is nobody else playing bioshit?

[Mooney]

i'll share my thoughts even though i'm only like 90% through the game. *no spoilers, trots*

the first bioshock was one of my favourite single player video game experiences of all-time. i played an hour or two of the sequel but essentially skipped over it, not even considering it an actual sequel since it was a different developer.

i'm fairly impressionable, and after loving the first game and knowing that most of the key developers were back and reading the unanimous praise, i didn't go into this game solely with high hopes - i went in simply eager to see just how much i would love it. that said, so far i am not impressed with infinite at all.

i know this is a story driven game, and the fact that before i started i think i inadvertently read an extremely concise three word spoiler, i think this has seriously hindered my experience with the game. since the story was ruined for me, this put an extra emphasis on gameplay mechanics for me. and boy are they pretty mediocre. had this game came out in 2009 as the actual successor to bioshock than it would be deserving of its ubiquitous praise.

in the first hours i tried to just immerse myself in the world, and soak in all the themes...american exceptionalism, worker exploitation, racism, what have you, but by the midpoint the game is reduced to hitting up on the d-pad, realizing you're supposed to go right to advance the story, so you go to the left first. this will be a twelve foot square room with varied 'goodies' in it. you can now goto the door on the right. you will walk through some corridors.....face one open area with a host of bad guys....walk a bit further checking out random rooms, as well as having to walk up to every trash can, barrel, desk drawer, what have you--half of which are unsearcheable and a quarter are empty--for the entire duration of the game. repeat. repeat.

every fifteen feet there are vending machines where you can purchase weapon and vigor (sepcial powers) upgrades. these are super expensive so i hope you were checking ever single trashcan and toilet along the way. the weapons you use will be dictated by those dropped by enemies faced so you will never want to spend your hard earned trash can looted dollars on upgrades because you will never know what weapon you will be using consistently moving forward. half the guns are all the same, regardless.

elizabeth chucks you shit during gameplay (health, money, salts) but this doesn't really add to gameplay, it's just been balanced in by the developers. also, during battles you can make things magically pop into existance -- cover, health packs, friendly gun turrets-- none of which actually adds to gameplay and feels extremely contrived.

graphics look really awesome at times, and at other times look exactly like what you would expect from a game pushing the limits of a seven year-old console - even though i am playing at 1080p on a pc capable of so much more. elizabeth looks like a disney princess, which would be fine if that was the artisitc direction they were taking, but all other characters just look like extremely dated extras. graphics don't always have to be cutting edge, but if things aren't consistant it really distracts from the immersion as far as i'm concern.

um, at this point i feel like i am only halfway done sharing my thoughts, but i am extremely drunk and i'm sure this is completely incoherent. i'll share more tomorrow if i wake up. as a note, at this point i don't think i've yet to read a single negative word about this game, which has encouraged me to share these thoughts.

[killtrocity]

tbh that's sort of how I felt about the first Bioshock...

your candor is appreciated

[Order 66]

i have a love/hate relationship with the gameplay. on one hand its pretty much you vs. a wall of bullets firing from god knows where (one reviewer accurately described rooms in this game as "kill boxes")... it can be pure chaos. on the other hand, it can get addictive. no matter how frustrating the battle i was never able to put the controller down until i won (except for the last battle... jesus christ).

i liked the addition of tears/elizabeth chunking salts and ammo/skyline. it wasn't revolutionary or anything but it added depth

like i said earlier in the thread i think Dishonored out-bioshocked this game in terms of expanding upon Bioshock 1's two-hand combat. kind of a bummer playing this right after Dishonored, but then again Dishonored is more of a stealth/rpg game as Infinite is a shooter

gonna smoke and go through my second playthrough right now. hopefully i won't suck as much this time (game is pretty hard for me, i even had to set the final battle to easy)

[Toby]

I had to take 2 days off because that last battle was so fucking hard and I refused to knock the difficulty down a notch; i already had to do it once during the first encounter with lady comstock.

Once I finish dead island I'm going to play through again. I hope the dlc expands on the story in some fashion. Multiple universes make storytelling pretty pretty pretty easy.

[Toby]

You gonna check out the dlc for Dishonored next week?

[Order 66]

nah i think i'm done with dishonored. i might get the game of the year edition on steam sometime down the line.. good game but i'm not dying to revisit it right now

i put in about 3 hours replaying infinite last nignt. i tried to stop and smell the roses more and there was alot of stuff i missed. i'm not one for replaying games but i think infinite is perfect for that.. especially how open ended the story is

[Future Boy]

you guys talking about the battle where you can call in the songbird?

[Order 66]

yeah. i wouldnt have set it to easy if i knew it was the last battle