High Scores And Egos: There's Always A Bigger Doodle 
The Last Moments Of GAME 
How Bad User Interfaces Are Ruining Video Games And Other Wonderful Things 
She Tried To Make Good Video Games For Girls, Whatever That Meant 
The Story Of Doodle Jump: Brotherly Love And Digital Snacks 
Sunday Comics: Dead Island Well, POV cry-babies, your squeaky wheel is about to get well and truly greased. 2K will be fixing the game’s widescreen “problems” as part of the game’s next update, which we’re promised will be “out soon”. So rest easy tonight, kids, safe in the knowledge your indignant vigil over this critical issue, which left one of the year’s best games utterly unplayable, has paid off. wheres the 360 WS-patch? [2K Forums, thanks Chito!]
There has been no shortage of speculation on a PlayStation 3 release of critical and commercial darling BioShock, but 2K Games, Microsoft and Ken Levine have done their best to smash any rumours about such a port. And while we’re growing quite tired of being emotionally torn apart at the seams by a potential PS3 version, the rumour has cropped up one more time. This time the source of the talk is EGM’s long running editorial nom de plume Quartermann. “There’s a change in the tide, as the world of Rapture may be Cell-enabled in 2008″, Quartermann writes.
Will we be at all surprised when BioShock is finally officially confirmed as the latest table scrap to be handed down from the plate of exclusivity? Nope. We won’t be surprised by the infighting when presented with a side-by-side comparison video in the comments either.
2K Boston’s head honcho Ken Levine sat down with the kids at Games For Windows magazine to chat about the downloadable content that BioShock may have in its future. Levine says that, instead of focusing on expanding the Xbox 360 game with, say, a multiplayer mode or new maps, the team wants to take a different approach. According to IGN’s recounting of the interview, BioShock DLC may simply on add breadth to the combat experience and deliver plasmids that landed on the cutting room floor. In short, expect more replayability, not a car combat mode, and a circus of value.
Since BioShock lacks multi-player, it’s not exactly the type of game you expect downloadable content for. Yet, 2K Boston’s Ken Levine hasn’t given up on BioShock DLC by a damn sight. No siree! Here’s what Levine has to say:
Diablo II, to me, was a great model for an expansion, because it enhanced the original game, but also extended the game, too. I’m not a really big fan of expanding things just by linearly adding to the experience, adding a new campaign, as much as I am of enhancing the original experience and adding replayability to that experience. I think that certainly BioShock‘s combat experience is great, but it could be broader. I’m a little more confused as far as how to expand the narrative experience.
No word on when this will happen, but it’s nice to know he hasn’t forgotten about DLC. Ken Levine, he’s gaming’s good guy! DLC Interview [1Up]
Maybe you haven’t finished BioShock yet and you need to install it on another machine. Or invasive online DRM systems give you the creeps. Whatever the reason, PC owners of 2K Australia/2K Boston’s FPS can now “deactivate” their installed copies and move them to another box, without having to worry about getting a nasty message telling them they’ve used up all their activations.
Just hit up the Cult of Rapture website to download the utility that makes the magic possible. Full instructions on how to use the tool are also available.
BioShock Activation Revoke Tool Available Now [The Cult of Rapture]
BioShock‘s music is great. All of it. And while it was nice of 2K to let us have the original composition, it didn’t go quite far enough. We wanted the snazzy “period” recordings scattered throughout the game as well. Handily for record collectors and illegal file-sharing aficionados alike, 2K have sent Microsoft’s Larry Hryb a list of every old-timer song included in the game. So go, run free and grab as many as you’d like. I’d recommend Bing Crosby’s Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams, but I know Flynn’s quite partial to some Django Reinhardt as well. Full list is after the jump.
Kotakuite Louis S. gave us the heads up for this auction on Dutch eBay, with proceeds benefiting the World Wildlife Fund (as far as I can tell, which is not much, not reading Dutch): a 2.2 meter Big Daddy statue constructed out of fiberglass, weighing in at 44 kilos (around 97 lbs). Bidding ends on 8 am Sunday, CET and as of earlier this morning, bidding was up to a mere 600 Euros. If you can’t live without one of these in your living room, bid here. I’m just glad creepy, life-sized fiberglass Little Sister isn’t included.
Admission: the ending to BioShock soured me. And not just the actual ending itself, the entire last third of the game, where it ceases being a wondrous exploration of a crumbling dystopia and becomes a tedious, run-of-the-mill shooter. That last bit, maybe that was just me, but the actual ending sequences definitely left people feeling cold. Even Ken Levine: …it was never my intention to do two endings for the game. It sort of came very late and it was something that was requested by somebody up the food chain from me.
Interesting. Please, continue.
One of the reasons I was opposed to multiple endings is I never want to do things that have multiple digital outcomes, versus analogue outcomes. I want to do it like the weapons system in the combat in BioShock. There are a million different things you can do in every combat; you can play it a million different ways. Looking into the future for the franchise, that’s something I want to [figure out] , that by the time you get to the ending of that choice path, you have a sense of your impact on the world through lots of little permutations rather than like a giant ending piece, if you follow my meaning.
And I think we did a reasonably good job with [the endings] , but there are just two of them. And this is not a game about A and B. This is a game about one through 1 million, and all those permutations of choice. And as I think about the future of the franchise, that’s where I want to take that.
Super-glad he’s said that. Because for all their talk of leaving any moral choices open-ended, playing through the game only to see a “good” or “bad” ending was a let-down. Hopefully he can get his ideas for true multiple endings sorted by the time BioShock 2 rolls around. Q&A: Diving deeper into BioShock’s story [GameSpot, via Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
I’m quietly confident that all the fuss over BioShock has passed… well, until Ken Levine announces in one of his many interviews an expansion or sequel, which he surely will.
You see, one reason why BioShock has done so well – and deserves an encore – is because of its amazing pedigree. One such father in the family tree is Thief, an FPS “sneaker” where the objective was to steal, rather than slay.
Over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun there’s a fancy write-up (with included developer interviews) on Thief: Deadly Shadows, the third title in the Thief series. Although it was developed by the now-defunct Ion Storm, the first two titles were cooked up by Looking Glass, who’s shattered remains became Irrational, and now 2K Australia/2K Boston (can we get this name shortened already? Sheesh. My vote is on 2K Aus/Bos).
The Making Of Thief: Deadly Shadows [Rock, Paper, Shotgun]
Finally 2K has seen fit to port Bioshock to the world’s most affordable games console, joining Street Fighter as one of the premier titles available for the Etch-A-Sketch console. If fact, if you look closely you’ll see that the game is actually running on the portable version of the system, which is a miraculous feat of programming if you ask me.
Bioshock [The Etch-A-Sketchist- Thanks Bernardo!]
