Bioshock Remastered
This game suffers from many design problems, but at the same time is so much loved. It was a bold game and maybe this boldness is both its strength and its weakness. When I began playing it I had an old laptop with i5200U CPU, 8GB, 920M GPU. It was enough to run this game. I dropped it when I reached the Smuggler's Hideout. If I remember it right, I was having too much difficulty with lack of ammo and dying too many times. Years later I bought a desktop and with a larger monitor, better hardware and I could play at 1080P. I finished the game with a better computer.
First, the world building of Bioshock is usually why this game is loved by many. The plot is about some megalomaniac person who wants to build a city underwater away from all governments, with a society of its own and its own system is creative. If you compare it to all other FPS from Quake and Half Life all the way to 2007, the year Bioshock was released. I think that the industry at the time didn't see the potential of bringing strong narratives to FPS games, maybe they didn't see it was possible to combine the two. Not only that, but look at System Shock. Inventory to carry trash, fabricate items, vending machines. FPS games were seen as pure shooters with no room for mechanics that were adopted by horror games, adventure games and RPGs.
The environment art department did an excellent job with Art Deco. They've clearly did their research to match the plot and the architecture. How many games have voice acting for enemies, characters that died before the player begins the game and even the vending machines? There was so much detail in the game. They also paid a lot of attention to environmental storytelling. Each area has its own theme such as market places, power plants, doctor offices, etc. If a resident died, you may find audio logs telling what happened. In this regard I very much prefer the audio diaries than Remedy's way of telling stories with texts scattered in computers and documents.
They made a pretty good blend of horror and action. Most of the underwater city is not well-lit in accordance to the decaying state of Rapture. It conveys a sense of a hopeless place and claustrophobia due to the imminent danger of everything collapsing and you dying underwater. Some jump scare moments and most players remember the impact of Fort Frolic with the human statues. The Big Daddies are another thing that added to the impact this game had. They are scary, big and powerful.
I don't know how they decided to play "If I didn't care" in Bioshock. This is a feat because for some reason this song now is associated with this game in my mind. The other association that I have is that the same song plays at the beginning of the movie "Shawshank's Redemption". When I heard this song in the beginning of Bioshock I immediately though that there was some TV and that the movie was playing somewhere in the room.
As much as the gameplay elements were creative and innovative, they are also why this game's experience isn't very smooth. Let's begin with the plasmids. Unlike other games, in Bioshock 1 you have to constantly switch between powers and guns. It's clunky and one of the reasons I dropped the game in the first time. I think that they wanted the combat to be more strategical, which wasn't well though in every encounter. Most of the time the combat is more action oriented than tactically oriented. There also seem to be an issue with balancing, because in the beginning you don't have much ammo and money. Later on you have plenty of money and ammo. The progression in this game is hindered by this unbalanced distribution of ammo and money. Another hinderance was the location of the machines which forces the player to backtrack a lot to buy ammo, health (or backtrack to healing stations) and also the gene banks. You weren't able to swap out tonics and plasmids at wild.
The research camera is a cool idea. However, it forces the player to play passively. It grants bonuses, but it's much less convenient than plain kill to earn XP points. Even Wolfenstein's system with "20 headshots, 30 grenades, 10 backstabs, etc" is more convenient. I can't say I liked the research camera's idea. Not only it forces the player to not shoot at enemies, it also consumes film ammo. This makes resource management in this game incredibly complex and many players end up dropping this game.
The level design added secondary routes to flank turrets and this is a modern technique extensively adopted by modern games. However, they didn't apply a circular level design pattern that brings you back to the beginning. They forced backtracking and very often I became lost because when returning to where you came from because the environment can be misleading.
The last mission before the final boss is to escort a little sister. While that concept is cool, not every player was a fan of having to stop by at multiple points of the level to protect a little sister which, in addition, was very weak. The idea of wearing the same outfit as a Big Daddy was cool, but while they were powerful beasts, the player was still the same character with the same weakness and weapons.
The pipe dream minigame can be cool for a while. After that it becomes a sore. Thankfully, you have the auto hack item to skip it. That minigame was clearly meant to be played with a mouse. Because with a controller it becomes too complicated. That minigame is also flawed because from time to time a maze with no solution is be generated, forcing you to lose health.
The moral choice of harvesting little sisters or saving them is shallow. The guides have shown that the net result is pretty much the same for the player in terms of ADAM. You earn some gifts but those can be bought if you decide to harvest a little sister. Apart from the ending and some dialogue change near the end, everything else plays the exact same way.
Design note: the 2D map does split up each floor of each level, but it's confusing because all areas are laid in the same map.
Goofs: There is a lot of water leaking in, but no bubbles coming outside the cracked glass.
Bugs: how to make the sound work properly. Grab the fmod dll from Bioshock 2 remaster and copy it over Bioshock 1 remaster's dll.
This game is quite unstable and I experienced multiple freezes. I have no idea if it's caused by windows 11, Epic games or what.
