That's a Handyman, you fight at least 3.

They just didn't have wigs is all.

They're partially lobotomised freaks, wig or no wig they gon' beatchu down.

I would have liked to see more to do with them, just not fighting them since they were dull and frustrating affairs. A Handyman lab at Fink or something.

The one they went with is all oooooh tragic horror what a horribly tragic place this is.


Shit, I'm starting to come round on this Bioshock, what a load of old wank idea.

MoesTavern wrote:

Much prefer that Handyman design to the one they went with.

Agreed. Same personality but that look could have been a winner.

Rogers gives it some words, typical irreverence and micro-dissections of things.
"Interference" is definitely a better term than "dissonance" re: rules fighting with fiction.

"lol, 4 thousands words."

"...well, shit."

There's touches like that, then at the other end there's the other extremes. It is rather schizophrenic.

The more I look back on this, the more I think it was a huge disappointment.

They managed to make the setting seem fresh which was no small feat after the brilliance of Rapture but the combat is so, so tired.

Brooks wrote:

Rogers gives it some words, typical irreverence and micro-dissections of things. "Interference" is definitely a better term than "dissonance" re: rules fighting with fiction.

I really appreciate this guy's viewpoint on videogames, and it helps me see your viewpoint about 'not making games about humans' much more clear

I finished this game a few hours ago and have mixed feelings, eventually concluding that yes, we shouldnt be making games about humans yet, because the game has immense humanity at times and as a game about people sucking, and elizabeth's plight, i was left affected and thinking a deal, but just about the rest of it was just fucking absurd

It's a spectacular absurd game and a very crappy shooter, which completely amputates all that was interesting about system shock, gameplay wise, but yeah it's an important game and i hope it does well, and i hope another game soon makes me feel like the game made me feel at times, because no matter how much i was thinking 'this is kind of crappy' at the game's shooting and it's ridiculous 'moral choices' (roger's review was hilarious and on point about the interference stuff), it did get me, the ending and the People Sucking did get to me

I thought brooks was being typically contrary before completing the game and reading his articles but he's not he's on target, except for, as far as i can tell, he just didnt care for the game, when on one level i genuinely did care for the game, or certain aspects and will think about them from time to time. Just a pity that significant affecting content was so rare and so abused by the absurdity of the rest of it. Worth a go though, i'm seriously not sure i actually sympathised with any aspects of a character as much as i sympathised with some aspects of elizabeth before, i allowed myself to establish some empathy with that bundle of polygons and rim lighting and it got to me

I agree that even as a total mess, this game remains something of a miracle insofar as it's unusually ambitious for its industrial tier, and something of that ambition is a little heartening. Is why I'd mention it in the same breath as the MGS series, there's a similar struggle going on.

Re: Roger's exam, I'm not entirely convinced Binf's curated space is as interesting to just 'be'/explore the details of is as engaging as claimed, and actually that would provide more headspace to start noticing the slips in execution, even down to some of the graphic design choices and NPC canned routines.
If we weren't shooting dudes inna face we'd need to be doing something challenging. With this in mind I'm kinda interested in checking out Gone Home.

If we think about IRL tourism, a key feature and provider of deeply satisfying feedback within the whole exercise is the fact we, well, exercise - we have to physically walk around to do any kind of investigating local architecture/take snaps with a cameraphone/check out a bay view/watch kids fighting. That isn't yet replicable in a virtual space; pushing the Forward button doesn't seem to cut it. (Rogers' go-to vocab for this sort of thing has been "friction" and it's well chosen; Steve Swink was talking about it first in Game Feel, which is still the best propa book on videogame design I've bothered with and y'all should give it a whirl.)

And thanks for the heads up i'll have a look at that book. I really want to get my next project (What i'm researching/preliminary arting and coding now) right, and understand basically how to get around what rogers called ludonarrative interference, supplying a game that is a game but attempts to rationally explain something further. My influence funnily is the last few seasons of Adventure Time. If only BI had the pure strength of that show's heart

Well that's it, underline consideration of tone and the design as it plays on a more intellectual and emotional basis. The essential result SHOULD be something of an oddity, it's not the basic ruleset that's at fault but a designers level of adherence to what has gone before. I'm sure you can make a game in which there is shooting where you can tell a moving and intelectually appealing science fiction story but it has to follow the tone of your story, be implemented in line with that tone - I dont see multiple 'get over here!'ing enemies with octopus water tentacles and shotgunning them, from an army of policemen/guys with red rags on their heads at close range in tune with BI's tone for example.

I even think you can make a spectacular game with serious things going on, but its themes, if Big Themes, should not be visual checkbox exercises with terrible rough player involvement.

I think mostly, you would expect a book, upon reading one having not read a book before, to actually make sense and its content appeal to you, not read like an insane rich white person has gone sky high up their own arseby the end of the first page and forever climbing in altitude thereafter, until by the end of the first chapter the book makes absolutely no sense and the things it asks you to take seriously bring out bursts of incredulous laughter. To be honest i am already a gamer and appreciated what BI trid to do and was affected by some of it, but i could imagine my partner yelling 'WHAT' at various points through the game, much like i did, even a a gamer, during metal gear solid 2 and 4.

Its not just games as fiction but games as responsible significant fiction that concerns me, and how we have to approach fiction from a game standpoint, how we have to reconsider how fiction is represented, and how games have to change to adapt to meet that half way.

You want, in the end, for the phrase 'oh nah im not a gamer' to be an stupid thing to say, like 'nah i dont read books' is usually marked with a tone of apology rather than dismissal from he/she who said it and going 'nah im not a filmer' is an extremely bizarre thing to say

If BI's aim was to empower gaming in an intellectual context, it has failed, because its a terrible mash of incredibly insulat gaming tropes executed oftentimes extremely badly, and thats such a pity! If its story could look upwards at the mechanics that drive it, rather than be dragged down and made largely inconsequential by them, it could have been truly a wondrous thing