Found myself a Little Sister to “harvest,” and I’m disappointed.  This is the big moral dilemma in Bioshock – do you free these little girls or kill them?  This is supposed to be a tough choice with tough consequences…a decision that shapes the game…  And in reality, there really isn’t that much difference.

When you “rescue” a little sister you pick them up, they struggle a bit, there’s some glowy magical genetic handwaving, and then the kid wanders away to the nearest air vent – leaving you with about 120 ADAM or so.

When you “harvest” a little sister you pick them up, they struggle a bit, there’s some weird green swirly stuff on your screen so you can’t see what’s going on, and then the kid’s just plain gone – leaving you with 240 ADAM or so.

The harvesting process wasn’t nearly as disturbing as I expected.  And the rewards weren’t nearly as impressive as I expected.  Ultimately there really wasn’t much of a reason to go one way or another…it wasn’t a huge dilemma…it didn’t seem to matter.

I decided to keep rescuing them because I really don’t need the ADAM, and the gifts they leave for you occasionally are nice…  But if that’s the best they can do for a major moral dilemma, I’m not impressed.

I’ve killed a couple Big Daddys in Bioshock, and dealt with their Little Sisters.

You’re given the choice to either “harvest” them for maximum ADAM, or “rescue” them for a lesser amount of ADAM – but you feel better about yourself.

So, I’ve been freeing them. And I got a present from them after I rescued a few. And I feel better about myself. But I’m really just dying to know what happens when you harvest one… I’m wondering what the animation looks like. I’m wondering how much ADAM you get. I’m wondering just how horrible it is.

So… The real question isn’t really whether or not I’m going to harvest one… The real question is how long I’m going to be able to hold out against my curiosity – and whether I’ll turn completely to the dark side once I’ve had a taste.

I’ve been hearing a lot from Mr. Ryan in Bioshock lately…  Some kind of public service announcements on all the televisions and radios in the area.  And I’ve picked up some tape recordings of his.  He keeps ranting about “parasites” – apparently pretty much anyone he doesn’t like.

Initially he was talking about parasites who hack vending machines…  Which I guess kind of makes sense…  But then he started talking about parasites who smuggle stuff in from the surface.  So I guess he just likes the word.

Interestingly enough…it looks like he’s got parasites of a different kind to worry about – those that make ADAM.

Got myself a Research Camera in Bioshock today…

It’s interesting – you take pictures of the various critters and use those pictures to discover weaknesses in them.  The better your picture is, the quicker the research.

It’s actually fairly difficult to get a good picture of something that’s trying to kill you.

No, I haven’t been born again – I finally got my hands on Bioshock and I’ve been playing it almost nonstop.

The setting for Bioshock is an undersea city called Rapture that sounds like some kind of Libertarian paradise.  The founder, Mr. Ryan, didn’t like how the assorted governments redistributed wealth…so he founded his own city under the sea.

Work hard, and keep the fruits of your labor to yourself.  Nobody is going to take your money and give it to anyone else…  But there’s no public support system either.

I don’t want to read too much into it…this is just a game after all…but I guess I’m not terribly surprised that things fell apart the way they did.  Somebody’s got to do the crap jobs…  Somebody’s got to make sure the roads are paved, the laws are enforced, and the sewage gets processed…  Without any kind of central government to take care of such things, they tend to be overlooked while everyone goes looking for fame and fortune.

BioShock is out, and everyone is talking about it. I’ve seen several of my usual web comics run strips on it…and all the forums are abuz. Everyone’s talking about how creepy it is, how scary the “Little Sisters” are, how challenging some of the choices are… And I’ve been sitting on the sidelines, wishing I could play.

My machine is about six years old now. I recently upgraded the video card…but it was with a $130 ATI thing that was on sale at New Egg – nothing amazing. I’m still running a 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM… You get the idea. Hardly a bleeding-edge gaming machine. And the previews I’ve seen for BioShock look absolutely amazing. Realistic water, shadows, detailed critters, dynamic environments… I certainly didn’t think there was any way in hell that it would run on my machine.

So I’ve just been reading the reviews and dreaming of eventually upgrading my PC to the point where I could play it.

Fortunately, my wife convinced me to download the demo just to see if it would run at all. She pointed out that Oblivion ran quite well when I’d thought it wouldn’t run at all. So I left the download running last night and this morning I installed the 1.8 GB monstrosity.

Amazingly enough, it runs pretty well. Granted, the resolution is set to 800×600 and the graphics options are all set to low…but it actually runs pretty well… No choppiness, no hesitation, and it looks ok. Plus, even with the graphics set that low, it’s still creepy as hell.

So now I’ve gotten a taste of BioShock, and I can see what everyone’s been raving about. Now the only thing that’s keeping me from playing BioShock is the price of the game itself…

I’m not sure if that’s an improvement or not.