BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite (SPOILERS)

[Todinho]

What!? That's just ridiculous so just because we dont play as her and she helps you she's a weak character?This reminded me of a tweet from Ken Levine,someone asked him if he was gonna make a game with a female lead,he replied with a screenshot of Elizabeth,Infinite it's her show and if you think that she's a weak character by the end I honestly think you must be blind and deaf or you just didnt play the same game I've.

[DomsBeard]

Podcasts are people's opinions at the end of the day, bound to be a lot of bull out there about this game in particular to get subs up etc....

[Imo]

Well I'm glad you all appear to be as surprised I was. Thats a brilliant point Todinho, I hadn't heard the story and it also reminds of a jimquisition just prior to the games release where he called it 'very much Elizabeths game' (He was saying she should have been on the cover rather than Booker, Ken Levine has explained the reasons why she is not)

If Elizabeth falls short Scrustle then I really am at a loss for what the answer to the feminism question is, she is not perfect as a character for but is such a stunning step forward that it has to simply be lauded.

Of course there has been a lot of praise but it was these views that confused me so much which is why I brought them up here, David Turner has called the game his Half Life 2 and I am inclined to agree

[Bakers_12]

I thought Elizabeth came across as a lot more then a "sidekick". It would have been very strange for a young women that as spent all her life locked up to emerge as a kick ass gun toting action heroine. In fact I felt when see helped you in a fire fight by sticking her neck out into danger by passing you a weapon or pointing out a danger that she was being quite brave.

[DomsBeard]

I thought Elizabeth came across as a lot more then a "sidekick". It would have been very strange for a young women that as spent all her life locked up to emerge as a kick ass gun toting action heroine. In fact I felt when see helped you in a fire fight by sticking her neck out into danger by passing you a weapon or pointing out a danger that she was being quite brave.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

[Buckled Kipper]

Theirs been a lot of crap talked about this game on podcasts in the last few weeks. Guess its easier to criticise than praise sometimes.

People coming to this game for the first time are going to be expecting a game with horrible shooting mechanics. Although the mechanics could certainly be improved, it's a perfectly good shooter in my opinion.

[Scrustle]

I think the shooting mechanics are kind of lacking actually, but the Vigors make up for it somewhat. It's still not enough to make it great, but it's enough to be enjoyable.

[Buckled Kipper]

I understand people's criticisms of the shooting, but it's far from bad.

[Bakers_12]

On Joypod Turners and Bell talk about that changing the controls to match other FPS (i.e. one trigger to shoot the other to look down the sights) improves the shooting! Has any one done this? does it? or does it spoil using Vigours?

[Scrustle]

I really don't agree with that. People have just gotten far too used to CoD and the games that have copied it. But I've played probably less than 20 minutes of CoD over the years, and found the control layout of Infinite totally natural. In fact, a lot of what made the game worse was aspects it took from other popular shooters.

[Imo]

Don't think I agree with the joypod lot on that one point however I did often find myself switching vigors/guns rather than shooting them.

What aspects do you mean in particular Scrustle?

[Scrustle]

What I mean about aspects taken from other games is the way that the game's pace has been slowed down, and just the general design of combat and environments. Normal running speed is much reduced, with the ability to sprint, but the inability to shoot while sprinting. Areas of levels where fights take place tend to be much more open and with obvious lines of cover littered in them too. It means the game plays a whole lot more like a shooting gallery-type game, where you don't really move much in combat because you can't defend yourself otherwise. And you are usually finding yourself shooting across larger areas, instead of constantly moving around narrow, cramped environments than the previous games. Because of that combat feels stationary and constricted. I also felt like the longer distances you fought over lead towards a bigger emphasis on iron sights, slowing you down even further, but it seemed unnecessary most of the time.

There's also the fact that the guns are simply less interesting and varied in previous games, and half of them are pretty much redundant. The ability to only carry two guns felt like a real unnecessary constriction too, especially considering the duplications. Although those are the aspects that annoyed me the most, there are other aspects to the gun selection and combat mechanics that were lifted out of other games that are detrimental to it. This video described them pretty well, even though some of them weren't a huge problem for me:



I don't agree with all those criticisms (a lot of the narrative stuff in particular), but he does a real good job of explaining problems.

I also wrote a blog myself back when I had just finished the fight with Lady Comstock, which actually came from a post I made in these forums. It explains my problems in more depth:

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Scrust ... 0952.phtml

Since finishing the game my opinion hasn't really changed much from that.

[DomsBeard]

Those Lady Comstock battles were awful

[Scrustle]

Yeah, it's definitely the point at where the game drags the worst, making the problems most visible.

[Cass]

The Lady Comstock/Siren battles are probably a gameplay weak point, but presentation (particularly the sound design) was so good that I forgave it a lot. In fact, the general presentation sucessfully carried a lot of the weakest moments for me.

[Indiana747]

Are hard mode or 1999 mode considerably more difficult than normal? Was thinking of giving another playthrough after finishing it at 4am this morning(incidentally, not the best time to finish up a game like this, was so tired, i feel the impact was lost). I found the game pretty easy going on normal mode and also ran into a trophy glitch that stopped any trophies from popping from Emporia level onwards. So, its a good excuse to playthrough again(and hopefully the trophies will recognise) with more of a challenge, but if its a severe difficulty spike i couldnt be bothered cause i can see a few areas that would be potentially tricky if certain vigours are not used.
Im still up in the air as to what i thought of the game. Its only downfall is the hype that has surrounded it. Isn't it just 'Sliders' the game? Seems a bit of a cop out explaining everything away with the multiverse theory. Anyway, as i said i was tired at the time, so thats my excuse for being dumb.

[Todinho]

I honestly see no point in playing in the higher difficulties as the combat is the weakest part of the game so I would recommend you just stick to normal,but from what I saw hard mode is not super hard,1999 mode is the real challege.

[DomsBeard]

I've started my second playthrough on easy as my main aim is to try and take everything in and find all the audio logs etc.

[Indiana747]

Cheers guys. I agree that the combat is the weakest aspect of the game, but you have to put it in perspective. The other parts of the game are near perfect, with possibly one of the best storylines in gaming history id say everything else would look poor in comparison. But to be honest the combat is far better in Bioshock Infinite than it is in many other FPS games with combat as the main mechanic. Needless to say i enjoyed the combat parts, using vigour combos with weapons add much needed diversity in a tired genre.

[DionysusDreams]

The biggest problem people seem to have with Infinite is the combat, but personally, I loved it! It could be because I'm not an FPS veteran, I don't play that many of them so I'm not particularly used to playing an FPS any sort of way or to expect a certain way of playing them. I played it the first time on hard and the only difficulty I had was the siren fights and I failed a couple of times on the Hand of the Prophet. Other than that it was fine. I have started my 1999 mode playthrough but I've yet to get very far in it. After I complete that, I'll go through and get the rest of the achievements, probably on normal, just to pick them all up easily enough.

I would suggest playing it on Hard the first time though as it does make combat more interesting than just winging it and killing everything without a challenge. However, if you really don't care for the combat at all and just want the story then I would suggest easy.