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TIGSource ForumsPlayerGamesBioshock: Infinite
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« Reply #20 on: April 03, 2013, 04:46:22 PM »

yeah the plasmids are almost entirely optional but you're right that they're a more central theme and mechanic than the psionics.

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It could just be that it's been a long time since I've played SS2, but I feel like combat in that was much more costly and avoidable.  Ammo, health (and resurrection) were much more precious and costly, which made the game feel much more tense.  Throw in the weapon repairing, and the calculus of who to fight, when, and how was much more involved than Bioshock's.

no, this is all correct. i think the randomly respawning enemies add to it as well. respawning enemies often suck but the way theyre used in ss2 is great. you're never really "safe" and have to always be on your toes.

also imo the hybrids are much creepier enemies than the splicers. always found the splicers more goofy than anything. the whole game feels like you're killing a bunch of blabbering drunks.

tho the problem w/ the weapon system and limited resources is that you're basically forced to use the wrench 90% of the time lol.
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gimymblert
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« Reply #21 on: April 03, 2013, 04:50:39 PM »

So it's still in the age of adolescent philosophy writing level?
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« Reply #22 on: April 03, 2013, 04:52:14 PM »

"a man chooses, a slave obeys"  Cool

so edgy
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« Reply #23 on: April 03, 2013, 05:24:59 PM »

Not that I will do better Who, Me?
I stole that phrase for my "real" project
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Blambo
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« Reply #24 on: April 03, 2013, 05:44:51 PM »

So it's still in the age of adolescent philosophy writing level?

"Babby's First Objectivism"
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« Reply #25 on: April 03, 2013, 08:32:08 PM »

I just want to know where my 'map' is.
And that I miss fucking up a hack on a camera or bot, etc.. only to get pummeled by gunfire because of it.

Where is my map??  Game felt so linear without it.  I never feared getting lost.
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« Reply #26 on: April 03, 2013, 11:10:49 PM »

I like the graphics of it so far, and the characters are likable. Not too sure of the locations feelings although, too sunny and bright for the setting they used to have in the previous games. My say isn't very valid although, haven't played much of infinite or the old ones.
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« Reply #27 on: April 04, 2013, 08:01:55 AM »

Game Informer covered the ending well.





edit: also this just got uploaded



« Last Edit: April 04, 2013, 08:08:13 AM by Mono » Logged

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« Reply #28 on: April 05, 2013, 08:32:49 PM »

3/5

GOTY 2013
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AshfordPride
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« Reply #29 on: April 05, 2013, 09:43:47 PM »

Let's talk about the first moment when this game becomes, well...  A game!  Goodness me, imagine that!  The first twenty minutes or so of the game are the equivalent of a rather nice theme park ride.  I was vigilant for a pirate chasing a wench in and endless loop, or a dog holding a ring of keys just out of the reach of some prisoners.  

Oh, wait!  Perhaps there is a little bit of game-ness mixed in all of this before you're just tossed into a pile of policemen to murder.  That fucking puzzle where you have to ring the bells while a picture explaining how to ring the bells does not belong in a game posing as art.  This is fucking disgusting, and I mean that with all the sincerity I can muster.  That a game that expects it's audience to be able to parse such things it would like to think of as high concept of ideas have a Dora the Explorer, Blues Clues, little itty-bitty baby puzzle of press the right buttons.  Any more round pegs you'd like to see if we can insert into round holes, Bioshock?  This seems small, but I feel that it's really reflective of the biggest problem this game has, it's dissonance.  And it might be a nice point for why games have such a hard fucking time tellin' stories and bein' art.

Back to murdering policemen.  Booker murders policemen.  Lots of policemen.  That fight probably has more people in it than the biggest fight in the previous Bioshocks.  Like, shit, I'm wrapping up Bioshock 2 now and I'm pretty sure you fought a SINGLE enemy when you first got into rapture.  Now I'm murdering a squad.

And I want to drive that home.

Murder, murder, murder.  Booker slits the throat of a man with a whirling blade who's trying to arrest him.  Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.  Booker ruthlessly murders dozens of people for the sake of wiping away a gambling debt.  A fucking gambling debt.  A fucking 1900's gambling debt.  How much money could Booker possibly be in the hole for that murdering one person wouldn't allow him to get to that point?  If Booker is so willing to kill, and kill innocents, why doesn't he just rob someone to pay back the seventy-five dollars and three cigarettes he's out after a bad game of dice in the alley?  You're not killing some schizophrenic monster man anymore, now you're killing people.  And lots of people.  I've probably ended more lives in two hours of Bioshock Infinite than the whole of Bioshock 2.  

It's like if Indiana Jones killed a cop.   Like, an officer walks up to him asking if he could see his permit to conduct a dig here and Indiana Jones just disembowels the man.

Like, sorry, this really bothers me.  It bothers me that we're supposed to assume that everyone on this ship is a vile worthless pile of human filth simply because they seem to be blindly following some religion.  How much of that is their fault?  At worst, these are just ignorant people obeying a cultural norm.  And for that, they deserve death.

In fact, kill civilians too!  Fuck 'em!  Oh, I'm sure that Ken Levine, being the dreamsmith he is wanted his city nice and populated with people.  Because in a lot of the trailers we've seen prior, Columbia looks like a rather desolate place.  But no, fill Columbia to the brim with little meat sacks for you to peck to death with crows or combust whenever the mood strikes you.  Faster Booker, kill kill!


So, right there, I fucking don't want to shoot things.  And what could make me want to shoot things even less?  Why, gunplay right out of Duke Nukem Forever!  I love it when pistols feel like I'm shooting paper balls, and when machine guns have no kick to them.  I love it when shotguns emit a burst of death anywhere in the general one-eighty degree field two feet in front of me.  And I love it when one or two guns in a game are good, and then the game denies the ability for you to use them exclusively.  

Aiming is fucked.  The game is begging me to use the iron sights to activate it's auto-aim.  I can here it whispering like rats chittering in the walls.  Chritckity-chricky, don't fire from the hip Saaaaaaam...!  Fuck you!  It works!  It's a miserable affair to see this system reduced to this.  Because Bioshock 1 and 2 didn't exactly have perfect combat, but it was something that was usually serviceable enough that felt involved.  Now it's just rat-a-tat-tat.

Hacking!  Remember hacking?  They seemed to have a solution for that.  The first game was perhaps a bit much.  The world around you suspended as you fiddled with pipes.  At times it did seem like you were being ripped out of you little moment to play a minigame, and then thrown back into it after a visit to the Popcap dimension.  The second game re-introduced hacking as a much more integrated part of the game.  You're held up defenseless as a meter swings back and forth, needing to be stopped at just the right spot.  They even dedicated a whole weapon to this!  You could hack at a distance, or hack instantly!  Bioshock Infinite...  Removed hacking.  Well, fuck you too!

And choices!  Choices, choices, choices!  Apparently they don't matter!  What the fuck is with Ken Levine's hate boner for player agency?  It's like he's trying to write a nice movie and the fact that someone has to play it keeps fucking it up!  The second game did a nice job of rewarding your choices.  How you acted is basically transferred to your daughter.  If you were merciful, she showed mercy.  If you were kind, she walked away from this as a better person.  If you're a murderous douche, you end up unleashing a little terror on the world.  It was a nice little step up from Bioshock one, where harvesting a Little Sister made you sea Hitler in the final cutscene.  Now choice is stupid.  And you're stupid.  Remember when Bioshock tore back the curtain of the player-game relationship and exposed how you're willing to do anything a game tells you to do (except the game doesn't test this by asking you to do anything you otherwise wouldn't and then ultimately when it comes to something you would be on the fence about like killing your dad comes up it's done in a fucking cutscene but shhhhhhh)?  That was something.  It was at least a cool twist, because I legitimately didn't catch it.  Now the twist of the game is literally the last spoken line of the entire story.  There's no time to let it sink in, no time for the played to chew things over, it's all just dumped on him until the bubbles stopped.  It's mind=blown shit.  

I dislike everything about Elizabeth.  But then again, so far I've only been with her through seventeen thousand set pieces and haven't really had much time with her in combat.  Everything about her seems off.  I was kind of expecting Rapunzel from Tangled, I guess?  







Uh, positives...

I think racial caricatures of Jewish people are hilarious and I like seeing them.

And the Lautece twins are great.  Like, fantastic.  This is the sort of silliness you need to bring to a story about multiple dimensions or people get all caught up in the technicalities of things when you try to be too serious.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2013, 09:48:59 PM by Samtagonist » Logged
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« Reply #30 on: April 06, 2013, 02:18:44 AM »

Murder, murder, murder.  Booker slits the throat of a man with a whirling blade who's trying to arrest him.  Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.  Booker ruthlessly murders dozens of people for the sake of wiping away a gambling debt.  A fucking gambling debt.  A fucking 1900's gambling debt.  How much money could Booker possibly be in the hole for that murdering one person wouldn't allow him to get to that point?  If Booker is so willing to kill, and kill innocents, why doesn't he just rob someone to pay back the seventy-five dollars and three cigarettes he's out after a bad game of dice in the alley?  You're not killing some schizophrenic monster man anymore, now you're killing people.  And lots of people.  I've probably ended more lives in two hours of Bioshock Infinite than the whole of Bioshock 2.  

This is precisely the reason I'm waiting until this game is in the bargain bin. It's high-concept but made for the lowest common denominator FPS fans in order to sell more copies. Okay, so maybe if it wasn't an FPS they couldn't have taken a risk with the story, but that stuff just doesn't jibe with any meaningful story. I go into it with the expectation that I'm going to make everything explode, not that I will experience something amazing.
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« Reply #31 on: April 06, 2013, 05:47:11 AM »

It reminds me a lot of the dissonance in the Uncharted games as well, particularly the second one.  You, the good guy, are supposed to be stopping a war criminal, but in the process kill hundreds of people, putting yourself on the same level of wanton killing and destruction as the bad guy. 
It's the problem with trying to make the player character of a shooter a Harrison Fordesque rogue with a heart of gold.  You want to make your guy seem cool, aloof, a little dangerous. Instead you make a fucking psychopath, who instead of just shooting Greedo first, disembowels him, his friends, everyone else in the bar, the cops who show up, and a couple civilians for good measure.
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AshfordPride
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« Reply #32 on: April 06, 2013, 09:20:04 AM »








Maybe Bioshock shouldn't spend twenty minutes showing off Columbia before asking you to start murdering people in it.  It's like, look!  These are all living, breathing people with lives and dreams...  NOW KILL EM.  They're only trying to stop you because they think you're going to take the girl who has been advertised as their salvation for the last twenty years, and that's totally what you're all about!

Like, why not have me starting off killing those crow weirdos?  Like, maybe they show up, and they're like this secret police force...  Or maybe a bunch of people in the crowd start donning those hoods and chanting ominously at you?  Like, something.  Because not two minutes before you're treated to two cops kind of shootin' the shit over the new skyline grapple that will be bisecting their own faces shortly. 

Also what was up with all those crow weirdos.

Seriously.

What was that. 
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 09:25:11 AM by Samtagonist » Logged
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« Reply #33 on: April 06, 2013, 09:31:52 AM »

In Greek myth war scenes, eg 90% of the Iliad, every time two characters do battle, a few pages of back story gets devoted to each dude. They yell at each other about their exploits and their father's exploits, and then it's often explained how one or both of them are sons of gods, the gods might intervene somehow, one of them is brutally slain or possibly saved by one of the involved deities, etc, etc. I guess what I'm trying to say is that Austin Powers totally ripped off the Iliad.
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deathtotheweird
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« Reply #34 on: April 06, 2013, 12:09:54 PM »

I don't expect the character of Booker to do anything else but be a careless psychopathic murderer. That's who he is. There is no dissonance here, Fallsburg.

The violence isn't really atypical for this guy, so it's more relevant in Infinite than it is in something like Deus Ex Human Revolution. Adam Jensen busting into a police station and killing every cop doesn't make sense, Booker selfishly killing thousands of Columbians to erase a debt does make sense. After all- he brutally murdered a bunch of Indians just to prove he had no Indian in him (he was suspected of having Indian relatives).

In the history of the character, when has he ever done anything morally right? I don't think now would be the time for him to start doing Good. So lying and needlessly murdering people to get what he wants is his M.O.

Here's a good article that responds to some similar issues with the game.
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AshfordPride
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« Reply #35 on: April 06, 2013, 01:47:43 PM »

To a point, man.  There's just a limit when it all seems kind of ridiculous, when something as ridiculous as being a one man murder machine has to be put up against trying to pay off your debts.  It all goes back to dissonance, and this game has that in spades.  A realistic character with hopes and dreams is in a flying city full of magic racists and sky crimes.  I'm two hours in and every fight feels like it shouldn't be here.  Every blob of enemies in my way feels like an unfortunate reminder that this is a video game, a sad moment of mourning to the failings of this medium.  No, a celebration of the failings of the medium!  Like I've said before, no series seems more aware of how video games can blow at telling a story, but instead of fixing them, they just DO IT and then pull you aside to say 'ain't that a bitch?'. 

And I fucking hate this.  I hate how trying to question the Bioshock series always seems like a matter of just not getting it.  And this isn't directed at you or anyone else allen, it's just this sort of sense that this is a smart game, for smart people.  The people who don't seem to like it must obviously just not understand all the complexity it has going for it, or perhaps they just want another dumb first person shooter power fantasy.

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Videogames are about their programmed boundaries placed by its designers and populated by our actions. And every single game, even the most linear, is different – is fundamentally and absolutely yours. Those choices, those tweaking of experience, that killing of an enemy, that head-flick of the camera or pause in step makes a whole different world, and it’s wonderful, boundless and infinite.

Man, I've been talking about this since fucking Bioshock.  Are you kidding me?  Someone would've payed me money to make a game out of this?  Me and Anarkex always talk about how the first Bioshock had this boner for how it controlled you, but then it let you make all these choices.  What gun did you use?  What did you upgrade?  What did you buy?  How did you kill this?  There's so much scribbled in the margin of A MAN CHOOSES, A SLAVE OBEYS that gets ignored for the sake of judging this piece as this bullshit deconstruction of something it just does.  There's no pie in your face like in Spec Ops, it just does it.  It makes you do shit you want to do and then giggles and claps it's hands about how THEY made you do that!  Tee hee!

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In passing, among the many things I like about Bioshock Infinite is its refusal to treat its players as ignorant.

Bull fucking shit.

And this is what really gets me going. 

Bioshock Infinite trusts you not to blow a fit about a funny picture of a golliwog eating a watermellon, but the game does not find you capable of playing the mechanical equivalent of Duke Nukem Forever.  I literally think Bioshock Infinite and Duke Nukem Forever have the same guns.  The same boring line up of pistol, machine gun, shotgun, rifle, shotgun, RPG, and wacky-quacky flurpity doop ding-dong diddle-iddle gun.  Because the game expects me to know what Wounded Knee and the Boxer Rebellion  are I'm supposed to forgive that as a game it makes every mistake that Half Life 2 barely managed to skirt by ten years ago?

Like, holy shit, this is how the game introduces the fact that you need to use Elizabeth and lock picks to open doors.  A GLOWING lock sits next to a GLOWING lockpick.  Try to open the door and Elizabeth tells you that she needs a lockpick to open the door.  Elizabeth doesn't notice it, Booker doesn't notice it.  But Sam notices it, and behind his fourth wall he's fucking fuming at the babytown game that's being heralded as the high art of video games.  And...

THIS GAME TOLD ME TO USE THE MOUSE TO LOOK AROUND

THIS GAME DOES NOT THINK I AM SMART

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Throughout by its chosen action and made explicit in its last twenty minutes, it says it’s okay to be a classical videogame. Videogames are about their programmed boundaries placed by its designers and populated by our actions.

I'm not buying it.

This game has been rewritten and redesigned too many times for me to buy that these aren't just a bunch of leftovers forming a little potluck of theory. 

BECAUSE THIS GAME ROBS THE PLAYERS OF EVEN THE LITTLE CHOICES.  I have two guns now, two plasmids, no medkits, no EVE hypos, AND A REGENERATING SHIELD.  A SERIES WHERE IT IS IMPOOSIBLE TO FUCK ANYTHING UP BECAUSE AT WORST YOUR MOST TERRIBLE MISTAKE MEANS YOU'RE OUT FIFTY DOLLARS AND SET BACK A FEW STEPS.  They're so proud of how they put the little choices you make be the ones that matter to you instead of these big sweeping setpiece decisions but they have spent six years CRUSHING all those little choices down to the same boring shit that every game presents us with.  This game is getting away with celebrating that you choose to hide behind a different piece of cover than another person, and that's what made the game special.  And in another game, I'd buy that.  But not here, after spending a decade worsening your series into this palatable slurry where nothing I do matters.  You fucking maniacs are trying to tell me that I should feel good about this.  Fuck off.
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deathtotheweird
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« Reply #36 on: April 06, 2013, 02:02:20 PM »

The thing about Infinite not treating it's players as ignorant refers to the story, not the gameplay. It's referring to the little details that aren't that noticeable unless you're paying attention. It's not always trying to shove them in your face, and even when it does they are subtle enough to not be blatantly obvious.

The point of this article seems to be against what you and Bobo seem so desperately trying to do. Nitpick every last little detail. Not like nitpicking is invaluable, but I feel sometimes when nitpicking you're glossing over too many things.

This line pretty much sums up how I feel about the nitpicking:
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There’s been considerable debate around whether Bioshock Infinite’s ending lines up, and while I’ve followed it, I’d immediately decided I didn’t really care.

If I spent too much time nitpicking various details of my favorite games (or even games I barely enjoy), I would appreciate nothing. I guess the point is people like me and him would rather focus on the positive things we enjoy about the game rather than the negative.
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« Reply #37 on: April 06, 2013, 02:17:25 PM »

Bioshock infinite, when video games jumps the shark!

I don't think SamTagonist is nitpicking, there is a whole buzz about bioshock shooting that has start even before the game was release. The dissonance is there. It was a question ask to levine right of the bat.

Basically the game sold itself on social commentary and good companon character, it turns out the commentary is a backdrop for generic geeky multi world and elisabeth is not as center piece as we where sold on.

Also looks like spec ops did change mentality, at least in the sphere of critics.
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« Reply #38 on: April 06, 2013, 02:20:27 PM »

if you're writing off stuff i've said as "nitpicking" then i completely give up on ever having any serious discourse with you on this type of bullshit ever again.

and i didn't even get into the gameplay shit, i was just talking about the story. but when samtagonist talks about the mechanics, he's just nitpicking and he should only pay attention to the story? i guess if we can't criticize the story, and we can't criticize the game's mechanics, and pointing out any flaws is nitpicking... uh... might as well lock and delete the thread, right?

it's not like i've ever gone out of my way to criticize popular games just because they're popular before, so why would i start now? the "you're just nitpicking" argument is total bullshit.

i agree with samtagonist, mostly. when everything that's "unique and amazing" about the game could have been done better as a film, then it's not really capable of being a great Game. there are better Games. there are better stories. i like it more than samtagonist did, and i think it's a good game, i guess, but it's not even close to being as great as everyone seems to want it to be.

side note, if it actually was a film, it'd still probably have to strip out the psychopath level death count to get a good reception. the film equivalent of video game psychopath rampages is like... the 2008 rambo, and that movie was ridiculous. games get a pass cuz they're games, but it definitely detracts from the whole "games as an artform" thing, imo.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 02:26:26 PM by Blademasterbobo » Logged

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AshfordPride
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« Reply #39 on: April 06, 2013, 02:28:37 PM »

The point of this article seems to be against what you and Bobo seem so desperately trying to do. Nitpick every last little detail. Not like nitpicking is invaluable, but I feel sometimes when nitpicking you're glossing over too many things.

You want nit-picking?  Because I haven't even started that.  I'm painting with broad strokes here, but if you'd like I got a nice list of everything wrong with that beach scene with Elizabeth.   I think I might just type them up right nooooooooooo-ah who cares.

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If I spent too much time nitpicking various details of my favorite games (or even games I barely enjoy), I would appreciate nothing. I guess the point is people like me and him would rather focus on the positive things we enjoy about the game rather than the negative.

Fallout: New Vegas is one of, if not my favorite video games.  And it's a buggy piece of shit rushed out entirely too early,and a spin-off of a game that I completely hate.  

Small stuff doesn't ruin video games.  It's not what bumps off stars for Infinite.  Bioshock Infinite is ultimately an average game because it's combat is fundamentally boring at best and broken at worst. Is it nitpicking for me to say that iron sights combined with auto-aim has entirely ruined the wonderful feeling of being able to fire from the hip in a dwindling world of games that allow you to do so?  Because that right there is enough to cement this as a three star game.  MAYBE the story and pacing might bump this shit down to a two star game if this starts to get cataclysmal.  And, just getting up to the Vox Poppuli myself, IT JUST MIGHT.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2013, 02:41:01 PM by Samtagonist » Logged
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