#but upon looking it up discovered that camera traps were in use commercially in the early 90's

[antilocaprine]

Frenrey 4? 🥺

(Kiss Prompt List)

I'm stealing the setting of @melonsharks 90's cryptid hunter AU again, this time with a slightly more gory creature fight.

4: ...where it hurts.

Benrey is utterly and unequivocally fucked.

They’ve been at Bubby and Coomer’s vacation cabin in the woods for two days, hunting after some rumored creature that Benrey didn’t pay attention to the debrief of. Since he’s currently in pieces in the trees half a mile from the cabin in the middle of the night, he probably should have. 

But it’s too late now - he’s hurting and bits of him keep falling off, but he has to keep moving, dragging himself through the dark, because the thing isn’t dead, and it’s still going after Gordon.

He sensed it the day before when Gordon was setting up his newest gadget. He was super excited about it, chattering about the infrared trigger and the type of film, and then he nicked his hand on a buckle as he strapped the boxy thing to a tree. 

Benrey’s used to smelling Gordon’s blood - he doesn’t like it, but the guy’s a klutz and it happens a lot, especially since they spend a lot of time wandering around rickety old buildings in the dark. But what Benrey is not used to is other things zeroing in on that blood scent, and he doesn’t like it. He especially doesn’t like that he can’t see the thing, no matter how many eyes he throws out. (Gordon had said it sounds like a ghoul, but Gordon also seemed very uncertain about that, and kept checking his notes.)

Now, Benrey’s struggling to claw together enough of a limb to drag himself forward, because the not-ghoul has just handed his ass to him on a paper plate. He knows he’s trailing toneless sweet voice, off-color hues dribbling from the jaws scattered across his form. He has to hold his breath to track the damn thing - he hurt it, too, but not as bad as it hurt him, and he still can’t see it.

Benrey closes all of his eyes to listen, then gathers himself and lunges for the nearest big tree. He slings several tendril-limbs around the trunk, the bark cutting into his form, but his claws sink into something that gives a raspy shriek and thrashes in his grip.

Slowly, agonizingly, Benrey drags himself around the tree trunk, anchoring the creature by basically nailing it to the bark with his limbs. It shouldn’t be this hard to hold a physical being - the thing must be utilizing some kind of dimensional slide, or something that lets it flicker in and out of existence. 

Even when Benrey finally sets some eyes on it, he still can’t really perceive what he’s seeing. It’s like a fuzzy shape has been cut out of the world, like a negative space, the shadow of a hole. He wouldn’t be able to describe it, even looking straight at it. But it’s still alive, and it seems incandescently furious at having Benrey’s gaze on it. His eyes burn, and he has to close them one at a time just to keep from flinching away from it completely. Multicolored tears of sweet voice drip down his body, his eyes watering in self defense.

Distantly, a part of Benrey that is always paying attention to Gordon registers that the cabin’s door has just slammed closed several hundred yards away. He opens a few eyes in that direction and sees a weak light bobbing through the trees. Instinctively, Benrey starts to hunker down, but the thing in his grip gives a creaky trill and tries to slink out of his claws. When he loops more limbs around it, it curls over and sinks razorblade teeth into his form. One of Benrey’s limbs falls away, landing with a wet thump on the forest floor.

That’s been happening a lot tonight.

Panicking, Benrey drags himself around the tree, trying to engulf the creature in the bulk of his own body. But it’s sliding away again, out of his sight around the trunk, and even though Benrey can still feel it, he knows he’s about to lose his grip. And when that happens, this…whatever it is will be making a beeline for Gordon, just like it was before, tracking his blood from the camera trap back toward the cabin. 

That can’t happen. However this night ends, it will not end with any more of Gordon’s blood on the ground.

Concentrating, Benrey forms two more limbs from his dwindling mass and sinks them into the creature. It’s incredibly strong, even as injured as it is, and he has to lean over it to achieve the leverage he needs to get a solid enough grip on the amorphous form to wrench his new limbs back and tear it in half.

The creature - and Benrey is going to find out what the fuck this thing is just so he can curse it properly later - lashes out with one tattered limb and rakes something claw-like across Benrey’s face. He rears back and hooks a tendril-limb around the creature’s faltering claw, then rips it off as well. The creature gives a shrieking trill, then shudders into silence. 

Benrey rolls off of it, pine needles biting into open wounds as he drags himself away from the remnants of the thing. He’s exhausted and can barely think, but Gordon’s yelling his name and getting closer and shit, shit, what is he going to do? He’s pretty much a formless mass of eye-bedecked shadows right now, hulking shoulders and thrashing tails and too many limbs, and there is absolutely no way in hell that he can make himself look anything like a human right now.

“Benrey? If this isn’t you and I’m about to be eaten by mutant coyotes - fuck, it better be you and you better be okay.” Gordon’s voice is shaking a bit, and as open as he is right now, Benrey can taste the adrenaline-drenched sweat wafting off him. He’s only got his flannel pajama pants on, but at least he threw a puffy coat on over his sleeveless shirt and managed to don his boots before charging out into the dark after a pair of monsters. “Where are you? Benrey!”

Well, he’s had a good run. Benrey really enjoyed being a person, playing human and following Gordon around. More than that, he’s enjoyed Gordon himself: his brilliant insanity, his tenacious quest to find the supernatural in the world around him, and, of course, his attention to detail - which is what’s about to blow Benrey’s cover. He’s managed to drag enough coils of himself into a pile that he could almost be a rock in the darkness, but Gordon is methodically sweeping the flashlight in overlapping arcs, and there’s no way he isn’t going to shine the light directly at Benrey.

“Fuck, okay, this is getting creepy, now - BENREY!” Gordon cups one hand around his mouth to shout, and Benrey flinches. Gordon’s less than fifteen yards away, he’s going to swing the light around and see either Benrey or the creature any moment -

The beam of light passes over where the corpse should be, illuminating churned up earth, split roots, scattered pine needles - and no body.

Benrey makes a noise. He can’t help it. Gordon is right on top of where that creature was, and if it was just playing dead, there’s nothing Benrey can do in this condition to keep it from killing him.

“Hello?” Gordon snaps, swinging the light around - and oh, okay, they’re doing this now. Benrey flinches and squints several eyes as the beam shines directly into them for a split second before it jerks and the flashlight hits the torn-up ground with a thump.

Even if Benrey couldn’t see in the dark, the half-moon gives more than enough light to tell that Gordon is in shock. He’s frozen, hands up in front of him as if prepared to shove away an attack, his mouth hanging open on a gasp or a scream. Benrey knows he’s a nightmare right now, a mass of black flesh shot through with multicolored sweet voice-dripping wounds, other injuries bleeding copper-scented red as he still struggles to change back to something more human. As it is, he’s piled up in a crescent curve, too many legs and too many eyes, and all he can do is wait for Gordon to see him, to recognize the creature he saw as a child in a darkened park and realize that the very thing that drove him into ghost-hunting in the first place has been haunting him all along.

But then Gordon surprises him again.

“No - no, no, no - oh, fuck, Benrey!” Gordon’s staggering toward him, and Benrey gives a ragged cough of surprise as Gordon drops to his knees in the bloody mud and pats frantically at the closest gaping wound dripping liquid light. “What the fuck did you do? What happened - where’s -”

Then he’s bounding back to his feet, lunging for the flashlight and swinging it in wide arcs as he glances quickly over his shoulder. “Is it still here?”

“S’what…still…” Benrey rasps, too shocked to understand. Gordon blinks and looks to the left, where the words emerged from a mouth on Benrey’s torso. Wincing, he closes it and reabsorbs the teeth and tongue back into himself. He needs to cut down on the redundancies.

“The - whatever did this to you,” Gordon replies.

“Dunno,” Benrey gasps, raising one formless tendril to point where the corpse should be. “Thought’t w’s dead…”

Gordon steps carefully over to the broken ground, then frowns and bends to pick up a stick from one of the limbs that had been torn off the surrounding trees in the fight. Keeping his back to Benrey - keeping Benrey behind him, he realizes with a burst of affection - Gordon pokes at the ground with the branch, then swears and flings a scrap of shadow up into the air. It dissolves as it falls, and nothing hits the ground.

“That’s…not a ghoul,” Gordon says slowly, and Benrey can’t help it - he starts laughing. It hurts, and he’s not sure how many lungs he has right now, but at least three of them are punctured, so the laughter sounds more like a busted accordion falling down a staircase than anything else. Gordon jumps and whips around, then drops the stick and falls back to his knees next to Benrey’s head. Instinctively, Benrey curls the biggest limb he currently has around Gordon, not touching, but keeping him tucked close, caging him in.

Without hesitation, Gordon leans back into the limb, and Benrey could cry at this miraculous level of acceptance. “M’sorry,” he rasps.

Gordon shakes his head, hands hovering over a bleeding slash on Benrey’s hide. “No,” he says quietly. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I need to check my notes, but - I think that was a hidebehind, and - Benrey, they don’t exist.”

“Packed a punch f’r…sumthin’ that d’n exist…” Benrey’s words slur together, but Gordon understands him. He always does.

“That’s the problem, man. It shouldn’t - they don’t exist. They can’t be observed, by anything or anyone. That’s why it turned to shadow when it died - they literally can’t be seen. Ever.”

Benrey takes a moment to let that information sink in like water, and like water, feels it run right off him and pool in the dirt. “Don’geddit,” he mumbles.

“Fuck, forget about it,” Gordon says, and finally presses one hand to a small section of unmarked skin on what will eventually be Benrey’s chest, if he’s got any say in it. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t - I never would have brought us out here if I knew that’s what it was. You shouldn’t be alive…” He trails off, his hand trembling.

Benrey painfully curls a little tighter around Gordon, humming roughly in the dark. “You’re…takin’ this well…”

“What - this?” Gordon pats at Benrey’s hide gently. “Buddy, I’ve known for…a while. You, uh, you’ve been slipping up.”

“Oh,” Benrey says, and doesn’t really know where to go from there. “So…y’don’ mind…?”

Gordon laughs weakly, shoulders shaking as he leans forward to rest his forehead against the back of his hand. The locks of hair that tumble over his shoulders and brush against Benrey’s torn skin feel like burning silk, and he flinches. Gordon pulls back, his face twisted in devastation. 

“I can’t even help you,” he chokes out, free hand coming up to curve under Benrey’s jaw. He’s down to one mouth, now, at least, even if his snout is longer than Gordon’s torso and still full of jagged teeth.

“M’fine,” Benrey grumbles. 

Gordon scoffs and leans back to shine his flashlight across the expanse of Benrey’s body he can see. Even raised up on his knees, the top of Benrey’s back is several feet over his head. Benrey raises an arm to bar Gordon from leaving the curl of his body as he tries to rise.

“You gotta - Benrey, I gotta check your other side, man, what if you’re bleeding out over there?”

“M’not,” Benrey reassures him, then rotates his wrist to knock Gordon back down. He drops to his knees with a sigh, shuffling forward to tuck himself against Benrey’s hide.

“If you die, I will be so fucking mad,” he says, and Benrey rasps out another horrible hacking laugh. Gordon turns his head and presses a trembling kiss to the hinge of Benrey’s colossal jaw. Stunned, he falls silent, and watches with several eyes as Gordon reaches up to run feather-light fingers along the edge of a dripping gash. He tips his head and kisses the tense skin next to the injury, and Benrey hisses out a slow breath, feeling his muscles relax despite himself. And hey, he has muscles now! Nice. What else came together in the last ten minutes?

Benrey rolls himself a little and struggles to compress his wild form down into something more manageable, whining at the pressure and increased bleeding from his wounds. Gordon slings an arm over his shrinking neck and holds him as he gasps and shudders his way back to something approximating humanity. 

It takes a long time, and it hurts the whole way, but Gordon keeps peppering kisses to the small sections of unmarred skin available to him and murmuring encouragement. Eventually, Benrey is lying facedown on the forest floor, covered in mud and blood and jagged pine needles, his head on Gordon’s lap as Gordon strokes the hair back from his face. Benrey keeps his eyes screwed shut as he takes stock. He’s still got a few extra eyes, but he’s on edge, so that’s expected. They’ll go away on their own. It feels like he’s got the correct number of limbs for a human, and most of the gaping wounds seem to have closed, so he’s in good shape there.

Finally, he opens his eyes. The grey light of dawn is creeping through the trees around them, thinning the shadows and showing more of the trail of mayhem Benrey and the hidebehind wreaked as they battled their way through the woods.

“Fuck,” Benrey whines, and closes his eyes again.

Gordon laughs a bit hysterically and sinks his fingers deeper into Benrey’s hair. “Yeah, you can say that again.” Benrey hears his hair rasp against the jacket as he turns his head and whistles at the destruction around them. “Can I, uh. Can I ask why the fuck you went out to fight this thing in the middle of the night?” 

Benrey groans and buries his face in the soft flannel of Gordon’s thigh. “No.”.

“Benrey…”

He sighs, knowing better than to fight that tone of voice. “Your cut. From yesterday. It was tracking you, so…had to stop it.”

Gordon’s hands have gone still. Slowly, he reaches out and passes a hand across the tender lines of fresh scar tissue on Benrey’s back. “So you’re saying…all of this…was because you were protecting me?”

Benrey huffs and shoves his face back into the flannel folds on Gordon’s leg. “Don’ make it weird,” he mumbles.

“I’m not - dude, of the two of us, I am not the weird one,” Gordon says. Benrey snorts, then drags his arms under his chest and struggles to push himself up. Gordon scrambles to help steady him as he heaves himself to his feet, then immediately tips sideways to slump against Gordon’s shoulder.

“Ow,” he says vaguely, and follows as Gordon wraps an arm around his shoulders and draws him stumbling along toward the cabin. At some point he realizes that Gordon’s puffy jacket is also around his shoulders, the three-quarter-length hem hanging almost to his knees. The increased modesty is appreciated, although Benrey’s still nearly black with gore and dried viscera. The poor coat will never be the same again.

“Can we…let’s put this one on a list,” Benrey says, and Gordon looks at him in concern.

“Put what on a list?”

“That…thing. Put it on a list of…’fuck no’ things. Blacklisted.”

Gordon chuckles. “Yeah, okay, no more hidebehinds.”

“No more woods,” Benrey adds, plucking pine needles from between his fingers.

“Some more woods,” Gordon cautions. “We’ll have to stay out here for a bit, at least.”

Benrey frowns at him. “Why?”

“You’ve got some, uh…” Gordon gestures weakly at Benrey, then tightens his arm and shakes his head. “You still have, like, eighteen eyes, man.”

Benrey blinks and realizes that yeah, he can still see even with his eyes closed. He’s definitely still feeling the stress of the last twenty-four hours. “Oh is that, uh, s’that not normal?”

“Well,” Gordon pretends to think as they round a curve on the path and the cabin comes into view. “Y’know, there might be some places in San Francisco…”

Still bickering, they drag each other up the steps and into the warm cabin, the door closing gently behind them. After a few minutes, white smoke begins to drift from the chimney, and more laughter can be heard from inside, startling a chickadee from a nearby tree and sending it spiraling up into the sky, rising with the first bright fingers of light from the morning sun.

[pihl14mcgowan-blog]

Google Voice App Now Available

While sitting in front of the television and playing video games may be one of the factors that makes children fat, nutrition educators are using some of the same media to teach students proper nutrition. You can communicate with NPCs through voice and gesture recognition - the Game-Pads camera will lip read and help recognize your commands better than conventional voice recognition. The truth was that Brahms, didn't hate school, he loved it. His friends weren't mean to him, but sometimes they wanted to use the red race car too, or wanted a turn deciding what to build that day. Immediately after breaking out of jail, Bob starts his journey of serial theft, and it is up to you to help him. This all stems from our ability to genuinely ask for and graciously receive the support of other people. The platform is really little more than a data store on your iPhone, and apps can write information into and pull information out of it. Some apps do both, though others may only input data or retrieve it. However, these new enterprises are facing two key local challenges: the country's increase in foreign food imports and the continued supermarket duopoly and dominance of big food manufacturers in the supply chain. Some companies today use Byte to offer food and drinks for free to employees who are working after a certain hour, for example. I want to make this a place you can ask anything, a place where you can get inside knowledge that will give you some comfort and peace as a parent. With http://invaloaredecumparare.com of life boosted in Clash of Clans world, we've come up with a guide to help you get started and spend as little real money as possible. A 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola, for example, has 65 grams of sugar, or 130 percent of the recommended daily value. For those willing to pay $4.99 to unlock it, a food scanner facility means that users can scan the UPC barcode of the food they eat instead of look it up themselves. The two types of food are specified in the top left corner and they change each run. Included with his comment is here is a great little library of weight loss topics such as the dreaded weight Plateaus” and vegetarian diets.” Similar to Livestrong, the MyNetDiary website database requires internet access and syncs your data among your devices. Using the app's nutrition interface menu, see how many kilojules your child is burning each day, and plan meals accordingly. However asking the same question twice in a row is cheating, God will know and just give you a random answer. In our app you will be able to view and interact with the personalised food plan that we have created JUST FOR YOU Login to your extensive Nutrition Members page and view all the meals we have planned for your personal health and fitness goals. If I had a voice on the conference call, I'd be sure to ask some of these questions. GrubHub is a web-based food delivery service that's available in hundreds of U.S. cities. In addition, the app conveniently has writing pages that let students write essays, take notes and ask questions from inside the app. After all, according to CEO and co-founder Suneel Gupta, food is the area around their personal health where people generally pay the least attention. Studies show magnesium may play a role in helping us snooze through the night Munchies high in protein usually contain tryptophan, an amino acid that increases serotonin levels that aid in sleep , according to the Cleveland Clinic. The Help's representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy - a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families.. Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. There's fast food and there's a lot of rampaging as you run around blasting hipsters with junk food until they explode. It seems like the lesson he learned is definitely better to ask for forgiveness than permission”. But the company knew that tracking food intake by itself wasn't going to be the most comprehensive view of a user's health or how they could improve it. As a result, the company is taking its first step toward a more complete solution by incorporating activity data through an integration with Apple's HealthKit. It is a helpful tool as you may find yourself interested to see how you happened upon a word. It's a trap that many nutrition enthusiasts tend to fall into — but it's simply not true. Uber began investing millions” in a network of support centers in various places over the last couple of years, including Chicago (US), Phoenix (US), Limerick (Ireland), Krakow (Poland), Wuhan (China), Hyderabad (India) and Manila (The Philippines) to help with quicker response times, but the communication between company and user needed something more native than email. The startup's pitch of course fits well into this ongoing storyline of companies that are aiming to increase productivity and efficiency, whether that's more efficiently skipping food or pushing buttons on a phone to get a car, or a snack, or anything really, send to your current location on demand. Zesty CEO David Langer said the company also uses algorithms and data analytics for menu planning, and to predict and optimize logistics. If you want to make crafting, base building and the many benefits of both a central part of your Fallout 4 experience, there are a couple of things you need to know. After all, I'm not a hardcore Fitbit user trying to use it to meet any real fitness goal; I'm just intrigued by data. Weight Tracker is an easy to use app for iPad to help you monitor and keep track of your weight. It is a bit sad to have to justify the need for proper writing by labeling it a sickness… I'm pleased that Siri does a good job at helping write well. I was quite surprised at how I almost serendipitously discovered a naturopath, a nutritionist I knew back east that my wife and I saw right before I published Getting Things Done”. When Pokemon food in the anime is prepared by humans, it typically consists of various combinations of plants, fruits, and Berries and resembles dry cat/dog food. I'm not a fan of Wetherspoon's food but, seeing as I don't go into Wetherspoon's pubs it doesn't really have that much of an impact on my life. He says the same thing can happen with food if enough people give real food a chance. Looking even farther down the line, Abrams said the Chef Watson team is interested in forging more commercial partnerships with cooking school chefs, restaurant chains and other food industry professionals from consumer product manufacturers to grocery stores. Cocoa is a rich source of dietary polyphenols And the cacao flavonoids can help boost mood and sustain clear thinking. While a cursory glance at Food Frenzy might suggest that it takes a large portion of inspiration from the previously mentioned Cooking Mama, it only showcases two mini-games that come anywhere close to replicating the experience of Office Create's title. This is where you come in. Taking control of the diminutive Jerry, you must use a piece of jelly to bounce each piece of food into the basket on the right of the screen.

[saffrongamer]

Bioshock Remastered Review

*SPOILERS*

Bioshock remastered is a fresh take on the 2007 hit by Take-Two Interactive. The original game received a lot of praise and awards throughout the industry. I completely missed the boat on it at the time since I didn’t own a PS3 or an Xbox 360. I was too busy with Pokemon Diamond and Mario Galaxy. I decided to enjoy the game for the first time through the remake of the original game. The remastered version can run at 1080p vs the original’s 720p. And that’s all I know about the differences. I will be judging it purely on my impressions of remastered.

The story of Bioshock involves your plane crashing over the ocean and you finding a mysterious entry to an aquatic elevator down to the town of Rapture. As your ride takes you down fathoms of water you are treated to a voice recording from Andrew Ryan; the city’s creator. He gives you a dramatic  speech of hard work and integrity as we gaze upon the stunning undersea city and the surrounding marine life around it. As we arrive, we see a man named Johnny killed by a mutilated woman with hooks for hands. She tries to break into your safe bubble, but she has no luck and decides to leave. You hear a some static on the radio near you and a voice asks if you would kindly pick it up. He introduces himself as Atlas and promises you that he’ll help you get away if you help him save his family. You come across a strange needle and put it into your arm. Atlas tries to calm you down as your fingers are sparking with electric and you fall over the banister and go unconscious. You lie there as two splicers investigate and then flee as a little girl and a monster come to look at you. Only to pass you up because you’re still alive while mentioning about something called ADAM. When you wake up, you discover your ability to shoot lightning from your fingertips. Which allows you to proceed through the hallway.

As Atlas guides you, you come across a monster rescuing a little girl from splicers. You’re told that they are big daddies and little sisters. They collect ADAM from corpses. A mysterious woman named Brigid Tennenbaum appears and offers you a deal. Save the little sisters and she’ll make it worth your time, while Atlas urges you to kill them for their ADAM. The ADAM functions as a means to upgrade yourself as you explore rapture. In this town it’s seen as a source of power and strength.

You proceed through the next parts of Rapture performing a laundry list of tasks to advance. Kill  a mad surgeon, take photos of mutants, and try to save Atlas’ family. As you arrive, Andrew Ryan destroys the bathysphere that his family was hiding in. Enraged, asks you to help him take revenge on Ryan in exchange for his escape.

Now that Ryan is very aware of your interference, he wants you out of his way. As you reach Arcadia he has all the trees killed. Destroying the oxygen supplying Rapture. You must then save the forest by collecting the necessary parts.

When you save yourself and rapture’s few inhabitants, you and Atlas are ready to confront Ryan. You hop in your bathysphere with intentions to take down the big cheese. Unfortunately you are intercepted and taken to Fort Frolic. A mad artist, known as Sander Cohen, offers you escape for helping to realise his artistic vision. His magnum opus. You take photos of his 3 traitors and he’ll grant you your freedom. He lets you go mostly unharmed, but you should be glad you’re not trapped in plaster like his other works of art.

As you’re reunited with Atlas, you’re back in the hunt for Ryan. However in order to enter, you’ll need to shut down the power plant as the entrance won’t let you through otherwise.

Upon your visit to Ryan’s office he has set the core to self destruct. He believes that the city is either his or no one’s. You head forward to Ryan and discover a wall of photos and red letters that read “WOULD YOU KINDLY”. A recording by Dr. Yi Suchong has the doctor instruct a little boy to kill a puppy after saying “would you kindly”.

As you try to understand the circumstances you proceed to confront Ryan. He reveals who you are in a dramatic monologue. He explains that you’re controlled by the phrase “would you kindly” And then ordered you to kill him.

After you kill Ryan you run over and turn off the self destruct. Atlas breaks character introduces himself as Frank Fontaine. He thanks you for your help taking down Ryan and he sends the security after you. You escape with the help of Tennenbaum and the little sisters.

Tennenbaum tells you what you need to do and you start your adventure towards Fontaine. Unfortunately this is where the story begins to feel like it’s already wrapped up. At this point in the plot, in my mind, I felt that you were simply getting beefed up to take on Fontaine. You receive the majority of your weapon upgrades and are even showered with supplies right before the final fight. This was the first time I had maxed out my wallet, and I didn’t even have anything to spend it on. We do get to explore a chapter where we learned about where the big daddys and little sisters came from. But that only leads right into the conclusion of the game.

Frank Fontaine appears and as you defeat him, a swarm of little sisters appear to purge him of the last of his ADAM. Depending on if you saved the little sisters or not, you will receive different endings. If you saved them all, you will get a cutscene where you escape rapture with the little sisters and live out as a father. You receive what none of you ever had; A family. However if you kill any of them or all of them, you view a cutscene where you take the power that you’ve gained and rise up on the surface with the splicers. Implying that you attacked the surface.

The most powerful aspect of Bioshock is it’s presentation. It’s such a stunning experience to see Rapture as you travel from level to level. Everything in this sci-fi horror tells you that you’re at the bottom of the sea. From the leaky halls, dilapidated rooms, and 1940s style architecture. The horror in this story directly comes from the atmosphere of the game. I was definitely creeped out for quite a while. But It dies down very hard after you defeat Sander Cohen. The first chapter is definitely the spookiest. I backtracked for supplies once and found a room that I missed. Then was jumped by a splicer that I immediately once shot on trigger.

Throughout the game, you come across recordings that citizens of Rapture have left behind. This is the main way that you are told the story of its people. The struggles of the lower class. The ideals of Ryan. And the power of Fontaine and his rebels.

My favorite recording is the demise of Dr. Yi Suchong. As we hear him speak of his failures with the big daddies, we hear him overcome and murdered. And we can look directly to a corpse eternally pinned to a table by a dusty drill.

Andrew Ryan was such a thrilling antagonist for the game. His dramatic speeches that he showered on you in your story made every moment more exciting. I quote him to my friends sometimes just for fun. I know Fontaine was the final antagonist, but he just seems to take a backseat to Ryan. But it is thrilling to know that there never was a family for you to find, and Fontaine called for you just to use you to rise up. After all, everyone thought Fontaine was already dead.

Lastly they leave director’s commentary film reels littered throughout the game. As you find them, you unlock the ability to play them from the main menu. I feel they should have been unlocked from the start or after you finish the game. They just kinda get in the way as you explore and take you out of the experience. I don’t want to go hunting for them while I go through the game. I’m usually only thorough in exploring on my first playthrough. But they do offer some cool insight into the development of the game and how some concepts came to be. And if you like giant commercials, Geoff Keighley hosts the interview.

My only other gripe with the presentation is the little quips that you hear from enemies. They’re creepy sometimes, but mostly just annoying. They can be very obnoxious when you are fighting a horde of splicers. Occasionally you can hear them through walls. Which I know is supposed to be atmospheric in some situations, but sometimes it felt like it was a bug that I could hear them

The mechanics of Bioshock are simple. You like magic sci-fi powers and guns? Well here we go. You get an array of guns and weapons at your disposal. I personally like using the shotgun, with occasionally the pistol or crossbow. You also have a chemical thrower, tommy gunn, grenade launcher, and your trusty wrench. All of these function exactly as you would expect. You’re given several upgrades to these weapons that can be quite helpful if you like that weapon. Such as power, ammo count, or knockback decrease.

Your other abilities stem from your plasmids. You can get abilities like electricity, fire, ice, telekinesis, wind, etc. Most of which range from being useful in combat to acting like a key to progress through the chapter. These plasmids are what gave power to the lower class to rise up and start a war within Rapture. And explain why there was such a desire for ADAM.

The game introduces you early on to the idea of hacking. See a security camera? Shock it to open up a hacking minigame. Then you can have security bots summoned to defend you from splicers. You may also hack turrets to shoot splicers for you. I feel that the hacking was used very ineffectively. You see you have to arrange the pipes to cause a flow of green something to get to the end of the course. It’s an easy enough minigame that only presents challenge when the developers increase the amount of traps or the speed of the flow. I think they should have introduced new ways to do hacks or more new pieces as the story went on. Instead you can only get upgrades that reduce flow speed or traps on screen. And tapping all these boxes to see what's inside doesn’t make it more fun to play. Don’t make me do that.

Combat wise it’s fairly basic. You see a mook. You shoot ‘em until they’re dead. Rinse and repeat for the entire game. Occasionally, you’ll come across a big daddy that requires some patience for you to defeat. Which is where the game shines when you have to struggle to take them down.

I noticed that the developers make some mooks easier to kill then others. I know it’s not me and my gun getting stronger. As the splicers in one room are weaker than in another. Sometimes taking just a single shot to kill, vs several shots.

By far the biggest offender is the final boss. Which apparently I’m not the only person to have complains about. Frank Fontaine appears like Jesus Christ from his cross while pumping himself full of ADAM. This final fight looks cool and all, but it’s extremely easy and Fontaine goes down with little issue. I think this boss needs a redesign or something.

Overall I feel that Bioshock is a thrilling adventure with impressive presentation, an interesting story, and a charming cast of characters. The original and the sequels had no impression on my opinions of this game. And I’m absolutely going to give them a fair shake as well.

This has been Saffron, thank you for listening.