Alexx's Journal

Halo 3's metacritic.com rating is now down to 94, a full two points below BioShock's champion 96. Go us!

It's probably worth noting that no other 360 game has even broken 90.

Some BioShock fan art -- on an Etch-A-Sketch.

An amusingly pointless article at Washington Post: Michael Dirda tries to play Bioshock and evaluate whether or not it is Art.

"Here's where I keep getting killed," he said after we loaded his most recent saved game. He'd made it to Neptune's Bounty, an early level in the game, and was getting murdered onscreen by one of the game's monsters. "I've got a first-aid kit, but I haven't figured out how to use it."

For those of you have finished the game -- SERIOUS spoiler warnings apply -- GameTab ran an insightful article about BioShock's storytelling flaws. I mention this one partially because he calls out one of my ideas as "perhaps the most brilliant storytelling prop in the [spoiler] -- hell, in the entire game." :-)

We're holding steady at a 96 rating at Metacritic. Halo 3 is tied with us for the moment, but that could still change in either direction.

So, I've created enough relevant savegames on my home machine that I could easily give a 4-5 tour of all the high points of BioShock, for those who are interested but unlikely to play it themselves for whatever reason. Any suggestions for when would be a good time to do this? Known constraints: Not this weekend, as I will be out of town. kestrell is hosting a Halloween party on 10/27. The weekends in between are currently unclaimed, though I'm sure that won't last.

Gamehelper gave us a flattering rating: "...this game deserves a round eleven out of ten. New ground has been broken, we will have new standards from now on."

The Hollywood Reporter has an interesting article about how BioShock was marketed.

Zero Punctuation has done a very funny video review of BioShock. (A few weeks ago, I meant to post a link to his excellent Psychonauts review, but never got around to it. Well, now I have.)

I've just uploaded a bunch of BioShock related pictures to Flickr. There's one of kestrell at the launch party, pictures of several bits of swag, and a photo-essay on the construction of a life-sized Big Daddy that arrived in our offices this afternoon.

BioShock Lego made by small children.

A Red vs Blue comic.

You know you've hit the mainstream when: your game gets discussed on a message forum devoted to the Denver Broncos.

Thanks to freerange_snark, who reports that at a recent party, she told everyone there to buy BioShock -- only to discover that everyone who had a relevant machine either had already done so, or was just waiting for their next paycheck :-)

Two of these came across in a work email today, and that inspired me to do a search for other BioShock cartoons. Here's the ones I thought were best:
Penny arcade
Ctrl-Alt-Del
HijiNKS ENSUE
Digital Unrest
Dueling Analogs (This last one had special significance to me, as I have an appointment with a new oral surgeon tomorrow...)

... but in a good way :-)

Valve bans Bioshock from the office.

"We had to ban Bioshock from our offices," Valve boss Gabe Newell told us. "Nobody gets to play it until Orange Box is done - that's our reward to ourselves as a company; everyone gets a copy of Bioshock."

For those who don't know, Valve are the makers of Half Life 2, which was the *last* game widely hailed as "best ever", and one that many (though not all) reviewers say that BioShock has surpassed.

Gamasutra.com lists the top game sales through Amazon each week. For the week of August 23rd, BioShock is #1 Xbox 360 game in North America, beating Madden NFL '08, and also the #1 PC game. In the UK, the BioShock *Limited Edition* was the top seller for both 360 and PC, with the normal version coming in at #2 for each platform.

More mainstream coverage:
A news article from Reuters: "Take-Two stock jumped 10 percent on Tuesday when "BioShock" was released as glowing reviews poured in and the game topped sales charts at retailers like Amazon.com."

An article in Esquire, "Video Games (Finally) Grow Up", which spends about half the column inches talking about BioShock.

A nice writeup in The Boston Globe.

And finally, a marvelously silly video from G4: Big Daddy Day Care :-)

Well, the GameSpot review is finally in, with a mere 9/10, dragging our average down to a "mere" 97%.

On the plus side, one of my favorite game writers, Tom Chick, did the Yahoo review and gave us 5/5. His concluding words:

Games like BioShock are what we need. They are what we deserve. This is one of the best examples of where we should go. It's silly to argue whether games are art, which doesn't matter one whit, when you can simply point to BioShock and say: "Games are this."

The launch party last night was pretty cool. They really went overboard on the themed decor. Neon signs saying "Welcome to Rapture". Security Bot (cardboard cutouts) hanging from the ceiling. A life-sized Big Daddy statue. What I first took to be mannikins dressed up like Splicers, but turned out to be human actors standing very still (creepy!). Waitresses dressed as Little Sisters (torn, bloodstained frocks), distributing "Adam" drinks by squirting them out of syringes. Big video monitors displaying the trailer for the game. A dozen or so stations set up where people could actually play. Even commemorative swizzle sticks and coasters. A few pictures can be found here.

The biggest down side was the noise. Downstairs, they were playing music at a decibel level that reduced communication to shouting within 3 inches of someone else's ear. Upstairs wasn't quite as bad, but was still loud enogh to make it difficult to have a conversation between more than 3 people at once.

I got lots of egoboo, which is a rare treat in the industry. Got to say hi to some folks from Harmonix who I haven't seen in ages. Kes saw a few folks that she knew from MIT circles, and got to bask in my reflected glory :-)