Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 18: Bioshock

(+) Yeah! (+)

Todays game is another nominated one, Bioshock. How would you rate the story on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest?
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Previous Results:
Outer Wilds - 9.86 (18 votes)
Omori - 9.6 (5 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.65 (24 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.35 (18 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.24 (46 votes)
*The Last of Us - 8.22 (29 votes)*
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.12 (34 votes)
Celeste - 7.46 (22 votes)
Death Stranding - 7.23 (11 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7.21 (16 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.17 (24 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.75 (16 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.61 (14 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.5 (24 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.44 (24 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.53 (13 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name> <rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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8

Great twist, great lore, great atmosphere, great audio logs/dialogue, great voice acting. Sub-par third act that loses steam and nuance.

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6

I have played it through to completion but was quite underwhelmed. To the point I just had to look up the plot as I remembered next to nothing about it. Good twist but that's about it

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8.5

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6
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7/10

I think I've only rated Disco Elysium and The Last of Us so some other ratings:
Outer Wilds - 9
Mgs 2 - 8
Ghost Trick - 9
Ace attorney - 9
Celeste - 6
Uncharted - 4.5

7

Amazing, horrific world-building and background details. Twist is very good, but I think the game waxes philosophical in a way that's too basic and surface level to be truly memorable or ground-breaking. Choices are not baked into the gameplay well at all; for example, choosing to sacrifice Little Sisters or rescue them is rendered pretty pointless as rescuing them is always the better option both morally and more beneficial to the player in the long run. Taken as vignettes, BioShock's secondary villains are however terrifying and extreme portraits of humanity gone twisted, and for that, I ultimately do enjoy this game's story and presentation quite a bit.

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9

A game I need to play

Nominate Mortal Kombat 9

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5

Admittedly I came to this game years after everyone else and with some sense of what the twist was, but it was really underwhelming to me. The setting is really cool and the writing is mostly pretty good (with a couple big exceptions though). The twist was great in concept and, at the time, novel from a gameplay/story meta perspective, but actual, literal mind control felt like a disappointing reveal. The ending was also pretty bad. Overall it was okay but I don't think it lived up to its potential.

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7.5 again for this one. Very strong story and setting, though it does have an underwhelming last act. Some very good stuff in here though!

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Rating:
Dark Souls - 7


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7

The twist is nice and mostly everything that leads up to it, but the third act just isnt nearly as engaging and kind of ends flat.

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7

Strong dialog writing and Andrew Ryan is a stand-out character, but definitely some weakness in the overall plot.

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7
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7.5

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7

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yeah gonna have to add to the consensus 7

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10 easily wtf

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Bioshock Infinite would get a much better score from me. Now that has great storytelling
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6.5

The storyline itself has one huge twist that's great but it's otherwise nothing special. The world-building is pretty good.

Ratings:
FFX - 8
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.5
Tales of the Abyss - 10
Uncharted 1 - 5.5
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8

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9

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7.5

I prefer the lore, setting, story and characters of Infinite but I'll give BioShock credit where credit is due. It is a really well designed games with a great air of mystery surrounding it and Rapture is one of the most iconic locations created in the last gen of games (although I personally prefer Columbia). Listening to the tapes to uncover the story was great but it never really reached the heights of some of gaming's best stories. The twist is good but again IMO is something Infinite does better.

I will give this a bump and then depending on how active it is try to get the next one up early.

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10

Everything is pretty much executed perfectly.

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I'll go 8. The flaws have been mentioned and I agree with most of them. But the world building is terrific, there's some really good characters and that end of Act 2 scene really is an all-timer. The audio log style of delivering lore actually worked in this game unlike many that came afterwards, I just enjoy experiencing being in this world. And it connects gameplay to story better than many story-focused games do.

I am curious how Infinite and 2 would do here!

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9.5

There are some pacing issues, but otherwise one of the all-time greats in the medium

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6

This WOULD be an 8 or 9 if the twist was closer to the end. The atmosphere and the moment-to-moment writing and dialogue is great. The setting is cool. The twist is unforgettable. I...can't say the same for anything past that, which I have totally forgotten.

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