I'm up to the part where you fight Peach Wilkins in the fisherman's wharf...and I keep dying over and over. Is the game really this hard or do I just suck?

I don't even remember that part. I do remember that it was worth it.

If you liked The Last of Us, I would say the original Bioshock was the last game before TLOU to deliver that caliber of story along with AAA gameplay. One of the rare genuine masterpiece games. If you're lucky, you didn't play Bioshock 2 or Infinite, and you lived under a rock in 2007 so you don't know what's up ahead of time.

Play on easy and just keep spraying him with bullets, die, respawn and then spray him more. It's basically like playing co-op against Diablo bosses but somehow dumber.

Telekinesis. I believe Peach only throws stuff at you, so catch and toss it right back at the bastard. Also, hack anything in the room.

(and never forget, Electro Bolt and water is pretty much always a good idea)

Electro bolt, water, and wrench!

The beginning of the game is hard because your weapons suck balls until you upgrade them a bit. Even then everything other than the wrench takes fucking forever to kill anything (shotgun is alright I guess), and then it gets hard again near the end because they start throwing more "elite" versions of enemies at you that are ridiculous bullet sponges.

The Peach Wilkins fight kinda sucks, but he doesn't have that much HP, and use telekinesis to pick up explosives and chuck them at him.

Also, when you get the camera, take pictures of all the enemies constantly. It upgrades how well you can damage them, and sometimes it unlocks other pretty neat stuff as well. Don't worry about film, it's dirt cheap, and you can't waste it, because if you try to take a picture that won't give you XP, the shutter closes but it doesn't spend any film.

Thanks for the tips, duders. I finally got through that fight and I haven't had much trouble since then. I think I finally found my groove. Also, this is kinda the scariest game I've played in a long while, which I wasn't expecting. Everyone of those moments when you pick up an item and then have to turn around and there's an enemy just standing right behind you have made me jump...

@plaintomato: I don't really know the end of this game, but I do know what's up with Infinite. That's the main reason I'm playing this one, because Infinite is about to go free on PS Plus and I wanted to play the first one first. I'll probably skip 2.

@dross: Oh that's really nice then that you haven't played Infinite yet. Infinite is fine and all, but IMO it was clearly a second outing (Bioshock 2 doesn't really count) based on an existing 'formula', so it didn't pack the same punch as the first game, which wasn't constrained as much by having a pre-existing form that it had to fit into.

Maybe part of it is that the first one's world was more engaging for me. I consider myself libertarian, and religious & exceptionalist, so I feel like I should have engaged with both stories pretty equally from a 'personal-interests' point of view, but for some reason Infinite just didn't feel as sharp for me and left me feeling like I'd been there and done that and it was better the first time. But now that I'm thinking of it I wonder if I might like Infinite better on a second play-thru, maybe I just wasn't in the mood when I played it.

I don't think plaintomato has replayed Bioshock Original lately. Let's be frank here, Bioshock is a 6 year old game and it shows. Bioshock Infinite is the Skyrim to Bioshock's Oblivion. It's a lot smarter in a ton of really great ways and it managed to be as shocking and unexpected in its twists as the first game even though, like in Bioshock, the hints are rubbed in your face from the first few seconds of the game. I feel like Bioshock Infinite reminded me of what it was like to play Bioshock again unspoiled. Like lightning striking twice it's amazing that they managed to fool me again.

I agree, to me infinite is much better, and plays about 100 times better. I played both for the first times back to back so I have good context.

@dross: I'd echo others in turning it down to Easy. The enemies in Bioshock are these dumb bullet sponges and ammo can be scarce. I honestly had very little fun fighting anything, least of all big daddies, and it kinda detracted from the otherwise interesting story.

Very well put. I actually thought there were some issues with Bioshock's actual story (everything after the big twist wasn't so hot) and I think Infinite was great the entire way through. And I thought the combat was just way deeper.

I think the gameplay is underrated, as far as the "put it down to easy and get it over with" talk. It's a fun game to play for me.

I just beat everything with my wrench, respawned, and continued hitting it with my wrench until it died. There is no penalty for dying/respawning. =D

If you're having trouble with the combat, I strongly suggest upgraded bees, especially for the more spry enemies. Bees will seek them out and bother them long enough for you to get a good couple shots off. I don't recall if they do much against Big Daddy's, but past the first area, BD's really aren't that tough. They can take a lot of damage, but remember that you get to decide when and how to engage with them. Traps are your friends.

BioShock's combat wasn't very good when it came out though and Infinite's is also pretty bad by 2013 FPS standards.

I disagree, I've played every modern FPS and still loved Infinite's combat. There's a lot more variety in infinite's combat than most FPS (All the vigor types, skyhooks etc).

@sooty: @counterclockwork87: I agree with Counterclockwork, there's something great to the amount of freedom and variety that can be found in Bioshock Infinite's combat. Also I think that the default control scheme is not the one to use. If you use the one where Left Trigger becomes, well, what Left Trigger usually is it actually feels really good and quite like other games where you pull left trigger and then right only you can also use magic and skylines. Perhaps that is part of issue people have with it. Hard to say, I really like it. It's very well made.

@sooty: I'd love to know what you think sets the standard for 2013 FPS games. Please, tell me what game artfully outdoes Bioshock Infinite in terms of shooting mechanics.

Infinite had perfectly functional "left trigger aim, right trigger shoot" shooting, plus the skyhook areas and the easily accessible vigors kept things interesting. Bioshock 1's plasmids were a nightmare to use if you wanted to switch between guns and plasmids, since there wasn't just a quick toggle and you had to memorize what buttons/keys you guns AND your plasmids were assigned to. Plasmids/vigors work much better on a radial menu than just assigned to all the function keys (didn't play console Bioshock, so not sure how they assigned them there).

Confirmed. And I also think Oblivion & Morrowind were better games than Skyrim. But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Initine (or Skyrim) wasn't a great game, just that Bioshock OG was an amazing game and amazing > great.

But it's true that I haven't replayed Bioshock in a long time so you can take my opinion on it with that grain of salt. Still though, there's a lot I remember about Bioshock that seemed unforgettable at the time, and Infinite is already fading fast, but that's just me.

@plaintomato: I think there is something to be said for original games when sequels a ways later are merely iterative revamps of the original released after a fashion and are a bit prettier. But that's not Bioshock Infinite or Skyrim, that's Bioshock 2. Bioshock Infinite and Skyrim went the extra mile to remain fresh, exciting and tight in many respects even after the original games they were patterned against aged to where they are no longer fresh, exciting or tight.

BioShock 2 is currently the pinnacle of BioShock combat -- duel-wielding, bitches! Infinite by comparison feels really watered down.

huh? really? Was replaying it early last spring because of all the talk about Infinite, because I knew what I was doing I felt there was a simple metroidvania style "get this to unlock this" sense of directions.

I mean, I'd recommend to at least stay focus and remember style changes in certain sections. There's a lot of variety in there to not think it's all the same corridors. It's simple enough as far as these opened sections feel like.... unless you are dying too much and the bathospheres loose your orientation? There's always maps.

It's been a while, but yeah, I remember BS being fairly tough at spots.

hmmmmm, you know, that's an odd thing to talk about because YES! Bioshock 2 the shooting worked better, but Infinite did have the magnetic lock melee kills, use of music and the skyhook gave it a swash buckling Errol Flynn quality to it.

Bioshock 1 have more this whole traps, the flying robot turrets that fallow you and actually the aiming is odd that you feel like your just spraying and praying most of the time so zapping people and then wacking them always worked best. But yes, Bioshock 2 is tighter, but it's still janky. I felt Minerva's den including the ray gun was the best idea of the series, a simple beam that hit your enemy consistently and did a lot of damage.

The whole series has an odd sense of combat, and they seem to be slowly getting better. You know if you had told me Bioshock's combat was originated from 1998 PC FPS games, then I would totally believe you.

I'm another who thought well of Bio shock' Infinite's combat. The first Bio-shock, well the story might be my first draw, though not the cap on what I could at least get along with. I remember using both hands in Bio-shock 2 as to be positively liberating. Bio-shock Infinite, true synthesis once some upgrades happened. Bio-shock Infinite was GOTY for me, though I did not play TLoU, in all fairness.

(I remember when this thread had absolutely nothing to do with Bioshock Infinite. Focus, people.)

Dude... dude! Please take what plaintomato said as extreme hyperbole. The end of the original Bioshock is a fucking disaster. Well, I take that back: only the very end is a disaster. The place it should have ended is good, and the parts leading up to the disaster are good; it's just the disaster that's the disaster. So... enjoy it as you will... but just know at some point things go from great to terrible. It's the last boss fight. You fight a super mutant. You may recall the Bombcast guys referencing the ending to Bioshock from time to time, and remarking on how terrible it is. This is why. It's a fairly unanimous opinion.

The plasmids and weapons are both on radial menus on the console version. But yeah, I'm not having much trouble anymore, I just started what seems like the "hell level," can't remember what it's called, it looks like there is fire everywhere...The previous level was definitely my favorite of the game so far (Fort Frolic), really loved the character of Sander Cohen...I'm really enjoying the game overall, but like I said before, I really only started playing because I want to play Infinite so bad and it's about to come out on PS+...I know it's not a direct sequel, but I know about...well you know...and I felt I should play the original first. If the end shits the bed, I'm not going to be overly upset.

Also, I finally figured out what the gameplay reminds me of: Fallout 3. Down to looking at every single item in an environment, looking for money, ammo, and food. I even think the eating food sound is the same as Fallout's. Anyone else make this connection?

I don't know how they did it on PC but on console, with a controller, it was left trigger vigor, right trigger shoot. You had to click in the stick to aim down sights which is somewhat jarring in modern games. On the flipside if you wanted ADS on a trigger you had to settle for the vigors to be on some awkward button so it was a lose/lose situation.

As for games that outdo Bioshock Infinite in terms of shooting mechanics - well a lot of them. Bulletstorm for example, and that's an old game. Shooting felt great in that game. Basically any Call of Duty game. I'm not talking about how interesting the shooting is here mind you, but the fidelity of it. Bioshock, ever since the first game, felt sluggish and slow. It doesn't help that enemies are quite spongy and somewhat braindead.

Don't get me wrong - despite all that I thought Infinite was a great game for it's story and I still do. I was emotionally invested in saving Elizabeth when you get to the "silent boys" section of the game. When the final piano keys dropped and the screen faded to black I was really in awe as the credits started rolling past. As great as The Last of Us was, I simply didn't get nearly as much mileage out of that games ending which left me somewhat indifferent after the emotional lead up.

That said the combat was average at best, clunky at worst, and despite what everyone claims "oh Infinite is the best! NO Bioshock 2 had the best combat! Wrench all the way!" it has pretty much remained the same throughout the series.

So I just killed Andrew Ryan...how much longer is the game? I kinda feel like this needs to be over...