Coelacanth

I missed that you've started on Alan Wake 2 now, but I'm glad you've got it running somewhat acceptably! It's a very demanding game, when I first played it I didn't have my new PC so I'm intimately familiar with struggling to be able to run it.

I'm glad you spotted the signs, I love the work on all the signs and graffiti in the dark place.

How are you liking the game so far?

After my rather disappointing adventure with Metro: Last Light recently I ticked off another backlog game in the way of a third-of-a-trilogy I'm really looking forward to this week with Bioshock 2. I adored the first game back when I played it, and I've been really looking forward to Infinite, with 2 being a kind of red-headed stepchild in the way.

Overall I enjoyed it and found it alright. The novelty of playing as a Big Daddy wore off pretty quick, and after that it was kind of just "more Bioshock" - which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The setting was still fantastic, and using the Nvidia RTX HDR feature the game looked stunning. The voice acting was great and the shooter gameplay felt as tight and entertaining as the first game. Lots of plasmids that kind of sucked in the first game were surprisingly great here which was fun. I did kind of miss the hacking mechanic from the first game, though.

While I liked the story, it doesn't really hold a candle to the first game in my opinion, but that is more of an effusive praise of Bioshock 1 than an indictment of Bioshock 2. It served its purpose and wasn't in the way of me enjoying the game, though it's not something I'll think back on time and time again and heartily recommend like the first game, I think.

Finally - and most sadly - the game suffers extremely from instability. I even played the Remastered version, but crashes were frequent, sudden and unpredictable and from looking around online this is apparently a common problem. I tried all the various fixes online but only managed to slightly reduce their frequency. Very unfortunate.

Still, I'm glad to have played it and am looking forward to Infinite sometime in the future.

Wait YouTube is disabling upload date and view counter?

It's such a great example of art direction versus graphics, honestly. Watching Skill Up's review I'd often go "oh hey, that lighting looks pretty good, those textures look nice" etc but thanks to the Pixarified people it still looks like shit whenever a person is on screen. I don't know why but the character designs make me think of cheap mobile games.

Yeah I really like it for the retro-futuristic theme of Bioshock, not sure about it meshing as well with an outright futuristic setting as in this game.

That's a BioShock looking logo and font, for sure. Has anyone played this? Is it any good?

These are good additions and all, but not sure they merit a specifically titled "Anniversary Update" patch.

Nice work! Really looking forward to seeing your reactions to Alan Wake 2 in the near future.

... my mind

Presumably

It's been attempted before with other game engines (like DA: O) but maybe this time it'll happen. Though I hate to be a negative Nancy but don't hold your breath with these fan conversions - they're huge undertakings. Skyblivion actually looks like it might happen, but it's exceedingly rare.

Ah, that's what it was! I always thought it was just a different color for 0 and 1, today I learned! That makes more sense when I think about it.

I haven't thought about burning CDs in a long time, man that takes me back. Remember Nero Burning ROM?

I think the etymology of the term is that when you're writing data onto a disk you're shooting a laser onto it to alter the chemistry and change its color, for which "burning" the data into it makes sense.