RPS Dudes whats with the picture changing and why is a bit of her face missing?

Like “electrocute that guy, oh wait, it does 1/4 the damage of a pistol bullet, this could take awhile” as a different way to play, other than shooting someone four times? The plasmids were godawful for combat, end story, period. The only redeeming features were either blowing an entire level up with fire (because there are explosive cannisters every six feet) and slowly electrocuting someone to death who is in water.

I tried for an entire level to use my entirely maxed out as much as possible plasmids only, and couldn’t. I tried only using guns, and could.

As to CoD4, I just played the (hilariously short) demo and have come to a conclusion: those NAZI’s from CoD2 look an awful lot like Arabs now.

Really, like what exactly? The ‘oh I shot a guy and he was replaced 1 second later by another guy in exactly the same position with a slightly different beard’ combat?

The ‘I stuck my head around a corner for the first time and got shot by 4 different people and had 2 grenades land at my feet’ AI?

The only redeeming feature was the cinematic storyline – and whilst I wouldn’t call it good as in original or superbly crafted it WAS executed in a very entertaining way, like part of an enjoyable action film. It worked well.

The sniper level was great too actually, apart from the bullshit end sequence that spoiled it.

Has anyone complaining about Bioshock replayability actually tried replaying it? The plot takes on a truly tragic slant and you notice all the little ways the characters find to screw you over. As well as all the foreshadowing not to mention the side stories I really only noticed the third time through. Also there’s around fifty weapons (8 guns with 3 ammo types plus at least 2 dozen plasmids) if you can’t find another way of using that I don’t think it’s Irrational who are to blame.

CoD4 had a great plotline? Seriously? Terrorists stealing a nuke does it for you eh? CoD4 had many great things, but I wouldn’t number its plot among them.

I think it is an allegory for fears about climate change, and the Iraq war, or at least wars involving oil. I talked about it in previous Crysis threads and explained it a bit more.

I do think that the story was weak to some degree; hence my earlier comment stating I liked the fact it was allegorical.
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I said before, writing a story is pretty easy, it is a simple chain of events, and sometimes there are plot twists and so on. But if you rely on plot twists the game will lose replayability (for me something Bioshock suffered from). Real depth in a story is something else. If you try to develop the character in an FPS you are presented with problems. Do they talk? And if they do, does the player feel they are losing control. Is it better to have a mute character and have them act as a blank slate for the players imagination? Will dialogue and cut-scenes slow the action?

These are problems Valve has worked hard on over the HL series and it shows, but they use extensive play-testing, partly for that reason. This is why their games have become so well balanced, but still manage to be emotive, despite Freeman being mute throughout. Crysis didn’t manage this as well, but the fairly sparse story in terms of plot (in the literary sense) is probably due to an effort by Crytek to make an action driven game.

I also think the aliens were there to change the pace. You go from stalking walking targets to fighting off dangerous aliens. They obviously wanted to shift up the pace and make the player feel under threat. You lose some of the ability to stalk around, but the games pace picks up as you progress. I didn’t like the floating section myself, it was a bit confusing and not much fun, I also found the end battle felt too much like a contra game. But I think I understand what they wanted to achieve. If the whole game had been slowly creeping about most of the time, it would have gotten dull, unless you added something else.