Bioshock: Infinite - New E3 Demo - Post #307

[angel]

the story really picks up alex and the ending is great, i think you'll enjoy it.

[Bojangle]

A kitten dies every time somebody thinks the story in Infinite is great.

[Alex W.]

Ugh, I've spent all day pondering the intro dialogue so I guess I'll have to finish it. I'll put it on Easy and dive back in.

I was a decent chunk of the way through Bioshock 1 last year, and while it's no System Shock, its combat was so much more interesting than this.

[Professor Puzzles]

Bioshock 2 has the best combat of the lot of 'em.

[Meh]

Totally. Infinite is a terrible, awful game with a great story.

[Bojangle]

Totally. Infinite is a terrible, awful game.

Fixed that for you, Meh!

[JoeK]

Boy this is crappy.

I was really enjoying wandering around and getting this evocative introduction to Columbia, then suddenly everything goes pear shaped in this fantastically well-realised crowd scene... And then I kill about a dozen people with some stuff I have lying around, and spend a solid hour being led by the nose through all these rooms that are obviously trying to teach me backstory, interspersed with gunning down about a hundred gormless troopers.

Elizabeth shows up, and she's great. Her "performance" is charismatic, she's well-written and well-acted, and it's just nice to have her around, unlike every other NPC in the game. However I'm acutely aware that I'm going to spend the rest of the game shooting more guys between wandering around absorbing plot points, just with agreeable company. She's the game's big selling point and its most interesting character, and I still got diverted through a dozen combat scenes and two mini-bosses while the game harped at me to reach her. How much more of my time will they waste on padding?

It's not like I mind combat, but it's really dull, swarm-of-ants combat. Maybe Dishonored has spoiled me.

Edit - And yep, my guess about the big twist was right.

I found it exactly the same as the original game. I absolutely love the world. I think it's one of the most stunningly realised visions ever created....and I just didn't want any of the shooting in it at all. I just wanted to explore and wander! Same with Bioshock original.

[Meh]

Fixed that for you, Meh!

It's too late for yet another kitten.

[Bojangle]

Think of the kittens, Meh!

[NecroMorrius]

You're all insane

[Kevvy Metal]

I thought Infinite was an amazing game. Enthralling to the end and a great mix of excellently delivered narrative and interesting sandboxy combat.

The Bioshock series seems to get ripped to shreds on rllmuk, even the first which is generally highly regarded.

[Alex W.]

I put this on again because I wanted something more laid-back than Dead Space 2, where I could soak up the atmosphere a bit. And I'm trying really hard to care, but now I'm looking for the thing, so I can do the other thing, to do the other other thing, and I barely put up with this stuff in Alien Isolation. I feel like I'm not getting much back for my effort, you know?

Elizabeth has started to do an alarming Creepy Watson impression and I'm regretting playing this so soon after Spec Ops: The Line.

Edit - I have now found out that it's not actually the guy from Spec Ops: The Line doing the voice.

[Captain Novaforce]

The last mission is ass, but overall I did enjoy this. As you've said Elizabeth is the main selling point, and for me the old timey music too. Its a great world they made.

The combat was dull as hell towards the end, and straight afterwards I played dishonoured which by comparison never got dull.

[Professor Puzzles]

I think I'm more fond of this game now than I was when I played it. I suppose all the good bits stand out in my memory and all the picking through rubbish bins, fighting through samey enemies, useless tonics and rinse & repeat structure faded out somewhat.

[Jamie John]

I finished this earlier today but am now replaying it to get all the audio tapes and try to understand more fully what the hell's going on.

Once I've done that, is the DLC worth it?

[dreamylittledream]

If you liked the main game then yes, Buried at Sea (part 2 particularly) is brilliant, almost like a semi sequel/prequel to Bioshock 1.

If not then probably not

[BruceBruce]

Once I've done that, is the DLC worth it?

The DLC is the best part.. it finishes off the story and lets you understand the entire series as a whole.

Also, infinite used to run fine on my 650 gtx but now it's frame dropping on my 970 for whatever reason.

[angel]

burial at sea absolutely destroys all the story goodwill from infinite, tries to cheaply retcon daisy fitzroy, and is a miserable experience (story wise). dont touch it. if you like elizabeth as a character, dont play it.

bioshock remaster rumoured for nov on gaf

[Monkeyboy]

The world of Infinite was beautiful, one of the best I've experienced. The story was convoluted bollocks though.

[Jamie John]

Thanks for the responses. The dlc has been well received so I think I'll pick it up (sorry angel).

[BruceBruce]

burial at sea absolutely destroys all the story goodwill from infinite, tries to cheaply retcon daisy fitzroy, and is a miserable experience (story wise). dont touch it. if you like elizabeth as a character, dont play it.

bioshock remaster rumoured for nov on gaf

Remaster of the first Bioshock or the entire series?

[Doomguy]

burial at sea absolutely destroys all the story goodwill from infinite, tries to cheaply retcon daisy fitzroy, and is a miserable experience (story wise). dont touch it. if you like elizabeth as a character, dont play it.

bioshock remaster rumoured for nov on gaf

The first episode was superb. You walk around a living, breathing, alive Rapture which was amazing. The second episode was utterly depressing shite; a rush job as they knew the series was ending and wanted to tie things in a not so neat bow.

[JoeK]

The combat never really clicked for me in any of the Bioshock games - always felt too chaotic and whilst you got given all these wonderful different ways of causing death and mayhem I never seemed to experiment as much as I'm sure the developers wanted me to.

However, Infinite is just such a gorgeous place to spend a bit of time in that I did get to the end...I'd have quite happily not had any of the combat stuff at all and just taken a tour of the place.

Exactly the same feeling I had with Bioshock too - would certainly be up for a remaster with some upgraded textures and stuff though...

[angel]

Remaster of the first Bioshock or the entire series?

bioshock collection apparantly.

Thanks for the responses. The dlc has been well received so I think I'll pick it up (sorry angel).

thats fine, just be prepared to be clobbered around the face by the story and be utterly depressed by the end of part 2.

The first episode was superb. You walk around a living, breathing, alive Rapture which was amazing. The second episode was utterly depressing shite; a rush job as they knew the series was ending and wanted to tie things in a not so neat bow.

i sort of disagree, i think part 2 was technically brilliant and super polished, i just despise how they treat elizabeth.

[Bojangle]

A collection would be lovely. Would definitely play through 1 and 2 again and 100% them both yet again. Whilst completely ignoring that Infinite exists.

[gospvg]

A collection would be lovely. Would definitely play through 1 and 2 again and 100% them both yet again. Whilst completely ignoring that Infinite exists.

A South African retailer appears to have leaked the release of The BioShock Collection for PS4 and Xbox One.

According to Raru, The BioShock Collection will be released for the two consoles November 27 from 2K Games.

http://www.vg247.com/2015/09/21/the-bioshock-collection-coming-to-ps4-xbox-one-in-november-says-retailer/

This is one collection I will be buying, I never got a chance to play the games last gen.

[Jamie John]

I've just finished my second run through of this. As I posted above, I finished the game on normal, didn't really understand it, watched a YT guide that sort of explained the ending, still didn't really understand it, and I've now just finished re-playing it on easy, using a walk-through to pick up all the voxaphones.

Overall, I don't think the story is told especially well and mostly agree with Monkeyboy's comment further up the page. The first time I played it through I found that the narrative was almost obsure for the sake of being so, to the extent that I got bored trying to follow it after a while and just fought my way from checkpoint to checkpoint. This resulted in the ending leaving me completely cold because I didn't understand the big twist at all, and I was slightly annoyed by the time the credits ran because I felt that nothing had been satisfyingly explained. Having completed it a second time, I now understand pretty much everything, and the voxaphones and dialogue make a lot more sense, but I've still not experienced a satisfying 'A-ha!' pay-off, because I knew what was coming. For me, a narrative in any medium is not especially well-structured if you can only understand it with the benefit of hindsight, or if you get bored trying to understand it the first time around. I think films can more easily get away with not revealing anything until the end because they're much shorter and the audience can still remember what happened at the start of the story and connect the dots by the time the twist comes at the end (as in Momento, or The Sixth Sense, for example). But over the course of a ten hour game, you forget the enigmas that you're supposed to understand when something is revealed much later. Like the Luteces' conversation right at the start of the game, for example. In this regard, it's kind of like Lost, which I just got fed up with after about the fourth series, when the list of mysteries was growing and growing with only very few resolutions. Maybe it's just all too much for my ickle brain to deal with.

It's still a very good game - it must be if I found it compelling enough to go through two playthroughs, back to back - but a no point did I feel quite as impressed as I did the first time I played the first game, which I thought was incredible at the time, eight (!) years ago, and I think Eurogamer's 10/10 score is at least two marks off. Having said all that, I'll still be picking up the DLC.

[rumblecat]

Not really sure what they could have done to be honest- I thought the story was pretty clearly laid out with just the right amount of mystery versus answers drop fed across the piece. Halfway through I was totally hooked by what was going on, much more than by the gameplay. I guess every story isn't going to work for everyone, especially if you get bored following it though.

[Butters]

I only played it through on normal admittedly, but I rarely used the vigors, unlike in the previous two Bioshock games. Not played the DLC yet.

Looking increasingly like there will be a Bioshock Series remastered for the current console generations.

[Alex W.]

I can see why this has its fans. It ends well, the science fiction is very clever and nicely handled, and once you unlock a handful of upgrades to the Vigors combat is a riot.

However that doesn't make up for the fact that the majority of the game has you battling through stupid enemies with boring versions of the powers in order to complete nested fetch quests, all set against the most perfunctory version of "maybe the rebels are bad guys too" plot yet committed to a game. You can see the odd glimmer of what that storyline could've been with the odd Khmer Rouge-esque reference, but in practice the Vox amount to a bunch of screaming maniacs, and it's obvious that nobody on the team had any passion for their storyline versus the excellent little interdimensional drama that dominates the finale.

(If you're wondering exactly when I started enjoying the game, it's about the time I started fighting a ghost while it summoned quantum zombies.)

It's like they started with their vertical slice, made that the endgame, then and worked backwards taking ideas out with no regard for whether what remained behind was actually fun.