Aladyyn
they praying for the death of a rockstar
It's actually an alien f***ing simulator.
HF Retro Game of the Year - 2007 - Mass Effet Wins!
- Thread starter SniperHF
- Start date
Ceremony
blahem
- Jun 8, 2012
- 113,224
- 15,460
Oooo this one is contentious, I like it 
The Bioware contingent is strong on HF so ME doing well doesn't surprise me. I am somewhat surprised Bioshock isn't 2nd right now. I wonder if it's a game people don't replay generally and thus isn't fresh in peoples minds. At the time I remember it being a bigger deal anyway.
The Bioware contingent is strong on HF so ME doing well doesn't surprise me. I am somewhat surprised Bioshock isn't 2nd right now. I wonder if it's a game people don't replay generally and thus isn't fresh in peoples minds. At the time I remember it being a bigger deal anyway.
Bjorn Le
Hobocop
I had the 8-bit and 16-bit Nintendo, nothing after those. Just full on PC-race playing Larry 1 as an 8 year old kid with my dad. Now if you asked what is the best game of all time, then I would say Super Mario Bros. 3 is up there. Super Mario Galaxy I won't vote for as I have not played it.
I have played Bioshock, COD, Uncharted and GoW2. Games like Halo3 and Galaxy I absolutely accept as great games, but I've not played them. It's also very unlikely I ever will as it takes so many wires already to even connect one f***ing console to my tv while the router is also connected to the tv.
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Warden of the North
Ned Stark's head
I had so many good times in TF2s heyday. I ‘only’ clocked in about 1000 hours total myself, but it’s easily my favorite FPS ever. So many fun dynamics between the classes. The pyros air blast might be my favorite video game mechanic ever.
SpookyTsuki
Registered User
- Dec 3, 2014
- 15,916
- 671
Oooo this one is contentious, I like it
The Bioware contingent is strong on HF so ME doing well doesn't surprise me. I am somewhat surprised Bioshock isn't 2nd right now. I wonder if it's a game people don't replay generally and thus isn't fresh in peoples minds. At the time I remember it being a bigger deal anyway.
Mass effect was one of the games that had a ton of heart (Like Shadow of the Colossus).
Bioshock was either. You loved it. Or you didn’t care for it. You could tell within the first or second misson usually
I'm lukewarm on it oddly enough.
Bioshock could have been a pretty good shooter with some tweaks but that wasn't the focus. A few more things to shoot at, better AI, more significant tactical advantages based on weapon/plasmid choices as opposed to it mostly being flavor choice, get rid of the stupid vita chambers (thankfully they can be disabled) and add some more interesting long term health resource management in its place. The levels are a bit constricted due to the consoles of the time.
Most of the non-gameplay bits are fine to great.
2 is a somewhat better shooter but worse at the other stuff.
SpookyTsuki
Registered User
- Dec 3, 2014
- 15,916
- 671
Eh lukewarm is kind of the thing I was looking for. I haven’t met anybody that hates it. Or seen anyone hate on it. (There’s obviously a couple)
Bioshock 2 is so disappointing. It's more of the same without the amazing story to go with it. Not close to bad as you said, but just....meh
Mass Effect however, is a masterpiece. Probably my favorite sci-fi series in any medium next to Star Wars. I'd love to run through the series again but 1 being so clunky (and the story as a whole feeling way worse without any of the choices carrying over) will probably keep me from doing so. That, and I don't have any of the DLC since i'm on Xbox now and it would still be really expensive to gather it all up.
Mario Galaxy as well, is great. Not sure why that dude would slam these games but whatever.
Mass Effect however, is a masterpiece. Probably my favorite sci-fi series in any medium next to Star Wars. I'd love to run through the series again but 1 being so clunky (and the story as a whole feeling way worse without any of the choices carrying over) will probably keep me from doing so. That, and I don't have any of the DLC since i'm on Xbox now and it would still be really expensive to gather it all up.
Mario Galaxy as well, is great. Not sure why that dude would slam these games but whatever.
Big McLargehuge
Fragile Traveler
18Hossa
And Grace, Too
- Oct 12, 2012
- 6,625
- 252
I played it for the first time last year and I didn’t really have any issues. Sure it’s not the best gameplay but its still playable.
syz
[1, 5, 6, 14]
- Jul 13, 2007
- 29,267
- 12,947
I mean I tried to play it the year it came out and I traded it in half way through.
Oscar Acosta
Registered User
- Mar 19, 2011
- 7,695
- 369
Mass Effect is great. I don't even have problems going back to it today, not sure why people have issue with it but I see that everywhere so I'm clearly the minority on that.
Hard not to vote for Rock Band, it was a phenomenon at it's time but I don't really think it hit it's pinnacle until RB2 and The Beatles.
Hard not to vote for Rock Band, it was a phenomenon at it's time but I don't really think it hit it's pinnacle until RB2 and The Beatles.
SpookyTsuki
Registered User
- Dec 3, 2014
- 15,916
- 671
It also wasn’t the best though. Probably the most fun or something (and that varies). But it wasn’t close to being the best.
It's also just dumber. Bioshock 1 has all these critiques of objectivism woven into the game and world. It's not particularly subtle if you know what it's talking about, but I doubt 95% of the players know exactly where it was going. Broad strokes sure, but BS1 has a specific target. Bioshock 2 literally takes you on a theme park exhibit of it and then figuratively beats you over the head with with it. Which hilariously does the same thing the work it's lampooning does.
I think the thing I enjoyed about BS1 was the fact I had never seen anything like that in a game I had played. It can be pretty much be boiled down to "Socialism is bad too, see!" but the twists and turns within the main plot put it over the top for me.
2 is basically "who are you and why do I give a damn?"
2 is basically "who are you and why do I give a damn?"
I found Mass Effect and its two sequels to be overrated, personally. Each one is "5 mins of cutscenes and dialog->walk into room suspiciously arranged with ample cover->1 min-long firefight->5 mins of cutscenes and dialog->walk into next room with ample cover->etc etc. They're highly scripted and highly staged and give the player as much "choice" as a Choose Your Own Adventure book. No matter what you choose, your playthrough is going to be very similar to millions of other gamers.
It's never too late to go back and play an excellent old game, even for the first time. The best ones are still fun, once you get past the initial agedness, no matter how old they get, because a good game is simply a good game.
BTW, BioShock received the remastered treatment a little over a year ago, so now's actually a very good time to go back and check that off of the list.
It's never too late to go back and play an excellent old game, even for the first time. The best ones are still fun, once you get past the initial agedness, no matter how old they get, because a good game is simply a good game.
BTW, BioShock received the remastered treatment a little over a year ago, so now's actually a very good time to go back and check that off of the list.
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BioShock is great largely because the focus wasn't on being a shooter. It's the RPG elements that really make that game, IMO. If it had ditched those and focused on shooter elements, it would've been a far more forgettable game. I suspect that most people who are either lukewarm towards it or hate it are judging it as a shooter and not appreciating that being different from most shooters is what makes it so great.
I found "significant tactical advantages based on weapon/plasmid choices" to be one of the game's strengths. It made a big difference which ammo you were using. For example, anti-personnel rounds did about twice as much damage to humanoids as regular rounds did, and armor piercing rounds did about twice as much damage to armored/machine enemies. Doing research by taking photos added more damage on top, as well as helped you to know which ammo types should be used against which enemies. Finally, different enemies were much more susceptible to fire, ice, electricity and so on. I actually found the game to be stronger in this aspect than many "truer" RPGs like Fallout 3 and Oblivion/Skyrim, in which you don't have as much choice in which weapons or ammo to use in encounters because you already spec'ed yourself for certain weapon types and decided which to carry with you.
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tacogeoff
Registered User
it could be a good time. ill have to pencil it in to my list. I didn't know that there was a remaster, thanks for the info
But it is mostly a shooter gameplay wise which is why it's a problem that the shooty bits are kinda boring.
Everything added to it just gives you another way to kill something just as dead as the last way would (flavor choice). Sure, if I pick a fire plasmid and strengthen it I'll kill certain enemies faster than I kill other enemies. But the disadvantage to lacking a specific plasmid or type of ammo is minimal 95% of the time. That's what makes it flavor choice. I never said "Dang I should have picked that to spend my Adam on instead". It's all carrot no stick.
You also get so much Adam in the game (even when you save the little ones) that these theoretical disadvantages you'd get from branching are rendered mostly insignificant which undermines the systems.
I'm not against the RPG elements in the game. I'm against them not mattering much. Deadspace and Dishonored do similar things and have the same problems.
It's called BioShock Remastered and there's also BioShock 2 Remastered. They may be bundled together as The BioShock Collection, especially if you're on Xbox One. I played them both last year. They do a good job of maintaining the look and feel of the originals.
Like I said, my experience was different. Sure, you can kill any enemy with any weapon or ammo type, but it can take a lot longer or more ammo with some than with others. I don't think that I was exaggerating when I said that it can take twice as long or twice as much ammo. The difference is significant. Keep in mind, though, that my impression right now is mostly influenced by my replaying of it in the remastered version on the Hardcore difficulty that it has and the original PC version didn't. That difficulty really makes proper ammo use and conservation important, as well as ADAM expenditure. I highly recommend that anyone replaying the game or wanting a challenge to play on Hardcore, since I think that it addresses some of your critiques.
