In Rapture... a Metroid chooses.

I've been playing Diablo 3. No shock horror there - it's quite addictive!

I've gotten to level 60, halfway through Act 1 Inferno and my interest is starting to wane; maybe it was yesterdays 7 hour session that broke the camel;s' back on it all but the climb again from here to Act 4 is a long one; no one's done it properly yet and with work commitments, friends etc it really looks a bridge too far.


Who is this type of game made for anyway? 10 years ago I could've told you that it was for me; I was preparing for WoW at the time, a devoted completionist of everything Final Fantasy and old school SNES roms, emulated of course on my Pentium 3. I loved those games, in a single post I couldn't tell you why (hence an ongoing blog and not just a once off!) but there was just so much stuff to keep a young mind entertained. One more hurdle to get over all teh time, grinding gear or levels or money. Investigating a story whose end you aren't sure of.

Those were the days without social media telling me things I hadn't achieved yet. I'm competitive, in a different way to most people.

I like to do things first and fast, in games I want to be the first to own them, the first to complete the storyline. From there the first to share that experience with someone else. One of my favourite things in games is to perform a playthrough for a friend who hasn't the time or skill to do it themselves, to show them the game and why it's so great.

A great example of this was Bioshock. Have you played it yet? It was released in August, 2007 (yes that is nearly 5 years ago now) but the storyline held within was important. A man chooses. He does; and Bioshock brought about one of the newer gaming paradigms of the last 5 years; playing as something of a father figure (more on this in a later entry).

Sure, people will say that all you did was harvest girls, shoot cool plasmids and steampunk your guns out but this was all secondary to the experience in the game.

I tried to get my girlfriend to play through this game with another friend of mine (taking it turns between them) but they couldn't get back into it because of the shooting and the running and the tension. I'll play it through again for her soon to show her what she's missing out on and I have no doubts the game will still hold up, because it was well written, well designed and well thought out.

Bioshock began as the spiritual successor to System Shock and System Shock 2, both released for PC. I haven't played them to be honest; they were too darn scary! I don't know if Bioshock is much like them (though I will go back and play them for blog analysis purposes).

There are hundreds of reviews out there for Bioshock; it's a good game and I highly recommend  it but in regards to what this blogs about - retro  - games I'd like to compare this game with another that was not as widely popular; Metroid Prime.

Wow, Gamecube! Do you remember it? Bioshock really took Metroid to a new level, but what the hell am I talking about?

The parallels are obvious when you think about them; you're thrown into a populated, organic world where people once thrived, something went wrong and it's up to you to find it out. Through interacting with the environment you pieced together all the parts of the story; in Metroid you scanned and read you through pages of data to reveal the extent of the planets damage, in Bioshock you had a camera.

In Metroid these detailed log entries explained what went wrong, how the culture crumbled, how they knew it was coming but couldn't stop it. The futility was palpable, this civilization passed away.

In Bioshock the masterful voice overs gave you an incredible sense of wrongness; these people were falling apart miles under the sea. The utopia which was promised; where a man was rewarded by the sweat of his brow, was a pipe dream flushed away.

The experience was wholly tailored for both games; you didn't have to explore everything, discover everything, but for those who did the reward was twofold. Not only did your arsenal improve, but your experience grew. The immersion (something that games keep trying to perfect) was a reward for playing the games properly; not something that was rammed down your throat (I'm thinking of the BFs and CODs where in-your-face death was intended as shocking and involving).

The gameplay was similar for both; run, shoot, scan, open door, shoot, run, but gameplay is never really a draw in the FPS genre. You've been doing it for years, with increasingly innovative (weird) guns that kill in a range of different ways. There's nothing to talk about in this regard; running and gunning has only had one innovation in 10 years; hiding behind cover (I realise this is an exaggeration but you tell me what else they've added!).

I've always meant to go back and replay Metroid Prime; it was easily the best single player game released for the GCN. Also I never finished MP3 (the Wii controls just never grew on me for it). In my own mind both Bioshock and MP were great; I spent equal times with both and have fond memories (though they've blurred with time) of my teenage years with them.

It's highly likely you've not played both of these; Bioshock is still available on Steam (you should buy it!) and if you have a friend with a Wii or GCN and Metroid would you kindly give it a shot; if you liked Bioshock this game is worth your investment.