James

By Pentadact


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Let Tom Francis tell you all what it's like, being male, middle-class and white.
 

 

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Three things happened at once - I slapped my forehead, the Engineer blew me away with a point-blank blast, and the Scout became my favourite personality - narrowly beating the Kenny-esque Pyro.
 

 

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Idea for a deathless superhero game that sparked a great discussion.
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Quick BioShock Warning

 
 

If you’re anything like me, the first thing you do with a newly installed game is delete the interminable publisher logo movies. You’re told BioShock is by 2K three times each time you start it, and have to read unskippable copyright blurb in four different languages - so much of it they have to split it across two separate unskippable screens.

You can delete them with BioShock - the movie you hate is first alphabetically in the Content/BinkMovies folder, and called 2KG_logo_720P.bik. But for God’s sake, open that folder in a very small Explorer window. Remember those three words I was talking about, the ones that ruin the game? Two movies lower down in that folder are called exactly that. Genius.

Also, if you install the game on one machine and don’t need it there anymore, uninstall it properly - especially if you’re going to reinstall Windows or format the hard drive. Each time you install it uses up one of your Activations, and you’ve only got two. Each time you uninstall it gives you that one back. So if you just delete the folder or reinstall Windows, you lose that Activation forever. Genius.

On the plus side, I hear the game’s quite good.

Comment
 
 
Pentadact: Ooh, look out for the System Shock 2 hypo noise early on. Only just spotted it.

The_B: This weekend is going to be the longest of my gaming life.


And by weekend I mean - entire time until I can afford to upgrade enough to play BioShock.

Jonty: Hypo noise? Where?

Alex Hopkinson: Deleting that movie file sounds like a job for the trusty command prompt then, rather than explorer. Do you happen to know if it can be safely deleted in the Steam copy as well (with no "I shall now re-download your entire game without asking you!" side effects)?

The_B: Alex - I'm not certain how well this will work from a fresh install, but in theory, right click on BioShock in your My Games list, then click "Properties" and select the Updates tab, then change it to "Never update this game" or something like that.

Altough as I say, not sure if it will work.

Bobsy: I hate everyone who this doesn't happen to.

DuBBle: I'm waiting for the lodge that holds my mail, and my Bioshock pre-order, to open up... 90 mins to go damnit. Thanks for the warning.

DuBBle: My mind is refining pure rage. The activation failed and customer support are in no hurry to reply. FURY!

Pentadact: This has just become an utter disgrace. When you're planning this stuff, and you get to the part where it won't always work, and that'll leave legitimate players locked out, you have to have the kind of people in the room who'll say "Damn, we can't do it that way then." I don't know what room it was or who the people were, but somehow the attitude became "Oh well."

This makes me angry.

DuBBle: Perhaps the people in that fateful room derived apathy from an arrogant observation of their game's brilliance. I've got the silly thing working now (customer support replied after four hours) and I don't think their attitude was "Oh well", more like, "Oh, hell, they'll forgive us for anything once they experience Rapture".

Graham: I was just looking through the video files in that folder, and it turns out there are three endings.

Huh.

Pentadact: 'Kill' and 'Harvest' looks like different takes of the same ending to me. Is that what you meant?

Graham: Yes. I'm just wondering by what means you get one rather than the other.

 
 

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    Previously, On James...

     
     

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