I did not use to be much of a hard-core player and I haven’t had the time and the enthusiasm to actually finish a game within the last decade. Ever since I started programming, I have taken more pleasure in creating games than in playing them. So, I half-heartedly played some of the new games when they came out at a friend’s place but it wasn’t much of a thrill. Well, I figured I was not a kid anymore and that’s just the way it goes. Boy, I was so wrong!
A couple of months ago, I saw Fallout 3 … and … well, I don’t know what hit me but I was in love! After all these years! I started to play and I felt like the 13 year old kid again who had to stay up (really) late because he must finish just one more level. There was this huge unknown world for me to explore and I loved every burned tree and radioactive waterhole of it. I finished it and I am now halfway through the second pass (now as the evil guy, of course).
A little while ago I stumbled over Bioshock in a store on sale. Encouraged by my Fallout experience I bought it, hoping for similar fun: Your common protagonist explores a futuristic retro-world filled with fears and dangers. Great concept! But what was that? Bioshock was nothing close to what I expected:
The first thing that really bugged me was the big bunch of technical issues. For one, the DVD I bought is a bit unbalanced. It makes horrible noises and caused most of the screws on my laptop case to become loose during installation. After fixing that I unsuccessfully tried to start the game. Some internet research, software patches and heavy meddling with ini files finally got me to the meat of the game. During this process I had to watch the logos and the intro over and over again, since you cannot skip them. What were they thinking? Tinkering with the desktop shortcut finally got rid of that problem, too. Now, with the game running in DX9-mode with XP-compatibility on my Vista machine with all graphical features turned off in 800×600 resolution I can sort of play the game.
Well, and here we come to the other issue: the game play. It is just another fairly linear first-person shooter. Admittedly, it does have an interesting setting, a really cool background story and a few new ideas but none of these could keep me entertained long enough to suck me in. So, I probably won’t be finishing Bioshock anytime soon. When I have more time at my disposal, I might give it another try. This may be in about 30 or 40 years when I retire. Maybe by then there will be a patch out that makes Bioshock run smoothly on Vista machines with ATI graphic cards, but I wouldn’t count on it.
So, what did I learn out of this? Well, for one I want a game to have a cool and interesting setting. Furthermore, I learned that I really enjoy huge game worlds with a great freedom of choice. I love being able to interact with this world and watch the world reacting to me depending on how I behave.
Having learned this about myself, I now understand why working on our very own game here at Rough Sea is so satisfying for me. Our idea pretty much matches my idea of a good game. If the game comes anywhere close to what we have planned, the chances are really high that this will be the first game I worked on as a professional that I will play in my spare time.
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3 comments
Bob Woodward says:
February 5, 2009 at 9:27 pm (UTC 1 )
I just hope you don’t expect your game to be great for the same reason this guy liked Fallout 3: http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2009/01/gamesfrontiers_0126
Bob
Seba says:
February 5, 2009 at 9:35 pm (UTC 1 )
Fallout 3 is the second best game every made, in my opinion. And that’s including all the many bugs it shipped with, which is quite a statement.
I’m on now my second pass too, but playing the good guy this time around (selling children to the slavers was too good to pass on
)
Give Fable II a shot. It’s also a terrific open-world RPG; completely different yet very similar at the same time.
Manuel says:
February 6, 2009 at 10:52 am (UTC 1 )
@Seba: I encountered the slavers completely by accident. I just figured … “hey … slavers … they are bad dudes. Bad dudes must go.” After a short chat with the guy at the entrance I attacked them. Well, I needed a lot (really a lot!) of quicksaves to get through the camp. I took ‘em all down.
Anyway, I’ll give Fable2 a shot if I can find it somewhere to buy. Thanks for the tip. (Checking out the Fable 2 website just reminded me on all the “When I Was At Lionhead” stories we were so fortunate to hear about.)
@Bob: Thanks for pointing out this great article! Before having read it I would have not considered Fallout 3 much depressing. Afterwards, I have to admit that it does have it’s subtle ways to make you feel a bit sad. Anyway, I have been in the game industry or a couple of years and thus not easily depressed.
Anyway, our game will not have “Warning. May cause depression.” printed on the box.