Tips 'n' Tricks

[Cormeh]

Post some of your tips and tricks here. Use your own personal experiences with the game - perhaps we'll help a few people along the way!

It doesn't matter if some of your tips can be found by using the research camera or by some other means in game, because we all know there's so much to miss in Bioshock.

Also, I WILL NOT be using spoiler tags, so:

BEWARE OF SPOILERS IN THESE PAGES
(Pages.... heh, what an optimist for thread success)

I'll go first.

The boss fight in the medical pavillion against the good doctor - using explosive canisters via telekinesis is the best way to put him down for good.

Keep an eye out for items that are seemingly inaccessible, up high or past an obstruction - telekinesis will fetch them no problem. They'll be flashing very visibly.

Spider splicers are torn apart using anti-personnel rounds. Preferably from the machine gun.

Use incinerate to melt ice obstructions, but keep an eye out for arbitary patches of ice, they sometimes contain items.

Meh, some of those are dead obvious, hopefully those further in the game will have some better ones.

 

[Tyguy]

Its very important to check every single body for items as any place which may contain health or eve. Use ammo sparingly and when you can kill an enemy with a wrench, use it. The best plasmids to have in my opinion are the freeze, fire, enrage and the hypnotize big daddy (near the end).

Try not to spend a lot of money on regular ammo as it is more apparent on bodies then anti-personell or armor piercing ammo.

Ill think of some more and edit.

 

[knut]

I think the thing that helped me most was keeping all your weapons reloaded and ready before each area, as it can take a while with some guns to reload or change firing mode (shotgun, chemical thrower and grenade launcher esp.)

 

[staticprimer]

If you encounter multiple security systems at once (ie a camera and a turret, or two turrets) use a target dummy. That will give you enough time to hack them both. Or, if there is a big daddy around and feel up for some fun, security bullseye the big daddy.

 

[Cormeh]

I've been playing around with proximity mines, and find that if you group some explosive barrels and place a mine on them, it can weaken a BD to half health, making easy prey for electric buck.

 

[hool10]

IMO using the plasmid to get a big daddy is a really bad idea. One wrong bullet in the wrong direction and you've got spicers and a big daddy on you. Usually 1 hs with a pistol or something kills splicers.

 

[Warbie]

Enrage is awesome - use it often

 

[Bad^Hat]

Throwing large objects at big daddies with telekenesis sometimes knocks them down for a second, and does a little bit of damage. Similarly, tossing stuff like chairs at splicers seems to do a fair bit of damage, sometimes one-shotting splicers that would've taken atleast a few shots otherwise.

Taking research photos of little sisters will benefit you - start early on!

Always have electro-shock and incinerate on you if you can spare the slots - it will help you open blocked areas that would otherwise be innacesable. That said, you can always go to a gene bank and come back to them, but this way is more convenient and they're both fairly useful otherwise.

Can't think of any others right now.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Oh, one big one (sorry for the double post, needs a bump)...

If you're playing on 360, and maybe on PC too, I can't say for sure - go into options and enable "unlock frame rate". Trust me, you'll never look back.

 

[knut]

Trap Bolts are a godsend. Enemies go down in one trip/clothesline with these things. If you're about to take down a Big Daddy backtrack your escape route and set it up with a load of Trap Bolts that you easily be able to duck or run under. I set up an entire corridor today - about 7 bolts in all - and set a Bouncer alight with napalm then retreated to the end of the corridor after I shocked him with electro bolt II. He came hurtling towards, plouged through the trip wires and by the time he was at the last one his health was practically non-existance so all it took was for him to run point blank into a OO buck round. He pretty much flattened me.

 

[jimbo118]

Oh, one big one (sorry for the double post, needs a bump)...

If you're playing on 360, and maybe on PC too, I can't say for sure - go into options and enable "unlock frame rate". Trust me, you'll never look back.

yeah what exactly does that do? it says in the description that it degrades the visual quality :/

a tip - TAKE PICTURES!

honestly, i've started walking around with my camera as default to photograph splicers, you get to learn more about them but it also increases the damage you do and unlocks tonics in relation to your research progress bar....

 

[Bad^Hat]

Yeah, I'm nearly maxed out on most of my research and I've only just entered Farmer's Market

As for the frame rate thing - it makes the game run ALOT smoother (looks about 60 fps), but yeah there's a teensy bit of a pay-off in visual quality. The game doesn't actually look any worse, but occasionally you'll see objects with low-res textures for maybe a second or two. Also, atleast for me, there was some minor screen tearing when I turned around quickly sometimes. But both of these are really small prices to pay. It makes the game look even better in motion, and personally I find it a bit easier to aim and move around aswell, it's not as stiff. Besides that, I've hardly noticed any lag at all, even with the frame rate maxed, which really speaks for how well it was optimised. The only occasions when it does is when there are a lot of objects/bodies around and a bunch of particle effects on screen, but I ran into that maybe 2 or 3 times in my entire play-through.

Anyway, I've tried switching it back a couple times, and I just CANNOT play like that anymore. Vast improvement