Fair enough. I've always been one to love a great experience when it comes to gaming (Interstate '76, The Longest Journey, Deux Ex), but the faults that accompanied Bioshock, I guess prevented me from really experiencing that ... experience. Perhaps I'll try it again one day to see if I can overlook those fun-stopping elements.

There have been plenty of other games that offered a similarly excellent experience to the one you describe, that all had faults of their own. Somehow I was able to overlook those. Guess I'm not sure what it is about Bioshock that I despised so much as to disallow that.
>> ^mentality:
The gameplay was nothing exceptional, but definitely better than games like Fallout 3. And I totally understand when things like technical issues or how the gameplay "feels" can ruin a game. Also I agree that there is a lot of repetitiveness. The repetitiveness, however, stems from the limited variety of enemies that you fought - and not from repetitive level design as in the first Halo game.
Like I said, I never considered the gunplay to be a strength of Bioshock, and those negative aspects that you mentioned never really bothered me. For me, the setting was always the real star of the show. From lush underwater rainforests, to the opulent decadence of the operahouse, to the run down squalor of the underwater slums, no one has ever put together such a spectacular cast of locales with such believable fidelity. And each locale has its own story to tell - told through flashbacks and journals - of how it was twisted into the macabre and fallen vision that you see before you. Throwing you in alone into this creepy and hostile world, run by a powerful and malevolent madman, created a sense of danger and desperation evoked by great survival horror games like System Shock 2.
For me, Bioshock was one of the few games that managed to transcend the limitations of gaming and provided an interactive experience.

>> ^ForgedReality:
Sorry, I can't agree. What was it that you enjoyed most about the gameplay? Or was it just the setting?
For me, I dunno. Nothing really ever jumped out at me that made me want to play it. It felt kind of "meh." I just couldn't get as into it as some people apparently could. I tried, but certain things really bothered me, like the annoyingly typical Unreal Engine graphics (AA issues, "everything is shiny" syndrome, etc), incredibly weak feeling weapons that seemed like they should have had a lot more impact on your enemies, the repetitiveness of the single player experience...
I'll admit, at first, the visuals and the atmosphere were kind of cool, but that all quickly melted away for me because it just didn't feel all that fun. I think a lot of the longevity it had was due to impractical things like collecting tapes and stuff for background information--the kind of thing that had no bearing on the actual game itself.

The gameplay was nothing exceptional, but definitely better than games like Fallout 3. And I totally understand when things like technical issues or how the gameplay "feels" can ruin a game. Also I agree that there is a lot of repetitiveness. The repetitiveness, however, stems from the limited variety of enemies that you fought - and not from repetitive level design as in the first Halo game.

Like I said, I never considered the gunplay to be a strength of Bioshock, and those negative aspects that you mentioned never really bothered me. For me, the setting was always the real star of the show. From lush underwater rainforests, to the opulent decadence of the operahouse, to the run down squalor of the underwater slums, no one has ever put together such a spectacular cast of locales with such believable fidelity. And each locale has its own story to tell - told through flashbacks and journals - of how it was twisted into the macabre and fallen vision that you see before you. Throwing you in alone into this creepy and hostile world, run by a powerful and malevolent madman, created a sense of danger and desperation evoked by great survival horror games like System Shock 2.

For me, Bioshock was one of the few games that managed to transcend the limitations of gaming and provided an interactive experience.

quite a different look at slum life. close and personal stories.

Where is this friggin' slum?

Or you can take the one thing out of that equation that causes pain and suffering more than any idea in the history of man: Money.


That's nonsense. Money is a commonly accepted medium of exchange to defeat the inefficiency of barter. It is, in essence, a product that is a placeholder for other products. That was truer when we were on gold than now, but still... Are you saying you don't want people to make stuff and trade with each other? Stop watching TV and read "Economics in One Lesson." It's only $10 on amazon.


Yes i do mean we could all live with out money. Lets value the true worth of ones work to community.. Do you really think that money is the ultimate asnwer? It is someting we humans thought of to make things a little simpler as bartering had it's disadvantages. And by bartering one can't collect such a huge amounts of wealth in one lifetime, all that lead us to the point where a small percentage of people in the world own most of the wealth. Is that right? Some poor schmuck in Thailand is working his ass of to produce for us the cheap tuna that we eat. A good socialist would think that it is just plain wrong. I don't mean that hard work and commitment shouldn't be appreciated, yes of course, that is EXACTLY what i mean. Why should a construction worker make more money in Switzerland than in India? Just let all people have what they deserve, not what we in the western society think they deserve.

And that private schooling? Yes, i bet that the overall quality would raise but what about those who then simply can't afford to pay for it? Will you let them stay in the low income slums and make products for us. Class strugles should be a thing in the past by now, we are smarter than that. Hell, let's put the low class monkeys to prison so we won't have to pay them anything. We can keep them there for years for stealing a cigarrette or smoking a joint. Really?

US of A, i despise you more and more every day and i use to look at you in awe and wonder. The land of the free.. Right.. Just look at the health reform... Let the poor get sick and die, let's just hope that they manage to multiply before the massgrave so we can have more SLAVES!

And the next comment after this probably says i'm a terrorist.. Far from it, pacifist whose grand dad went to jail for not picking up a gun, as did my dad. We should all be free of organized religion, free of the monetary powers, free to be humans. No we are alla just slaves.

Sorry about the rant again but this thing just ticks me off. And i'm afraid that something so bad will happen if these things are allowed to continue. And by the way, i don't even own a TV...

An amazing piece of architectural engineering, of course they're going to publicise the fact they've just built the tallest building in the world. Who wouldn't?

Obviously Smugg, you know nothing of the Palestinian problem to be making such an inane comment and so far as the Muslim responsibility for helping poorer Muslim nations...it made me think about all those lucky lucky Christian kids living in abject poverty in Mexican slums thinking about how lucky they are to be bordered by the great and benevolent Christian USA. (along with all the people living in American slums??) Stones and glass houses I think.

I don't personally agree with nor like the ostentatiousness of Dubai, in the same way I don't agree/like that of Vegas and Disneyworld. I also do not like self righteous American hypocrisy.

So the workers only got $6 p/day?? Who, the designers? the structural engineers? maybe the architects? I'm sure some of the workers were low paid but not all. I mean, it's not like the USA has ever made use of cheap immigrant labour is it. (and let's not talk about the use of SLAVE labour, it only lasted three hundred years after all.)

[wind noises]

If I could sample the wind, I would loop it

And let my life poem flow over its sacred beats.

Using Kilimanjaro as my djembe I would drum rainbows out of the moonlight and use them as hooks in between verses; verses of little girls spinning ropes in opposite directions, waiting for an opening to jump in.

As the world turns, double dutch, I jump, double time over oceans and back; the water waves and I wave back.

Rippling echoes of "sunshii-ii-iine" - folks get ground in the "sunshii-ii-iine."

But the lightning flaaash three times and its time for the chorus which includes corn bread, candy yams, and all that good stuff, which black folks on Saturn are made of.

As we approach the second verse the roots of trees are plucked from bass lines, which resonate and shake the earth -- devastating everything that's not built in harmony in it.

The second verse is a journey through the ruins of ruined souls; that valued all that was nothing, and nothing of the all-knowing ever flowing wind - which is the undercurrent of this current blowing, the funky drummer from here to eternity.

But even as ruined souls backspin, the wind mills forward and rocks steady 'till the sun hits the fader and the chorus kicks in; then the moon yells "Go!" and we all backspin -- ZULU! As the moonlight shines true blue silvery indigo light my spirit takes flight - because the moonlight is my indigo; indigo ON, to the break of dawn, I rock rock steady steady 'till the early morn, word is bond I'm talking about seeing your nature in nature innate in your nature - New York states of mind did not create ya.

Not until you listen to Rakim on a rocky mountain top have you heard hip-hop.

Extract the urban element that created it and let an open wide countryside let us illustrate it.

Riding in a freight train listening to Coltrane and my reality went insane and I think I saw Jesus; he was playing hop-scotch with Betty Carter who was cursing him out in a scat-like-gibberish for not saying "Butterfingers."

And like the grains of sand, like the seeds of time, the pains of Man, the frames of mind which built these frames which is the structure of my urban superstructure. The trains and planes can corrupt and obstruct your train of thought so that you forget how to walk through the woods which ain't good, 'cause if you never walked through the trees listening to 'Nobody Beats The Biz' you ain't never heard hip-hop.. and you don't stop, and you don't stop, and you don't...

STOP lettin' cities define you, confine you to that which is cement and brick.

We are not a hard peoples, our domes have been crowned with the likes of steeples. That which is our being soars with the eagles, and the Jonathon Livingston seagulls - Yes - I got wings, you got wings, we all got to got wings!

So let's widen the circumference of our nest, and escape this urban incubator -

You see, the wind plays the world like an instrument; blows through trees like flutes but trees don't grow in cement. And as heartbeats bring percussion, fallen trees bring repercussions; cities play upon our souls like broken drums, we drum the essence of creation from city slums - but city slums mute our drums and our drums become humdrum, 'cause city slums have never been where our drums are from - just the place where our daughters and sons become, off-beat heartbeats, slaves to city streets, where hearts get broken and heart beats stop - broken heart beats become break beats for niggas to rhyme on top, but they rhyme about... NOTHIN'.

You don't got nothin' to rhyme about 'cause you've never seen the moon, your styles can't be universal if you're not in tune, with the... [wind noises]

>> ^raverman:
ok screw synchronized swimming - this should be an Olympic sport


It kind of is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_at_the_Summer_Olympics

(Mountain bike)

Your video, Oh Em Gee! Brazilian Slum Mountain Bike Run., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^poolcleaner:
>> ^longde:
Nice, but it would get annoying to see that every morning.

I used to wake up to the same Vietnamese breast augmentation ad outside my apartment every day. Now THAT is annoying. That was years ago, and you know what? I drove by my old neighborhood and it's still there. I prefer the artistic expression to the commercial ad placement. Really, it's one or the other -- or nothing at all, but desolation and monotony of your every day life.

And somewhere in the world somebody's staring at a PETA billboard out their window who wishes they could be looking at an advertisement for boobs.

Somewhere, somebody has all the money and advantages they could want in life and is miserable while somebody else is living in a slum in Africa and believes she can do anything a human is capable of doing.

It's amazing how little our surroundings, possessions, circumstances or the scenery beyond our windows has to do with our outlook on life.

>> ^longde:
Nice, but it would get annoying to see that every morning.


I used to wake up to the same Vietnamese breast augmentation ad outside my apartment every day. Now THAT is annoying. That was years ago, and you know what? I drove by my old neighborhood and it's still there. I prefer the artistic expression to the commercial ad placement. Really, it's one or the other -- or nothing at all, but desolation and monotony of your every day life.

Your video, Slum artwork will blow your mind, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Thanks, Endall!

In reply to this comment by EndAll:
*quality

Where are cops with tasers when you need them? Damn slum rats.

I don't think it's worth the effort finding sources and news reports for your longde, but:

Singapore
The Chinese in Singapore are extremely ethnocentric. See the treatment of Indians, Africans and Filipina/o workers that have no legal recourse in this Chinese-centered meritocracy.

Malaysia
You must be joking. It's illegal to change your religion in this country, unless you’re converting to Islam. Ethnic Malays have an easy-going business process while the Chinese are kept down in bureaucracy and the expectation of bribes.

South Africa
Again, are you serious? How about their treatment of "refugees" from Zimbabwe last summer.

Kenya
Now I know you're joking. Kenya, like most of Africa is completely engaged in ethnic squabbles. The Luo people are particularly violent. Cities and slums are frequently broken down into sectors where different ethnic groups live. Sporadic violence is common place and the influx of Sudanese which are left to amass wherever they can find a spot is adding more kindle to the fire. Elections are a particularly dangerous period where candidates are endorsed by riots.

Brazil
If your skin is darker than #999966, expect to paid about half what a paler person makes. In no other country in the Americas is being black such a handicap.