the Little Sisters obtaining the "good" ending. I missed two weapon upgrades, one apparently because I killed Sander Cohen, and the other due to an oversight, though I wasn't overly interested in Chemical Thrower range and Crossbow Breakage chance. Oh, but I would recommend getting Pistol Clip Size early. Much more useful than I thought it would be.

But anyways, I believe I enjoyed the bulk of the intended experienced. If I were to do it differently, I would likely focus on Wrench tactics, and I'd probably give Hacker's Delight a try, since I did fucking hack everything. Oh, and it turns out, I never really understood Security Bullseye. Silly me.

But, in summation, Bioshock is a hell of a game. Upon completion I quickly indulged myself in the Bioshock 2 Big Sister and multiplayer trailers. Guess I don't have much to do except salivate until February 9th...

Mr. B, Mr. B, Big Sister doesn't want you playing with me...

No comments: