Fun Friday: This Can't Come Soon Enough Edition

When, I heard about the Big Sister a couple of weeks ago, I thought that it may have been an April Fools Joke. I was wrong and it became known that she was in fact going to be in Bioshock 2. Now that I've seen her in action, this game can't come soon enough.

Bioshock 2 to Include Big Sisters

The April 2009 cover of Game Informer has revealed what has already been rumored: Big Sisters. I really like their design, they appear sleaker, speedier, maybe even stealthier than our lumbering Big Daddies of old. One commenter I read speculated that they could be as agile as the spider splicer, which is a scary thought.

One thing that struck me is that in the original game, the Big Daddies foreshadowed what the player would become: a protector of the Little Sisters and a father figure for them, literally donning a Big Daddy suit. Does the inclusion of a Big Sister imply that the main character for Bioshock 2 will be a woman? I guess will have to wait at least for the next issue of Game Informer to find out.

Of course, this could also be an April Fools joke. If so, why, Game Informer, why?

Happy Birthday, To Me!

Also known as Kyburz's office code, or Australia Day, in Bioshock!

Fun Friday: Adorably Sweet Halloween Edition

I have never been a huge fan of Halloween and I haven't dressed up in years. But I love Bioshock and apparently the following dad does as well. He dressed up as a Big Daddy and got one of his daughters to be a Little Sister. Ahhh, family bonding at its best. I look forward to many moments like this with my own children.

I Needed More Motivation To Be Bad

Bioshock has succeeded. It has already garnered the level of cult status and it is a classic experience that all gamers should enjoy. Still, I have a tiny, tiny bit of a problem with the game that in no way hindered my original experience but I think could have given much more weight to the dilemma that the player is faced with early in the game. I hadn't even really thought about it too much until reading N'gai Croal and Stephen Totilo's face off. Croal writes:

My finger was hovering over the X button, ready to harvest...and all of a sudden, I couldn't do it. There was a little girl, albeit virtual, cowering in front of my avatar, and I couldn't bring myself to harvest her, as she'd been presented far too sympathetically. At the same time, I couldn't bring myself to rescue her either, because I wanted that Adam. Yet there was another complicating factor, one which is the true mark of the brilliance of BioShock's fiendish conundrum: the promise of an unspecified reward from Tenenbaum for rescuing the Little Sister.

What was puzzling me was the nature of Levine's game. He was pitting my basic humanity against my greedy self-interest and against my curiosity--a cruel hybrid of a moral dilemma fused with the Trust Game. This was a far more devilish problem than had it been a simple binary either/or, and it had completely paralyzed me. Should I treat this game as a Rorschach blot and do what I would do in real life: rescue the Little Sister? Or should I treat it solely as a fantasy and do precisely the opposite, explore the road I'd never take in the real world. I didn't know what to do.

While I totally hesitated in that moment over whether to save her for the promised reward or to put her out of her misery, the ADAM was never really a major draw at this point in the game. The game offers that if you do harvest the little sister, you will gain more ADAM for spending on plasmids, but does the player actually understand at this point what that means?

Our only experience up until this point in the game with plasmids in the electricity plasmid. It is very useful and fun but there is no hint at what comes with enhanced powers. You could use your imagination but it's easiest to see this power only becoming stronger. So what's the draw for more ADAM? Is it the desire to become as powerful as possible? Curiosity? I felt more sorry for her than anything, so I chose to save her.

Now, let's suppose that the game does something a little different the first time you inject yourself with a plasmid. You body has no idea how to react to this genetic mutation and you suddenly have a vast array of powers at your fingertips that is unstable (very similar to a sequence later in the game when you have an adverse reaction to an antidote). After experiencing all that ADAM can offer and its power, it is taken away from you only to be offered a way to get back by taking it from the little sisters. Like a drug, it has been taken from you and you now have a way to get back but at a terrible moral cost. Now here's a dilemma!

Now, while this borrows heavily from the Metroid formula, as well as adjusting the a bit of the story line, I think it would have added a lot more weight to the harvest/save problem. Now I wasn't the game designer and maybe they thought of this and thought the game was better their way. Either way, it is still an experience that transcends the norm.

Does One Game Make a Franchise?

On Friday Evening, I finished Bioshock while saving all of the Little Sisters. By itself, it was a very emotional and powerful ending but the themes of fatherhood hit particularly close to home. The game was phenomenal from start to finish and it will easily be the game of the year.

Earlier today, Take Two held their earning call and praised their hit title. Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick said of the game's success "Clearly, we have a new hit franchise on our hands." This stuck me quite odd. While the game is clearly a critical and financial success, I don't see one game as a "franchise." Zelda and Madden are franchises, long running series that have been successful year in and year out.

I understand that this talk came from the people responsible to the shareholders that want a promise of more success to come. Games that transcend the banality of our industry are not immune from the franchise mentality that plagues this industry. Shareholders want high returns on little investment, they want sock prices to go up. Unfortunately, they want to capitalize on this success.

But it has not always worked out. Great games are not always the launching pads for viable franchises. For many reasons, consecutive titles in a "franchise" fail to meet expectations: KOTOR, Maximo, Prince of Persia. On the other hand, the major franchises have all started all small, developed a cult following and progressively improved from year to year: GTA, Final Fantasy, Tony Hawk, even Halo. Bioshock set the that first franchise step pretty high and its going to take quite an effort to maintain that level of excellence.

News Round Up

PAX and the holiday weekend threw off my posting schedule, so here’s a rundown of things that have caught my attention over the last couple of weeks as I play catch up.

• Manhunt 2 is Dated for a Halloween Release: I was off by a couple of months as far as the release of a ‘modified’ version, but I think they have achieved the desired effect – buzz.
• Guitar Hero III Achievements Unveiled: I love achievements but these suck. I know, I know, you should have to achieve something to earn them. But for the love of all things holy, I can understand a few, but not the majority of them. I initially thought that these achievements were fake. Firstly, they are way too specific and require unnatural skills at the game. Secondly, some of them have errors in them, like the ‘Now That’s Impressive’ achievement that states 750,000 points on a song with a 1 million point image. Thirdly, there are no achievements for progressing through the game past the bosses, like Slash and the recently announced Tom Morello. Finally, I noticed that there were 59 achievements. Juiced (a THQ game) had submission problems because they had 60 achievements but was then passed, maybe because of Guitar Hero. But, come on, look at the requirements for Tone Deaf and Button Masher. Seriously?
• Sequel to The Ship is Coming to 360: I love the premise of this game. You are given a name and must find this person on a cruise ship full of people and kill him – all while avoiding the unknown person who has yours. Quite a departure from most online multiplayer games, this one requires some stealth and skill, not just run and gun. Awesome!
• Pit’s Intro in Super Smash Brothers Brawl: I don’t care about SSBB. Not one bit. But if Nintendo finally went ahead and created a new Kid Icarus game, I would finally have enough reasons to own a Wii. It looks like they have the assets. Come on Nintendo, let’s get this done.
• Zero Punctuation Reviews Bioshock:

J. Thompson Hates on Bioshock Ad

In his most recent stunt along his crusade against all things gaming and Take Two, Jack Thompson sent a complaint letter to the FCC. His issues stem from the fact that several Bioshock ads were aired during Friday's WWE SmackDown episode. He claims that Take Two are aggressively targeting all of the "children" who watch wrestling much the same way cigarette companies targeted them with Joe Camel. He even cites Rockstar in the despite the fact that they have nothing to do with the game. Their evil ways must be infecting the entire company. The wrestling is fine for the kids but not the thirty second spot for a mature themed video game; the irony is very thick. Chris Kohler at the Wired's Game|Life said everything I wanted to say. Only he did it sooner and better.

Thompson provides no viable solution, but it's okay, because the problem he's describing isn't even a problem at all.

Why Jack Thompson Is Wrong About BioShock [Game|Life]

Bioshock: Sweet, Sweet Demo Action

I took just over thirteen hours to download the demo (7PM last night to 9AM this morning) but it was definitely worth the wait. The game looks like awesome cherry cheesecake: sweet. It is evident that a lot of love went into the entire process. Water has never looked so hot. It is most definitely not "just another just another f**king PC FPS." The action is smooth and frantic. It took me only about forty-five minutes to get through the demo but it had a lot to offer. The game has drama, suspense, atmosphere, intrigue, sheer heebie-jeebie moments... my thesaurus has run out of adjectives. It's cliche, but I had two distinct games come to mind while I was playing the demo: Condemned and Oblivion. Since these have been two of my favorite games on the 360, this is a very, very good thing. Especially since the best elements of these two games are ratcheted up, like they're hopped up on Eve. My insatiable desire to get my hands on this game is now at a breaking point. Thankfully, we only have a week or so longer to wait.