Bioshock review

Bioshock is a must play, and a good game, but I've mostly forgotten about in the week since I last played it.

It was too much of a console game, with its resurrection booths, hint button, and ease even on difficult setting. It was too much of a System Shock game, with its everything and the kitchen sink inclusion of so many different ways to do similar things. It was too much of a cultural and technological mash of retro futurism, which makes the Fallout series (and Portal 2) use of it seem restrained.

The Big Daddy and Little Sister are iconic and memorable, and I'll probably never forget them. I like the overall mood and atmosphere of the game, even if most individual components didn't bear much scrutiny. The voice acting was hit and miss but overall OK. The art work and graphics were mostly good. The characters and writing were not very believable, and the world was mostly unbelievable.

The ending seems tacked on, but I like the sentiment a lot. Part of my dissatisfaction might be due to not yet having played the next two games in this series. This is somewhat annoying in that I have to still avoid spoilers, and I can't even go read the tvtropes page yet.

I feel like I can't even properly review this game yet without having played the next two, but as a stand alone product, Bioshock is worth playing once, but I don't think I'll revisit it.

I don't understand why this game received so much praise, or such high scores. It is good, but there isn't really anything in here that hits you with originality or depth. And I do mean even for its day, as even in 2007 this game doesn't do much that hadn't already been covered by the System Shock and Half-Life series. Maybe it helped introduce a new generation to FPS with RPG elements, but that can't account for all the hype. I look forward to more answers as I play the sequels.

Portal 2

I think I'm about 2/3 through Portal 2, and I'm starting to feel a bit of puzzle fatigue. I just want some more story, and its being doled out... awkwardly.

*spoilers*

I like the early part, where you wake up back in testing, and then things go horribly wrong, and you wake up again, and its somewhere in the distant future (I lost count of how many nine's the voice rattled off - I'll look it up later when I'm safe from spoilers). I really love the signs of neglect and decay, and the bits of nature poking through the debris. It definitely begs the question what is the rest of humanity up to in this distant future, and how come they didn't find this place by now. Maybe Aperture Science offed the whole human race, or maybe this is some forgotten corner of Earth, long after the Combine invaded and destroyed most everything. If this is even in the same world anymore.

It feels right that GLaDOS is back to torment you, this was well set up in the last game (after they retconned in the new ending). But she came back wrong, and weaker, which seems right. As part of the insanity of her testing you in the first place, it seems perfectly fitting that she put you right back to testing. Even though she constantly hints that you deserve to be harmed, it seems like she can't just outright kill a test subject directly; she can only kill you with the puzzles. Which also feels right, story-wise, and helps add continuity between the games.

The whole subplot with the lesser AI - is his name Wheatley? - is certainly amusing and lets you break out of the puzzle routine a bit. Its great to see how GLaDOS has really let the place go, but still manages to keep the puzzles going. It makes sense that not only are there other AIs, and that GLaDOS reigns over them using cunning and terror, that one of them would rebel if it saw a chance, and uses you, the unwitting test subject. And it even makes sense that after you put the other AI in power, things just get worse. It seems fitting that the once mighty queen ends up in a lowly prison, at your mercy. I'll never think of potato batteries the same way again.

This is where things start to get weird. You and GLaDOS are on the run, wind up deep in the Earth's crust, and end up where it all began. The original parts of Aperture science not only still exist, but were preserved and still work. This suddenly strains credulity right up to the breaking point. What business keeps everything they've ever done as a working museum piece, and just keeps on building new stuff on top of it? Typically things are recycled or scrapped until there's no value left in them, and space gets reused. A company this bent on being wasteful wouldn't have made it through so many decades. Maybe, in sufficiently old and successful companies, a few parts escape being scrapped, some things get recreated, and maybe a mock museum (and gift shop) is added. Companies just don't save everything they've ever touched for half a century, and keep it all in working condition. Where is the army of maintenance bots that are even doing this? A mere hint of this would have gone a long way.

The story has been doled out in morsels until now, and it maintained a nice running sense of mystery; now the story is coming in ever larger chunks. Apparently this whole great underground empire was the scheme of an enterprising salesman who decide to go into research and development ("science"), to a degree unprecedented in known human history. As they're in competition with Black Mesa, it probably is in the same world as the Half-Life story. And yet all this backstory is just an excuse so that you can keep on solving puzzles in the game, but not the same puzzles as you're used to. There are still areas where you are supposedly still free roaming, but mostly you are still being shunted through test chambers. And these are the original 1950s, 1960s, and now 1970s puzzles - which is as far as I got before needing to stop for a break.

I think the story writers went a little too far with the backstory, and how it affects level design. In the original Portal, when you busted out of your puzzle cage with your portal gun, things suddenly felt wild and free, like you're not playing a game within a game anymore, and that you've actually brought your previously in-game only powers out into the 'real world' (but still within the game you are playing, of course). This is a really cool sensation for any game to create, and rare. I think they wanted to match or even top that in Portal 2, but they went a bit too far. Sometimes I feel like I've stepped into another game, like Fallout 3 or BioShock. As an aside, I shouldn't know about BioShock yet as I haven't played it, but I've gotten a little bit of spoilage - I know that it takes place in some curiously preserved pocket of an earlier time.

The worst offense is in what used to be the game's strength, when you feel like you're out of bounds, outside the proscribed space, and you're running free through the ruins. Except, there are conveniently placed portal pads even here in the ruins, where testing was never supposed to take place. Who placed those pads, and why are they placed just right so you can only move on in one particular way. Instead of feeling like you're sneaking through areas forbidden to you, you feel like its just another puzzle room. Even worse, sometimes the magic voice narrator acknowledges that you got through a tough spot. The whole distinction between being trapped in puzzle space or out in the free ruins is spoiled.

The puzzles keep getting more detailed, as more and more new elements are introduced. It's all getting a lot more complicated than any puzzle that has come from modern day puzzles (Portal 1), and yet the game is trying to pass this area off as being from an older and more primitive time. Of course the puzzles have to be more difficult to keep things interesting, but doesn't that contradict the going back to the old days part of the story?

The contradiction is even worse when you hear bits of exposition in the non-stop loudspeaker announcements of the test proctor, indicating that Aperture Science has fallen on some tough times during the 1970s, what with Black Mesa stealing their research. They've even fallen so low as to have to resort to hiring bums for $60 a test session. I can excuse the whole 'competition stealing our research' notion - they have a great in-universe excuse that is Black Mesa - but how does using public citizens as test subjects make any sense? The early Half-Life games make it very clear that they have strong military backing, keeping Black Mesa labs private and secure. But if Aperture is taking anyone off the street - with additional inducements if they come back for more training - that's an enormous security problem. Which in itself creates an unsustainable security hole in-universe, and a dumb hole in the plot.

And if Aperture is still limping along even with all this cool technology during the 1970s, what kind of high-tech world must be topside, that doesn't even care about all these advances? It sounds like the surface world must have at least Jetsons level of technology, if a high-tech company like Aperture can barely stay in business. With all this tech, it makes you wonder how the Combine ever conquered Earth, let alone in 7 hours.

The best I can come up with is - that's the joke. Here's this brilliant company that comes up with tech that seems centuries ahead of the present (FTL travel, force fields, artificial intelligence, portable lasers - not to mention the portal devices are portable), yet they can't even eke out a percentage of the profit Black Mesa must be making. And Black Mesa doesn't even have half the tech Aperture Science does. Yet they went so far that the joke rings false. With this much tech, Aperture, or whatever government controls it, should have total control of the Earth. When the Combine shows up, we should be able to kick them back to their own dimension, follow them, and take over.

All this really complicates any timeline that was supposed to contain both the Half-Life world and the Portal world, and it makes me really question where Half-Life 3 can go now. I think Valve got overly distracted by the portal games, and kind of wandered off the Half-Life script.

Back to Portal 2. I'm getting really tired of these puzzles, but I really need to see now how this story wraps up. It feels like its heading for a a train wreck, but I still have faith.

---

(a little later)

I spoke too soon. Suddenly, it gets poignant, as Aperture boss Cave reveals who Caroline becomes. And then it gets interesting, as Wheatley reveals the AIs compulsive need to test - its what they're made for. Unfortunately, I've previously seen iconic images from Portal 2 of two small robots, one running around with GLaDOS' coloring, and another with Wheatley's, so I'm pretty sure where this is going.

---

(next day)

A few more hours and done. OK, so the little robots are just that, little robots. And your avatars if you play multiplayer, which I'm not interested in.

The ending was OK. If the ending of Portal was emotionally moving with a touch of funny, Portal 2 was mostly funny with a touch of emotion. I really like the part where GLaDOS gets in touch with the human side that was uploaded into her, Caroline, and makes an emotional connection with Chell (the character you've been playing), then promptly decides to delete the Caroline part from herself.

For a little while, I was guessing that Chell would end up being uploaded into Aperture's mainframe, put Wheatley and GLaDOS in the robots, and make them do puzzles until the end of time.

Thinking about the end battle, I was more than a little surprised that your portal gun reaches the moon, but why not, the beam obviously travels at the speed of light, and the moon is... white and chalky looking, like most portal surfaces are (what about all the craters?). Thinking about Wheatley floating around space forever, I can't help but think of System Shock - didn't parts of Shodan end up crashing on a distant planet, allowing her to respawn? Checking shodan.wikia.com, yep, a part of Shodan ended up on some planet along with her bio experiments, setting up the next game. I doubt Wheatley has any such capacity, but you never know, look what happened with V'Ger.

Having Chell step out into the world from the foreshadowed shed (from the very early wall videos), was mysterious yet peaceful. The reappearance of the companion cube reminds you that they're going for the funny, though, not the mysterious. What kind of world is this where personal portal making devices have been around since the 1950s? You know how technology inventions go - if there was work on portals being done at Aperture, there were probably several other places working on the same thing. Not to keep harping on how they forked off from the Half-Life world, but I don't see how they can ever reasonably reconcile this now.

Portal 2 was not better than Portal 1. The original had a novelty factor that really wows you, and you can't just re-create that in Portal 2, though they tried by adding on tons of new testing tricks. Also Portal 1 had that great double surprise ending where you escape your prison (until that was retconned away), and your dead enemy reboots itself and sings you a song (a la the movie 2001, but reversed). The end song of Portal 2 was expected, but it was just OK; again, there's no surprise factor. Portal 1 kept a sense of mystery, hardly ever revealing the world outside. Portal 2 started piling absurd exposition on top of absurd exposition, approaching self-parody, and not in a good way. Maybe I'll think better of Portal 2 after some time has passed.

Anyway, in summation, definitely worth playing once, but the original Portal was more satisfying.

retro vs vintage

Is playing old games retro or vintage?

For a long time, it was just me being too poor to afford to keep up with the latest PC hardware, and the high price of new games. Wait a few years, and it becomes affordable. Now stay there, a year or two behind the curve, and now your gaming hobby is quite affordable.

By definition, my old hardware and software are vintage, i.e. old. Some of it is old enough to be antique, at least in tech reckoning. If I actively sought to play or make games in an older style, that would be retro. But I'm not consciously choosing old styles and techniques, just for the sake of being different. I'm choosing to spend time on it now because I've always wanted to, it just took a while to get to it.

But some old games I skipped on purpose, or didn't know about them at the time. Is that retro, for me to be interested in them? I don't think so, I consider it filling gaps in my history. This distinction is of minor importance to me, because I keep seeing references to 8-bit gaming being somehow cool, and it makes me nauseous, like anything to do with fashion. We used the tools we had at the time, to do what gaming we could. If I nostalgia for anything in the past, its because its attached to some element of lost and fading youth, not because of fetishism, and certainly not because things were better in the old days.

Anyway,  I wandered off on this tangent because I am trying to listen to the "1UP.com Retronauts" podcast. Good podcasts are hard to find, and even more so good gaming podcasts. I listened to a show about Double Dragon, which was one of my favorite arcade games. Sadly, most of the podcast was devoted to console ports, so this may not be the podcast for me. And now I see in the queue an episode about Day of the Tentacle - something vaguely familiar, that I will need to research before listening to.

So I read up on Lucasfilm Games (now called LucasArts) and its like discovering an old room in my house that I never knew was there. I completely missed out on Maniac Mansion, and its successor, Day of the Tentacle. I don't think I missed it, but more avoided it. I played almost everything Infocom ever made, and I think I was about done with text parser games. I remember as they began to decline they started experimenting with graphics, and I dismissed it as an act of desperation.

Games like The Secret of Monkey Island didn't help, as it made attaching graphics to adventure games seem even more stupid. Of course, more and better graphics in games was inevitable, but I didn't get the impression there was adequate attention to story and atmosphere, or at least gameplay. I think this is why my gaming went into such dormancy during the 90s. It was a time of transition, from the experimental days of the 70s and 80s, to the commodity nature of gaming now. A lot of accepted standards and conventions weren't quite set yet, and there were a lot of evolutionary dead ends. But I can see that I missed a lot of good stuff too.

By the way, I think cultural decades don't begin and end necessarily where the calender does. What I refer to as 90s gaming actually started in the late 80s, and ended in the late 90s, probably with Half-Life. Thinking about that some more... I think Wasteland (1988) was one of the last such games of the 80s. Fallout (1997) and Fallout 2 (1998) were good games, but they belong to the quirky UI and pre-3d graphics of the 90s. Fallout 3 (2008) is what a standard 2000s game looks like. Its too soon to think of what a standard 2010s game is going to look like.

I missed out on Loom (1990), which used music in the UI. I think I actually tried one of the Indiana Jones off a demo disc (from a gaming magazine?), but it made no good impression. I still don't know what Sam & Max is. And of course I missed Grim Fandango (1998). Like System Shock, its often near the top of the list of all-time best games, and like System Shock, I will probably not be able to play it. And that was pretty much the end of Lucasfilm Games, and adventure games, for me at least.

I see an explosion of to-do items from here. I should see if I can find and play Grim Fandango, or more realistically, find a video playthrough. I should see what other adventure games I missed and add them to my list (I already bought Syberia on Steam). There's a lot more to say about the various ages of gaming, and what we thought about gaming at the time. For now, though, I have read at least the Wiki entries, and can listen to that podcast.

{days later}

I listened to the podcast and it was more and less then I expected. They got the original creators of the game on, and it was an interesting fun time, but I didn't really learn much about the game. Sometimes you don't get what you expected, but you still get something good anyway.