Ive played Bioshock for a good 10 or 12 hours now and I can't help but see a good amount of similarities with Fallout. Now, Bioshock is obviously going to be different from Fallout 2 merely because it is in a different era of gaming and much more is possible, along with the fact that one is first person and one is a 3/4 overhead, turn-based game. However, it made me wonder how similar Fallout 3 will be to Bioshock, if it carries over many of the aspects that Fallout 1 and 2 did.

Obviously the greatest similarity is the 50s vibe that both games have, which is great. The songs from that time are a great contrast to the dystopian realities that both games are set in. From there you can also see a very similar skill description techniques. That being "yellow and white" basic cartoons that are comically non-violent in their style of decribing beating people with wrenches or rocket launchers. I can easily imagine Fallout 3's pipboy having a voice explaining skills in a short and sweet manor just as they are in Bioshock.

Next, Bioshock's weapons can be upgraded in a homemade manner, just like the weapons in fallout 2. After upgrading the Machine gun to have less kickback I couldn't help but think that it looked very similar to the extended magazines, scopes tied on , etc, in Fallout, in style at least.

Then, there is the concept similarity of the gameplay, in theory at least. There is the "defeat enemies how you want" idea. From melee to range to hacking nearby computers(and getting by automanted sucurity systems). Fallout also did the same thing with its skill progression, allowing you to upgrade whatever you wanted to do. This also leads to the "choose when to fight" aspect of the game, which both have.

You can even stretch the interactions with characters pretty far to say they are the same too. Imagine if a Big Daddy was like the muscle guarding a merchant. Then think of the hacking of a vending machine as being pickpocketing a merchant, you get more for less, and sometimes even things that you can't get normally(as in fallout you could take the merchants items that were on him, rather than what was on sale). And when enemies are fighting each other, you can stand back and watch, or help the losing side so that mop up is easier, which often happened in random encounters in Fallout 2.

I can't help but think that when Fallout 3 comes out its gonna be pretty similar to Bioshock. There will obviously be many differences. Bioshock has elemental powers, no NPC interactions, a camera, hacking minigames, etc. Fallout will(I would think) have radiation concerns, many NPC interactions, many more weapons and armor to choose from, levels, cannibalism, etc. However, I just thought I'd point out some of the similarities in Fallout and Bioshock as I didn't really think about this comparison before I actually played the game.

Some people just can't get over the fact that nothing lasts forever, and that change is constantly evolving everything around us(Except War. War never changes). Its just a fact of life. But why is it that no one can apply this logic to video game remakes and revivals?

What is the first thing you hear(and most likely, think) about when a franchise is revived? Do you hear about the new features? Eventually, yes, but not at first. First, there is a giant shit storm of disapproval from the fans of the "original". And, oddly enough, its normally coming from the biggest fans of the franchise, normally people that have been clamoring to get a sequel or a remake for years, ever since they finished the original.

Its comical to even imagine the instant 180 that this person's brain must take when this situation arrives.

Pre-announcement: "JESUS, they need to make a new X"
Remake/revival of X announced: "hooray..."
Seconds later: "You know what, this new one will SUCK BALLS, its COMPLETELY not the one I played 20 years ago."

This is literally exactly what happens in people's minds. And they are right, to a degree, but not the way they want to be.

One of the things people become angry about with remakes are new features, or new gameplay, or a tweaked anything. Well, this is simply because they are viewing a remake in the wrong light. When a game is remade or redone it is not just literally making the EXACT game again. If you want to do that I have good new for you, YOU CAN! Its called "playing the original". Its an odd concept, but some crazy people do actually play games that are more than a year old. A remake or revival is like a "re-envision" of an old franchise brought into modern technology. It is meant to be similar to, but not a carbon copy of, the its predecessor.

Another of the common complaints is that a new game will somehow "destroy the franchise". Maybe its simply the thinking that "if my favorite games franchise isn't popular it makes me feel bad", but this has always been an odd argument to me. A new game will not tarnish an old one. Period. It is just baffling to me that someone would think that a new game has to be good as if it will retroactively destroy another title. Did Castlevania 64 make you hate the other titles in the series? Did Parasite Eve II make me look down upon Parasite Ever? Did Bomberman Act: Zero maim my childhood memories of older version? Obviously the answer to all of these Questions is no. Games should and will be viewed based on their own merit, not the franchise they come from.

I do think that this behavior can be stopped fairly easily though through a few simple methods. First, stop comparing the new game to the old game. They will not and should not be exactly the same. View it as a new title and work from there.

Secondly, (this is more of a developer thing) don't listen too much to what people have to say about your title. Take input, of course, but don't listen to everything that is said on the internet. Some people just don't know what they are talking about so always keep in mind the words of bill Cosby, "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody". Make the game that you want to make, not the game that 30 or 40 people on an internet forum want. The more a title is changed based on the opinions of people outside the project the more it becomes watered down from its original vision.

And lastly, people need to accept that sometimes a game does not lend itself to a remake or revival. Some games, like Beyond Good and Evil, are great stand alone titles and really have no need to be revisited. Again, if the original was so great that you need more of it, then do just that, and play the original again.

I'm excited about Fallout 3, you're excited about Fallout 3, everyone is excited about Fallout 3. Except, of course, for those rabid Forum posters. O how I love thee, rabid forum poster, each of your pots is as intelligent and well thought out as the last. Just look at some of these gems from this site:

"Please, no more
I've had enough of this
Remember how one of the FO devs said that selling FO license is like selling his own daugter?
Well, this daugter has been beaten badly and violated by 5 super-mutants

Duh"

Its beautiful. No need to use periods when you can just add a whole new line to your post, the longer it is the better. Also, in rabid forumite mode there is no need to make a point, other than something has been really screwed up by someone else, somehow, and this angers you to no end. "Ive had enough of this". But why? Who knows, its not important, because we all know that this guy thinks Fallout 3 is crap from a news story by one guy and some still screens of a demo he has never seen in action. The "duh" is added in to emphasize that its common knowledge every game that this person has never played, because it isnt even out yet, sucks.

But wait, theres more. Look at yet another brilliant example of how the forum goers get their point across so eloquently:

" QUOTE Back in 1987, while working on their own RPG, Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, they fell in love with Fallout."

It's impressive that they can get stuff like this so wrong. Don't these people spend any time on research?"

This guy TOTALLY nailed Nick Brutal. Brutal obviously doesn't even know what decade that fallout came out, or Elder Scrolls 2, or any game for that matter. Could this merely be a typo? HA, the forum junkie laughs at you, for every single piece of information ever typed is written in stone, and there are no typos.

And, of course, the analyzation of the gameplay from a post about a demo that was played in front of the writer(so thats twice removed gameplay) is equally amazing:

"QUOTE did someone from Bethesda ever send you an email saying that "We only care about money and don't give a [insert unspeakable word here] about the quality of our games."?

Close, but not really.
They've dumbed it down to another fps so they can get larger audience and more $$$
KA-CHING!"

They have non-turn based gameplay so the game has obviously been dumbed down to an FPS. Forget that they still have the targeting system with the VATS. Forget that they have talked radiation and how it seeps into multiple parts of gameplay. Forget that it still has the Special system with tag skills, and that there are more perks to be chosen(once per even level, rather than once per third level). It was said that there is non turn-based gameplay, and from that one statement, it is painfully clear that all Bethesda cares about is "KA-CHING".

As Ron Workman would say, the "internet Matlocks" are pure genius.

I was thinking about games like Beyond Good and Evil and Ico, and wondering what other games Ive played that it seemed like no one else did. I came up with this one.

Parasite Eve



This is one of my favorite games of all time, but it seems like me and 1 of my friends are the only people who have ever played it. This is the game that made me think twice about selling games, because for some reason when I finished it I thought I would be done with it forever, but I have bought it at least 5 times from multiple places. Every so often I just get the urge to play this game, and am wholly satisfied every time I do. It had one of my favorite story lines OF ALL TIME, and it was really very very simple - Mitochondria are fighting against the creatures they are in. Its one of the few games that can actually teach a little bit about a real scholastic subject other than military tactics or economics.

The gameplay was slightly more than that of a turn based RPG. You would run around in a small area on the screen(designated for battle, takes much less time to come up then loading a whole new "battle area". While you ran around dodging enemy attacks and ATB guage would fill. Then, when you chose to use your turn, the game would temporarily pause while you selected an action and a target, but would be in real time as you fired, so if you chose at the wrong time, you could still be hurt by an enemies attack. You also had a magic guage(Parasite Energy guage) for magic like attacks. There is also a range system built into the game, which adds a little bit more to the avoid/attack system and give a little bit more strategy in what weapon to use when, etc.

There is a slight RPG-like system where you have a few things to choose to improve as you level up. A slightly abnormal aspect of the level up system though, is that you can choose to give a bonus to either yourself, your weapon or your armor. And this is a game where you are changing weapons and armor just rarely enough to make it a decent idea. You can also synthesize the most powerful weapons in the game by collecting 300 pieces of "junk" and talking to the weapons guy in the Police Station.
You also gain new powers as you level up, though its not a choice which powers to get when.

The game was only about 9 hours long(if I remember correctly), but it had a couple of different ways of making you want to play more. The first was that at the end of the game you can engrave something into 1 weapon and 1 armor, it doesn't tell you at the time, but you get to use these to start the game in the "EX mode". And the second was that a new area was unlocked in the city, the Chrysler Building. This was an impossibly difficult area if done at the wrong time. This led you to essentially have to beat the game more than once to be able to get to the top(by leveling up your weapon that you kept instead of yourself, then leveling up in your third game to actually get to the top of the building.

Overall I pretty much liked everything about this game. Its a game by SquareSOFT, oddly enough to me, as I didn't think it felt like a Square game, but it seemed very realistically done(for a game where you have powers and fight reanimated dinosaurs) and it seemed like its gameplay was much better than that of the standard turn based RPG. I liked the incentives they used to add replay, I liked the story, I liked the battle system, I liked the enemies and I liked the characters. I pretty much just loved this game.

So, there you have it, one of my favorite games ever, and it seemed like no one else heard of it. Chime in and mention one of yours.