In the distance, a moonlit tower can be seen, questions race through your mind: How? When? Why? But such thoughts were pushed to the back of your mind as the chill of the water began to take hold, you swim for it. Upon reaching the tower you find the architecture strangely modern but again you do not linger on such things as you are still soaking wet and the cold of the night air did not exactly help, You enter the strange tower, electric lights snap to life.
A nearby staircase led down, deeper into the tower, you descend. Lights come to life before you as if leading you and follow not knowing where they will take you. You end up in a round room with some sort of submersible docked in the center of the room. Curious, you closer to the contraption, it is spherical in shape and seems to be made of brass. You enter it wondering what the interior looks like. The door slams shut behind you as the sub quickly descends into the deep.
You begin the panic, quickly trying to figure out how to get the thing to go back up when a screen descends inside the sphere and a slideshow begins to play, along with some voice that spoke of freedom and hard work. Finally the show ended and the screen lifted to reveal...a city! And according the voice its name was Rapture!
The scenes I just described was, of course, from the much acclaimed video game Bioshock.
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| http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/86/Bioshock_series.jpg |
Although I will admit that it is not my most favourite game, this because I do not have a single favourite game but more of a series of favourite games. Despite this, the unique setting, amazing weapons, and a drop dead story that will blow your mind made this game one of the best games i have ever played in my life.
In terms of animation Bioshock displays quite a hefty number of animation components and concepts spread throughout the entire game ranging from the extraordinary to the mundane I am posting this in an effort to try and identify as many of them as possible.
The game is set in an underwater city called Rapture and due to civil strife has fallen into disrepair so of course there would be a myriad of of different water animations to be seen through out the game such as:
Water quickly flowing ( seen throughout
Bioshock Water)
Water flowing up against a wall (best seen at 0:39 where the water meets the wall in
Bioshock Water)
Water shooting out of cracks in walls ( best seen at 0:29 in
Bioshock Water)
Water flowing off of players face (seen at 0:29 in Bioshock Water)
Rough water surface (seen at 0:13 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Calm water surface ( seen at 0:19 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Water splashing onto water (seen at 0:26 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Distortion of buildings and other objects found outside the walls (seen at 0:33 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Water flowing down walls (seen at 0:41 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Water flowing down stairs (seen at 0:45 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Water drops and ripples (seen at 0:52 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Water falling (seen at 0:58 of BioShock Water Demonstration - HD)
Light reflecting off water's surface (not sure if this is more attributed to lighting or water either way its seen at 0:12 of Bioshock Water Animation Sequence)
Truly, the variety of water animations is astounding, the attention to detail shows the developers talents and devotion. But that is not all that requires detail, the weapons do too so as to make sure that each weapon "feels" right when swung, fired, or thrown. All to create that satisfaction of crushing all that stand in your way. Though due to the sheer magnitude of the number of weapons and abilities available within the game I will not go over every single unique animation used by each and every weapon and ability but instead I will use a general set of animations that cover all the weapons and/or abilities.
Weapon Displayed on screen
Weapon Fired
Weapon reloaded
Abilities Fired
Abilities Reloaded
*all animations mentioned seen throughout video
Now that I have covered what you shoot with, now its time to cover what you shoot at. Again, because there are numerous different enemies who use numerous different weapons I will be using general terms to describe various animations used my most if not all enemies in the game.
Enemy walking (seen at 2:27 of first video)
Enemy running (deen at 5:33 of first video)
Enemy attacking (seen at 2:13 of second video)
Enemy being damaged (seen at 2:13 of second video)
Enemy dying (seen at 2:15 of second video)
As one can see there a many, many animations for just about everything within the game and as such i am unable to cover all of them so if you have viewed all these videos and are still thirsty for more Bioshock by all means feel free to purchase the game yourself and experience the grandeur that is Bioshock first hand.
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