Bioshock > Miscellany > Too Much Time On Bioshock

Too Much Time On Bioshock

I really spend too much time on Bioshock, and when I am not playing the game I am writing about it. I have even saved favorite battle scenarios to play over and over.

Riot At Langford Labs

You are back at the Langford Labs from the Farmers Market with the Lazarus Vector, after dodging Ryan's security bots. You remembered to hack the security system. You also remember to seed mines in strategic places in the front office, for that is where you are heading after you feed the Vector in the cooker. Ryan is sending an army of splicers your way in three waves. If you stand at the windowed alcove in the hall between the front office and the door to the labs proper, you can watch the splicers get shot up or blown up. This sort of thing, of course, works only if you have gotten Natural Camouflage. Oh yeah, and try not to get the wandering Big Daddy involved: It's such a pain when you hit him by accident.

The Frozen Room

You thaw out of a block of ice, in which you were encased by Martin Finnigan. The room is full of frozen splicers. One of them is Finnigan, and you are pretty sure which one: He is the only weaponless statue in the room. You start off the festivities by carefully thawing out a Nitro with napalm or Incinerate plasmid. If you fry the Nitro just right, he will hit the First Aid station first to reinvigerate himself. Then the Nitro servers Finnigan some Molotov cocktails. Finnigan in turn chases after the Nitro. You sit back in the alcove and watch the fun. Watch for the aftermath, though, as either Finnigan or the Nitro may survive.

I Remember Fort Frolic

You chose to wait until you reached the Mercury Suites in Olympus Heights, and whack Sander baby for his muse box key (and the Power to the Jack machine Sander had been keeping to himself). Now, after all that Lot 192 nonsense is over, you decide to stop off at Fort Frolic for that muse box magic on your way to fight Fontaine.

After rifling the box, you just can't resist shooting or flaming the Quadtych. Really, it is kind of kitschig, and no real honor to all those dead people which stand there holding the portraits. No matter: Sander Cohen will raise from the dead to the occasion of punishing his little moth for defiling his masterwork.

There are lots of things to remember for the fight.

  1. Use Natural Camouflage to mask yourself, so that even Sander can't see you. Sander and his minions will know you are in the area; they may even stand right in front of you; but they will not waste any effort unless they see you.
  2. Use those hacked turrets and bot-summoning cameras you left from your last visit. They will soften up Sander and weed out some of the splicers.
  3. Dupe the one or two Houdinis — and, if he survived from the last visit, the Southern Mall Nitro — into Sander's presence and slap them with Enrage to get them to play with Sander.
  4. The projector room at the Fleet Theater is a useful refuge. It's very quiet: no Sander's masterpiece to drive you nuts with its constant playing. And nobody can see you from inside the theater. But Sander and Co. can still get in, so set up a perimeter of trap wires outside the door.
  5. The women's restroom at the Southern Mall entrance hall is not quiet, but its turret (assuming it is hacked and in one piece) will give you some protection if you have to flee. Whatever else the splicers do, they will not laugh at you for fleeing to the girls' room.
  6. If you are cornered, or if a fight gets too hairy, spray Sander or a tough splicer (Nitro/Houdini) with frozen nitrogen to immobilize them as you flee. For spiders and thugs, assuming you have both Sportboosts, you can just outrun them.
  7. Sander first appears wearing his ornate wild bunny mask. You can use Telekinesis to yank it off his face, then throw it back at him as a projectile. Then you can run for your life.
  8. There will be one Big Daddy searching in vain for a Little Sister. If you are truly desperate (or sadistic), load Call Big Daddy, expend an Eve vial to make him your friend, then sic him on Sander. The big guy's persistence makes it just a matter of time before Sander goes down, no matter where he teleports.
  9. If you are even more fearless and low on cash, you can shoot a trap bolt into the null post of the Atrium stairs nearest the door before defiling the Quadtych, then flee to the Southern Mall restroom. Sander will invariably appear in front of the entrance camera, setting off an alarm. For some reason, the Big Daddy runs downstairs to the entrance to the Mall. It will hit the trap wire and zap itself hard. Shoot him with a bolt or buckshot to down it for its money.

And, whatever you do, do not return to Poseidon Plaza. It will be crawling with silent but deadly Sinclair Spirits dancers, who are too fast on their feet to aim an Enrage tomato (or anything else) right.

Battle of Apollo Square

Yes, there was already a battle at Apollo Square. That is why it is such a ruin. But this is the battle you make them fight after you return from Artemis Suites with your plasmids fully working for you.

When you return, your will notice there are now three splicers in front of the shed in front of the Artemis Suites entrance, warming themselves around a fire. Invariably, one is a Baby Jane thug, one is a Waders leadhead, and one is a Toasty leadhead, playing possum.

This fight assumes the following:

  1. You have spared the two nitros earlier by sneaking around them.
  2. You have not switched out the plasmid Enrage.
  3. There is at least one splicer coming in from the other two areas.
  4. The Big Daddy/Little Sister pair are not crossing the square. (The big guy has a habit of ending things all too quickly.)

I have done the following things to the splicers in the Square.

  1. I slashed the Baby Jane with Enrage. She attacks the Waders immediately
  2. I slashed the Waders with Enrage. He may attack the Baby Jane, or he may run over to attack the turret guarding Hestia Suites.
  3. I leave the three alone, and splash the nitro with Enrage as soon as he appears. He attacks the turret first.
  4. If the Big Daddy is at the vent near the three, I splash him with Enrage. The blurring of the air shows that he is not a happy chappy! Neither are any splicers he attacks.
  5. I put a Decoy among the three. The three attack it at once, then proceed to attack each other, as there is no way they can avoid striking themselves. And that assumes the nitro does not bomb them first.
  6. I put a Decoy near the turret, but within view of the three. They run over to attack, making them vulnerable to the turret's bullets and to the nitro's bombs.
  7. I set the pool of kerosene on fire. The explosion of the three barrels will kill at least the possum, and draw out the nitro.
  8. I fire a Prox Mine at the three to nail them all, and ready Enrage to splash any splicers coming to investigate the bombing.
  9. I simply rush over to kill the three with my wrench. I get Waders first, then the possum (they are the tougher of the three), and the Baby Jane last. Make sure you have all pairs of Wrench Jockey and Wrench Lurker plus Damage Research before even thinking of doing this.

The whole point of this is that Enrage culls the number of splicers to one or two, then gets them to attack the Big Daddy to finish them off. It is a good idea to have Eve Save active, as keeping the party going requires all of a unit of Eve.

The funnest part is when the two nitros are throwing bombs at each other. By this time I will be at research level four with nitro, meaning that a large number of bombs will not go off. But some will, and it is amazing to see them fly through the air after their enemy's bomb lands on or near them.