Bioshock

“L-L-Look at you hacker. A p-p-pathetic creature of meat and bone. Panting and sweating as you run through my corridors.”  – Shodan – System Shock 2

Bioshock is hands-down the second best sci-fi horror FPS I have ever played.  The first, of course, is my all-time favorite:  System Shock 2.  Both are pure addiction, both were created by the same team; originally Irrational Games, now 2K Boston.  I’ve played through it twice, and i’m playing it on hard now.

The sound effects are amazing; a character’s voice acting, the sound that iron makes as it buckles from underwater pressure, the moan of a Big Daddy, and the long, distant echo that a giant, hollow underwater facility would produce.  One minute you hear a man sobbing away his lost loved ones in the distance, and then he turns insane as he curses and attacks you.  It makes you really believe that the overuse and abuse of splicing Adam has turned their minds insane.  This game has atmosphere.

Some differences of the two games:

First of all, Bioshock’s introduction story is hard to believe.  A huge, underwater city that nobody on the outside knows about.  That, in itself, is nearly impossible.  To build such a big city underwater would be very, very expensive, and the money trail would be big enough for any accountant to be able to follow.  Keeping such a thing secret just isn’t feasible.

Now juxtapose that with System Shock 2’s story.  Its the future, you wake up, you have anmesia, and your in space, on a spaceship.  Thats not too hard to believe.  It could happen

Splicing DNA is another cool, but hard-to-believe feature.  You are able to extend your DNA, but you only have a maximum of 5 available slots in your gene bank.  If you want to use a different gene, then you can “unload” a gene and replace it with a different one.  In biology, you can’t just “unload” DNA from yourself.

In System Shock 2, you upgrade yourself using bionics; so its like adding machinery to your body, and you can’t undo it.  Thats a little more realistic.

But my favorite thing about System Shock 2 is the villian Shodan, an intelligent and evil AI.  Your not battling some organic creature, or something else within a physical realm, but an artificial intelligence that has control of nearly everything on a derelict spaceship.  The movie Aliens got it right with adding a derelict spaceship, but the Alien is just too easy to kill; Ripply was able to survive!  What fun is that?  Now, what if it was the entire spaceship that Ripply had to fight?  Including the Alien!?  Now that would be entertainment.

Its funny, because System Shock 2 was nearly a garage game; a couple of nerds sitting in a cramped room and programming, and its still the best.  And this was back in 1994!  Ah, 1994, one of the best years in computing and gaming.  And don’t have to tell you about that (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_in_video_gaming)  ^_^ .  Of everything i’ve read and done, if I were born just 10 years earlier, i wonder what i could accomplish….

Reminder:  do chores first, study, then play Bioshock.

Japan April 2008 – Day 4

Early in the day, we visited a camera district; camera shops were everywhere.  I bought a lens cleaner to clean up Kota’s and Midori’s work from yesterday.  It amazes me how Tokyo has certain areas that cater to one field, such as a many, many camera shops in a very close radius.  I wonder how economically feasible it is to have so many competitors geographically right next to eachother.

We visited the Tokyo Metropolitan Government district.  The area was very clean and beautifull.

We saw other tourists walk by and take pictures.  Some people carried professional cameras and tripod.

Staring up at the towers of the metropolitan Toyko government office.

There were many statues like this.

A restaurant “La Terrazza” was at the top of the building.  The service was awful.  I learned that some government entities, such as government restaurants, have the worst customer service.  I was actually shocked, since I haven’t had one bad restaurant experience before in Japan.

The view from the top of the metropolitan Tokyo government building.  The view was amazing.  Many buildings, very dense and close together, yet organized and beautiful.  Its enough to take your breath away.  The whole experience was a hundred times better than visiting the top of the Empire State Building in New York.  I haven’t posted my New York trip yet, but its coming.

Looking all the way down, in a park with gorgeos trees and a waterfall, we were able to see a little white dot run back and forth from a little black dot.  Looking very carefully, we saw that it was a dog playing fetch.

Its lunch time now, and there are hungry government officials everywhere!

Lunch time!  We both had a bowl of incredibly yummy ramen. mmm mmm.

We walked along Tokyo and saw very many colorful buildings and natives.  The arcade – with the “space invaders” character – looked pretty cool from outside.  I didn’t have enough time to visit the arcade.  However, i did visit more arcades than i expected, so i didn’t mind walking by this one.

Many more interesting buildings and inhabitents.  This is the area where Ai and I had our Japanese Wedding pictures taken…

And here we are, in traditional Japanese marriage attire!  Ai is so pretty ^_^

Afterwards, Okaasan treated us to a very special sushi dinner.

This was our very own sushu chef!  We just pointed to any of the fish on display, and they sliced a bit off to make sushi  It was all very tasty, and from what was told, the price was very reasonable too.  I am a bit of a newbie with sushi ettiqutte, so when i dipped the wrong end of the sushi into soy sauce, you bet he let me know that i was doing it wrong ^_^

So this is the end of day 4.  Unfortunately, it looks like i will have to find a new picture provider before i can start with day 5, since it seems that with my free account on Yahoo’s flickr,  only the latest 200 uploaded pictures are viewable for the public, unless i upgrade to a paying account… which is reasonable, but i’m always trying to save a buck here or there, so i’m on the lookout for a new picture hoster…