The_Other_Fred

------- INTRODUCTION ------- (tldr at the end) Alright small story to start us off I got Into the Radius in December of 2020, i played it for about an hour before giving up on the game for the arbitrary reason of there not being any hand animation for picking up some objects. That was More than unfair and honestly, it was childish. Now, however, as I was looking at my backlog of games Into the Radius stood out to me as I felt like I never gave it a chance so after installing it I was ready to go back Into the Radius (see what i did there, i am so cool)

------- POSITIVES ------- The Ambiance, World Design, and Art Direction are great. Starting with the art direction, everything feels very down-to-earth in terms of the buildings, items, and random props while also feeling alien and otherworldly when it comes to artifacts, enemies, and anomalous hazards which builds this sense of dread as you see normal-looking buildings getting torn apart and infested with horrors beyond our comprehension which never fully goes away even as you get used to the oddities of the Radius. The World Design helps to add to the feeling of danger, loneliness, and dread by setting arenas in things like small villages, factories, and train yards. Nothing larger than life but all feel corrupted by whatever is going on in the Radius around the large ominous black orb that hovers in the sky as a constant reminder that nothing is okay. While builds are reused from area to area I found that it never really detracted from the game and if anything it helped create this sense of cohesion in the game world for me, I do need to clarify quickly that the inside of the buildings are not copy-pasted however just the room layouts of them, the loot inside and the furnisher are hand played with care so no need to worry about that. The Ambiance is great. While not reinventing the wheel by any means Into the Radius's Ambiance is a damn great wheel. The sounds of footsteps, the cracking, scuttering, and chattering of enemies, the sounds of typewriters typing when walking around office areas, hearing trains chugging up behind you as if you're about to be hit, or hearing a car drive by as you walk a battered old road, screams in the distance and shadowy figures standing far away enough to make one second guess themselves on if its an enemy or not. Really it's all great, all of what I just wrote has to do is get you once, to spook you once, to have an impact as something you may remember from your time play through it all. And now onto some more mechanical things. The Gunplay, sense of progression, weight management, and stamina are all great things in this game as well, with some minor exceptions. Stamina, which is used for running, depletes at a generous rate but the total will be capped by hunger/exhaustion. Hunger is simple, you don't eat for a while and your Stamina gets capped eating will reset this debuff. Exhaustion is affected by your carry weight as the heavier you are the more your character will need to put in more work to run thus capping your Stamina, however, if you stop running Exhaustion will slowly reset meaning it will take double the time for your Stamina to regenerate. Speaking of carry weight, and also running. The carry weight in this game is rather good and it's simple. The heavier you are the slower you walk and this also affects running speed as far as I'm aware. Your backpack and your pouch can hold infinite items in them so the only real factor in how much you can carry is the Carry Weight system and even with everything I had by around mid game I couldn't get it that far above 40kg which still allows for running to be quick enough to work well. But as you put items into your bag physically a cluttered bag can be a pain in the ass which is the other reason you do not want to grab everything you find and keep an entire armory on you at all times. Moving on every gun in the game feels great, from Pistols to SMGs, Assault Rifles to Battle Rifles, and even Shotguns and Sniper/Marksman Rifles everything has a decent and/or appropriate amount of weight and heft behind every shot which means it's hard to go wrong when picking up a new gun in terms of raw feeling alone. The progression is the main thing that sticks out to me the most about this game which is why I wanted to save it for last in this section as it is extremely good. Starting from a basic Makarov Pistolet and working your way up to things like an AS "Val" or a FN "Scar" 17 as a main weapon with a Desert Eagle(357) as a sidearm feels great. You almost feel like you're in a constant arms race with the enemies as every time you complete a "Top Priority" Mission you get access to new guns and most likely get taken to a new zone where the enemies have gotten stronger as well. This feeling makes getting any new gun exciting but something to bear in mind is that every weapon is an investment. You do not just buy a weapon, you also need to buy that weapon's ammo, mags, and any upgrades you want to put on it such as attachments and stat upgrades.

------- NEGATIVES AND NIT-PICKS ------- Sadly this game isn't perfect and does have some flaws. I'm going to start with what I see as one of the bigger ones and that is Shotguns just don't feel that strong. Early on they seem fine if not a little inconsistent at times but around late mid-game to late game they just fall off a cliff, Buckshot becomes nearly useless as stronger and better-armored enemies will just laugh it off, while Buckshot can still kill weaker enemies, shotguns are long guns meaning they'll take up your main weapon slot and in said latter half of the game you can't afford to have your main weapon only useful some of the time. However, you can get Shotgun Slugs at any point in the game, the only problem is that shotguns still don't feel stronger than most other weapons for the primary downsides of either needing to load in shells one by one with the Spas-12 and under or with the mag capacity of 5 with the Saiga 12 and overall shotguns have lower accuracy than most other weapons meaning even when using Slugs you will have a harder time hitting most things in the medium to long range. First off I think adding something like flechette shells would greatly help give Shotguns that distinct feeling that Shotguns lose in the later parts of the game, also maybe a small accuracy buff when using Slugs would be nice. Accuracy is a strange thing, for the most part, it's fine as bullets mostly go where you point the gun with some minor deviation but then you try and run while shooting a weapon and see a bullet go flying off to the far left or right. Running and Gunning will often waste bullets as the gun Accuracy stat tanks when trying to do so, while I understand why this is the case, this often results in planting your butt in a spot of cover and taking a potshot every now and again if you get pinned down. You can't run to a new spot and try to kill an enemy while you run meaning you just stay in one spot, kill one enemy, move, and repeat, to be fair it's not that it doesn't work most of the time it's just that this game isn't a fast-paced shooter and if you play like it is one you aren't going to get very far. I few more minor things: 1 grabbing attachments off of guns can be a bit finicky 2 using ammo boxes can be a pain sometimes 3 some props and buildings have collision boxes that are a smidge too big leading to some shots hitting invis walls if you aren't careful

------- CONCLUSION ------- Into the Radius is a great VR game with some small problems. From its Art Direction to its Sense of Progression, it's a quality experience through and through. While grabbing things may be a bit jank and shotguns feel kinda underpowered I can say that I had a great time and if you're looking for a new VR game to play this is a damn good choice.

------- INTRODUCTION ------- (tldr at the end) I was introduced to the game when I was around 7-8 at a friend's house back in the day(I'm 18 going on 19 btw) and while I was too scared to play it but Bioshock stayed in my mind as an unforgettable game. I also played Bioshock Infinite and funnily enough Bioshock 2 when I was young so that helped, But I wanted to both challenge myself by playing on the hardest difficulty and see how it all started. So let's start this review off right with the-

------- POSITIVES ------- The story tackles interesting ideas and topics that still feel relevant today as it's a "what if" scenario on what would happen if a multi-millionaire built a city with no real government oversight and a totally free market "Where the artist doesn't fear the censor and the scientist does need to worry about petty morals". While I'm not going to say much about the story outside of this let's just say that the game does a great job of showing what the extreme of this scenario looks like in all its grim glory. The art direction is top-notch as the game oozes with a rich atmosphere of melancholic awe-struck wonder and sheer dread at what the city of Rapture has become, The sea trying to reclaim Rapture as rot and decay take hold, fires burn out stores and apartment homes, The enlightened citizens going insane and tearing each other apart like rabid dogs in a civil war which could have been going on for either years or weeks. While the bespoke music is sparse it carries the game's themes perfectly and the licensed tracks are some great hits the the 1950s which helps ground everything in the time period. The gameplay is quite good if not a little antiquated by today's standard, Each gun feels great to use and you will be using all of them every so often. The Wrench and Pistol being your starting weapons are great in a pinch with the Pistol working well long into the late game if you can hit headshots. The Tommygun and Shotgun are the general workhorses for most of the game as they both do consistent damage with the Tommygun being great for sustained damage on tougher targets and the Shotgun working great on common scrubs. The Grenade Launcher and Chemthrower are both great for clearing large crowds, but The Grenade Launcher can also set traps and do high damage to armored enemies, and the Chemthrower is good for burning said large groups, freezing mooks big or small, and electrocuting/stunning sacks of bolts and meat alike! With the final weapon you get being the crossbow which is overpowered as it can one-shot headshot most enemies with stronger guys getting brought down in just a few bolts, AND the bolts can be recovered with only a slight chance of breaking so you'll hardly run out of ammo. The crossbow becomes the MVP of the late game for this reason and while it can get a bit boring it's still fun as you only get it in the second half of the game. Plasmids and Tonics are the game's main stand-out from other shooters and both work well in this regard. There are so many Tonics in the game that I can't list them all but the jist of it is each Tonic gives a passive buff that goes from reducing damage taken to making hacking easier and taking the downside from drinking every bottle 'o' booze in Rapture away(outside of getting VERY drunk). Plasmids are sea genetic magic pretty much. You can shoot bees out of your hand, send enemies into a blind rage attacking anyone around them, light someone or something on fire with a snap of your fingers, and shoot lighting out the tips of your fingers like that one guy from that one thing (yeah that one). And while that is just dipping into the surface Plasmids and Tonics give so much variety to the gameplay i can see myself coming back one day just to try out different things... Or you know there IS a new game plus that gives you a good way to try new things and do challenge runs if you wish, though it doesn't make the game that much harder. Three last final notes about the remastered are, 1 they added a museum that shows developmental stuff about the making of Bioshock which is cool to look through, 2 There are director videos talking about the game which you can find in-game which I haven't watched and I'm sure you can find elsewhere, And 3 there are some challenges you can do which...I haven't done them so I'm not sure how good or bad they are just find out for yourself! (I just don't feel the need to do it I guess, but I do think is a neat addition)

------- NEGATIVES AND NIT-PICKS ------- So the most boring and repetitive part of the whole game is hacking. You can hack robots to turn them friendly and vending machines to lower their prices, and it's without a doubt the worst thing about the game, if you want to get the most out of vending machines and not waste ammo on scrap metal then you'll be doing it ALOT. Hacking is just moving pipes around, you've surely seen something like it in other games before, and sometimes it's just impossible to complete the hack unless you make an immediate change to the flow of the power goo in the pipes. Which you are not GOING to know that unless you can react quickly or fail which costs health, this makes the system ultimately frustrating because this happens all the time. The next thing that I will bring up is that dying has no consequence as you just respawn at a checkpoint with everything you did post-checkpoint saved. This makes every encounter in the game just a resource drain and takes the stakes out of playing the game for a challenge. You can turn this feature off but I left it on for the playthru and I do think that it's better for casual players but if you like some bite in your games and don't mind an overly long death animation then it's best to turn it off as you can just manually save. The biggest casualty of death meaning nothing are Big Daddy mini-bosses because when you die whatever health they were at they stay at when you die so it's just a matter of ammo and time before they go down which takes the risk-reward out of it and just turns it into reward. Also, Big Daddies are just bland in terms of their fights as there are only two types in the game and both are basic. One is ranged and the other is melee so it's just kite the melee one around a hallway and the ranged one is the same but you trade damage as the game rolls dice to see if it hits you or not. The final things are that the games a little buggy, it's not too bad but I had to replay a part of the game. I've seen online that similar soft locks to the one I had so just save often and it won't be a problem. Also way back when first got the Remastered version I remember it not running on my PC at the time no clue why but the normal version worked, and as you get both versions of Bioshock it's not that much of a problem but just keep that in mind.

------- CONCLUION/TLDR ------- Bioshock is a great game. The story is engaging and explores interesting concepts. The art direction and world-building are top-notch and immersive. Though some of it is repetitive and a bit dated by today's standard the gameplay is still great as every weapon is punchy and the DNA-changing sea magic is great for adding variety, just make sure to turn off Vita-chambers in the settings if you want a real challenge.