I played the Bioshock demo last night on my brother’s projector. Way too scary for me.

Being a longtime fan of Thief, Deus Ex and System Shock I was looking forward to Bioshock on the xbox.  Games being expensive and with Halo 3 coming out I had my wife play the demo, she liked it, though too said was atmospherically scary and I’d have to be in the room :) So I preordered my Bioshock copy and look forward to exploring.  I wish it had co-op but maybe Bioshock 2. 

-Tim

Buffalo GameBuffs blog

Wow, Video games, boardgames, and RPGs all in the same blog entry!  You collected all three!

They all have their strengths and it is interesting to see the overlap (or non-overlap) between them for various people.

Too scary? We are so jaded. We thought it was wonderfully creepy in a kind of Val Lewton with mutants kind of way.

I really want to go back and play System Shock 2, especially as it has co-op. I’ve been having trouble finding the main game, and it looks like it is such a pain to get running on XP.

I hope you’re now thoroughly enjoying your Bioshock adventures.  I played the game with the medium setting, and found it to be an incredibly rich experience as an interactive story, but relatively tame as these games go.  There was very little in the game to challenge even the most inept of videogamers (i.e., me).

I see very little long-term replayability here, but it will be fun to see either expansions to this (a prequel or two would be easy to envision) or more from the same team.

I too played on Medium and explored every nook and crany of the areas.  I even felt compelled to search each and every crate, and sighed when I walked into a crate filled room :) But the story is the key, yes.  And the exploring aspects.  The fighting was fun in that you could use many ways to dispatch the badies.  I agree, Medium seemed a bit tame, though there were some tough ambush moments if you were not prepared.  I lovingly finished the game and just started it again on Hard. I try to play for about 2 hours a day as a break from work and am enjoying it.  I respect this style of game and look forward to a sequel because of the good sales.

Yes it has it’s flaws with combat sometimes being too easy if you are prepared but with all of the other inovative gameplay elements, I look forward to an even better game next time around. 

My wife is now even playing it and it’s interesting to see how she tackles the various areas.  Maybe co-op play next time around would be great too.

So replayability is kinda like Gears of War for me.  It’s fun to play through a second time and do it differently.  Especially with Bioshock you can then choose a different path with the Little Sisters and focus on a different Plasmid path too.  But for those that just play games once, I’d at least recommend renting this game, this is a game worth trying and enjoying.

-Tim
Buffalo GameBuffs blog

Mayhap we need to start some kind of Halo 3 pact. Sandi bought me the preorder as my birthday present.

The 4 player coop is just appealing. It was even fun with the lame Serious Sam 2.

I will sign a Halo 3 pact.  Cooperative modes are generally the most interesting multiplayer options, for me.  Of course there must be a provision along the lines of, “no teammate will be repeatedly and viciously fragged due to frustration with his ineptitude.”

As regards Bioshock, I too loved searching containers, and though replaying the game on hard hasn’t really appealed to me yet (eventually I probably will do so for the achievement), I do need to replay the game to find the three or four missing diaries from my first go-round.

Halo 3 4 player co-op here we come.  Now my wife and I just need to splurge and get gold live membership.  Serious Sam 2 ... that deserves a smiley :)

A few of my friends love multiplayer Halo and studying the levels and killing everyone, but I too enjoy the co-op the best.  And Josh, you can form the contract for us to sign for multiplayer co-op. 

But it sounds fun, feel free to e-mail me with you xbox screen names and we’ll have to try to remind each other about co-op at the end of September.  We can be the board game video game group. 

And the audio diaries… I ended up looking in every nook and cranny for them. 

-Tim
[that gamebuff type person]

Gads, you want me to draw up a contract?  Here it is:

“Since Josh Adelson (Cranky 360 on Xbox Live) is going to invest his hard earned (well, his wife’s) cash on yet another video game that will probably see only three or four hours of actual play, I, the undersigned, do solemnly swear to play Halo 3 cooperatively with him whenever I humanly can.  I acknowledge that I have been completely and irrevocably informed that his ineptitude with regard to ‘shooters’ is in no way a valid reason to fail to honor this contract.

________________________ _____________”

Great contract :)

Been awhile… as real life and colds and allergies kept me away from my internet love.  Anyway, feel free to e-mail me, Frank or Josh, at tim @ buffalogamebuffsblog . com and we can exchange gamertags.  My wife and I just finished the Halo 3 campaign and splurged on gold accounts for live. We played the whole campaign together, have either of you tried the campaign with coop online?

-Tim

Josh is Cranky 360, I’m moofrank. I’ve not quite finished the main campaign yet. (On Normal, I’m a weenie.)

Any idea how headsets work in split-screen co-op? Do you need a gold account for the second player? (We’ve got that 48 hour eval.)

I’m new to live as well, I tried some random matches to see and played with a couple family members in custom games.  I think you can have a second player as a Guest.  They would turn on the controller and then join as a Guest.  Not sure how the headsets work, I assume they’d work throughout the whole campaign.  My wife and I played a couple custom games with family and we were split screen and they both worked seperately and the other two people, at other tv’s and systems at other houses heard both of us fine.  I’ll add you two when next I’m on. We can see how they work. Feel free to e-mail me when you normally play.  You’ll see myself as ShadowSong13 and my wife as Fundy73. 

And you’re not a weenie, only if you played it on Easy :) My wife loves playing the campaign alot I like to sporadically try my hand at getting beat by the 10 year olds in randon online matches :)

-Tim

Okay, Tim, I’ve requested both you and your wife as Live friends.  All this means is that periodically I’ll check your achievements and say, “wow, I wish I had gotten that one.” I do that a lot....  Well, okay, usually it’s when people finish hard and expert modes on Guitar Hero II, but I’m sure there will be some skulls on Halo that I’ll never find.

I anxiously await my first coop campaign game.  I am playing through on normal, and am working on mission 5 or 6. 

Josh

I do the same.  There are a few games, like Bioshock and now Halo where I try to get most of the achievements, but most games people get more than me.  I download alot of the party type live games to play when none video game friends are over too.  Guitar Hero, you could kick my butt, I never played :)

Maybe we can try Halo 3 on Heroic for Co-op.  One step above Normal.  My wife and I started on heroic, but as co-op and moved to legendary.  Legendary was tough but we played a bit on the weekend and one level a day before bed and finally got through.  But you’ll notice it’s easier when doing co-op because your mates can help flank and attract enemy attention. 

-Tim