By Quintin Smith on March 14th, 2011 at 11:49 am.
The BioShock 2 Protector Trials DLC arrives on PC today, adding a new challenge mode and six arenas to 2K’s inarguably moist epic. A mere seven and a half months late, too! That said, we’re getting it for free, and having had a read of Christian Donlan’s Eurogamer review this sounds to me like neat enough stuff. Take a look at some in-game footage below, if you’re curious. Thx Blues for the tip-off.
Just think! You can get home from work tonight and enjoy some brand-new content for free. Unless you work in a rotting and abandoned undersea city, in which case you probably won’t enjoy yourself so much. But then, why did you buy the game in the first place, you big freak?
14/03/2011 at 12:12 Xtinction says:
So a piece of DLC based on the worst aspect of bioshock 2… allright.
BTW have I missed it? Is Minerva’s Den out for PC yet?
14/03/2011 at 12:14 Quintin Smith says:
It is not. Also, I totally enjoyed the Sister defenses in Bioshock 2! Each one a little Alamo last-stand.
14/03/2011 at 15:21 oceanclub says:
Hey, IYHO, dude. I loved the “protection” scenarios, personally, so free DLC based around it? Yes please. I might even jump back into the multiplayer for a quick bash. And “Minerva’s Den” is tempting for me to try to buy it on the shitastic GWL Marketplace.
P.
14/03/2011 at 15:33 Heliocentric says:
The multiplayer is peer to peer, meaning you get all of the netcode problems we abandoned when we left dial up.
Run around a corner and shoot a guy? Watch him die, then you get set back around the corner shooting at the wall and the person you killed comes around the corner and shoots you.
Don’t worry, its not some magic respawn plasmid! Its just your kill was ignored by host.
Add into this camoflage plasmids and speed boost plasmids? You won’t even know if its the server\host or you were legitimately killed by a player even your pc didn’t know was there.
I was so bloody excited for bioshock multiplayer, why did they have to make it peer to peer, gfwl is just salt in the wound.
14/03/2011 at 17:50 oceanclub says:
Heliocentric, that’s interesting – I’d wondered why it was so horrendous when I first played it. One of the few single player games whose MP component I anticipated before release. Still I had fun the last time I jumped in and played.
P.
14/03/2011 at 12:16 Xtinction says:
Ah well, we’ll agree to disagree. I enjoyed drilling people and hitting them over the head with said drill, never really understood why this sequel got so much flak. It was pretty great.
14/03/2011 at 12:48 Navagon says:
It was. The only legit point I’ve read against the sequel is that the first game concluded Rapture’s storyline. Which really is little more than an excuse to just ignore the sequel and complain whenever anyone mentions it. I still maintain that a prequel would have been quite cool. But you only get a few seconds glimpse of what that could have been like in BS2.
14/03/2011 at 12:45 Navagon says:
Will we be getting Minerva’s Den free too? :D Hey, I can dream, right?
14/03/2011 at 13:21 McDan says:
Ah, yet again your excellent caption things for screenshots made me spray drinks over people. Well done.
14/03/2011 at 13:29 P3RF3CT D3ATH says:
It’s nice to at least see free DLC again. Guess I’ll be playing this after I beat Bioshock.
14/03/2011 at 13:32 Valvarexart says:
Great, just bought the game yesterday…
14/03/2011 at 13:55 WJonathan says:
“inarguably moist epic” ?!?
14/03/2011 at 17:09 Dances to Podcasts says:
Oh, the humidity!
14/03/2011 at 18:27 Navagon says:
I don’t think we should seas the opportunity to inject more bad puns.
14/03/2011 at 18:37 stahlwerk says:
That was in-poured taste, Navagon.
14/03/2011 at 19:03 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
I was going to jump in here with a pun of my own, but then I realised that none of you care wet I think.
15/03/2011 at 07:13 honolululu says:
HOH, but we dew!
14/03/2011 at 15:07 Iskariot says:
I just finished playing Bioshock 2 yesterday. I felt it was a very good, enjoyable sequel.
14/03/2011 at 15:13 CrazyBaldhead says:
No. Just NO. After buying and not being able to play the first Bios(c)(h)ock on Win7 x64 due to it crashing each and every time I try to change any settings, I can’t help but think the series must be pure shite.
I can’t refute the claims that gameplay/storywise it’s great (the reason I got the game in the first place was just because of those very claims anyway). It doesn’t matter when I CAN’T PLAY IT.
So, Bioshock, you can suck on my… sock.
14/03/2011 at 15:37 oceanclub says:
I’ve played Bioshock on Windows 7 64-bit fine, except for a problem at the start related to having Rapture 3D installed. Uninstalled that app (installed by the Dirt 2 demo, I think) and Bioshock then worked fine. Not sure this might help you, CBH but I found this thread very useful:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1133842
P.
14/03/2011 at 16:22 Pointless Puppies says:
Playing through BioShock 1 right now on a Windows 7 64-bit machine and I’m having a grand ol’ time. My only problem is the idiotic physics engine rendering at 30FPS while the rest of the game simultaneously renders at 60 FPS. It’s unbelievable (and not in a good way).
Have you lurked around the Steam forums? A couple of problems I had (like sound effects clipping out) were fixed with relative ease after reading the help topics.
14/03/2011 at 16:22 Pointless Puppies says:
….and that was directed at CrazyBaldhead above. <_<
14/03/2011 at 16:37 CrazyBaldhead says:
I’ve spent more than a couple of hours at the Steam forums trying to find a solution, alas, nothing has worked for me. What infuriates me even more is that the game kept crashing all the same on both of my two completely different setups. I eventually gave up and uninstalled the damn thing. Games are supposed to relieve stress, not add to it.
14/03/2011 at 17:33 Mistabashi says:
I had similar issues on a Vista-32 system; the game would crash about 50% of the time when you tried to change certain settings, and it would also randomly crash on startup about 20% of the time, and whenever it did crash it wiped all the settings leading to some thoroughly annoying endless cycles of crash, change settings, re-map keys, crash, change settings, crash, changeAAARRRRGGGHH!
It also has a few issues with the audio playback that can cause crackling/stuttering audio and missing sounds in places (this problem seemed to be particularly common).
If you can get past the buggyness though it’s definately a game worth playing (although didn’t live up to all the hype, if you are expecting System Shock 3 you will probably be disappointed to some degree as it’s pretty much a slightly above average corridoor shooter with an interesting setting and a well delivered plot for the first two thirds of the game or so).
14/03/2011 at 16:25 CrazyBaldhead says:
Thanks oceanclub, but I don’t have Rapture 3D installed and I’ve tried pretty much everything else. The game just refuses to work properly. Thanks again though.
14/03/2011 at 17:39 szlevi says:
Did 2K ever patch that horrendously buggy and over-the-top DRM out of BS2? Or was it just another lie of that bald-faced fatty Elizabeth 2K on the forum?
Seriolusly, 2K is the #2, right behind Activision in the world’s most abusive, most disgusting lying PoS game companies.
14/03/2011 at 17:48 oceanclub says:
“My only problem is the idiotic physics engine rendering at 30FPS while the rest of the game simultaneously renders at 60 FPS”
Yeah, that effect is so grating, and you _never_ stop noticing it. I still keep my fingers crossed that some technowhizz can one day unofficially patch it out.
P.
15/03/2011 at 00:12 MadTinkerer says:
But when will this and Minerva’s Den be available on Steam as opposed to GFWLGTFO? Because then I can actually buy and play it. To some publishers, releasing something “on PC” is a bizarre, nebulous, theoretical process which actively prevents me from actually buying it for my PC.
Not that I won’t buy non-Steam games, but making something a Steam exclusive is far better than making something a non-Steam exclusive. I’d rather buy direct from the developers and/or from one of the other few digital distribution systems I tolerate/enjoy (such as Impulse and GoG.com) than from GFWL or some other service I don’t already use.
EDIT: Oh wait, sorry, this is the free DLC story. I got mixed up. Still want to buy Minerva’s Den on Steam, though.
15/03/2011 at 09:13 N'Al says:
So, has anyone managed to get this to work, then? I’ve downloaded and installed the DLC, but the “Play Download Content” option in-game is still greyed out.
Seems like the release is riddled with problems, once again: http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?105759-Bioshock-2-Protector-trials/page2
15/03/2011 at 22:20 liance says:
It needed to be patched, but now it’s working. I must say I’ve always been partial to the sister defences: Bioshock 2 has always been good at cutting past my cynical, tactical FPS thinking and giving me visceral, drill on splicer combat instead.