bioshock-2-pc posts

BioShock 2 PC players have been waiting patiently for developer 2K Marin and publisher 2K Games to release the final two DLC packs for the first person shooter. This weekend the Cult of Rapture community site announced that the Protector Trials DLC pack will finally be made available to download for PC port owners on Monday.

The Protector Trials download, which will be free to BioShock 2 PC owners, add six new levels as players fight off waves of Splicers in the Big Daddy suit. The DLCV pack will also come with a patch for the game that will fix a few issues. The final DLC pack, Minerva's Den, still does not have a PC release date.

[Via Destructoid]

BioShock 2's PC players have been waiting (and waiting) for publisher 2K Games to fullfill its promise of releasing the remaining DLC content for the 2010 first person shooter. Now it looks like some players downloaded the game's Protector Trial DLC ahead of its official release.

According to forum posts on the BioShock 2 message boards, the DLC appeared in the Games For Windows Marketplace, priced at $5.75. However while some players have purchased and downloaded the DLC, no one has been able to actually play it, suggesting that the game itself needs a patch in order to access the content. 2K Games' community manager has confirmed that the DLC wasn't supposed to be out yet, saying, " ... wait till my word before you go grab it - it's not ready yet."

A few weeks ago PC gamers were understandably upset when 2K Games announced that the final two paid downloadable content packs for BioShock 2 would not be released for the PC port of the first person shooter as they were for the Xbox 360 and PS3 counterparts. Now that decision has been reversed with 2K Games' Elizabeth Tobey announcing on the game's official message boards that the Protector Trials and Minerva's Den DLC packs will be coming to the PC after all.

Why the change of heart? Basically, it came down to the game's PC owners expressing their opinions on this move (i.e. they didn't like it) to 2K Games. These opinions caused 2K Games to start thinking differently on the matter with Tobey stating, " ... given the conversations we've had over the past two weeks, we've decided to go back and finish the PC patch and Protector Trials." The PC patch and Protector Trials are both expected to be released sometime in December. Furthermore, the Protector Trials DLC will be a free download. Minerva's Den is going to take a bit longer but Tobey stated, " ... we have reallocated resources to work on completing the project so PC gamers can have this experience in Rapture."

PC players still haven't gotten access to the last BioShock 2 DLC but that's not stopping developer 2K Marin from revealing the latest and final DLC release for the team's first person shooter sequel. Minerva's Den, due out sometime this fall, will be a single player narrative mini-expansion for the game.

This DLC will put players in the role of a new and unnamed character who explores a previously unseen district in the city of Rapture. Your goal is to help Brigid Tenenbaum in defeating a dictator that has taken control of the district, Rapture Central Computing. You will get new weapons and a new Plasmid to defend yourself but new Splicers, security bots and a new version of Big Daddy will oppose you. In fact you can see him in the above screenshot. Pricing was not announced.

As usual, Take Two Interactive marches to the beat of a different drummer as it releases its quarterly financial reports a month after everyone else has done the same. Today the publisher announced that for the quarter that ended on April 30 the company brought in $268 million in revenue, a massive increase compared to the $174.3 million the company brought in for the same period a year ago. Take Two reported a profit of $16.9 million for the quarter compared to a loss of $10.4 million for the same period a year ago.

The higher revenues came from, among other games, the release of BioShock 2 and Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City for the PC. While there are no major PC games planned for this quarter, Take Two Interactive still plans to release Mafia II on August 24 and Civilization V sometime between August and October of this year.

Even as 2K Games is getting ready to release its first downloadable content update for BioShock 2, fans of the PC version will be getting an early morning patch for their port of the first person shooter. The game's community web site has posted up word that the small patch will be made available at 5 am Eastern time on Tuesday.

This patch, which should be available as an automatic download via Games For Windows Live, is mostly to fix the widescreen bug that was discovered soon after the game shipped to stores. The patch will now allow the game to fully use monitors with 16:9 aspect ratios. This is not the end of patches for the PC game. The site states, "We are working on a larger, more extensive patch now . . ." which should be released in the near future.

Gallery: BioShock 2 Screenshots

The good news? 2K Games has released the first patch for the PC version of BioShock 2. The bad news? At the moment it's only available via an automatic download on Games for Windows Live. The good news? It fixes a number of bugs in the game discovered between going gold and its release. The bad news? It does not have the much promised widescreen bug fix.

The worst news? This new patch also managed to add a new bug in multiplayer mode where pressing the mouse button doesn't register in the game. 2K Games is aware of the bug and the word now is, "We are already working on a fix to this problem . . . " So if you just care about single player go ahead and have the patch downloaded. If you like multiplayer we suggest you wait.

While many gamers are upset about the lack of gamepad support in the PC version of BioShock 2, still others are not happy that the game does not have proper widescreen support. This was actually an issue in the PC port of the first BioShock game but the problem was not corrected until a patch came out several months later.

However it looks like the issue for BioShock 2 will be fixed more quickly. A post from 2K Games' community manager states, "Yes, there's a problem, yes, a fix is on the way, yes the view will expand horizontally for you widescreen gamers." So there you go.

Last month, 2K Games announced some of the unique features of the PC version of BioShock 2, including the fact that the PC port of the just released first person shooter sequel would not have support for gamepad controllers. At that time, 2K Games said they wanted to make the PC version unique by making its UI and HUD work well with a mouse and keyboard.

Even though the publisher did announce that decision before BioShock 2 was released on Tuesday, the lack of gamepad support has apparently not made some of the game's players happy. Several of them have expressed their frustrations over the lack of gamepad support on 2K Games' official message board forums, asking the development team to offer up gamepad support in a patch. At the moment there's no word on if the development team will change their minds, although a statement on the message boards from 2K Games' community manager did state, "Not supporting the controller was not a decision that we made lightly."

[Via Shacknews]

If you have been waiting to check out the PC version of BioShock 2, you may be wondering if the sequel to 2007's acclaimed first person shooter will be just a straight port or will it have some specific PC features. Thankfully the game's community site The Cult of Rapture has you covered with a Q&A and even a podcast about that very subject.

The podcast has info from 2K Australia's producer Jake Drobowiecki who talks about their work on the PC port. That includes changing the UI and HUD in the game to work with a mouse and keyboard (in fact, they made the decision not to support controllers at all in the PC version). They also talk about supporting Nvidia's 3D Vision technology, having some visual extras for the DirectX 10 users (it also supports DirectX 9) and more. The feature also has some PC specific screenshots from the game.

In related news, Best Buy is planning to hold midnight openings on February 9 for the launch of BioShock 2. If you want to grab your copy in the middle of the night you can do so at these locations.

Gallery: BioShock 2 PC Screenshots