God I adore this game, can you believe I never once saw BioShock's intro ever? I call myself extremely lucky I knew nothing about this game, the chillingly amazing intro, the terrifyingly beautiful city of Rapture, the mouth gaping twist. I came to this franchise late, but better late than never
Just finished this 5 video series yesterday and wanted to come back and thank you for the experience! I had never played the series but due to it being an FPS, I knew I never would, so getting to learn about it and partially experience it through your style and viewpoint was a pleasure. I can't say I even had more than a passing interest in the series and wouldn't normally watch a video series on it but I've seen enough of your content to be confident I'd enjoy regardless. Great work as always!
@@kirbynom-alt Obviously watching my videos is no replacement for playing the games themselves but I hope my videos helped convey what makes the Bioshock series so special. Thank you for the kind words, hearing that you enjoy my channel enough to go through all my videos really warms my heart!
good video man, keep going - getting the first 1k subs is tough but you have the quality and attention to detail to grow a healthy community here. can't wait to watch your other stuff
your ending statement was so sweet austin! to put it simple i think bioshock would be too "scary" for me to play but holding ur hand and going it through it together was a pleasure! im excited to see where we go from here in the next entry!
@@AustinAshworth Yeah! ive always heard only great things about bioshock and i do see why you are so enamored with it! just watched your minervas den retrospective too! such a tragic ending - and that voice performance was indeed great!
That was the fastest 47 minutes of my life, this video was very well put together and you have a lot of great points that aren't just praise or just negative. This video needs more attention
i really enjoyed this video!!!! everything you had to say was super interesting and insightful, and your voice is weirdly calming as well lmao. i’m looking forward to more videos from you!
i also especially liked your point about tenenbaum “going soft” and how she’s really one of the only women in the game. i hadn’t thought about that when first playing, but it’s definitely something i’m thinking about now!
Thank you so much! Comments like yours are really appreciated as I work to grow an audience. Never knew I had a career in ASMR haha! I should have a new video out soon but in the meantime I hope you check out my other uploads!
I've watched a lot of Bioshock videos. A lot. Your video absolutely wins best category for one aspect. Best Ken Lavine pic. Hands down. Say what you want about the man, but he sure does enjoy a tasty beverage! Hilarious. Bravo!!!!!
love your bioshock videos and your insights! I must say though when you are talking and you also have the audio of them speaking behind it its hard for my attention not to be pulled between the two
Thanks! Yeah I struggle to get the audio balance right. My intent is to have the subtitles from audio logs on screen so you can read them because they relate to my discussion. Unfortunately if I have the game volume too loud it’s distracting. I’ll try to improve that aspect.
Perhaps the most egregious sin is how, if you decided to forego harvesting the Little Sisters throughout the game and instead saved them, the net loss you get in Adam is largely negligible and made up for in the form of a gift of Adam from Tenenbaum after you kill Ryan. Apparently Levine argued against this and wanted the choice to either harvest or save the Little Sisters to have real consequence in the difficulty of the game, but higher ups in the Production team insisted that players not be punished too harshly for choosing the "good route."
Ken was definitely in the right there! As is, the biggest effect the moral choice has is just which cutscene plays at the end. It barely affects the gameplay experience at all.
You should definitely use Telekinesis as a combative plasmid. Damage from objects are scaled by the size of the object thrown. For instance in Medical Pavillion the hospital beds can 1 shot splicers on survivor difficulty. Amazing video, coming from a guy who holds this as his number 1 game and I can tell you'll have a large channel one day if you keep pushing out amazing content like this. Keep it up!
Just like the gravity gun in HL2! That definitely sounds really effective - I've never really explored telekinesis's potential in that way because I really dislike how much the objects obscure the screen. Thank you so much for the kind words - this comment made my day!
Bioshock is a absolute masterpiece. The first two games i got with my 360 back in the day were Bioshock and Assassin's Creed. I've got so much nostalgia for the early days of the 360 and Bioshock in particular was a highlight.
41:50 This segment of the game doesn't just randomize the plasmids you use. It also give you access to plasmids you never used, or maybe missed entirely. In this way, it's a bit of a carrot on the end of the stick for a second play-through using different abilities, which meshes nicely with the kill/save decisions. It's also one of those moments that removes the "gameplay brakes", so to speak, and really tests you on how well you understand the game systems by making you adapt on the fly.
to an extent Bioshock's simplification from its predecessors is that you can only play it as a first-person shooter. the "sim" aspects have been reduced to the point there's no role-playing at all. and this is why dishonored and prey are my favourite sim games; in dishonored you can finish the entire game without killing anyone. still, the bioshock games are pretty entertaining by themselves.
I’m really bad at stealth games but still enjoyed both Dishonored games. Prey is fantastic though, I was so engrossed in it that I couldn’t put it down when I first played!
I really appreciate the kind words! Please understand the videos take a long time to make and be patient. I wish I could upload more too haha but it’s hard to find the time to work on this channel
I disagree with your take on the chemical thrower. The chemical thrower is one of my favorite weapons to combine with other weapons. Electric gel for the chemical thrower can be used in tandem with the crossbow, shotgun, and grenade launcher in quick bursts to deal massive amounts of damage. I use this to take out big daddies and sometimes leadheads. Sometimes, I get the chemical thrower ammo upgrade in order to save on ammo. This makes the gun much more fun to use in my opinion, and this might completely change how you see the weapon. I don’t know though, it might depend on your play style. Love the video though.
That rapid weapon swapping sounds like something out of Doom Eternal haha. I can definitely see the damage potential there but it also sounds like a lot of effort to make the weapon useful. Like you said. I think it’s a play style thing - another commenter was talking about heavy use of the telekinesis plasmid for damage and that was such a foreign strategy to me lol. Just shows how open ended the combat system in Bioshock is!
The chemical thrower is also essentially a gun version of the Electrobolt, Incinerate, and Winter Blast plasmids, and so allows you to continue melting ice and opening doors without always needing a slot dedicated to those plasmids.
just finished this game. So much and ya I agree the ending feels so silly. I hate escort missions and the final boss fight felt very forced. The twist was so well done, but the game had nothing planned after that. I did however like the disney ending cut scene though haha
Hi! Thanks for watching my video! The footage is recorded from the original PC release, not the remastered version. I'm not super knowledgeable about all the differences between the two but I don't think it makes a big difference which you play when on PC. I stuck with original because it's the version I am familiar with; some of the superficial changes to the water effects and the all the added seaweed kind of bother me in the remastered version. Just as a warning for anyone who plays the original, you may have to do some tinkering to get it to work right. For example, I had some issues with mouse acceleration but was able to fix it pretty easily.
@@AustinAshworth I see, and I thought you were playing it because the game looked pretty good.. I guess I remember the game looking duller and I guess grayer? Idk. It looks good still though!
@@DivePlane13 Ah gotcha! It’s rare that a game looks better than we remember! Bioshock has fantastic art direction so it holds up a lot better than some other games that released alongside it.
I liked the review alot but the point about tenenbaum being a poor representation of a female main character was not only out of place just like her accent but I would consider wrong. Her "going soft" isnt negative as it shows she is most likely the only soul in this city of sin , envy, and greed that is capable of having a conscious, not to mention her being a survivor of the holocaust only adds to her character as she is a survivor and a genius she is a force to be reckoned with as evidenced in her being a LARGE part of the reason Fontaine fails. She also knows when she is wrong and tries to atone for her past sins like any good hearted individual would, she is not afraid to do the right thing nor admit her own mistakes. I can only think some preconcieved notion of a woman not being ruthless somehow persuaded this opinion but I dont see it as very concrete as the rest of the review. besides that I like everything else.
You make a good counterpoint and I thank you for challenging me when I don’t do a good job supporting my arguments. I see now that I failed to clearly convey what I meant. I just thought it was too trite that the most prominent female in Rapture is the only genuine ally like she was singled out for that explicit purpose. It feels like the “mother goose” caregiver role was created first and then Tanenbaum’s background as a scientist and Holocaust survivor was added after that utility was already set just to give her character more depth. Like the story required a protector for the little sisters so of course they used a woman and it just so happened to be practically the only woman in a very male centric cast. I’m probably still not explaining it well but that’s the best I can do. Again thanks for pushing back a bit and encouraging me to make more cogent arguments in these videos.
personally, i really like that Brigid doesn't retain her humanity so much as she finds it for the first time. I think its interesting that this awful place brought out something good in her that she thought she'd lost after the person she had to become to survive the camps
I had a _very_ different experience with this game. I tried to play it 3 or 4 times and ended up dropping it every time in the early stages. It's worth mentioning that the story and setting never hooked me and I already knew the twist going in. I _only_ played this game again because I made a deal with a friend. I told him that he needed to play 'Fallout New Vegas' and he said that he would play it start to finish under the condition that I do the same for the first Bioshock. I slogged through the early game and ended up loving it purely for the gameplay. Something I don't hear enough about this game is just how _viable_ everything is. I said to hell with hacking which had pissed me off every other time and bought my way through that shit. I wasn't super into the other plasmids, but I loved telekinesis and used it pretty much exclusively throughout my playthrough. The game really lets you use what you like, and you can mostly ignore the parts of the sandbox you don't like.
Thanks for sharing your very unique perspective. I can’t imagine not being hooked by the story or setting! To each their own but that’s the biggest draw for me. Glad you were able to enjoy it regardless. Sounds like you did a Gravity Gun run from Half Life 2 haha
The HL series (especially 2) are favorites of mine as well! I’d love to do a video series on them someday (but don’t currently have plans so don’t get too excited haha)
1. i played the series for the first time in 2021. 2. i hate FPS 3. but boy did i love this game. Also I don't think tenenbaum went 'soft'. I think she was one of the few characters that went from being a monster to becoming human, in contrast the rest of rapture. Theres nothing wrong with the little sisters needing a motherly figure..plus we have the insanity that is lamb to counterbalance the female roles.
Yeah , after hacking everything my first playthrough ; I started using my money to buy out as many hacks as I can , saving auto hacks for the more costly hacks.
14:53 I’m not going to sugarcoat my response or give you some leftist essay on why I disagree but the fact is women are more emotional than men and that’s one of the reasons why Tenenbaum “went soft”. Not to mention if Tenenbaum was a dude, he would have reacted the same way since anyone with a conscience and a dark past like Tenenbaum’s could see that experimenting on kids is evil. It’s not a “stereotype” or whatever it’s a realistic response
Ngl super smash bros ultimate seems overrated asf to me. I played a lot of it but it’s not really some great game tbh. It’s just a fighting game with some popular characters 🤷♂️
"I hope the length of the video won't be a problem"
Uhmm that's why I m here
Haha I’m glad! You and I are the same type of weird!
@@AustinAshworth can confirm I just clicked on this video because of its length :)
God I adore this game, can you believe I never once saw BioShock's intro ever? I call myself extremely lucky I knew nothing about this game, the chillingly amazing intro, the terrifyingly beautiful city of Rapture, the mouth gaping twist. I came to this franchise late, but better late than never
That’s so awesome to hear! Glad it all holds up so well for a newcomer!
I think it's a good time to have joined the fanbase, I'm pretty sure bioshock 4 is in development now!
It is in development! I can’t wait to find out more about the presumed new setting and gameplay!
It's in development, shit what a time to become a BioShock fan!
Dude this is so well put together, you definitely deserve more attention
Thank you so much!
Exactly he is my type of reviewer good job and I love the details and explanations of the game keep it up
Just finished this 5 video series yesterday and wanted to come back and thank you for the experience! I had never played the series but due to it being an FPS, I knew I never would, so getting to learn about it and partially experience it through your style and viewpoint was a pleasure. I can't say I even had more than a passing interest in the series and wouldn't normally watch a video series on it but I've seen enough of your content to be confident I'd enjoy regardless. Great work as always!
@@kirbynom-alt Obviously watching my videos is no replacement for playing the games themselves but I hope my videos helped convey what makes the Bioshock series so special. Thank you for the kind words, hearing that you enjoy my channel enough to go through all my videos really warms my heart!
This channel is the circus of value! And I love it
Haha I love the Circus of Values voice and it's so funny that it's Ken Levine himself. "Come back when you've got some money buddy!"
Bioshock is a classic masterpiece, one of my favorites. Thank you.
good video man, keep going - getting the first 1k subs is tough but you have the quality and attention to detail to grow a healthy community here. can't wait to watch your other stuff
Thank you so much!
your ending statement was so sweet austin! to put it simple i think bioshock would be too "scary" for me to play but holding ur hand and going it through it together was a pleasure! im excited to see where we go from here in the next entry!
Thanks! I'm glad you were able to at least experience the game vicariously, it's really something special!
@@AustinAshworth Yeah! ive always heard only great things about bioshock and i do see why you are so enamored with it! just watched your minervas den retrospective too! such a tragic ending - and that voice performance was indeed great!
That was the fastest 47 minutes of my life, this video was very well put together and you have a lot of great points that aren't just praise or just negative.
This video needs more attention
Thank you so much!
you deserve more of out this quality of content, i saw you bioshock 2 video and thought you must have had atleast 10,000 subs
Wow thank you so much! Maybe one day but I’m also happy with the small but supportive audience I have now.
i really enjoyed this video!!!! everything you had to say was super interesting and insightful, and your voice is weirdly calming as well lmao. i’m looking forward to more videos from you!
i also especially liked your point about tenenbaum “going soft” and how she’s really one of the only women in the game. i hadn’t thought about that when first playing, but it’s definitely something i’m thinking about now!
Thank you so much! Comments like yours are really appreciated as I work to grow an audience. Never knew I had a career in ASMR haha! I should have a new video out soon but in the meantime I hope you check out my other uploads!
Your videos are so well done that I thought you're a big youtuber but no, that's not the case. Well, nicely done!
Thank you so much! Hopefully one day haha
Amazing review, love your analytical style
I've watched a lot of Bioshock videos. A lot. Your video absolutely wins best category for one aspect. Best Ken Lavine pic. Hands down. Say what you want about the man, but he sure does enjoy a tasty beverage! Hilarious. Bravo!!!!!
Haha that’s great. I love the guy, he’s got a great personality. Eagerly awaiting an update on his new project - any day now…
love your bioshock videos and your insights! I must say though when you are talking and you also have the audio of them speaking behind it its hard for my attention not to be pulled between the two
Thanks! Yeah I struggle to get the audio balance right. My intent is to have the subtitles from audio logs on screen so you can read them because they relate to my discussion. Unfortunately if I have the game volume too loud it’s distracting. I’ll try to improve that aspect.
@@AustinAshworth I feel that! I respect your vision, just a suggestion. Take care 💖
Perhaps the most egregious sin is how, if you decided to forego harvesting the Little Sisters throughout the game and instead saved them, the net loss you get in Adam is largely negligible and made up for in the form of a gift of Adam from Tenenbaum after you kill Ryan. Apparently Levine argued against this and wanted the choice to either harvest or save the Little Sisters to have real consequence in the difficulty of the game, but higher ups in the Production team insisted that players not be punished too harshly for choosing the "good route."
Ken was definitely in the right there! As is, the biggest effect the moral choice has is just which cutscene plays at the end. It barely affects the gameplay experience at all.
You should definitely use Telekinesis as a combative plasmid. Damage from objects are scaled by the size of the object thrown. For instance in Medical Pavillion the hospital beds can 1 shot splicers on survivor difficulty. Amazing video, coming from a guy who holds this as his number 1 game and I can tell you'll have a large channel one day if you keep pushing out amazing content like this. Keep it up!
Just like the gravity gun in HL2! That definitely sounds really effective - I've never really explored telekinesis's potential in that way because I really dislike how much the objects obscure the screen. Thank you so much for the kind words - this comment made my day!
yknow what. this video was so fucking great i have to sub. great shit man, just about to watch your bioshock 2 one!
Wow thank you so much and I hope you enjoy my other videos just as much haha
Bioshock is a absolute masterpiece. The first two games i got with my 360 back in the day were Bioshock and Assassin's Creed. I've got so much nostalgia for the early days of the 360 and Bioshock in particular was a highlight.
Xbox in particular was cooking in 2007: Bioshock, Mass Effect, Halo 3...
You do see Diane McClintock! The scene of "The Longest Con."
Wow somehow I totally missed that - good catch and thanks for bringing it to my attention!
41:50 This segment of the game doesn't just randomize the plasmids you use. It also give you access to plasmids you never used, or maybe missed entirely. In this way, it's a bit of a carrot on the end of the stick for a second play-through using different abilities, which meshes nicely with the kill/save decisions. It's also one of those moments that removes the "gameplay brakes", so to speak, and really tests you on how well you understand the game systems by making you adapt on the fly.
That’s a good way of thinking about it! You might have actually changed my mind on this section, although I still think it’s frustrating in practice
to an extent Bioshock's simplification from its predecessors is that you can only play it as a first-person shooter. the "sim" aspects have been reduced to the point there's no role-playing at all. and this is why dishonored and prey are my favourite sim games; in dishonored you can finish the entire game without killing anyone. still, the bioshock games are pretty entertaining by themselves.
I’m really bad at stealth games but still enjoyed both Dishonored games. Prey is fantastic though, I was so engrossed in it that I couldn’t put it down when I first played!
Very nice review brother!
Much appreciate! Thanks for watching!
man I love your content. pump out more videos please
I really appreciate the kind words! Please understand the videos take a long time to make and be patient. I wish I could upload more too haha but it’s hard to find the time to work on this channel
I disagree with your take on the chemical thrower. The chemical thrower is one of my favorite weapons to combine with other weapons. Electric gel for the chemical thrower can be used in tandem with the crossbow, shotgun, and grenade launcher in quick bursts to deal massive amounts of damage. I use this to take out big daddies and sometimes leadheads. Sometimes, I get the chemical thrower ammo upgrade in order to save on ammo. This makes the gun much more fun to use in my opinion, and this might completely change how you see the weapon. I don’t know though, it might depend on your play style. Love the video though.
That rapid weapon swapping sounds like something out of Doom Eternal haha. I can definitely see the damage potential there but it also sounds like a lot of effort to make the weapon useful. Like you said. I think it’s a play style thing - another commenter was talking about heavy use of the telekinesis plasmid for damage and that was such a foreign strategy to me lol. Just shows how open ended the combat system in Bioshock is!
The chemical thrower is also essentially a gun version of the Electrobolt, Incinerate, and Winter Blast plasmids, and so allows you to continue melting ice and opening doors without always needing a slot dedicated to those plasmids.
The best game of all time 🙏
just finished this game. So much and ya I agree the ending feels so silly. I hate escort missions and the final boss fight felt very forced. The twist was so well done, but the game had nothing planned after that. I did however like the disney ending cut scene though haha
Did you play the remastered version of this?
Hi! Thanks for watching my video! The footage is recorded from the original PC release, not the remastered version. I'm not super knowledgeable about all the differences between the two but I don't think it makes a big difference which you play when on PC. I stuck with original because it's the version I am familiar with; some of the superficial changes to the water effects and the all the added seaweed kind of bother me in the remastered version. Just as a warning for anyone who plays the original, you may have to do some tinkering to get it to work right. For example, I had some issues with mouse acceleration but was able to fix it pretty easily.
@@AustinAshworth I see, and I thought you were playing it because the game looked pretty good.. I guess I remember the game looking duller and I guess grayer? Idk. It looks good still though!
@@DivePlane13 Ah gotcha! It’s rare that a game looks better than we remember! Bioshock has fantastic art direction so it holds up a lot better than some other games that released alongside it.
I liked the review alot but the point about tenenbaum being a poor representation of a female main character was not only out of place just like her accent but I would consider wrong. Her "going soft" isnt negative as it shows she is most likely the only soul in this city of sin , envy, and greed that is capable of having a conscious, not to mention her being a survivor of the holocaust only adds to her character as she is a survivor and a genius she is a force to be reckoned with as evidenced in her being a LARGE part of the reason Fontaine fails. She also knows when she is wrong and tries to atone for her past sins like any good hearted individual would, she is not afraid to do the right thing nor admit her own mistakes. I can only think some preconcieved notion of a woman not being ruthless somehow persuaded this opinion but I dont see it as very concrete as the rest of the review. besides that I like everything else.
You make a good counterpoint and I thank you for challenging me when I don’t do a good job supporting my arguments. I see now that I failed to clearly convey what I meant. I just thought it was too trite that the most prominent female in Rapture is the only genuine ally like she was singled out for that explicit purpose. It feels like the “mother goose” caregiver role was created first and then Tanenbaum’s background as a scientist and Holocaust survivor was added after that utility was already set just to give her character more depth. Like the story required a protector for the little sisters so of course they used a woman and it just so happened to be practically the only woman in a very male centric cast. I’m probably still not explaining it well but that’s the best I can do. Again thanks for pushing back a bit and encouraging me to make more cogent arguments in these videos.
personally, i really like that Brigid doesn't retain her humanity so much as she finds it for the first time. I think its interesting that this awful place brought out something good in her that she thought she'd lost after the person she had to become to survive the camps
great video!
I had a _very_ different experience with this game. I tried to play it 3 or 4 times and ended up dropping it every time in the early stages.
It's worth mentioning that the story and setting never hooked me and I already knew the twist going in.
I _only_ played this game again because I made a deal with a friend.
I told him that he needed to play 'Fallout New Vegas' and he said that he would play it start to finish under the condition that I do the same for the first Bioshock.
I slogged through the early game and ended up loving it purely for the gameplay.
Something I don't hear enough about this game is just how _viable_ everything is. I said to hell with hacking which had pissed me off every other time and bought my way through that shit. I wasn't super into the other plasmids, but I loved telekinesis and used it pretty much exclusively throughout my playthrough.
The game really lets you use what you like, and you can mostly ignore the parts of the sandbox you don't like.
Thanks for sharing your very unique perspective. I can’t imagine not being hooked by the story or setting! To each their own but that’s the biggest draw for me. Glad you were able to enjoy it regardless. Sounds like you did a Gravity Gun run from Half Life 2 haha
Hey RUclips, would you kindly share this video with more people?
chemical thrower? *waves away*
crossbow? *thumbs up*
All my homies hate the chemical thrower!!
Haha You get it!
this & half life 2 basically changed my view on fps campaigns
The HL series (especially 2) are favorites of mine as well! I’d love to do a video series on them someday (but don’t currently have plans so don’t get too excited haha)
Like commented and subscribed 👍
Post more videos please!
I plan to! Glad you enjoyed!
Rapture is basically Libertarian Atlantis
1. i played the series for the first time in 2021. 2. i hate FPS 3. but boy did i love this game.
Also I don't think tenenbaum went 'soft'. I think she was one of the few characters that went from being a monster to becoming human, in contrast the rest of rapture. Theres nothing wrong with the little sisters needing a motherly figure..plus we have the insanity that is lamb to counterbalance the female roles.
11:17 theres what looks like a swastika, and apparently rapture is made for the superior race.
Am I the only one who enjoys the hacking minigame XD
Lol you may be haha. More power to you!
Yeah , after hacking everything my first playthrough ; I started using my money to buy out as many hacks as I can , saving auto hacks for the more costly hacks.
@@robertmurdock1848 I always find myself with way more money than I can otherwise spend in Bio1 so that’s not a bad strategy haha
14:53 I’m not going to sugarcoat my response or give you some leftist essay on why I disagree but the fact is women are more emotional than men and that’s one of the reasons why Tenenbaum “went soft”. Not to mention if Tenenbaum was a dude, he would have reacted the same way since anyone with a conscience and a dark past like Tenenbaum’s could see that experimenting on kids is evil. It’s not a “stereotype” or whatever it’s a realistic response
Ngl super smash bros ultimate seems overrated asf to me. I played a lot of it but it’s not really some great game tbh. It’s just a fighting game with some popular characters 🤷♂️
Second!
First!
47 minute nit pick