Bioshock Infinite

[hoverdonkey]

Thanks Pete23. Ordered on a whim.

[niat]

Ah bugger, I ordered mine from there last week for £35.

It was posted this morning, so hopefully I'll at least get it nice and early.

[hoverdonkey]

Wow, I'm impressed. Just in from work and it was sitting on my doormat. Awesome service

[hoverdonkey]

First impressions. Loved the first 40 minutes, soaking up the place. Slight issue with PS3 glitching when I turn quickly. Hoping it won't continue

[hoverdonkey]

Hmm, I have to say, playing this and then the new Tomb Raider with the wife last night, Lara Croft's adventure is streets ahead. At the moment. In fact it's one of the best games I can remember. Bioshock feels repetitive and simple by comparison, but then I'm further into Tomb Raider so I'll give it more time.

TR is so good I might have to start a new thread on it

[Pete23]

I wasn't expecting that! Did you enjoy the previous Bioshock games?

[hoverdonkey]

I did, but not to the degree that others did. I don't know, it's lovely to look at, but I'm finding the combat quite irritating. Well, I did the last time I played it, but perhaps that was just the mood I was in. Combine that with a session I had later on when I had Lara stealthily taking out seven hoodlums before climbing to the top of a radio mast and I'm probably just on a bit of a downer about it.

Think I'll finish Tomb Raider first then give Bioshock the attention it deserves. One thing I do know, I'm playing more games than I have for years.

Edit to add: Reading the reviews around the web and I'm obviously a moron. It's getting unadulterated praise.

[Eis Nein]

It'd better be good. Levine destroyed 2 ace PC game podcasts to build it.

[Thursday]

I would guess  I'm about two-thirds of the way into Tomb Raider and the first half is great, good balance of puzzles/exploration and combat. But then it all goes too Uncharted and just keeps throwing endless enemies at you, combined with some unforgiving checkpoints. I just want to explore for a bit, solve a few puzzles in isolation, but it keeps wanting to throw more men to kill at me. The combat is actually very good, just too dragged out. It really would be a case of less is more.

[Rev]

Yes, Tomb Raider gets silly with the combat set-pieces.  They always go on just that bit too long, one wave of bad bastards too many, and cross the line between being challenging and annoying.  It gets oddly grippy about checkpoints at times, too, falling into the old easy bit, easy bit, easy bit, easy bit, really hard bit, fuck you start again pattern.

I'm only an hour or so into Bioshock Infinite, but the combat in this seems really jarring, and there have already been cases of it laying it on a bit too thick.  I'm getting the impression that the people involved would have preferred this not to be a shooter at all, and weren't all that bothered about refining the combat element.  It sort of worked in the original Bioshock as enemies didn't flood at you out of nowhere in their dozens, but here it's a bit like it occasionally hits the 'action' switch without much thought about how things might play out.

It's a shame - as I say, I'm not far in, and want to see the sights and the story, but can tell that this isn't going to be enjoyable to actually play.

[Zetetic]

Someone tell us about the saving system, go on.

[Milo]

So what is it?

[Jim_MacLaine]

So is the woman hanging around all the time then and is she capable of protecting herself?

[Egyptian Feast]

I'm not very far into it yet, but:

Someone tell us about the saving system, go on.

It's got an autosave system, and unlike the original there's no manual save option. The checkpoints seem to be frequent enough, and it only seems to send you a few feet back if you're killed (not sure yet if you have to pick up items again).

So is the woman hanging around all the time then and is she capable of protecting herself?

I haven't met her yet, but apparently she's pretty useful in combat situations and doesn't run around blindly walking into bullets, thankfully.

[Thursday]

Pretty sure I read you'll never have to worry about protecting her.

[Rev]

I'm not sure if she's completely immune to damage, but she appears to be be, and is quite handy.  When a fight breaks out she gets the fuck out of the way, but occasionally throws supplies to you.

Another thing on saving/checkpoints - it's more or less the same deal as the chambers from the first one.  They set you back a little way and cost you money, but if you die halfway through clearing out a room full of arseholes, the dead ones stay dead.  Any who were still alive supposedly get healed a bit, though.

[ziggy starbucks]

god knows how you lot can play this. I watched 10 minutes of a youtube lets play and felt like like I was in the middle of the Atlantic ocean being violently tossed [nb]not like that[/nb] side to side by a gale force storm. The motion sickness is unbearable. It was the same with Bioshock 1. I feel sick just thinking about it.

On a positive note, the game looked unbelievably good for the 10 minutes I could get through. The graphics are so good they literally make me puke.

[Rev]

It's a slog, but not for the reasons you mention.  I'm someway into it now, and the combat remains completely idiotic.  The big thing should be vigours, but it's so grippy on salts that you're pretty much forced to forget that you have them and just gun your way through.  The enemies are absurdly accurate and have a ridiculous range - almost every time I've died, it's been attempting to find who the hell's shooting at me, and it's turned out to be a speck in the distance rendered all but invisible by the game's beautiful but busy style.  Far too many of these sequences have ended in me scouring the area for a last idling bastard, too, because the fighty bits lock you in until everyone's dead.  The only time the combat seems to work is when you're indoors, as it's more or less like the original game.  Outside it's just annoying.

[hoverdonkey]

So, exactly for the reason I mentioned then :)

[Rev]

No.

Yes.

My analysis was more nuanced.

I understand this thing ends well, and it certainly starts well, so I'm expecting it to end up as two amazing hours sandwiching a long stretch of tedium and irritation.  It's really baffling how it's clearly been so intricately crafted, but the gameplay seems to have been chucked in as an afterthought.  It's like they took the bit from the first one where you become a Big Daddy and made an entire game out of it.

[Thursday]

I've heard a few people say they're not actually finding the game that much fun, I guess it depends on how much you liked the gameplay and how much you just like it for the world, but I will say I'm surprised at how "gamey" it is so far. It's still got weird game logic things in there, and you're still eating an absurd amount of food, mid battle to keep your health up, I was hoping they'd device a slightly better system than that.

When I've read interviews with developers in the middle of Bioshock, it's often seemed like they had more ambitious plans and then come the release, they had to scale them back a bit and just make a normal game.

[Junglist]

Well I'm loving it, fuckers.

[Egyptian Feast]

Me too. It's an absolute blast. Flying around an airborne city on skyhooks and twisting a bunch of racist cunts' heads off is a rare pleasure indeed.

[Thursday]

I'm loving it  too, although not knowing where the fuck bullets are coming from can be frustrating, but the skyhooks and tears really add another dimension to battles. I think it's just a problem of the combat mechanics not being as evolved as the storytelling.

It doesn't seem to be living up to these inital "gameplay" trailers. I don't think these bits are in the game now, although they might still be spoilerish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snDNJdmSSHc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEBwKO4RFOU

[Rev]

There are no spoilers here!

So I've finished it, and as an experience it's entirely worth it, but is exactly what it felt like when I commented earlier.  I think the point Thursday brings up is right - there seems to be a case of big ideas versus looming deadlines here, just as there was in the original game. 

I'd put this in the same category as Spec Ops:  The Line.  You're here for the thing as a whole, and the gameplay is sadly the underfed afterthought of the piece.  At times it works - some of the fights are good fun, but only those in confined spaces - but for the most part you're dealing with enemies entirely surrounding you while your screen is a mess of smoke and bloom and the yellow flash of your shield being damaged, while you hear the whirr of a turret somewhere and run around trying to figure out where the hell everyone is, because they may as well be invisible half of the time.

I'll be giving 1999 mode a crack, partly to see if the gameplay makes a bit more sense in that mode, but mainly to see if the story does on a second run-through.  I said no spoilers and this isn't one, but the story doesn't resolve in a particularly neat way.  At this point I'm not quite sure it works for me, but it was an interesting journey.

[wasp_f15ting]

This game is overwhelmingly beautiful on the PC..

That very opening ascension was amazing..

[Thursday]

Some minor spoilers, but here a run through of  the 1912 cover versions in the game http://kotaku.com/here-are-all-of-bioshock-infinites-secret-musical-cove-461865411

[Canted_Angle]

Really enjoyed this although the game felt way too short. I noticed quite a bit that wasn't in the game from those gameplay videos above. Perhaps they've saved some stuff for a potential sequel which will hopefully be out by christmas...I can keep dreaming I'd just like an excuse to go back to that world.

I wish someone would make a game as large as fallout but as good looking and narrative driven as this.

[Thursday]

I think it was just too difficult to do or sustain over an entire game, maybe the technology just wasn't quite up to it. When you look at the kind of things they were talking about with Elizabeth's abilities, some of it sounded incredible and I was dubious at the time at how possible it was. It seems like there a few production troubles along the way, but you wouldn't know if it hadn't been for the trailers.

Srill, can't wait to see what Levine does next.

[Bored of Canada]

New DLC coming soon. They released a Challenge Map today, but y'know, who cares.

http://youtu.be/ElvkqE3PwQo

So it's a noir set before the fall of Rapture. This could be really good. Especially as I see the backlash towards Infinite could lead them to fix a lot of the issues, especially as it'll likely be shorter and doesn't need to be padded out with as many gunfights. I am really curious about this. That trailer showed me all the stuff I liked about Infinite, ie: Walking around the world and talking to people. And didn't show any combat. I mean, there can be combat, but I feel it should be rarer and give it more weight. It's a noir, after all.

What interests me even more is the NEXT DLC. Read on destructoid that Irrational have described it as a survival horror where you play as Elizabeth.

Overall, I did think Infinite was great, and two short pieces could be great.