Jolt Country

Bioshock is a game I am now looking forward to. Apparently it's possible to spoil the thing, because it's got something going on to give it spoiler qualities. Like a plot maybe? Who knows.

From another forum, I read:

FYI Something Awful is running banner ads that spoil Bioshock so you may wish to avoid that site in general.

Jesus Christ. You know, it's funny, that place was spoling things in ads for the Harry Potter books, only I don't read them and therefore didn't care. But now they are spoiling something I do care about, Mr. McClane, and I deleted my bookmark. Wow. WOW. I can't think of anything that better demonstrates driving off people for the same of some banner ad revenue.

Additionally, here is how to get System Shock working on Windows XP:

http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.p ... adid=69578

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Jesus Christ. You know, it's funny, that place was spoling things in ads for the Harry Potter books, only I don't read them and therefore didn't care. But now they are spoiling something I do care about, Mr. McClane, and I deleted my bookmark. Wow. WOW. I can't think of anything that better demonstrates driving off people for the same of some banner ad revenue.

The banner ads in question (as well as the Harry Potter spoilers) are created and purchased by members of the forum, many of which are assholes. Lowtax can't really pick and choose which banners he wants to runs.

Yeah, I'm defending SA but I don't think they deserve the reputation they have gotten. The people who have gotten the site that reputation are actually a small percentage of the userbase who feel that it is hip and cool to ruin other people's fun while spouting "GOONS GOONS GOONS PAK CHOOIE UNF."

hygraed wrote:The banner ads in question (as well as the Harry Potter spoilers) are created and purchased by members of the forum, many of which are assholes. Lowtax can't really pick and choose which banners he wants to runs.

Well, somebody screens them to prevent someone trying to put up a banner filled with cocks and pop-tarts -- been there, tried that. (Hurr, lol, sorry.)

Don't get me wrong, the guy gets a lot of shit for nonsense his userbase (or former userbase) engages in, and it's impossible to run a forum that size without it making a person mental, but this is him choosing cash over visits. I am not even all that into BioShock -- you could tell me that the little girls in the game have crabs for snatch and it wouldn't even register to me that the game was spoiled because I don't know enough for spoilers to work (yet).

The main culprit is the people who think they are still being edgy spoiling shit, sure. It was kind of funny a few years ago, but it definitely didn't age well. It's pretty lame in the way that a person not lettting a joke go is. I can't think of anything that would drive off reasonable people faster. People will live with all manner of ads, but no grown-up is going to hang around a place that constantly spoils stuff they might be interested in. Time is precious, if I watch five seasons of The Wire and see a flashing banner ad that goes, "McNULTY DIES!!!" I'm going to never visit that site again, not go, "Oof, good show, you got me! Ho ho ho, oh well." If that's their new "thing" then the userbase that remains is going to be a bunch of dead-inside mehhers that don't enjoy anything.

(Or, er, people who have turned the ads off, I guess that works too.)

Lowtax made an announcement today:

Due to overwhelming sensitivity and nonstop bitching, I'm pretty much stuck in a corner here and have no choice but to make it against the rules to "spoil" something in custom titles or ads or any other global stuff. I personally think it's ridiculous to get upset because somebody wrote about Harry Potter in your custom title, but either I'm in the minority or the pro-complaining crowd simply wore me down. I'm tired of having to address this topic constantly, so I'm just going to cave in and ask people to please not ruin movies, books, games, or anything else that may show up in multiple forums. I never thought this place would turn into a place where we have to tip-toe around offending Harry Potter fans, but I suppose I underestimated their quantity and tenacity. So please don't spoil shit, because much like libertarians, Harry Potter fans absolutely NEVER EVER SHUT UP.

So I guess you can start reading SA again.

edit: actually the Bioshock ad is still running so probably you should wait for a while.

Man, whoever bought that ad is seriously a fuckbag. "I'm not interested in this game, and NOBODY ELSE SHOULD BE EITHER SO I WILL RUIN IT FOR ANYONE WHO IS." I'm not interested in it either but you don't see me searching out spoilers, then paying money to ruin other people's enjoyment. That is an asshole move of the highest magnitude.

hygraed wrote:So I guess you can start reading SA again.

Actually, the time I did not spend there this weekend directly translated into:

- Getting a lot of work done on the new text game
- Posting here more (and making better posts)

So this is probably the best thing for me. Don't get me wrong: I looooooOOooove posts like your "Let's Play" one for the Lurking Horror over there. I think that's awesome. But a lot of people over there rub me the wrong way. Granted, most of them are Yankee fans, but at the end of a weekend I'd much rather have accomplished more here and on the text game, than have read a bunch of SAS threads by some of the dumbest humans I've ever seen in my life, who are only interested in baseball because there's no salary structure.

edit: actually the Bioshock ad is still running so probably you should wait for a while.

Thanks for the heads-up.

Man, whoever bought that ad is seriously a fuckbag. "I'm not interested in this game, and NOBODY ELSE SHOULD BE EITHER SO I WILL RUIN IT FOR ANYONE WHO IS." I'm not interested in it either but you don't see me searching out spoilers, then paying money to ruin other people's enjoyment. That is an asshole move of the highest magnitude.

Seriously. I went from not knowing that Bioshock existed to pre-loading it (to, uh, trying to find the demo so I can decide whether or not to buy it) in like 48 hours. While there is apparently no M. Night Shaylaman twist, there's enough there where I don't want some do-nothing nobody on SA spoiling it for me.

I am surprised that people complained to the admin as much as they did about the spoiling ads. If a place spoils shit for you, just stop going. It's a little frightening that people are so addicted to SA that they can't take a break until they've digested whatever content the assholes are currently ruining.

At any rate! I am going to try to get System Shock going tonight on my XP machine to get "in the mood" for Bioshock.

Don't forget System Shock 2.

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?gameid=3924

hygraed wrote:Don't forget System Shock 2.

http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?gameid=3924

You know what, I didn't like SS2 all that much. I didn't hate it as much as this guy on Caltrops, but I don't think I played it for more than a half hour. (I got SS2 well, well after it was released, so it wasn't like I had sunk $50 into it or anything, but still.)

If someone tells me that weapons break in Bioshock, I might be "out," however.

I succesfully installed System Shock tonight. I just started it. It was a bitch to get going, but I won in the end.

I dorked around with the controls, and got a lead pipe. A game after my own heart!

And then, while continuing to dork around, the game took me into a cut-scene. I had been captured by the Shodan and turned into a cyborg to serve them.

You know, I only played for three or four minutes, but I suspect I made a terrible mistake. That was... awesome. How many other first person games don't let you sit there and idle indefinitely? All of them?

Man, good on System Shock.

So I've been watching videos and reading about Bioshock, and it is now #1 on my list of games to get as soon as I get a PC that can run them. Christ, this looks awesome.

I just played through System Shock 2 the weekend before Bioshock's release, and it was really good. I haven't finished Bioshock yet, but from what I've seen SS2 is a better game. Bioshock is still a good game, however.

Welcome to the site, Hydrogen!

It's disappointing to see that getting SS1 to work on XP is such a chore. I've been hanging on to the game for years meaning to give it another try but that sounds rather annoying.

Roody_Yogurt wrote:It's disappointing to see that getting SS1 to work on XP is such a chore. I've been hanging on to the game for years meaning to give it another try but that sounds rather annoying.

It wasn't too bad. The guy at that link sort of over explained it. I got it going in twenty minutes, I think (but if I had to replicate it, I bet it would be five).

Let me know if you'd like me to whip up a "I don't have my head in my ass" version, as you are fully capable of getting the thing to go.

Cool, thanks for the offer. I'll keep that in mind, especially if you start getting further in the game and saying it's all kinds of awesome. I pretty much only wandered around a little, opened a couple doors and fought a couple things, and checked out the cyberspace stuff a little back in the day.

what kind of game is this? a guy at work was saying it's a must-grab.

Sure, I could ASK HIM... or read reviews. but I want it straight from my HOMIES MOUTHS

I am going to write a full review, but here is the basics (keeping in mind that I don't know all the details and backstory yet, as I am not even close to being finished)

A guy named Andrew Ryan decided to create a city at the bottom of the ocean that built upon the Ayn Rand principles depicted in a lot of her work, notably Atlas Shrugged. I have heard Randian ideology described as "self-ism."

Your character shows up in this city after a crash of some sort. (This is not because of a spoiler, it's because I don't remember what he was in that crashed.) And all hell has been unleashed in this city at the bottom of the ocean.

Gameplay consists of regular first person shooter things like a shotgun and machine gun, but also power-ups that come from altering your genetic code. You get slots to add new powers, like so much Marid Audran in Circuit's Edge. There is the hacking of systems, bots and droids. It's got a few RPG elements, and the enemies display some new tactics.

It's also amazingly gorgeous to simply look at. It has great art direction.

I didn't hate Doom 3, but Doom 3 is best taken as a haunted house simulator. BioShock is constantly throwing new stuff at you like a haunted house simulator, but it also seems to have a bit of a plot (through ham-fisted audio recordings you pick up) and I know there are some Interesting Decisions to be made later on.

Let me confess that I have not played many first person shooters recently. If you have never played one before and picked up, I don't know, Halo or something you'd be all, "Dude this rocks!" I don't want to be that guy. But I have kept in the loop informationally, and I am pretty sure there is new and interesting stuff going on in BioShock.

I think you'd love it.

Lowtax wrote:Due to overwhelming sensitivity and nonstop bitching

Spoke the guy who signed up for a boxing match and then blogged about his opponent disregarding the "no hitting in the face" rule. He apparently was an unpaid extra in Eww Bowel's latest flick, so I guess all that's left is for his wife to get blitzed by the panzer division.

Then for him to call everyone pussies when I buy a scat porn gif banner up on SA.

So I guess Andrew Ryan is a kinda-sorta anagram of Ayn Rand?