BioShock, System Shock and other Immersive Sims and "Shock-likes" - or just the ImSim Thread

[R00T]

Are you Jewish? That's a lot of paragraphs to waste on "Levine dindunuffin", when his whole body of work starting from BioShock 1 was "White gentiles bad

Levine did do something. He butchered what should’ve been an attempt at confronting a philosophical ideal, and essentially overwrote what the point was in interviews with statements he thought would make him look good.

I love Rand. I’ve read not just her fiction but also her philosophy. It’s far more nuanced than greed is good, but no one delves further than that because to do so would mean you might actually agree with something she wrote. She also had a mental breakdown as she got older and never really recovered, becoming quite manic and doubling down on more of the ridiculous aspects. It’s a shame because it just causes everyone to throw out her stuff by default. I don’t even love Atlas Shrugged that much. It falls apart in the end in so many ways. We the Living was a far more interesting book but you never see anyone talk about it. They only talk about Shrugged, and if they’re inept The Fountainhead, because it’s “Atlas Shrugged but shorter.” Terrible attitude to have imo.

Did you know she had no issue with people donating to charity early on, the argument being that if *you* enjoyed it and got emotional satisfaction out of the deed, then it is something good you do for the self. It’s just that others benefit from it. A concept completely lost in Levine’s characterization. Why not have that be part of Tanenbaum’s motivation? Because then it would indicate that there is something correct there in Objectivism and that wasn’t Levine’s goal.

You hate Levine because of his Jewishness. I hate him because he’s a hack writer that co-opts the story to say something unrelated to what is presented, and can’t effectively present what he’s arguing against. If you can’t even understand that you might just be an exceptional individual as well.

 

[NeonFlux]

Krogan’s entire argument falls apart when you think about it for 30 seconds. “It’s about Jewishness and how great Jews are” fails when 80% of the Jewish characters are twisted and corrupted in their actions. Cohen’s ideals about art are lofty, and in the circle of high art commendable, but fail in practice when it requires setting people on fire and recording their final moments. Outside of his name I forget if he even mentions Judaism but he certainly doesn’t apply any recognizable practice of it.

It's not about how you personally feel about each character, the video was about what Ken Levine's intentions are when he wrote the story/universe which is the point of the video. This is why he cited articles/interviews in the video involving Ken discussing his thoughts about the in-game universe, he didn't just add "Ken rambling about nothing."

In the video, he compares Frank Fontaine (The gentile) to Andrew Ryan (The Jew). Andrew Ryan is allowed to have a complex character arc whereas once "Altas" reveals himself as Fontaine, he turns into a one dimensional villian with no redeeming qualities, complete with new yorker 1940s gangster accent. Don't bring up the 2nd game where it was revealed Frank had a loving family and son, Ken had nothing to do with that game.

In Fort Frolic, Cohen sends you on a mission to kill 3 of his gentile disciplines and it's implied Cohen sexually abused them. You MUST kill these men or the game won't let you progress to the next level whereas Cohen can be spared or killed.

I get it, It's an autistic man going on and on about hidden politics for 1 hour in an almost 20 year old video game and it's a bit much to ask people to engage with it when there's more important shit to worry about nowadays. Just say "I'm not watching that shit" instead of writing out paragraphs.

 

[Oddjob OTP]

Still mad about preordering Bioshock Infinite. Making a 7 hour long Rail Shooter with the most fun mechanic being the literal rails about the illusion of choice is evidence then Ken was so high on his own supply it's a wonder that he still hasn't asphyxiated.

 

[Star Classic]

I unironically like Doom 3. you found him, here I am, the one and only Doom 3 Enjoyer

it's such a shame that modern id is so fucking worthless, I'd genuinely like to see a follow-up to Doom 3 that iterates on its design.

I gotta disagree on this. I think all things considered they've done an exceptional job with Doom, I'd say 2016 is their best product to date. Sure maybe it shows a lack of originality, but if RAGE is anything to go by maybe they should stick with what they know.

 

[Asian tech support]

You don't get access to typhon powers until much later in the game, and while you can always just rush ahead to get your hands on the psychoscope, it's not something a new player will have knowledge of. There was no reason not to have a psychoscope in Morgan's office, as an example.

Dude you get the psychoscope right after finishing hardware labs and going into psychotronics. It's not that deep into the game at all.

 

[regalterry]

I gotta disagree on this. I think all things considered they've done an exceptional job with Doom, I'd say 2016 is their best product to date. Sure maybe it shows a lack of originality, but if RAGE is anything to go by maybe they should stick with what they know.

Agree on Doom 2016. It's a pity they dropped the art direction and large parts of the plot threads left over in that game in Eternal.

And RAGE wasn't that bad. I liked the ambition, since it's generic Fallout-lite, and it's obvious they had fun making it, considering someone spent the time to implement a card battling game, and a few other minigames besides that.

RAGE was mostly fucked over by hardware limitations, since consoles could not support that level of graphical detail while delivering large, open maps.

Dude you get the psychoscope right after finishing hardware labs and going into psychotronics. It's not that deep into the game at all.

It's deep enough that it feels like a pointless delay.

 

[Sigg Kyle]

Funny this thread showed up because I actually bought the entire bioshock collection on steam a while back and am playing through ‘shock 1.
Some thoughts
1. I hate the focus on kids. I open steam overlay when I have to deal with little sisters. Grosses me out.
2. Cohen’s casino had fortune telling machines where an indian would scam you. Above em would be titled ‘Epstein’s Swami’. Unnerving.
3. Art direction is surprisingly neat, splicers are a good enemy, but the level of variety and diversity is complete dogshit. It’s on the level of what you’d expect from a fallout new vegas playthrough but worse.
4. Worst guns I have ever fired in my life. Only acceptable one is the shotgun. I even lowered the difficulty because the guns might as well be cardboard and I didn’t care to shoot the bullet sponges with these shit weapons.

Game would genuinely have been better off as a resident evil clone of some kind, but at the time RE4 didn’t exist so it’s a bust. We’re extremely lucky to have dead space 2 exist, and most of my enjoyment out of this game was seeing what the prototype to aryan gems like DS2, dishonored, etc, actually was like. Ken levine can go ‘ack himself.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

Prey 2017, hated it.

 

[Love Is Blue]

Worst guns I have ever fired in my life. Only acceptable one is the shotgun. I even lowered the difficulty because the guns might as well be cardboard and I didn’t care to shoot the bullet sponges with these shit weapons.

when you get the crossbow upgrade it twice and never look back

 

[Sigg Kyle]

when you get the crossbow upgrade it twice and never look back

I’ve already started. Good lord I hate the machine gun.

 

[Star Classic]

I’ve already started. Good lord I hate the machine gun.

spam the everloving piss out of the camera, too.

 

[Kane Lives]

The push for inworld interactables instead of pressing e on everything also just felt very ImSim-ish to me.

It's weird that the only time I seen these inworld interactables are like Doom and Dead Space. Although I forget if Doos Sex HR had them or not.

It feels like an easy way to immerse a player into the world and yet not done frequently. Idk, maybe it's just a pain to do it. I recall that that the Doom 3 panels had its own simple scripting language you can use.

 

[I'm Retarded?]

I gotta disagree on this. I think all things considered they've done an exceptional job with Doom, I'd say 2016 is their best product to date. Sure maybe it shows a lack of originality, but if RAGE is anything to go by maybe they should stick with what they know.

Doom 2016 sucks asshole IMO. it's more like Halo than Doom, it's dripping with bullshit edgy pretense, the enforced melee executions are fucking stupid, the enemy designs are boring, the maps are boring, it wants to act like it's Not Just Another Boring Console Shooter but also constantly locks you in unskippable cutscenes and dialogue sequences, it has an absolutely insipid story full of Stupid Made-Up Proper Nouns and of course has no manual saving. the only cool thing they did was the ledge mantling, which all the Doom modders instantly copied and improved. Doom Eternal and Doom: The Dark Ages are barely worth talking about. they took 2016's flawed design and iterated on all the worst parts while consolizing it even further. absolutely dog shit games for idiots.

if you want a far superior modernization of Doom, play the Project Brutality mod (use the staging branch) with a level pack of your choice (Maps of Chaos is the default recommendation). yeah the graphics aren't as pretty, but the gameplay is a million times better.

 

[big pauper]

You're making me want to actually play Bioshock 2. I never believed the hype, there was no way it could be good, but a lot of you fuckers seem to actually love it like pigeons love balconies

it's not amazing or anything. it's about as good as you can expect a by-the-numbers sequel to possibly be, though. they gave the same engine and assets to a B team that honestly did not bang out an environment as good as the first game but they also smoothed out some of the retarded combat progression tradeoffs (i do not remember the specifics i played it in high school ~16 years ago). the writing is about the same.

You can interpret bioshock as an examination of how people use right wing ideology for an ulterior motive, bioshock 2 flips it around where it's examining how people use liberalism for an ulterior motive. Sofia Lamb is a sadistic altruist willing to wax poetic about how good of a person she is for providing splicers with ADAM like a bunch of junkies so they do her every whim. A communist in literal form, not a marxist, but a kumbuya communalist. "we're all in this sinking ship together!" the ending was just kind of like... whatever you wanted it to be based on the choices that you made in the game because there's like six of them. your choices influence elenor to either save her mom or kill her. Spoilers,
the morally correct option is to kill at least one person so elanor kills sofia because she's an irrepentant psychopath responsible for creating the little sisters in the first place

 

[robobobo]

4. Worst guns I have ever fired in my life. Only acceptable one is the shotgun. I even lowered the difficulty because the guns might as well be cardboard and I didn’t care to shoot the bullet sponges with these shit weapons.

The pistol and machine gun basically require the specialized ammo and upgrades to be reasonably functional past the initial areas. The crossbow is MVP for the game as soon as you lay hands on it.

 

[klab]

Still mad about preordering Bioshock Infinite

The Game Informer magazine featuring Bioshock: Infinite, which I think also came with a demo disk that had Frontlines: Fuel of War.
Infinite was shaping up to be such an incredible game. Gutted.
It's weird, I remember getting quite a few of those magazines with the demo disk, but I only remember FoW and a Gundam Dynasty Warriors demo.

 

[Star Classic]

Still mad about preordering Bioshock Infinite. Making a 7 hour long Rail Shooter with the most fun mechanic being the literal rails about the illusion of choice is evidence then Ken was so high on his own supply it's a wonder that he still hasn't asphyxiated.

It's a crying shame, even forgetting Levine and the lack of a tard wrangler, there was no feasible way it could've run on a 360 or Heaven forbid a PS3.
Infinite was made a generation or two before it was possible, its absolutely the type of game that could be made today, and that's what I find so tragic about it.

 

[Kill Mitts]

when i was a teenager i wanted to put the system shock 2 wrench up my ass so bad

 

[Star Classic]

when i was a teenager i wanted to put the system shock 2 wrench up my ass so bad

 

[Kane Lives]

It's a crying shame, even forgetting Levine and the lack of a tard wrangler, there was no feasible way it could've run on a 360 or Heaven forbid a PS3.
Infinite was made a generation or two before it was possible, its absolutely the type of game that could be made today, and that's what I find so tragic about it.

With modern game dev practices? It'd be 150GB at launch and still would be the same game otherwise, just with FSR, AI upscaling or whatever, and will run dogshit even with a 5-series RTX.