BioShock

[IndigoAK]

Here's the link then. As far as I know, there's no spoilers or any information in the review that should ruin anything for anyone. It's a little on the harsh side - my reviews tend to be. Some people see at as me being overly critical, but I think it's just because I'm passionate about games and my bar is set fairly high because I know that if developers put forth the effort, my bar can easily be reached.

http://www.ambience-design.com/games/bioshock_review/

Have fun and feedback is welcome.

[Stryker]

My first feedback would be "Please break up the review into paragraphs". Hurts my eyes to see long blocks of text without being able to quickly scan it. The second one would be that although we have seen umpteen screenshots, adding a few here and there will be a welcome diversion from the text. If you can put up some unique shots illustrating something in the review, all the better.

Haven't read through it yet, this is just my first impression.

[IndigoAK]

Originally Posted by Stryker

My first feedback would be "Please break up the review into paragraphs". Hurts my eyes to see long blocks of text without being able to quickly scan it. The second one would be that although we have seen umpteen screenshots, adding a few here and there will be a welcome diversion from the text. If you can put up some unique shots illustrating something in the review, all the better.

Haven't read through it yet, this is just my first impression.

Thanks for the feedback. I've already made some changes based on feedback given through the comments on my website, but my score hasn't changed. I'll look through my gallery for screenshots in a bit and pick out two or three to plop in there. Anything that requires more than two hours or work will have to wait, as th Guild Wars preview events starts in that time and that's where I'm going to be for 72 hours.

[Whizzer]

2K clearly listened to the community by extending the activation limit up to 5 and announcing that revoke utility. To me it sounds like deactivating an install of the game without removing the game data from the PC.

[Koroush Ghazi]

As expected, they had to do something, and they did. It was (and is) just plain ridiculous to expect things to run smoothly the way they'd planned it.

I've just bought the game, come home and installed it, and for those who haven't yet bought the game, here is a step-by-step of exactly what happens right after you install the retail version of the game:

1. After installing the game and prior to activation, the game needs to download a "patch" to complete installation. In reality this isn't an upgrade or improvement patch, it's a patch designed to reduce piracy by downloading the game's main executable. It takes less than a minute or two, so it's quite painless:



2. Once the installation is complete, the first time you launch the game you will be asked to begin the infamous Activation process:



3. You enter your serial number in the box below. The serial number in my case was found on the back of the game manual in the format XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX:



They have plenty of space in that dialog box to tell people whether to include the dashes or not, and the number 0 and the letter O are also easy to confuse and users should be made aware of this. Nowhere does it tell you (before or after this process) whether the dashes are necessary. From the Take2 Support Site however it becomes clear that users do need to include the dashes, and be careful about zeros and O's. The case shouldn't make a difference, though lower case worked for me.

4. It then tries to contact the activation server:



In my case I've tried this about a dozen times now, entering my serial number with and without dashes, all caps or lower case, checking and rechecking to make sure everything is correct, disabling my Windows Firewall, all to no avail. Each and every time, it comes up with the fail message below:



It doesn't specifically tell me whether it's failed because it can't reach the server, or my serial is entered incorrectly, or both. It just has that generic message no matter what I enter, implying that I may have done something wrong and the server may be down

So I can't activate my copy of Bioshock at the moment, even though I've bought it on the official release date (5PM 24 August right now here). I'll have to manually email securom to get it activated, although I might try again with the online activation in a little while. This is a classic example of how NOT to roll out a new copy protection method on a game. It's sad that with all the effort they put into making this game, it will be remembered mostly for this ill-prepared and poorly planned protection mechanism. I can accept activation in a game, but they need to do it better than this.

/EDIT: As noted later in this thread, after a couple of hours I was fortunately able to activate my copy online after retrying some more. It seems the activation servers were offline or flooded for a while. However the fallback support channel of emailing SecuROM yielded nothing helpful at all - I simply got a generic email back from SecuROM support around 5 hours later telling me to check my serial number and try again (when I know the number had been entered correctly because it did eventually activate online).

[IndigoAK]

(EDIT) Bah, I thought I deleted the quote, sorry. This is what happens when you post on a forum when you're about to drop from exhaustion.

I'm not sure if this is your problem, but I found that everything had to be capitalized. I entered my serial number without capitalizing the first time and it failed. Switched it up for another go and presto, worked.

[Jonas Beckman]

Assuming the activation server (wherever it is located for Australia) is up and running the only advise I can give would be this site for Bioshock support regarding activation problems.

http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/support/general_3.htm
(Though it's not much there and it seems you already tried most things mentioned.)

EDIT: There's also this knowledge base for Bioshock issues.
http://support.take2games.com/cgi-bi...i=&p_topview=1
(Similar to the above.)

EDIT: It might take a while before Securom responds if you contacted them, also don't forget the picture of the disc. ( )
(Taken from the previous http://www.pcgamer.com/ wich was updated today with the authors complaints about waiting times.)

[Koroush Ghazi]

IndigoAK - I've tried that, pretty much every variation I could think of for the serial number.

Jonas - I've emailed securom support as the fail message prompts me to. I'll be curious to see how long it takes them to respond.

[ChaosBahamut]

edit: Guess some posts were made before I finished my suggestion. Nevermind.

Also, looks like the source people got that petition thing from should not be trusted (Wikipedia), as the "2K will impliment SM2.0 compatibility if the petition hits 5000 marks" part was removed from the article.

[Koroush Ghazi]

Again, thanks for the suggestions but I'm not actually looking for an answer. I've tried all the various things I can try. I just wanted to report for those who haven't bought the game the details of precisely how the process works, and the potential problems involved. I'll pursue this myself using the various support channels and information in this thread as required (I abide by the basic research rule myself as well ).