Continuing a grand tradition that began when BioShock first came out in 2007, the remastered versions of BioShock 1 and 2 did not emerge from the bathysphere plunge to PC unscathed.
On the upside, the remastered BioShocks are functional, albeit janky in places. The most overt issue is a lack of graphical options that would have been a slap in the face any year, but feels jarringly out of place in 2016. Look at this:
That’s all of them. No shadows, no textures, no FOV. Even the original PC release did a better job and, thanks to mods, it’s now in significantly better shape than the remaster.
The other curiously PC-unfriendly bit is a mouse-smoothing issue that causes acceleration and sensitivity to feel wacky and out of control — less Big Daddy and more runaway bus. In my experience, the game was still playable, but I was less comfortable than I would have liked to have been.
I’ve also seen reports of stuttering, crashing bugs and PC/console control scheme mix-ups, none of which I encountered after an hour of play. I did, however, come across a couple of moments where sound dropped out, which is extra jarring in a game as aurally intense as BioShock.
You can certainly play the remastered PC versions of BioShock 1 and 2, but I’m just not sure why you’d want to at this point. The graphical upgrade is marginal at best, and you’re inviting a whole host of potential issues. Get the originals and mod them instead.
If, however, you absolutely must play the remasters — say, to stop a bomb from detonating or to appease a depressed dog — Rock Paper Shotgun has some quick and dirty fixes for sound, resolution and mouse-smoothing. That ought to tide you over until a patch (I really, really hope there’s gonna be a patch) drops.
Comments
8 responses to “The PC Version Of BioShock Remastered Has Issues”
It’s crashed twice during my play through. Both times it deleted all the saves aside from the autosave at the beginning of a level and reset all the graphical, audio, control and game options.
Fun times.
The problem I’m having is that when I turn Vsync on, textures pop in & out. I need to turn it on cause of all the screen tears I’m getting (getting 300fps)
That’s why investing into a gsync or freesync monitor is a good idea these days. I have heard hit and miss stories about freesync but I recently got a gsync monitor and my goodness the tech actually works and makes playing so much more enjoyable. I always found that vsync tends to make mouse movement a little unresponsive but I have none of that on my gsync monitor.
Playing the remasters on my BenQ 144hz gaming monitor is by far the best experience I have had with the bioshock games, feels brand new again
RE: RPS linkage – I couldn’t find NuBioshock 1’s system folder, the directions worked for NuBioshock 2 though. To a point, only one of those mouse settings was in the relevant .ini
Not going to bother with the visual tweaks until I sort out the issues with the mouse. What’s with the big-name FPS’s that can’t get such a thing right?
While I want to complain about the shitty job they’ve done with the graphics options (or lack there of), It’s kind of hard to when for $10 last steam sale i essentially got both remasters for free. I am just happy I can play them at my 21:9 res with no problems. Sure is nice seeing Rapture again at 3440×1440 res.
pay for product…. product is gimped in some way
legit games industry
Who cares about the graphic settings, by default the game looks amazing as is. The settings are all ready cranked up to begin with and it looks spectacular. What everybody should be focused on here is the stuttering issues. Fix that and the game would be great. I remember playing the original on a P4 with only 1 Gig of ram and everything was on high settings, all of a sudden, having 4 times that ram doesn’t seem to be enough which is bullshit. This is why modern day games can’t compete with games from 10 years ago.
I still very much think the core Bioshock experience fell short of my expectations – across all three titles. The remasters already feel like little more than polished turds. (IMHO only)