Yes, that topic name was a joke. However, due to the fact that I often bring up video games and post mini-reviews of them in Chatty Chat, and now with BR asking me to elaborate on Bioshock, I decided to start a topic to store my editorials about video games!

Yes, that's right these aren't political editorials (although I may make some comment that direction if a game I talk about deals with it).

Now, this topic may not get too many replies, but that's okay. And if you wish to ridicule my opinions about the game, as suggested in the topic description, please only do so in good nature (but I probably don't really need to worry about that here).

Anyway, on with the geekspeak!

Bioshock:

BR, you're being charged $60 for Bioshock?!?! Don't Steam and Best Buy both have it for $50? Anyway, as for it being "worth it", you may need to decide for yourself, but let me evaluate Bioshock in a number of catagories...

Gameplay: Nice and fun. Survive the underwater city in a variety of ways! Blast your foes with firearms, hit them with electricity, flame, ice, telekinesis, etc. with plasmids, make the city's security system work for you, take snapshots of your enemies with a camera to gather info on them and more, etc.

Atmosphere: Good. It has that retro-1950s feel and look, and your foes, in addition to the run-down state you find the underwater city in, are a grotesque reminder of how horrible the events that destroyed "Rapture", and the state that it and its residents are in now, really is...

Story: Excellent. Set in 1960, it tells the tale of how the underwater city of so-called "Rapture" turned into something much closer to Hell rather than Heaven, and what will happen now that your character has made the scene. The characters are interesting, there are plenty of historical references (one of the characters is a scientist who worked in a Nazi prison camp in WW2, another is the founder of "Rapture", who seems to hate Washington and Moscow (and the Vatican) equally, still another is a surgeon gone entirely bonkers due to...well, I won't say, if you play it, you can find out yourself).

Sound: Good. Music, where present (there isn't much), usually has a positive effect on the atmosphere, I can't really hear any real problems with the voice acting, and the sound effects are accurate enough.

Does that help, BR?
:D

Perhaps I should post in the RPs now :heh: ...

Sounds like a interesting game. I'm fairly certain it's for a system I don't have, but when I finally jump into next-gen I'll look into playing it sometime.

Although if I'm wrong and this is on PS2... hehehe... then I'll pick it up. ^^

Let's try to avoid political comments... they tend to ignite arguments and problems and it's best to just steer clear of those. There's a time and a place for politics, but not here, ok? ^_^;

It's an Xbox 360 exclusive (well, that and for the PC, but in that case, you'd have to have a PC, and make sure it was good enough to run it, like all PC games).

Certainly, certainly. However, I was saying, if politics gets into the game, well, then, I have to address it, don't I? Make no mistake, I'm not going to start campaigning for (insert candidate here) in '08, but if nothing else, I will address the issues of any games I talk about (and it shouldn't be much of a problem...most games don't really delve into politics.).

Anyway, GS, Bioshock is for Xbox 360 and for PC. I'm guessing you have a PC, although it you may want to check out Gamespot.com's hardware guide before picking it up.

Anyway, thanks. More may come.

360, huh? Hmm... I'll get one eventually. No time soon, though. I do want to play Halo and that Naruto game, though. So I'll look into this when I get a 360. ^^

Of course, if in a game's storyline it addresses politics, that's one thing. I'm obligated to remind everyone, though, that actually talking politics is something that should be avoided. ^^; I wasn't trying to make a big deal of it.

Actually, I may have been saying I'd offer political commentary, but yeah...I suppose I'll just address it as far as a game deals with it. Anyway, I'll possibly talk about Company of Heroes sometime. :D

First, awesome idea! Video game reviews! This definitely belongs in the Video Game section, if you only intend to do video game reviews, so I'll move it there unless somebody says I shouldn't. It'll probably get more attention there anyway. ;)

Secondly, yeah, everywhere I've seen it is sixty. Haven't been looking too hard, but in New York and Indiana it's $59.
And I'd definitely be looking for it on the 360, because not only do I have a Mac (unable to run Steam as far as I know) but I also have the non-pro version of the Macbook, which isn't really powerful enough to run games like that. Well, it is-- but I have enough gigets and wagets running in the background to keep it occupied. ^^;

Thirdly, excellent review! It does have me interested. I am, however, left with some questions which might also be constructive to a budding critic such as yourself: Is it an FPS?
Does it concentrate on combat, exploration, puzzles or something else?
Is it set up in a level-by-level format like Halo or in a large explorable area like Metroid?
Or a combination of both like in SA:DX?
Also, what you said about the music has me interested: what type of music is it and why is it used so sparingly?

~Off-topic~

Fifthly, political bias in journalism is, depressingly, seemingly unavoidable, or, at least, unavoided. As with any journalism, though, whether your commentary is acceptable depends on your audience. If we're here to see a game review, political commentary doesn't really have a place there. However, if it's not very incendiary, which I doubt it would be, I don't think anybody here would have a problem with it. We accept differences in opinion while at the same time avoiding incendiary discussions.

Sixthly, everyone here is intelligent and, in varying yet increasing degrees,
interested in mature topics such as politics, "real life" struggles and, dare I say, religion. We have a cast of wonderful and passionate individuals whose friendships and discussions on this board would either be jeopardized or galvanized by a more open policy on such serious issues. While such a dramatic change in policy would be met with no small degree of wariness from the staff, including myself, we are, nevertheless, the staff of a board which has been led by its members into becoming far more than just a Sonic board. If there is a serious interest in discussing some type of serious issue which is currently off-limits, and a significant number of you believe it is something you would feel it wise to authorize were you a moderator here, then speak up. We can promise that we will, at least, discuss it.

I post #6 because this is not the first time I've heard someone note that they would say something related to something off-limits if they could. If there are any responses to #6, please just quote me in Chatty Chat to help keep this thread on-topic. ^^;
~~~~~

Rule #2 of forum posting-- space out your paragraphs or nobody will really read them. XD Well, was I right?

ANYWAY SO: Is moving this topic OK with everybody?

I am not intending to say more than I should about potentially incendary topics here. If I ever do, than if an admin will point it out...thank you.

Anyway, to answer your questions...it is defiantly an FPS, with a focus on both combat and exploration of its levels to find goodies and story tidbits.
As for its design...leans more towards the Metroid style of allowing you to revisit levels you have already been to (although you don't ever have to).
As for the music...well, perhaps I just don't pay enough attention, so maybe there's more to it than I said, but why would it be used so sparingly? Well, it adds to the atmosphere. When you're exploring a leaking underwater city filled with crazed enemies who will attack you on sight, the absence of BGM may help build a feeling of emptiness and possibly even tension. Most of the music is either instrumental BGM to increase dramitic effect (like when you see the underwater city of so-called "Rapture" for the first time) or 1950's-style songs playing out of radios you find in said city.


Does that help explain?

Well, I was going to mention the whole "politics" thing, but it looks like GS and BR already did... so I won't nag ya about that, too. XD

So, are these editorials purely about video games? If so, I might move this to the video games forum, rather than keep it in the off-topic forum.

Okay, folks! Next up, it's time for another of...TVoL's editorials!


This time...





Gameplay: Good. It starts off, as noted by Gamespot.com, as though it were "Master and Commander" in space: small battles between 2-4 ships drag out until one or the other gets so beat-up that they decide to bail out, and later on, combat grows more fast-paced, with more ships and weapons blasting away at each other as you press the "Pause/Break" button every so often every so often to reassign orders to your fleet. It may seem confusing at first, but the game's opening missions serve as a tutorial of sorts to help get you used to, if not familiar with Nexus's mechanics. The game takes a unique stance on space combat: instead of simply blasting your foes into submission with just one weapon type, things aren't that simple. When the game enters full swing, you have to deal with three different types of weapons: hull damaging, shield draining, and finally, device-disabling. This gives you the room to customize your ships as per your strategy: do you want a fleet that specializes in knocking its foe's weapons offline, then slowly chipping away at a hapless target, or do you prefer to load your ships with the most powerful shield and hull-damaging weaponry you can find for the simple "blast them into submission" strategy? (Frankly, I usually lean toward the latter of those two, as disabling systems can take a while in the game's later stages.)

Anyway, for the most part, ships are automated. You tell them what to attack, and which type of attack (shield-draining, hull-damaging, or device-disabling), and they handle the basic ins and outs of doing that. They maneuver and shoot automatically (unless you access the devices and direct things from there, but I've only done that once, and I don't recommend it in a full-scale fleet engagement). You can also do things like tell them to direct auxillary power to some system (or group of systems, at least) or another, commence commando raids on enemy ships, launch fighter craft, etc., all the while trying to figure out how to get the better of your opponents as they attempt to do the same. As the game progresses, your fleet gains additional ships, but take care of them-if they get evacuated and/or destroyed, you lose them for the rest of the game (I think. :heh:). In fact, it can be frustrating, if you're one of those people such as I who likes to keep your fleet at full strength, as you can be winning a battle against your alien foes and then suddenly have to restart a mission because they picked off one of your smaller ships. And stay away from ships that are going to explode-the pack a punch when they go boom.

Atmosphere: Okay, at least, if not good. The music is a major factor in this, and often, (during the menus and briefings, at least) it's kind of a weirdish spacey operatic tune, sometimes its tingling, calm music during stealth missions (or at least missions in which you haven't begun to fight yet), to epic tunes playing in the heat of things when things finally heat up.

Sound: Good. I know what you're thinking: "There's no sound in space!" Okay, maybe you aren't thinking that, but either way, there are sound effects during the battles, but, despite their scientific inaccuracy, they're actually pretty good. From the thundering booms of railgun shells pounding away at hulls, to the sounds of laser weaponry flashing and fizzing (or whatever kind of sound it makes, it may be hard to describe in text :heh:),to the rumble (or something :heh:) of engines blasting, to the alarms of ships sustaining heavy damage, the sound is nice, and the game would simply be too silent without it, despite its setting in space. I've already discussed the music, and the voice acting is good. The only real problem that you may find with it is that most of the dialog in missions comes in the form of slightly distorted communiques, but I found that easy enough to overlook. Also, make what of this you will, but most of the ship order acknowledgment soundbites seem to have a British accent to them.

Graphics: Good. Lighting is accurate enough, the ships are well-designed (and most races in the game seem to have a fairly different visual style, too, so that's obviously a plus), shields, engines, thrusters, lasers, projectiles, and explosions all flash and/or light up and/or appear with...pizazz, shall we say, (the explosions may be a bit overdone, though-when something blows, the explosion tends to obscure the view around it), and the camera can be adjusted and rotated easily, (usually) allowing you to get a good view of whatever it is you want and/or need to see on the battlefield.

Story: Good. It's actually a pretty original story sci-fi story, as originial as it may get nowadays, at least, told both through dialog in the missions, the briefings, cutscenes, and finally through journal entries and "historical notes" you can read between missions.

I haven't tried the multiplayer, not yet, at least, but from what I've experienced from the campaign, I'll say that Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is a fairly solid space fleet combat game. Its difficulty can be frustrating, at times, as can, perhaps, its tendency to keep you guessing about what, exactly, you're going to be up against next, and/or how to deal with it (going into a mission without proper equipment can be a baaaaaaad thing), but that's what online guides are for. ^_^

So, in conclusion, if you've got a hankerin' for some interstellar adventure at the helm of your customizable ship (you can swap its weapons, engines, etc.), and, in time, your fleet of customizable ships, you may want to seriously consider Nexus: The Jupiter Incident.


Well, there's another game review, courtesy of TVoL.

Speaking of courtesy, would it kill ya to post in TSC? :LOL:

Thanks!