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Re: Bioshock Infinite - Only after Completion

Posted: May 1st, 2013, 10:44 am
by Buckled Kipper
DomsBeard wrote: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.
I'm doing this too, just want to soak up the story.

Re: Bioshock Infinite - Only after Completion

Posted: May 1st, 2013, 10:53 am
by Buckled Kipper
Indiana747 wrote: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.
Spot on. This is exactly how I feel about it.

Re: Bioshock Infinite - Only after Completion

Posted: May 24th, 2013, 8:26 pm
by Todinho
It has been a while but just in case you guys arent tired of people discussing Bioshock infinite I've found this video that tears the plot apart,,the video is well put together and well thought out and manages to address some of the problems I had with it,I know this guy can be seem as just another person trying to to hate on the game but I think he has some merit in what he is saying.


Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: July 30th, 2013, 1:18 pm
by ratsoalbion
The first two dlc packs have been announced.

The first, a budget priced offering revolves around the game's much-maligned combat:



Meanwhile the second looks much more interesting, though Irrational could be accused of fan service by returning to Rapture:


Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: July 30th, 2013, 1:22 pm
by ratsoalbion
Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer has already played Clash in the Clouds (out today) and reviews it here:


Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: July 30th, 2013, 4:33 pm
by Scrustle
Really excited for Burial at Sea. The concept of it sounds amazing, and I've always wanted to go back and see Rapture before it fell. Seeing it with updated graphics is a bonus too.

Not sure on Clash in the Clouds though. Never really liked horde modes, and focusing on nothing except combat in Infinite sounds like it could drag. That museum thing looks interesting though.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: July 30th, 2013, 6:47 pm
by Todinho
Hum clash in the clouds doesnt really interests me if im honest,but burial at sea looks really interesting especially since you'll be able to play as Elizabeth in part 2 so im very excited for that,also seeing rapture again is a big plus.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: August 17th, 2013, 10:50 pm
by Cass
Replaying Bioshock Infinite. It is still a gorgeous experience, and Columbia is still beautiful, but... the shine has gone. The sense of wonderment I had when I first booted up the game - and which lasted pretty much from scene to scene - is dulled on a replay since nothing is new any more, and I have to say, it's making me enjoy the game substantially less.

It's still a good game - and if nothing else art and sound direction would carry me through to the end - but without the barreling momentum of a first playthrough I'm paying more attention to the story, and it's not looking good under inspection. I'm at Shantytown and the game is trying desperately to get me to care about the class struggles of Columbia, which is pointless because I know there's no resolution to it, no meaningful point to be made - just a reminder as if to say "racism and oppression of the working classes sucks" without any greater message.

The main story is about the tears, and Comstock and Booker and Elizabeth, and Columbia and basically ALL of Columbia's characters and settings are just... window dressing for that. Columbia as a concept, Columbia as a freaking city in the sky - none of that is anything more than a backdrop. You could set the same basic story on the ground and none of it would make a difference. Exactly how the city can fly is handwaved to you like it's no big deal. It doesn't impact the action or story at all, and that's such a damn shame - considering how rich a backdrop it is, Columbia could easily have sustained its own story. Here it feels wasted.

My overriding feeling playing this through a second time is that this game is like watching Doctor Who. The story bounds along with such charisma and energy, and you get so swept up in it, that you don't notice how thin the plot really is, or where the holes are. There's something to be said for that - a lot of people love Doctor Who. But I'm beginning to wish I hadn't decided to play this game a second time. It's marring the memory of the first.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: August 17th, 2013, 11:35 pm
by Scrustle
I get what you mean. I'm on a second playthrough too, and I just did that part.

A lot of the story aspects feel like they were planned to have much more attention than they do. Fink and Fitzroy barely play any role in the plot at all, but they were built up to be more important than they really are. It's especially true of Fitzroy, since Fink actually talks to you a bit and tries to get in your head. But it's still nowhere near enough.

If you look at some of the earlier demos of the game the whole thing looks drastically different to how it turned out. Seems like they had to make a lot of concessions for one reason or another.

As time has gone on my feelings towards the game are becoming more and more mixed. I still really like it, but I can't help but find something flawed everywhere I look at the game. I'm starting to get the feeling that the game might not really be that good. It's definitely not bad, but the way it has been hyped up so much has kind of lead everyone to be ready to unquestioningly lavish praise on it right from the start, and not many people have really had a problem with that. Even the people who heavily criticise the game tend to say they like it overall. But I've never seen anyone entertain the idea that perhaps the game is maybe simply not good. Well, apart from one or two bitter trolls. But still, it seems the general attitude is that of course the game is perfect, and we always knew it would be before it was even announced. So what people have done is to come up with reasons why it's great after they've already come to that conclusion.

But think about a lot of things about the game that people tend to praise. The more I look at them the more it seems they aren't really that exceptional. Like the character of Elizabeth. Everyone loves her, but why? She's kind of cliched when you think about it, and her story arc isn't that great really. At first she's all wide-eyed and naive with wanting to go to Paris and everything, then she gets pissed at you for lying, but she gets over that pretty damn quickly. Then she just kind of hangs around with you without any clear character motivation. There are a few cool moments, but they feel like set pieces, and after they're done she goes back to behaving just like she always did. Then at the end you find out who she really is, and then it all ends.

And seeing all these great indie and less high budget games coming out recently that do storytelling really well, the way Infinite does story doesn't come off so good in comparison. So much of it feels staged and scripted. You may be able to walk around during some scenes of conversation, but it still feels like it's so separate from actual gameplay. You walk down the corridor of a level until you kill all the bad guys and walk up to the trigger point. The scripted event takes place and you sit and watch. I'm not saying the game should have conversation trees or anything like that though. I actually think those kinds of systems are overrated a lot of the time, but so much of the story in the game makes me feel like I'm nothing but a passive observer. Like whenever I reach a story point, which are supposed to be the biggest draw of the game, I'm taken out of the experience and forced to pay attention to the work of the writers and voice actors and mocap performers. Feels very staged and unreal. In the older games you just got a radio message while you kept on playing uninterrupted, with control taken away only for very specific moments where they really wanted to emphasise a feeling of loss of control for narrative reasons.

Ugh. See, I didn't even intend on going in to all this stuff, but as soon as I think about one problem I just think of another and another. And the more I do the more it feels like when I say that the game is good, or even that I like it, that I'm just lying to myself more and more.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: August 17th, 2013, 11:39 pm
by ratsoalbion
I guess it depends who you follow, but there's been an almighty backlash against the game online. I had a grand time with it (flaws and all) and gave it one of those glowing reviews, but I will replay it when we do a podcast on it to see if my opinion holds up.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: August 17th, 2013, 11:44 pm
by Todinho
Yeah I played the game twice and a half now and the flaws really show up in other playtroughs especially if you compare this game to the first and even the second bioshock.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: August 18th, 2013, 1:53 am
by Cass
Don't get me wrong, I still really like the game. Backlash notwithstanding, this is still one of the games of the year. But when a game is this ambitious, and then fails to deliver on its ambitions, then it's inevitably going to open itself up to a kind of disappointment that you just wouldn't get with a more conventional (but less accomplished) game.

Like the Founders/Vox Populi conflict. There's real meat there, it's set up beautifully, you've got so much room for poignant storytelling. But then Infinite abruptly runs out of things to say about racism, besides "it's bad, mmmk", so why bring it up at all? I hate to use the P-word here, but it seems pretentious - why raise the topic, only to do nothing with it, if not to appear more intellectual than you actually are? In the first hour or so, Infinite tells you that maybe blindly mowing down anything that moves might not be a good idea - and then presents you with thousands of cartoon racists to blindly mow down. Bioshock 2, for all its flaws, illustrates class tension better than Infinite does.*

Or Columbia, the flying city. That is a really, really cool idea - pity it doesn't figure into any of the combat or story except for the fun factor in cutscenes. You get that Voxophone in which Lutece is all like "Oh, the floating? Yeah, I just discovered a way to make particles stay stationary in space, whatevs" like it's this insignificant detail - what the hell? Such a wasted storytelling opportunity! You could argue that Columbia doesn't need to be an important story element, but why shouldn't it be? Just off the top of my head - Columbia is powered by the Siphon, so in destroying it Elizabeth has to reconcile accessing her full power and dooming the city. That would have been better than nothing!

Basically, I feel Infinite's story is weighed down by its sheer number of underdeveloped concepts. Any of the individual elements - the flying city, SuperAmerica, racism in this world, the tears, parallel universes, the cost of war etc - could have been fleshed out into its own story and given the attention it deserves. As it is, in its haste to include all these really cool ideas, Infinite doesn't give itself room to breathe, and ends up feeling half-baked. Add to that mediocre combat, and you have a game that's all the more frustrating for its several moments of brilliance.

*Also, why revisit the "class tension" motif when it was already in place in Bioshock 2? I mean, I realise they didn't make that game, but they must have known it'd be associated.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: August 18th, 2013, 5:27 am
by Todinho
The game seemed to be much more "political" like the first game in it's inception as most of the focus was on the class conflict when the first trailers and demos came out,ken Levine said that this was not the original vision for the game and let's remember that this game was remade several times during development all of that and the fact that Levine wanted to appeal to the wider audience possible as he said in interviews,all of this I think explain much of the problems with the game that appear with you take your time and think about it from the combat to the plot,it's still a good game but while I was playing it again it started to remind me more of uncharted than Bioshock and maybe that's the main problem,I dont know.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: January 1st, 2014, 5:01 am
by richie_in_japan
Finally got round to putting Infinite in the old PS3. Although I got given it way back in May I decided to play Bioshock 2 first and then left it a while so I didn't burn out. I've successfully avoided all spoilers and so haven't checked back in this thread but I wanted to ask what difficulty people suggest I play on. Started on Hard as I usually am often alright with games at this level, like a reasonable challenge and also the trophies. But early in some of the turrets are chewing me up, I found you lose money for dying and restarting (!) and I had forgotten how wooly the targeting can be in Bioshock on a Dualshock. It's all combining to make the combat not that fun. Should I bump the level down or do you get overpowered later on and combat get too boring? Any advice appreciated.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: January 1st, 2014, 10:46 am
by Scrustle
Through the entire game your character always feels pretty weak. You lose health really easily and your shield is pretty much useless, even if you focus all your upgrades on it. While getting more Vigors does give you some more options, I've never really felt overpowered at any point playing that game. I've always had to be relatively careful in combat. You can't really rush in to the fray surrounded by loads of enemies and not expect to get torn apart. That's playing the game on medium too. I wouldn't call it especially hard or easy though. Pretty balanced in the middle. There's a bit right at the end though where you have to survive loads of waves of enemies coming at you for a certain length of time. I've heard people found that an annoying difficulty spike. I didn't have much of a problem with it myself.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: January 1st, 2014, 3:30 pm
by NokkonWud
richie_in_japan wrote:Finally got round to putting Infinite in the old PS3. Although I got given it way back in May I decided to play Bioshock 2 first and then left it a while so I didn't burn out. I've successfully avoided all spoilers and so haven't checked back in this thread but I wanted to ask what difficulty people suggest I play on. Started on Hard as I usually am often alright with games at this level, like a reasonable challenge and also the trophies. But early in some of the turrets are chewing me up, I found you lose money for dying and restarting (!) and I had forgotten how wooly the targeting can be in Bioshock on a Dualshock. It's all combining to make the combat not that fun. Should I bump the level down or do you get overpowered later on and combat get too boring? Any advice appreciated.
Hard makes it a real shooter but IMO takes away from the story and pacing. I'd actually recommend using Hard difficulty for a second playthrough (or just going straight for 1999 mode) and playing through on Easy/Normal.

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: January 7th, 2014, 10:00 pm
by DomsBeard
All Bioshock DLC is on sale this week. Bioshock 1 and 2 are available for about £3 each too. Burial At Sea is down to £8 (still too much for me!) on 360

Re: BioShock, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite

Posted: January 16th, 2014, 8:06 am
by richie_in_japan
Just to answer my own question, Hard is really no problem. Health, salts and money are littered all over the place and Elizabeth does a decent job of keeping you going by chucking various items at you. I figured out why I was struggling at first and it's because when the game pops up a health bar for enemies, it doesn't always mean your bullets are going to hit the target. I was shooting enemies early on and wondering why I was doing little damage, but I was actually missing them entirely. After I learned to go by my gunsights and not the health bar, it got a lot easier.

Re: Bioshock Infinite - Only after Completion

Posted: February 18th, 2014, 8:19 pm
by Alex79
I just completed this. As with every other Bioshock game, I felt it was a pretty boring, repetetive shooter, totally redeemed by its final 20 minutes. I loved the ending.

Re: Bioshock Infinite - Only after Completion

Posted: February 19th, 2014, 12:59 am
by Flabyo
Looks like being the last one we're going to get.