The "I Got A New Game!" Thread
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Maniacal
the green Napoleon
Yes, yes you should. Kan and I only just got to the lighthouse so we're not too far into it.
The only thing that bothers me so far is that most of the bungalows can't be entered
At least there is still plenty of looting!
The only thing that bothers me so far is that most of the bungalows can't be entered
At least there is still plenty of looting!CommonKnowledge
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Bioshock Infinte
I've spent a while trying to decide if I actually like this game or not. However today, since I had a day off, I figured I would re-visit it and see what 1999 mode was like. About an hour later I uninstalled the game and realised why the game left a sour taste in my mouth. Basically it's too smug about having a better than average story and therefore constantly shoves it in your face - in this context better than average for games, in comparison to any other medium it's nothing exciting.
Okay so lets get the story out of the way first. Spoilers within:
In terms of game play there's absolutely nothing special about Infinite. In fact there's less than in Bioshock since hacking, alarm systems and alternative types of ammo are all conspicuously absent. Instead it's a pretty standard shooter with plasmids, no wait tonics. The actual story of how tonics arrive in Infinite is dumb beyond belief and again uses the "cuz alternative realities" logic. Like modern music copied from tears via voxophones it's claimed that plasmids were taken and then copied in the form of tonics - but that makes no sense and would be impossible. If I showed you this picture of a liquid:
How would you possibly know how to make it? It looks like a drink (probably alcoholic) but for all you know it's a new recipe for rocket fuel. Not to mention that you could never know how it tastes or what function it serves short of guessing. Oh well, good job people in Infinite have the innate ability to look at drinks and are then able to re-write a persons DNA because of it.
But back to the game play; tonics aside Infinite is more of a straight forward run and gun shooter than any other Bioshock game because that's all there is. You can't get your own entourage of security bots to help you out, or rig turrets and cameras to create traps, or hack medical bays to hurt enemies and even the weapons themselves are nothing special - certainly no harpoon gun. The only noteworthy weapon is the Handcannon which, to all intents and purposes, is basically a magnum. The rest are just the standard array of pistol, rifle, machine gun, sniper, grenade launcher and RPG.
Although in an unnecessarily annoying move each weapon has a counterpart so that the machine gun you start with also has a burst gun equivalent, but any weapon upgrade will only apply to one and not the other. The split seems rather pointless because by the time you get there you probably won't want to switch precisely because upgrades don't cross over. Oh and there's no visual weapon modifications as in the previous two games which is rather lame.
Visuals - I've stopped noticing for the past few years since all AAA games are equally shiny. Unless it's an indie game or something being deliberately retro I've stopped caring. "Oh wow look at that sky box. Look at those beautifully detailed buildings over there. Can I go and explore? No? More railroading I guess."
I think my main problem with Infinite is that it sacrifices game play for story to such an extent that it becomes more of a slightly interesting quandary to muse over whilst uninstalling it rather than something that can be replayed. A good game should have a balanced approach to story and game play since a story is in the telling and for a video game the telling is in the game play. Infinite sacrifices too much game play for me to consider being good. Instead it's better than most of the dross that the AAA industry pumps out but it's really not great. The only way I would consider calling it great would be in comparison to the rubbish also recently released.
Ultimately Infinite is another in a long line of "could have been great, but..." of games that are too busy appealing to broad demographics in order to make a profit rather than targeting a specific group and making something for them - see Dead Space for more on this phenomenon. I don't regret buying it but personally I'd wait for a sale.
Actually now that I think about it there's really no reason why this should be a Bioshock game. It doesn't have anything in common, short of a hero protagonist with a dark past but then so do 99% of all games today. A lot of the elements in game, most notably tonics, feel tacked on and only present because Bioshock had them. If this had been called "Not Quite Myst But We Have A Lighthouse" instead I would have enjoyed it more because then it could be it's own game rather than some weird ginger spawn of Bioshock that just wants to imitate it's dad but isn't quite sure how.
I've spent a while trying to decide if I actually like this game or not. However today, since I had a day off, I figured I would re-visit it and see what 1999 mode was like. About an hour later I uninstalled the game and realised why the game left a sour taste in my mouth. Basically it's too smug about having a better than average story and therefore constantly shoves it in your face - in this context better than average for games, in comparison to any other medium it's nothing exciting.
Okay so lets get the story out of the way first. Spoilers within:
Spoiler :
In terms of game play there's absolutely nothing special about Infinite. In fact there's less than in Bioshock since hacking, alarm systems and alternative types of ammo are all conspicuously absent. Instead it's a pretty standard shooter with plasmids, no wait tonics. The actual story of how tonics arrive in Infinite is dumb beyond belief and again uses the "cuz alternative realities" logic. Like modern music copied from tears via voxophones it's claimed that plasmids were taken and then copied in the form of tonics - but that makes no sense and would be impossible. If I showed you this picture of a liquid:
Spoiler :
How would you possibly know how to make it? It looks like a drink (probably alcoholic) but for all you know it's a new recipe for rocket fuel. Not to mention that you could never know how it tastes or what function it serves short of guessing. Oh well, good job people in Infinite have the innate ability to look at drinks and are then able to re-write a persons DNA because of it.
But back to the game play; tonics aside Infinite is more of a straight forward run and gun shooter than any other Bioshock game because that's all there is. You can't get your own entourage of security bots to help you out, or rig turrets and cameras to create traps, or hack medical bays to hurt enemies and even the weapons themselves are nothing special - certainly no harpoon gun. The only noteworthy weapon is the Handcannon which, to all intents and purposes, is basically a magnum. The rest are just the standard array of pistol, rifle, machine gun, sniper, grenade launcher and RPG.
Although in an unnecessarily annoying move each weapon has a counterpart so that the machine gun you start with also has a burst gun equivalent, but any weapon upgrade will only apply to one and not the other. The split seems rather pointless because by the time you get there you probably won't want to switch precisely because upgrades don't cross over. Oh and there's no visual weapon modifications as in the previous two games which is rather lame.
Visuals - I've stopped noticing for the past few years since all AAA games are equally shiny. Unless it's an indie game or something being deliberately retro I've stopped caring. "Oh wow look at that sky box. Look at those beautifully detailed buildings over there. Can I go and explore? No? More railroading I guess."
I think my main problem with Infinite is that it sacrifices game play for story to such an extent that it becomes more of a slightly interesting quandary to muse over whilst uninstalling it rather than something that can be replayed. A good game should have a balanced approach to story and game play since a story is in the telling and for a video game the telling is in the game play. Infinite sacrifices too much game play for me to consider being good. Instead it's better than most of the dross that the AAA industry pumps out but it's really not great. The only way I would consider calling it great would be in comparison to the rubbish also recently released.
Ultimately Infinite is another in a long line of "could have been great, but..." of games that are too busy appealing to broad demographics in order to make a profit rather than targeting a specific group and making something for them - see Dead Space for more on this phenomenon. I don't regret buying it but personally I'd wait for a sale.
Actually now that I think about it there's really no reason why this should be a Bioshock game. It doesn't have anything in common, short of a hero protagonist with a dark past but then so do 99% of all games today. A lot of the elements in game, most notably tonics, feel tacked on and only present because Bioshock had them. If this had been called "Not Quite Myst But We Have A Lighthouse" instead I would have enjoyed it more because then it could be it's own game rather than some weird ginger spawn of Bioshock that just wants to imitate it's dad but isn't quite sure how.
sophie
Break My Heart
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
I can't believe they made the combat worse, it ruined the first game. Interesting how that video makes Bioshock 1 actually sound good.
civvver
Deity
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I got mass effect 3 a couple weeks ago but just finished it now. Altogether solid, but it lacked the emotional connection that 2 had. I think it's because you're thrown immediately into this galactic war with the reapers, the entire game is extremely dramatic with Shepard constantly saying crap like "I know we can do this if we work together!" and many other heroic, inspiring one liners that have zero depth. The story is still interesting but it's much more like watching an action movie than playing a game imo.
In 2 you had more conversations with your squad, you met a lot more characters for the first time and while the game had main missions and several plot missions you had to do at certain points it was still more non-linear and open. ME3 was basically a string of main missions with a couple side ones. They did do a good job with the citadel and making you overhear conversations, many of them leading to missions etc. It did feel like the whole galaxy was engaged in this war and I was a part of it, but I kept wanting to reconnect with characters from the previous games in a significant way and never got there. All I got was, ok a scene with Thane, a few lines with Jacob. And the worst was Miranda by far. That whole relationship was completely left hanging and never resolved. To me the ending was fine except for that, I really wanted to talk to her more before the end because all you do is talk to her non stop in 2, whether you romance her or not. I guess it just feels like the reaper conflict dominates the game so entirely that everything else was underdeveloped.
The gameplay itself was improved with the additional cover options and rolls, and some of the levels were really cool, but there was a huge lack of boss fights imo that could've made the game much more interesting. It was also super easy though this is probably because I imported a character. I like having more weapon choices although in the end I stuck to the two same weapons anyway. The journal interface completely sucked, it was impossible to tell which items you had gathered and whether to return on the missions, I used the wiki so many times to find stuff.
Also my final major complaint was you fight two enemies the whole game, reapers and cerberus. There's zero variety in the battles. I liked ME2 where you might fight a band of batarian pirates one mission and some militant turians the next. Different species had different abilities and weapons, now every opponent is those cerberus assault troopers and they all look the same. Again, it's just because that's how the story goes, but it kinda sucked.
In all it's a good game, I'd still give it 7/10 but it's a far cry from ME2. Oh and I thought the ending was fine. Don't know why so many people hated it. The game had many bigger problems than the ending.
In 2 you had more conversations with your squad, you met a lot more characters for the first time and while the game had main missions and several plot missions you had to do at certain points it was still more non-linear and open. ME3 was basically a string of main missions with a couple side ones. They did do a good job with the citadel and making you overhear conversations, many of them leading to missions etc. It did feel like the whole galaxy was engaged in this war and I was a part of it, but I kept wanting to reconnect with characters from the previous games in a significant way and never got there. All I got was, ok a scene with Thane, a few lines with Jacob. And the worst was Miranda by far. That whole relationship was completely left hanging and never resolved. To me the ending was fine except for that, I really wanted to talk to her more before the end because all you do is talk to her non stop in 2, whether you romance her or not. I guess it just feels like the reaper conflict dominates the game so entirely that everything else was underdeveloped.
The gameplay itself was improved with the additional cover options and rolls, and some of the levels were really cool, but there was a huge lack of boss fights imo that could've made the game much more interesting. It was also super easy though this is probably because I imported a character. I like having more weapon choices although in the end I stuck to the two same weapons anyway. The journal interface completely sucked, it was impossible to tell which items you had gathered and whether to return on the missions, I used the wiki so many times to find stuff.
Also my final major complaint was you fight two enemies the whole game, reapers and cerberus. There's zero variety in the battles. I liked ME2 where you might fight a band of batarian pirates one mission and some militant turians the next. Different species had different abilities and weapons, now every opponent is those cerberus assault troopers and they all look the same. Again, it's just because that's how the story goes, but it kinda sucked.
In all it's a good game, I'd still give it 7/10 but it's a far cry from ME2. Oh and I thought the ending was fine. Don't know why so many people hated it. The game had many bigger problems than the ending.
Spoiler :
I don't see the problem with or the "dissonance" in killing them?
Also who cares about railroading. Not every game wants to be Mass Effect or TES. Some want to tell a story, not have you create one.
EDIT: Video is way to hard on how Bioshock should be a vehicle of social commentary. I mean, I think I absorbed what they were trying to say pretty well, I don't need someone to give me a monologue on why rasism or objectivism is bad (even though there are parts where this essentially is what happens).
CommonKnowledge
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Because the only aspect of the game that anyone ever goes on about is the story which is made good by the small touches of humanity injected throughout the game. Having those few moments interspersed with decapitating police men who, lets be honest, are just doing their job doesn't stack. It would be like re-making Aladdin but cutting out 90% of the film before splicing in scenes from Mortal Combat.
Sandbox games still tell a story but the emphasis is more on the stuff in between. Infinite wants to tell a story but instead focuses on bland combat with about 5 different mobs in the entire game. If it wants to tell a story then tell a story rather than making me endure the tedious combat so I can find out what happens next. Also all the choices in the game are an illusion since there's one ending. The three MASSIVELY signposted choices have no influence on the games story whatsoever and may as well not exist at all.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
Mortal Combat with the characters from Aladdin. I'd watch that.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
I think a lot of people, you and Campster included, are missing the point of BioShock Infinite. It's neither a social commentary on religion/racism/imperialism nor is it meant to be a mere vehicle for a compelling story. It's a commentary on the nature of video gaming and the experience of immersion. In that sense it's a worthy sequel to BioShock the first, which asked the question of "who is really in control when you pick up the video game controller?" Infinite asks "what is the experience you're really having when you immerse yourself in a game?" Every aspect of the game is designed to draw attention to this: from its myriad and shameless kickbacks to the first game to how it drowns you in a meta-analysis of itself, it challenges you to contrast this experience to other video games. Some people - such as Gabe and Kiko of Penny Arcade fame - don't like that. They sense the dissonance but they don't quite touch on it. What exactly do I mean? Well...
I guess for love's sake I'll just say there are spoilers for the rest of this post.
OK, so let me use this as an example. Whenever you die in Infinite you revive moreorless on the spot sans money following either a "revival" scene where Elizabeth restores you to half-health and half-salts or a walk-through-the-door scene where you step out of your dream world office back into the battle. I think the key here is that there is no revival, just as there is obviously no office - this is a conveniently memory contrived by Booker to accommodate just having "died." Rather, when you die, you inhabit an alternate-reality Booker that didn't die, and to cope with these memories your character fills in the blanks. This is supported throughout the game by the narrative with characters such as R. Lutece, Elizabeth, and Booker alluding to conjured memories to cope with the stress of crossing dimensions.
The key is to recognize this as more than a convenient narrative MacGuffin to handwave away not actually being able to die. This mirrors the process of playing a game - any game, with you being the person who redesigns the narrative whenever your avatar dies.
Take Skyrim. You go into a cave and a troll kills you. You reload save and go kill the troll. Now, you know that this is the actual chronology of events, but that is neither how you understand it within the context of the game's narrative nor is that how you'll internalize that as an experience for later recollection (barring a particularly interesting death that itself becomes the point of your escapade). Point being that you won't tell people "I went into a cave and got killed by a troll, reloaded save and then killed a troll" you say "I went into a cave and killed a troll." This is how you rewrite the narrative to suit your experience; this is what "immersion" necessarily demands of the player, and it is ironically the thing most demanding in terms of suspension of disbelief. Robert Lutece writes at the beginning of Infinite "the mind of the subject will desperately attempt to create memories where there are none" (paraphrased) - you are the subject, the memories refer to your experience.
The entire experience of BioShock Infinite is meant to challenge your immersion by undermining your sense of gravitas. It creates levity at every opportunity (suitable given that the city is floating). The world is colorful and genuinely unbelievable, which is good because you have no reason to believe in a world where you're listening to anachronistic music tracks and the innumerable bloody encounters are contrasted sharply and immediately by a freaking Disney princess. In Finkton the game actually has you move to a completely different dimension, which ought to knock the wind out of you. What the hell does any of this matter if the "solution" is just a dimension hop away? It becomes hard to apply value to any given arrangement of the pieces on the board when it's all so arbitrary.
The real genius in BioShock Infinite is that it never takes itself too seriously. It's a game that's meant to be overanalyzed, because that's how you start to peel back the veneer. Playing Skyrim and dying is one thing, but it's another thing to use the modding tools to change Skyrim. That's really digging deep. Infinite uses the Luteces, and later, Elizabeth (Elizabeth is an allegory for the player) to show what happens when you go from immersion - accepting what you see at face value and shoving square pegs into round holes or whatever suits the narrative - to understanding - when you see all the "doors", so to speak.
It's easy to see BioShock Infinite as a try-hard pulp-fiction adventure, a mediocre shooter with pretty art. But it's actually one of the cleverest and most salient video game commentaries there is.
CommonKnowledge
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Perhaps everything you wrote is what the player was intended to feel, although personally I didn't gt any of that, but it being clever doesn't alter the game play experience. It's like telling a clever joke that nobody laughs at; it doesn't matter if you then explain why the joke is funny because nobody laughed. For all I know Infinite is the smartest game ever made and is to other games what a person is to a slice of stale bread. However none of that makes the dull and repetitive game play any less dull and repetitive.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Well, that's your prerogative. I won't tell someone they had fun when they didn't. But I am nevertheless interested in discussing why vigors aren't a plot-hole 
(or, more correctly, why they are, and how that doesn't destroy the contiguity of the game).
Personally I found nothing to complain about in the gameplay but then again, I play shooters a lot (I also have no brain).
(or, more correctly, why they are, and how that doesn't destroy the contiguity of the game).Personally I found nothing to complain about in the gameplay but then again, I play shooters a lot (I also have no brain).
CommonKnowledge
Warlord
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I would have thought that if you've played a lot of shooters Bioshock Infinite would be even less enjoyable because it's so generic. Surely the opposite would apply and that it's better if you've played fewer shooters?
After all it's not just the combat that's dull and repetitive it's the lack of enemies, stock weapons that get used in virtually every shooter, dreary AI that's so dumb they only every run straight towards you or try and hide with half their body sticking out. In Half Life the enemy soldiers worked together and gave voice commands, they covered each other, advanced tactically, actually used grenades and were a force to be reckoned with. Whereas in Infinite you either get someone with a stick running straight towards you (ignoring all cover) or someone with a gun who's so incompetent they can't even work out how cover based shooting works. It's amazing how a decade and a half later a newly released AAA game can still have worse AI than Half Life.
After all it's not just the combat that's dull and repetitive it's the lack of enemies, stock weapons that get used in virtually every shooter, dreary AI that's so dumb they only every run straight towards you or try and hide with half their body sticking out. In Half Life the enemy soldiers worked together and gave voice commands, they covered each other, advanced tactically, actually used grenades and were a force to be reckoned with. Whereas in Infinite you either get someone with a stick running straight towards you (ignoring all cover) or someone with a gun who's so incompetent they can't even work out how cover based shooting works. It's amazing how a decade and a half later a newly released AAA game can still have worse AI than Half Life.
civvver
Deity
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Here's an interesting interview with infinite's head designer:
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9097228/tom-bissell-interviews-ken-levine-mind-bioshock
I think that Crezth is right, they're trying to explore the medium of video games, what is a video game narrative? What is the video game experience and how does the player fit into it? I think that philosophical video games are dull myself, just entertain me!
http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9097228/tom-bissell-interviews-ken-levine-mind-bioshock
I think that Crezth is right, they're trying to explore the medium of video games, what is a video game narrative? What is the video game experience and how does the player fit into it? I think that philosophical video games are dull myself, just entertain me!
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
The AI is nothing to write home about and the weapons are all pretty generic with the exception of vigors. Otherwise I don't see the criticism. Again, this is an industry that praises titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Battlefield. Having played both of those and games like CS, TF2, Far Cry, Crysis, and the original BioShock, I can't really say that Infinite is generic. What really floors me is that Campster guy criticizing Infinite's "four enemies" on the one hand and then he immediately moves on to praise Doom. That's just silly. And that's not to say Doom is bad, but show me games that have a lot of different enemy types and are better because of it. The Half-Lifes come to mind but then there are also the Daikatanas and the Quake II's. It's a mixed bag. Even so, Infinite has several enemy types. I don't think there's exactly a dearth of variety there.
I'm not trying to convince you the game is fun if you didn't have fun playing it. That's an exercise in futility. But I think a lot of this may be false outrage. The AI in Infinite is literally as good as it was in Half-Life 2. Maybe that's bad, maybe it should be better; but the reason enemies kicked your ass in Half-Life 2 is because they all had long-range hitscan weapons and you didn't have anything like Bucking Bronco.
The first BioShock worked around normalcy by leveraging small crowded spaces and a focus on traps and ambushes. It borrows a lot from System Shock 2 in this respect. Infinite works around the big spaces and long-range bullsh*t with the skylines and I think it works pretty well.
I'll end this thought by saying that there's nothing like fighting a Handyman in any other game. Stuff gets dynamic.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
So is having really dull gameplay part of the commentary, or did they accidentally commentary on themselves or just fail there?
MoreEpicThanYou
The most Epic.
I finally got my hands on Alpha Centauri, and it's really something. Why can't Firaxis make anything close to that level of detail, an amazing mix of strategy a story, anymore?
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
That's subjective, which I guess is part of the point. What separates video game analysis from television/movie analysis is in large part that interactive element. But we can still identify themes and mechanisms that serve to convey aspects of the general human experience. There's obviously something to be desired if you aren't having fun with Infinite but I don't think that represents an apotheosis of the genre so much as an exemplification of its limits: if you aren't having fun with BioShock you probably won't have fun with other shooters, either. Infinite stands out because of its awareness of this limitation.
And I know there will be some people piping in with exceptions like "I hated BioShock but I loved Half-Life" or whatever, but that's why we call it a rule of thumb and not a natural law of the universe.
CommonKnowledge
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The combat in Bioshock has always been weak. However in previous games it was only one aspect because you could always play the enemies off against each other by setting security systems on them or hacking your way to victory. If you wanted you only had to engage in combat for certain boss sequences and wandering mobs. Whereas in Infinite the combat hasn't changed but now it is the entire game because everything else was removed.
Also I wouldn't recommend getting Infinite because it's a shooter that's bad at shooting. It fails at its core mechanic and it really doesn't matter how much exposition and meta-narrative you wrap around it - its failed to do it's job due to dull combat, repetitive enemies and brain dead AI. Disliking Infinite has no bearing on how I feel about other games because Infinite does nothing new game play wise and, what it does do, is pretty poor. TF2 went F2P about a year ago and it's leagues better than Infinite's game play.
Being clever by commenting on yourself and other tropes does not give something a free ticket to credulity because, if it did, the Scary Movie franchise would be practically Dickensian in it's magnificence rather than a steaming pile of offal.
