Bioshock: Infinite - New E3 Demo - Post #307

[angel]

Can't agree with that mr W, now watch some of the video plot analysis online. I've finished it three times and love every moment, but don't forget you have the DLC to play. It plays better than the main game, but (no spoiler) the story is very divisive. I HATE it. But you will probably like it.

[Alex W.]

I think I got the plot the first time through to be honest, it was dealt out very elegantly. So much of it through background detail rather than dialogue, too.

Just so much time wasting on the way. There's a 5-hour certified classic in here.

[K]

By strange coincidence, Ken Levine has just posted this on Twitter:

"I like short-ish single player campaigns & that's our specialty. Our goal is to build small open world like Shock 2 and make it replayable".

Shame he didn't apply that philosophy to Bioshock: Infinite.

[angel]

I think I got the plot the first time through to be honest, it was dealt out very elegantly. So much of it through background detail rather than dialogue, too.

Just so much time wasting on the way. There's a 5-hour certified classic in here.

well there are lots of details you will have missed like the opening conversations, you being the 115th version of booker etc. and the dlc really has some great touches so get on that

[Alex W.]

I'm all about a shorter version of this so I'll keep an eye out for the DLC in the sale. And a replay on Easy, sure. I kind of figured out some of what was going on really early, but it all fit together so well I just wanted to go with it.

[Vorgot]

So I never really got into Bioshock despite owning the digital version, but am working my way through it and loving it at the moment. Just noticed that 2 is £6 and Infinite £8 on PSN, and both are the complete editions with all DLC. I presume at those prices, it would be rude not to grab them, especially as I have the money sat on PSN. The great think about still being on the PS3 is that I am going back and playing all these games I dropped for the latest shiny thing, and really enjoying them.

[Butters]

I would definitely grab them at that price. 

 

I don't think that the sequels ever quite hit the heights of the first game for me, but I suspect that it was because how original a setting and atmosphere the first game created.

 

Rapture was just such an amazing environment. I played the demo, and it didn't quite grab me, but I borrowed the full game when it came out, and couldn't put it down.

 

The only DLC I haven't played is for Infinite. For those that did, is it worth getting? 

[Bojangle]

2 is the pinnacle of the series, in my opinion. It's sadly a massively overlooked game which a lot of people unfairly dismissed as a rushed out sequel, when it's anything but.  Infinite has a fantastic opening but falls apart as soon as the game actually starts, Columbia pales in comparison to Rapture too. The two pieces of DLC are fantastic, though.

[Vorgot]

Thought so, and people have said the DLC for 2 and 3 are brilliant, so since the money is there, and they are so cheap, I'm in.

 

Unbelievably, I realised that the reason I was enjoying Bioshock this time was spotting that there was a bloody map, something I had missed before. Chimp. On a par with me not realising that there was a Wait button in Oblivion until 80 hours in. 

[glb]

Bioshock 2 for £6 is about a good a bargain as you can get in gaming. Brilliant game.

 

One series I wouldn't begrudge a remaster. Bioshock was one of the first 360 games I played, so, so atmospheric and the decaying Art Deco world is eerily beautiful.

[Vorgot]

7 minutes ago, glb said:

Bioshock 2 for £6 is about a good a bargain as you can get in gaming. Brilliant game.

 

One series I wouldn't begrudge a remaster. Bioshock was one of the first 360 games I played, so, so atmospheric and the decaying Art Deco world is eerily beautiful.

I',m loving creeping into a new area and listening to the psychos babbling away before they know I am there. It's a great PSN deal too. Regular price for 2&3, both complete editions, £65. Sale Price, £14. 

[Mawdlin]

So this is now free to download if you've got PSPlus, but is it worth the time investment?

 

I remember really enjoying 1 and limping to the end of 2.

[Benny]

Not really.

[Marlew]

Several set pieces are incredibly beautiful and have stuck with me ever since but the gameplay is pedestrian. 

[PyramidFace]

29 minutes ago, Mawdlin said:

So this is now free to download if you've got PSPlus, but is it worth the time investment?

 

No, it's absolutely terrible.

[Qazimod]

I think it’s fine - not exceptional, and disappointing next to B1, but fine as it’s own thing... however, in hindsight I think the game suffered from large chunks of filler and felt like a bit of a slog at times, so maybe a sense of worthwhile “time investment” isn’t one of its strengths.  

[JoeK]

It's probably worth it for the first section alone, as it's a genuinely beautiful thing to behold. I never liked the combat much, but it's well worth a play through.

[Jamie John]

I enjoyed it. Not as good as 1 or 2, but still a solid game and really quite spectacular in places with some imaginative baddies. I remember it being quite difficult, as well, but I can't remember what difficulty I played on. The relationship you form with the woman you ally yourself with is pretty immersing, too, from what I recall.

[deKay]

5 hours ago, Mawdlin said:

So this is now free to download if you've got PSPlus, 

 

It’s not there for me.

[Stevie]

5 hours ago, Mawdlin said:

So this is now free to download if you've got PSPlus, but is it worth the time investment?

 

I remember really enjoying 1 and limping to the end of 2.

 

Yes. Its a great game. Not as good as 1 but better than 2. 

[Mawdlin]

45 minutes ago, deKay said:

It’s not there for me.

Sorry, I think it'll be on in a couple of days. Seems to be a divisive game so I'm keen to find out for myself.

[Isaac]

It's got fantastic art direction, but the gameplay isn't great.

 

I enjoyed playing through it though.

[Unofficial Who]

It's the worst of the Bioshock games, not surprising given its troubled development.

 

It has some amazing art design, one of the story arcs is amazing and heartbreaking, the music, reworkings of pop standards from the past few decades is delightful.

 

The politics of the game are awful with some amazing "bothsiderism" which is basically "both sides are just as bad" shit. The DLC while mechanically better than the full game has an awful overcorrection of the issues with the politics of Infinite and also contains one of the most disturbing and unneeded acts of violence I've ever seen in a game.

 

7/10.

[Alex W.]

The middle section is conspicuous not just in how politically stupid it gets but how bad it is in gameplay terms: a constant series of samey arena battles or monster closets that give you little opportunity or impetus to get creative with the powers. You can almost see where they puffed out the ten-hour story they had in to the twenty-five hour game.

[deKay]

Scott Bradlee was involved so it’s better than 99.9% of all other games just because of that.

[Isaac]

Absolutely loved this article by Justin Clark, to mark the 10 year anniversary of Infinite:

 

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-assassination-of-daisy-fitzroy-by-the-coward-bioshock-infinite/1100-6512699/

 

Some choice quotes:

 

Quote

10 years later, BioShock Infinite failing its best Black character is an even worse look than ever.

 

BioShock Infinite shows us the nauseating racism and class stratification of the floating city of Columbia early and often. From an interracial couple being tied up and "stoned" by a crowd armed with baseballs at the city's carnival, and the Chinese and Irish being worked to death in the city's bowels just to provide a beach for rich citizens to sunbathe, to the slum neighborhood of Finkton, where Columbia's gleaming splendor turns to appalling squalor. Abolitionists, even white ones, are treated as pariahs and criminals. And the state is defended by immense firepower. 

 

But despite the game forcing us to witness these atrocities, we unfortunately spend our time playing as a man who pointedly doesn't care about them. Booker DeWitt only cares about clearing his debt, and says outright that he sees Zachary Comstock and Daisy Fitzroy as two sides of the same coin, while also offering no thought of his own on what marginalized people who have been given no other options for betterment should do to obtain their freedom. The closest Booker gets to an understanding is a moment where he and Elizabeth wander one of Columbia's inhuman detention facilities, and states in disgust, "Sometimes, you need a person like Daisy Fitzroy."  But even if Booker understands Daisy's necessity, the game doesn't seem to agree with it.

 

Quote

For clarity, it should be said that this doesn't necessarily make BioShock Infinite a racist game. It's very clearly not on the side of the monsters of Columbia. It's just a game that wants to say racism is bad, but without using its platform to offer anything of worth to the conversation beyond that. It frames the desperate act of desperate people just as abhorrent as the deep-rooted, ungodly systemic violence and oppression that made them this way. That mostly just makes it kind of a waste of psychological space and time. Bringing up a topic as pervasive as race, but refusing to acknowledge it in its entirety doesn't make it a theme of BioShock Infinite so much as the wallpaper. Compare that with, say, MachineGames' Wolfenstein titles, games that hate Nazis with all the fire in their hearts, but also, more than this, fully address the problems, pitfalls, and discomfort required to truly fight evil. Revolution is not the backdrop of these games; it is the narrative.

 

[RubberJohnny]

Considering when everything turns 10 it suddenly gets re-evaluated as a nostalgic classic, I'm glad this is getting dragged instead, it got basically no criticism on original release, instead being held up as a classic and now gets praise by zoomers on Youtube.

 

You can see me in this thread going against the grain and calling out its politics as shitty in 2013, it's a game whose political views are both sides bullshit that amounts to yelling FBI crime statistics at a BLM rally. It is a racist game.

[Harsin]

I’m glad they went into Burial at Sea as well. The attempts to try and retcon the Many Fine People on Both Sides storyline of the base game into was all some kind of 4D chess masterplan actually was yeeesh and it simultaneously managed the feat of making the story of the first Bioshock much worse.

[RubberJohnny]

Also holy shit is this thread some bad reading these days, a lot of "ugh, look at this woman having opinions, bringing up social issues", a mere year before everyone would become a big advocate of that, along with great takes such as "I don't find it a problem that the black people faction are all murderous loons".

 

On 10/04/2013 at 06:59, Orbital2060 said:

I dont understand the praise for this game. Its a competent shooter, in bullshit wrapping. That is all.

 

On 10/04/2013 at 11:36, Orbital2060 said:

In taking the game seriously, I want to be as clear as possible: BioShock Infinite uses racism for no other reason than to make itself seem clever. Worse, it uses racism and real events in an incredibly superficial way—BioShock Infinite seeks not to make any meaningful statement about history or racism or America, but instead seeks to use an aesthetics of ‘racism’ and ‘history’ as a barrier to point to and claim importance. BioShock Infinite presents a veneer of intelligence—with wholly unexplored and mystifying asides to complicated concepts like Manifest Destiny and the New Eden—without ever following through. Without any deeper exploration of these ideas, BioShock Infinite’s use of American history and the Columbian Exposition is illusory, and already puts the lie to the claim that by engaging with these themes, BioShock Infinite is the place to find substance in mainstream videogames.

 

This guy got it.

[Rsdio]

Obviously it's worse here due to the subject matter which demands more delicate handling but paying lip service to themes for the sake of an aesthetic backdrop is so normal in videogames that it's just kind of expected, really.

 

They won't be the worst for it by any means but the Persona games were the first to spring to mind. I've played and (mostly) enjoyed them but they come off like someone skimmed Carl Jung's Wikipedia page then decided to make a game out of it. It's stuff that journalists like to latch on to but it's completely superficial window dressing. So often you'll read that a game 'deals with' or 'comments on' this or that issue then you play it and it says nothing at all.

 

Obviously it's not just videogames either, I watched Neon Genesis Evangelion not long ago which would struggle to be more acclaimed but thematically it's just a load of big concepts vaguely alluded to for the sake of suggesting depth rather than delivering the reality of it. It has plenty of other stuff going for it though.