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2K has today refused to rule out the possibility of BioShock coming to the PS3.

Earlier this week the internet exploded when eagle-eyed forum posters noticed that 2K Boston, previously Irrational Games, was advertising for programmers with Unreal Engine 3 and PS3 experience on its website.

Today a spokesperson for 2K Games told VideoGamer.com that the publisher has “nothing to announce at this time”, which isn’t exactly a denial, but is no-where near a confirmation either.

If you’ve just picked up or received BioShock, you might want to take a look at the Xbox Live Marketplace for six HD videos from BradyGames that will help you locate all of the game’s audio diaries. Finding the audio diaries is definitely something I’d recommend, as they really do a good job of fleshing out the backstory of the game, which would otherwise go largely unmentioned.

Plus, you’ll get an achievement for finding them all, and there’s nothing wrong with some gamerscore love.

We’ve seen achievements be added to games after their releases; Oblivion and Gears of War instantly come to mind, with their expansions or downloadable content adding new achievements to compliment the new content. But BioShock hasn’t seen any downloadable content released, and it’s gotten a new achievement – worth 100 points, the achievement is so super secret that no one knows for sure what it is.

Instead of making an uneducated guess myself, I went straight to DaKing240, Senior Independent Achievement Expert, who’s always on top of the latest achievements before anyone else is. The conversation went as such:

Me: What do you think about the new secret BioShock achievement? What do you think it’s going to be?

DaKing240: For a game where the majority of the achievements deal with doing something [inventing, hacking, or researching], or collecting items, I expect the new achievement to deal with plasmids to some degree. Either collecting all the new plasmids, or beating the game in a new manner. Now, would you kindly share your thoughts?

Me: I think someone is calling me… I must go now.

Unfortunately the conversation was cut short due in no part to my laziness, but a phone call. Or something.

Will we be seeing BioShock DLC soon? Certainly seems possible, as we know it’s something 2K Boston has been exploring, as plasmids were cut from the game.

—Related Articles at Gaming Today:Levine Confirms No PS3 BioShockGaming Today Investigates Bioshock Early Release ClaimsAchievement Locked UnderwearWhen ‘XBL Achievement Points’ Ruin GamesNew BioShock Trailer Here on FileFront

Strange and wonderful. Those are the two words that best describe the BioShock experience. What other game has dared to throw so many bizarre oddities - killer diving suits, cannibalistic little girls, underwater utopias, gene splicing drugs - together in one package? More importantly, what other game succeeds at being this crazy and, at the same time, this believable?

To fully understand and appreciate BioShock’s unique achievement, though, you have to know how it started. How it transformed. How it mutated. In order to chart that evolution from weird to weirder, we scoured the creative team’s archives for early art, original sketches and concept paintings. Then we asked a senior artist, Hoagy De La Plante, to make sense of it all. The journey he and the art tell, like the game, is a strange and wonderful one.

Hoagy De La Plante, Senior Artist on BioShock: Initially, the Little Sister was just a tiny slug that wandered around the environment - you could gun them down if you wanted to. One version of the Big Daddy was this monster with amputated legs, riding around strapped into an antique wheelchair with cannons hooked on. That never made it past the concept stages for obvious reasons.

Finally after a 3 days of waiting a cracked version of highly anticipated X360 and PC game Bioshock is released by group ONEHitWONDER. I know many of you out there have been waiting for this game and got your first taste of it with the demo released a few days ago. This release is quite big coming in at 6GB and requiring 8GB of your HD for installation. System requirements are also quite high as you probably know by now. The NFO states that this ONEHiTWONDER’s first and only release hence the name “ONEHiTWONDER” so don’t expect any more from them. Download and enjoy this fine game

Edit: Nukewar is finished… result: officially NUKED. Lot of people complain about not working crack ect. Keep the image, and wait for a working crack!

BioShock is the “genetically enhanced” first person shooter that lets you do things never before possible in the genre: turn everything into a weapon, biologically mod your body with plasmids, hack devices and systems, upgrade your weapons and craft new ammo variants, and experiment with different battle techniques in an incredible and unique underwater city.

You are a cast-away in Rapture, an underwater Utopia torn apart by civil war. Caught between powerful forces, and hunted down by genetically modified “splicers” and deadly security systems, you have to come to grips with a deadly, mysterious world filled with powerful technology and fascinating characters. No encounter ever plays out the same, and no two gamers will play the game the same way.

BioShock is loaded with some of greatest, most modifiable weapons to ever blast their way into a shooter. But guns alone won’t be enough to defeat the devious AIs of Rapture. There are literally hundreds of other strategies players can use to take out his enemies. Here’s just a few things you can do a foe:

Features:

• Catch his Grenades in Mid Air and Toss Them Back at Him
• Freeze Him Solid and Shatter Him with Smack of your Wrench
• Lead him and his comrades to water and Zap them all with 1000 Volts
• Burn Him Up With Home-Made Molotov Cocktails
• Booby Trap Healing Machines and Watch Them Blow up IN his Face
• Brainwash Him to Become Your Personal BodyGuard
• Invent your own Ammo Types to Prey on his Vulnerabilities
• Turn his own Security System Against Him
• Light Him on Fire and Launch Heat Seeking Missiles At him
• Torment Him with Plagues of Insects
• Take Research Photos of Him to Learn his Weaknesses
• Send Him Flying into the Ceiling to Knock him Senseless

System Requirements:

• Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista
• Optical Drive: DVD-ROM
• CPU Speed: Minimum-Pentium 4 2.5 GHz (single core) Reccommended-Intel Core 2 Duo Or AMD Athlon 64 X2
• Disk Space: 8GB
• Display:DirectX 9.0c compliant card with 128 MB RAM
  (NVIDIA 6600/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550), Must support Pixel Shader 3.0
• Memory (RAM): 1GB-2GB

Release name: Bioshock.DVD9-ONEHiTWONDER
Size: 1 DVD9, 6.05 GB
Protection: SecuROM
Genre: FPS (FirstPersonShooter)
Filename: bs-ohw

For our inaugural entry in the Brush Up series, we decided to go right to the creator of the game. Ken Levine, the creative director of 2K Boston (formerly Irrational Games), shared with us what movies, music, architecture, and books (yes, those things that have pages) you should be checking out to get pumped up for the release of BioShock and to fully appreciate the amount of work that went into constructing the amazing undersea world of Rapture.

“For a first-person shooter that’s being noted for its visuals, I like to think that BioShock has got some brains to go with its looks,” Levine told us. “Here’s some of the great stuff that kept us excited and inspired when we were making the game.”

READ
The Shining (Book, 1977)
“I read this book when I was 9 or 10; it completely knocked me out. BioShock owes a huge debt to it: A story of people trapped in a remote location, targeted by the ghosts of the pasts for reasons they can’t understand.”

The Fountainhead (Book, 1943)
“Rand is a brilliant thinker and, despite herself, has written quite the potboiler. Full of huge characters and huger ideas, The Fountainhead makes you believe that gods can walk the Earth. If only real life were that simple. Atlas Shrugged will do just as well.”

Animal Farm: (Book, 1945)
“You really only need to read this one book to understand power and what it does to people; it’s the ultimate story of what happens when ideals slam into less than ideal people.”

BioShock was influenced by Akira? It’s true!

The struggle for power is a big theme in BioShock, as it is in Animal Farm.

WATCH
Miller’s Crossing (Film, 1990)
“My favorite film of all time. It’s all dialogue, style, and more interconnected plot threads than you can possibly comprehend in one viewing; probably why I’ve seen it 20 times. A huge inspiration when trying to create the slang and language tonality of the city of Rapture.”

The Hudsucker Proxy (Film, 1994)
“Another Coen brothers’ film, this is the visual touchstone of art deco and ’40s fashion design. Because the world is not entirely realistic, it shares a lot in common with Rapture…. it’s the period as we might have imagined it, not as it exactly was.”

Sweet and Lowdown (Film, 1999)
“The film that introduced me to, indirectly, the guitar jazz of the period and, of course, Django Reinhardt, whose ‘La Mer’ is playing in the Lighthouse opener.”

Akira (Film, 1988)
“Effects artist Stephen Alexander says he got a lot of special effects ideas from the godfather of Japanese anime films. In his words: ‘I pulled inspiration from Akira because explosions and other naturalistic effects (smoke, steam, fire, explosions) are often very expressive in anime, and I tried to draw on that to give the effects more of a signature character where I could and where it fit with our overall aesthetic. A concrete example is the bouncing tendrils of spoke that come from turret explosions, which are something I found to have a very cool impact in a specific scene in Akira.’”

Brazil, Blade Runner (Films, 1985 and 1982)
“Art Director Scott Sinclair points to these films as references for lighting, atmosphere, environment feel, and retro tech.”

VISIT
New York City
“If you’ve never been, go to Rockefeller Center. It was here that the visual concepts of Rapture began to form. My wife and I spent a day here, with crappy cameras we bought at the gift shop, photographing every lighting fixture, door knob, and Diego Rivera mural we could find. We followed that up by going to the Empire State Building, which hosts the inspiration for the ‘wall coins’ you find in the lighthouse sequence.”

LISTEN
1950s-Era Jazz Music
“I actually called my dad, who grew up in the period, to get a start on the songs of the period that we licensed for the game. I was familiar with some–Django Reinhardt, Bobby Darin, Billie Holiday–but he brought me up to speed on Johnny Ray, Pattie Page, and Rosemary Clooney. Licensing music is a very complicated process, and we weren’t able to get everything we wanted–losing Piaf’s ‘La Vie en Rose’ was particularly painful, as well as ‘That Old Black Magic’ by Louis Prima.”

When a flame war erupts, the exaggerated fanboy smack talk almost always boils down to, “My system has (or will have) better games than yours.” It’s the end-all argument. It doesn’t matter how fancy your Wiimote is, how many polygons you can render at once, or whether or not you can play Blu-ray discs. The games are what matter. Unfortunately for the diehard fanboys, their precious exclusives tend to do more flopping about than a trout caught in a bear’s claw.

Crysis, the upcoming FPS blockbuster, is a PC exclusive. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, told us so, sort of:

“…neither Crytek nor any third parties are currently engaged in developing Crysis for console platforms.”

The words “currently engaged” leave a lot of gorgeously rendered room for speculation. So is or isn’t Crysis coming to consoles? Yerli had this to say to CVG:

“PC is our focus right now, we were born there and we want to showcase what we can do there, before we made any move onto consoles.”

His tenses may have been slippery, but the spiel was the same. Though we can’t help but wonder why Crytek would post job opportunities for PS3 programmers if it had no plans for a console version of Crysis. Please, Mr. Yerli, tell PC Gamer what’s on your mind:

“Crysis could be on the 360 or PS3.”

Thank you, was that so hard?

Hold on, fanboys, hear us out. Perhaps you’ve heard of BioShock, the “genetically enhanced” shooter that came out of nowhere to capture the public’s attention and the critics’ adoration… the shooter that’s received unanimously perfect scores… the shooter that’s already sitting on store shelves awaiting your purchase and enjoyment. Yeah, icon or not, Halo 3 now has a high bar to surpass.

Too high, according to GamesRadar’s Senior Editor, Joe McNeilly. He asserts that BioShock will emerge as this year’s better game and he’s got the unassailable manifesto to prove it. The only thing standing in his way is Xbox 360 Editor and Halo defender Charlie Barratt.

Who’s right? Who’s crazy? Read on and decide for yourself.

When a flame war erupts, the exaggerated fanboy smack talk almost always boils down to, “My system has (or will have) better games than yours.” It’s the end-all argument. It doesn’t matter how fancy your Wiimote is, how many polygons you can render at once, or whether or not you can play Blu-ray discs. The games are what matter. Unfortunately for the diehard fanboys, their precious exclusives tend to do more flopping about than a trout caught in a bear’s claw.

Crysis, the upcoming FPS blockbuster, is a PC exclusive. Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, told us so, sort of:

“…neither Crytek nor any third parties are currently engaged in developing Crysis for console platforms.”

The words “currently engaged” leave a lot of gorgeously rendered room for speculation. So is or isn’t Crysis coming to consoles? Yerli had this to say to CVG:

“PC is our focus right now, we were born there and we want to showcase what we can do there, before we made any move onto consoles.”

His tenses may have been slippery, but the spiel was the same. Though we can’t help but wonder why Crytek would post job opportunities for PS3 programmers if it had no plans for a console version of Crysis. Please, Mr. Yerli, tell PC Gamer what’s on your mind:

“Crysis could be on the 360 or PS3.”

Thank you, was that so hard?

Above: Possibly, maybe coming to a console near you. In a while

Crysis‘ questionable PC exclusivity is just one of many examples of exclusivity flip-flopping. Metal Gear Solid 4, for example, is definitely a PS3 exclusive. Everyone, including both SCEA President Jack Tretton and Hideo Kojima himself, has said so. So why are rumors flitting about that MGS 4 will appear on the 360? Will Sony get a “timed” exclusive, with the 360 version being released a few months after the PS3 version? Will Microsoft fork out $100 gazillion for it? Do we care?

And who does exclusivity really benefit? The console manufacturers certainly know the value of a strong exclusive. Finding and securing the killer apps - the games that will sell more consoles - is top priority. Microsoft did it when it bought Halo developer Bungie, which turned out to be a pivotal moment for the Xbox.

But does exclusivity make our games better, or does it just validate our brand loyalties? We wandered the office in search of answers, or, in lieu of answers, venomous rants. We found OXM Editor Dan Amrich, and like a true video game Swami, he offered us the insight we needed to move on with our lives and stop freaking out (mostly) about exclusivity.

Origin gamesradar

Surviving the perils of Rapture in BioShock is no mean task as you rip through Splicers, outwit Big Daddies, and generally improvise your way through countless dangers. Your path to success is also largely dependent on the combination of Plasmids and Tonics you employ. And we’re going to help you out with a few additional tips and tricks that should help you to uncover the mysteries of Rapture. Good luck.

You’ve made him mad now.

Conquering Big Daddy
Dealing with Big Daddies is tricky, and while there are any number of ways to take on these formidable foes, try to remember these handy tips:

• Use the environment: It’s no use just launching an attack on a Big Daddy in a random location. Scope out nearby hallways and rooms for useful elements. Lure a Big Daddy into a room with a rocket turret you’ve hacked previously. Or you can do battle in a room filled with propane tanks and explosive barrels, or find areas filled with water to help channel electricity.
• Hit ‘em hard: Your first attack on a Big Daddy should be intense. From frag grenades to explosive shotgun shells and even tossing propane tanks with telekinesis, hit them first with your most potent weaponry.
• Strike quickly and run away: Once you’ve launched an attack on a Big Daddy, it’s time to flee the scene momentarily. Look for places to hide, or simply run as far as you can until the Big Daddy gives up. Once they’ve targeted you, it’s too dicey to try and dodge their onslaught.
• Keep them distracted: Whether it’s using a turret you hacked, or using the Enrage or Target Dummy Plasmids to make them attack something else, keeping the Big Daddy distracted is your best bet for survival after your initial attack.
• Where’s Little Sister?: Make absolutely sure the Little Sister is present when taking down a Big Daddy. It’s common to make your initial assault, only to come back and find the Little Sister has crawled into a vent. If they do, just wait until the Big Daddy summons them again. After all, the only point in taking down a Big Daddy is to collect Adam from the Little Sister.

Ummm … I was just leaving.

Electric Wrench
There may be no better combination for dealing with a single enemy than a shot from the Electro Bolt Plasmid to stun your opponent, followed by a knock upside the head with the wrench. It’s a quick, easy and powerful combination made even better by using the Wrench Jockey Tonic for extra melee damage and upgrading to Electro Bolt 2 as soon as possible. This tactic remains effective throughout the game, so keep it in your arsenal.

Resource Preservation
Unless you’re playing on Easy difficulty, hold on to all the First Aid Kits, EVE Hypos, and precious ammunition you can. If you find yourself in an impossible combat situation, such as when security bots join an already intense battle, just give up without using any of your items. You’ll revive with all your gear intact at the nearest Vita Chamber.

Explore
Careful exploration is vital to uncovering helpful items, including audio-diaries (collect them all for an Achievement), equipment such as ammunition and First Aid Kits, and new Plasmids and Tonics. Make sure you’ve fully explored each and every room, hallway, nook and cranny of a map before loading into a new section.

Someone’s a little cranky.

Shock and Melt
The Electro Bolt and Incinerate Plasmids are great for combat, but they can also unlock sections of the world. The Electro Bolt Plasmid will short-circuit door controls to unlock doors, and Incinerate will melt ice-blocks barring your path. Consider keeping them in your standard rotation so you don’t have to backtrack to a Gene Bank to get access to a room.

Research Again
Taking photographs to research enemies is a multi-step process. You gain information and tactical advantages with your first picture, but there are additional tiers for each enemy, so keep shooting pictures of Splicers, Little Sisters, Big Daddies, turrets, and other enemies until you unlock their respective Fully Researched achievements. This gives you increased Gamerscore and some extra Tonics as well.

A Word on Hacking
Hacking turrets, safes, security cameras, and other machines is a big part of BioShock. Here are a couple of suggestions for consistent hacking success:

• Use the Engineering Tonic: It’s worth spending some Adam early on at a Gatherer’s Garden for an extra Engineering Tonic slot. Each hacking-based Tonic goes a long way to reducing the stress of the mini-game, and consequently, saving your health from being electrocuted away after a failed attempt. Also, the mini-games get progressively more difficult as the game goes on, so the Tonics will come in handy.
• Clear the tiles quickly: Your first task when beginning the hacking mini-game should be to clear as many of the tiles between the start point and end point as you can. This will give you a good indication of the parts you have to work with, and the obstacles you must confront.
• Auto-hack the safes: Save your auto-hack items for safes. They’re by far the hardest items to hack and provide the biggest rewards.
• Use the cameras: Instead of shooting down security cameras on sight, take the time to dodge underneath them. Then, when you’re standing in their blind spot, hack the camera. Not only will they turn to your side and summon security bots to deal with enemies, but the alert notices will help keep you informed of enemy movements.

Say hello to my little friend.

Rescue Her
Power-gamers will be mighty tempted to harvest the Little Sisters to mine more Adam at a time, but you may want to reconsider that path. Yes, choosing to rescue a Little Sister gives less Adam, but you’ll be periodically compensated with “gifts” containing extra Adam to help make up for the loss. Plus, you’ll be working your way towards a hundred-point Achievement if you choose not to harvest a single Little Sister, and well, it’s the nice thing to do.

Weapon Considerations
From the chemical-thrower to the classic shotgun, your guns play as important a role as your Plasmids and Tonics and require nearly the same amount of thoughtful strategy. Consider the following:

• Aim high: Headshots are a plus in any shooter, but they’re particularly effective in BioShock. Take careful aim when first targeting an enemy as a couple of well-placed headshots can do the work of two full clips of body shots.
• Keep the big guns for Big Daddy: Though you can make short work of a group of enemies with a few blasts from the grenade launcher, your more potent weapons are best kept in reserve for Big Daddies and other boss fights.
• Upgrade your favorites: Your first consideration when upgrading a weapon should be how often you use it. The shotgun and machine gun are your faithful standbys, so make them your first upgrade priority. It may be tempting to go with the grenade launcher, but the Big Daddy fights are just too infrequent to make it worthwhile at the beginning.
• Conserve ammunition: Ammunition doesn’t grow on trees, even in Rapture. While it may be a touch more fun to blast a Splicer in the face with a shotgun round, it’s often just as easy to use Electro Bolt and a wrench. Use your guns only when necessary.

Map Use
Consulting the map is good not just when you’re lost, but also for finding key locations in a hurry. For example, if a camera spots you and sends a fleet of security bots your way, it’s better to track down the nearest Bot Shutdown kiosk rather than fight it out. Unexplored locations are grayed out on your map, so that will help clue you in where to go next.

BioShock is one of those games that has it completely figured out, an immersive storyline, tense moments, and just overall great gameplay. With the tips mentioned above, you should be well on your way to surviving the rigors of the underwater world of Rapture.

Article by Ryan Treit

Deep in the ocean depths there is a secluded metropolis, a vast underwater city born from the enigmatic and disturbed mind of one Andrew Ryan. Frustrated with the power and ethics of established society, Ryan shunned the outside world and delved deep to mold his masterpiece, a utopia built to provide the brightest artists, engineers, and scientists with complete freedom far beyond the worry of governmental supervision. He called it Rapture.

A world gone mad.

Such is the very basic foundation for 2K Games’ masterful first-person adventure BioShock. The game has received rave reviews from widely disparate sources, and even perfect scores from normally tough reviewers. The experience of BioShock is something truly wonderful.

You play an anonymous plane crash survivor who finds the sea level entrance to Rapture, only to discover a city consumed by insanity, violence and an ongoing struggle for power. Was it Ryan’s own experiments that brought ruin to Rapture, or were other factions involved? What addiction drives the insanity of the residents, and was your finding Rapture merely a coincidence? These are the questions that need answering, and only through tension-filled exploration and white-knuckle action will you find the answers.

It’s Adam also that helped create the raving, violent lunatics that populate Rapture as their craving for the elusive substance has driven them ever deeper into madness.

Immerse Yourself into the Depths of Rapture
From the moment the bathysphere plunges into the ocean and you catch your first brutal glimpse of a rage-driven Splicer attacking a fellow inhabitant, it’s clear that the world of BioShock is meant to be “experienced,” as much as played. Sure, you can bustle through the halls at high speed if you want, but you’ll miss so many subtle, immersive, frightening, and even humorous moments.

Only the best for Rapture.

Whether it’s taking the time to listen to a lonesome but addled mother whispering despairing thoughts into a long-empty baby stroller, or witnessing the oddly touching relationship between the Big Daddies and Little Sisters, and even looking on in blank horror at the final death throes of a trapped scientist, BioShock has been built with remarkable care to produce rare moments of complete immersion. There is just as much fun, if not more, to be had exploring Rapture as doing battle in the environment.

Not Just Your Average Shooter

BioShock plays from the firmly established first-person perspective and there is the usual wide assortment of powerful weaponry, such as pistols, shotguns, grenade launchers, and even a flamethrower. But BioShock goes beyond this with its unique Plasmid/Tonic system that provides both active and passive powers, powers that can be used to really mix up the action and game tactics.

• Plasmids include active abilities like Electro Bolt, which allows you to shoot electricity to stun opponents, electrify a pool of water, or short-circuit a door lock. Likewise, Telekinesis allows you to grab objects and fling them at enemies, while Enrage throws an opponent into a blind fury, forcing them to attack even their own comrades.
• Tonics on the other hand provide passive abilities. For example, Wrench Lurker allows you to make less noise while sneaking up on enemies and deliver more damage with surprise melee attacks. Static Discharge stuns enemies with electricity when they strike you, and the Speedy Hacker tonic slows down the flow of energy when playing the hacking mini-game.
• While all Plasmids and Tonics are useful, strategy comes heavily into play as you decide which combination of powers to use at any given time, because only so many slots are available. However, you can switch out the Plasmids and Tonics at various Gene Banks you find throughout Rapture.

A tremendous foe.

Sample Combat
Combat in Bioshock involves much more than simple point-and-shoot gameplay. You must make use of not only your powers, but also the environment, your enemy’s abilities, and the various A.I. relationships.

For instance, you enter a room and find a few wandering Splicers, a security camera and a gun turret. To start things off, turn the security camera against the Splicers using your Security Bullseye Plasmid, which summons security bots to attack the Splicers. Next, electrocute the gun turret to temporarily shut it down, and hack it to turn it against your enemies. Last, whip out your upgraded machine gun and tear through any newcomers with anti-personnel bullets that you’ve crafted from spare parts using the U-Invent machine. Now that’s a battle!

The Adam Dynamic
Adam is the mysterious resource that makes the world of Rapture go round. It’s precious Adam that powers your Plasmids and Tonics, and the more you harvest, the more abilities and slots you can purchase. It’s Adam also that helped create the raving, violent lunatics that populate Rapture as their craving for the elusive substance has driven them ever deeper into madness.

Adam is also at the core of the Big Daddy-Little Sister dynamic so prevalent throughout the game. Only the Little Sisters can collect Adam from the corpses that litter Rapture, and while they are frail and vulnerable, the Big Daddies that protect them are enormously powerful and well armored. Even the slightest threat to a Little Sister will set a Big Daddy off, and once they throw themselves into action, they are relentless.

Good luck with that.

It’s hardly possible to progress through BioShock without collecting Adam though, so you’ll need to master the tactics required to take on and take down the formidable Big Daddies.

Bioshock is that rare masterpiece that far exceeds even its own lofty expectations, and is already well on its way to becoming one of the highest-rated, critically acclaimed titles in videogame history. Put simply, it must be played to be believed. Get ready for Rapture.

Article by Ryan Treit