Bioshock Infinite - the $200 million 6 hour literally on rails interactive movie with guns thread

[Azarkon]

Is backtracking from dead ends fun? How about spending 30 minutes running in circles because each corridor looks the same?

Map design doesn't say everything. I played enough Doom back in the day to know that. The sophisticated maps look great on paper, but the play through experience is not.

Great level design DOES require multiple paths, which Bioshock Infinite is lacking in. But just because a map looks complicated =/= the level design is solid.

Common, this 30 minutes running in circles is a very silly complain. SS2 had more complex levels but the places on the ship where clearly delimited with signs on the walls or floor (when there is a big arrow in the ground written cargo bay A in it, it isn't hard to know where cargo bay A is) ,you can learn the layout of the level very fast. I didn't looked to the map and knew exactly where to go. SS1 is way more maze like but even then, I had all the medical level layout in my head without problem or getting terribly lost.

The question is not whether it's surmountable but, rather, is it great design?

Maze style level designs are one of my pet peeves in FPS games. I simply do not find them enjoyable. Sure, they're a challenge. But they're a tedious challenge, in the same way that 0.1% drop rate quest items in MMOs are a tedious challenge. I'm able to tolerate them when they serve a specific thematic purpose, but devs just a decade ago loved throwing them out for the sake of throwing them out. Yet, lest we forget, cities, buildings, space ships, etc. aren't designed to be mazes. No sane city/space ship/building architect goes around wondering how he's going to make his master piece less easy to navigate through by putting in a billion crisscrossing side tunnels and dead ends. That's immersion breaking.

I welcome clever level design and creative puzzles, but being labyrinthine for the sake of being labyrinthine - no thanks. I don't want to spend my precious free trying to figure out which tunnel is a dead end. That's not rewarding exploration. That's tedium, which is why each time people bring up a complicated map to show how older games were better, the first question that pops into my mind is - but is it fun?

 

[Average Manatee]

SS2 is hardly a labyrinth. It takes... 1 min to cross a level? Maybe 2 mins including enemies you fight? They are most certainly not mazes, the layout is understandable to the point where you could do just fine not even using the map for 99% of the game. All of the floors and areas are pretty clearly connected where they should be, there are recognizable hubs with access to most areas in each level, everything just feels right.

If you are complaining specifically about SS1 I'll give you that, since some of the level layouts are silly and labyrinth-y. Not helped by the less clear map and the environments having less recognizable landmarks to help orient yourself. But SS2 is perfect.

 

[potatojohn]

https://pay.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1cjo8m/evolution_of_level_design_in_the_shock_games/

 

[Spectacle]

Yet, lest we forget, cities, buildings, space ships, etc. aren't designed to be mazes. No sane city/space ship/building architect goes around wondering how he's going to make his master piece less easy to navigate through by putting in a billion crisscrossing side tunnels and dead ends. That's immersion breaking.

There must be plenty of insane architects around then, because large buildings are often mazelike and hard to navigate for people who don't work there daily.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

https://pay.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1cjo8m/evolution_of_level_design_in_the_shock_games/

Reddit, reddit never changes.

Yet, lest we forget, cities, buildings, space ships, etc. aren't designed to be mazes. No sane city/space ship/building architect goes around wondering how he's going to make his master piece less easy to navigate through by putting in a billion crisscrossing side tunnels and dead ends. That's immersion breaking.

There must be plenty of insane architects around then, because large buildings are often mazelike and hard to navigate for people who don't work there daily.

Wow, the outside world sure sounds like a scary place!

 

[Jasede]

It is, that is why I never go there.

 

[sea]

The question is not whether it's surmountable but, rather, is it great design?

Maze style level designs are one of my pet peeves in FPS games. I simply do not find them enjoyable. Sure, they're a challenge. But they're a tedious challenge, in the same way that 0.1% drop rate quest items in MMOs are a tedious challenge. I'm able to tolerate them when they serve a specific thematic purpose, but devs just a decade ago loved throwing them out for the sake of throwing them out. Yet, lest we forget, cities, buildings, space ships, etc. aren't designed to be mazes. No sane city/space ship/building architect goes around wondering how he's going to make his master piece less easy to navigate through by putting in a billion crisscrossing side tunnels and dead ends. That's immersion breaking.

I welcome clever level design and creative puzzles, but being labyrinthine for the sake of being labyrinthine - no thanks. I don't want to spend my precious free trying to figure out which tunnel is a dead end. That's not rewarding exploration. That's tedium, which is why each time people bring up a complicated map to show how older games were better, the first question that pops into my mind is - but is it fun?

Really? BioShock, and System Shock 2, labyrinths? Have you ever played Ultima Underworld, I wonder, or any other games set in actual labyrinths?

Seriously, there is a difference between "levels that are open-ended, require exploration and have free-form ways to achieve objectives" and "mazes." It might be worth it for you to consider that maybe if you don't like exploration in games, even when it is tied into the game mechanics and progression, you just shouldn't be playing a game like System Shock or BioShock pre-Infinite. I don't know if you're unwilling to enjoy the radical effect that open level design has on player freedom, tactics, narrative delivery and pacing, but calling a level that's more than a corridor with a branch or two as a "maze" is just disingenuous. Even you should be able to understand why people are upset about the changes in Infinite, unless you really do just not want to recognize the upsides that more open-ended level design can have.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

With all these linear as shit FPS's, im wondering why they havent already been adapted to light gun games. At least with a light gun game the design can stay as corridors of mooks, the player gets to be immersed in the game by actually mimicking shooting with a light gun, and the same banal left/right good/bad binary options can be retained for future playthroughs.

Shit, I could market this idea to EA and have them finally beat ActiVision's CoD franchise.

 

[Azarkon]

The question is not whether it's surmountable but, rather, is it great design?

Maze style level designs are one of my pet peeves in FPS games. I simply do not find them enjoyable. Sure, they're a challenge. But they're a tedious challenge, in the same way that 0.1% drop rate quest items in MMOs are a tedious challenge. I'm able to tolerate them when they serve a specific thematic purpose, but devs just a decade ago loved throwing them out for the sake of throwing them out. Yet, lest we forget, cities, buildings, space ships, etc. aren't designed to be mazes. No sane city/space ship/building architect goes around wondering how he's going to make his master piece less easy to navigate through by putting in a billion crisscrossing side tunnels and dead ends. That's immersion breaking.

I welcome clever level design and creative puzzles, but being labyrinthine for the sake of being labyrinthine - no thanks. I don't want to spend my precious free trying to figure out which tunnel is a dead end. That's not rewarding exploration. That's tedium, which is why each time people bring up a complicated map to show how older games were better, the first question that pops into my mind is - but is it fun?

Really? BioShock, and System Shock 2, labyrinths? Have you ever played Ultima Underworld, I wonder, or any other games set in actual labyrinths?

Seriously, there is a difference between "levels that are open-ended, require exploration and have free-form ways to achieve objectives" and "mazes." It might be worth it for you to consider that maybe if you don't like exploration in games, even when it is tied into the game mechanics and progression, you just shouldn't be playing a game like System Shock or BioShock pre-Infinite. I don't know if you're unwilling to enjoy the radical effect that open level design has on player freedom, tactics, narrative delivery and pacing, but calling a level that's more than a corridor with a branch or two as a "maze" is just disingenuous. Even you should be able to understand why people are upset about the changes in Infinite, unless you really do just not want to recognize the upsides that more open-ended level design can have.

I'm talking specifically about putting up labyrinthine maps to make arguments about decline. Whether game X does a decent job with level design is not a function of how complicated the map looks; the in game experiences are of greater import. For example, Infinite's maps look innocuously linear, yet the game has these side quests where you have to backtrack over and over again. There's nothing in the map that tells you that. Just the same, a complicated map does not necessarily produce an 'open-ended, free-form experience'.

 

[Angthoron]

So running back and forth along a corridor produces these?

 

[DeepOcean]

The question is not whether it's surmountable but, rather, is it great design?

Maze style level designs are one of my pet peeves in FPS games. I simply do not find them enjoyable. Sure, they're a challenge. But they're a tedious challenge, in the same way that 0.1% drop rate quest items in MMOs are a tedious challenge. I'm able to tolerate them when they serve a specific thematic purpose, but devs just a decade ago loved throwing them out for the sake of throwing them out. Yet, lest we forget, cities, buildings, space ships, etc. aren't designed to be mazes. No sane city/space ship/building architect goes around wondering how he's going to make his master piece less easy to navigate through by putting in a billion crisscrossing side tunnels and dead ends. That's immersion breaking.

I welcome clever level design and creative puzzles, but being labyrinthine for the sake of being labyrinthine - no thanks. I don't want to spend my precious free trying to figure out which tunnel is a dead end. That's not rewarding exploration. That's tedium, which is why each time people bring up a complicated map to show how older games were better, the first question that pops into my mind is - but is it fun?

Really? BioShock, and System Shock 2, labyrinths? Have you ever played Ultima Underworld, I wonder, or any other games set in actual labyrinths?

Seriously, there is a difference between "levels that are open-ended, require exploration and have free-form ways to achieve objectives" and "mazes." It might be worth it for you to consider that maybe if you don't like exploration in games, even when it is tied into the game mechanics and progression, you just shouldn't be playing a game like System Shock or BioShock pre-Infinite. I don't know if you're unwilling to enjoy the radical effect that open level design has on player freedom, tactics, narrative delivery and pacing, but calling a level that's more than a corridor with a branch or two as a "maze" is just disingenuous. Even you should be able to understand why people are upset about the changes in Infinite, unless you really do just not want to recognize the upsides that more open-ended level design can have.

I'm talking specifically about putting up labyrinthine maps to make arguments about decline. Whether game X does a decent job with level design is not a function of how complicated the map looks; the in game experiences are of greater import. For example, Infinite's maps look innocuously linear, yet the game has these side quests where you have to backtrack over and over again. There's nothing in the map that tells you that. Just the same, a complicated map does not necessarily produce an 'open-ended, free-form experience'.

I agree that linear =/= automaticaly bad even if I personaly believe that non-linearity is more interesting. There are good linear games and bad linear games, HL 2 is an example of the former and Bioshock Infinite is an example of the last one. The major difference between the two is on the mechanical side, HL 2 has variety in terms of locations, enemies, different mechanics like driving vehicles, controlling antlions and etc., Bioshock Infinite has you shooting the same guns in identical situations, on reskined versions of the same enemies on the whole game. The big problem of linearity on Bioshock Infinite is the shock in the name, to anyone that played and liked SS2 and Bio 1, the linearity in Bioshock Infinite is a big fuck you. Irrational games were one of the few options for someone that don't want linear games and Bioshock Infinite is now just another linear shooter. If you take a franchise that is non-linear and turn it in another linear game, it is ridiculous, even if Bioshock Infinite was as good as HL 2 it would still be a considerable dumb down from Bioshock 1 and 2, I won't even talk about SS2 because it is another level of quality. Backtracking and side closets to "explore" aren't enough to make a linear game have complex level design. The map on Bioshock Infinite alone don't tell that the game is a shitty linear game but tell that it is a linear game, and even if Lavine managed to make a good game (he did not) it would be still inferior even to Bio 1 and 2 to somenone that likes non-linearity. Remember: I don' like non-linearity =/= non-linearity is bad.

 

[Dexter]

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/04/end-epic-why-success-bioshock-infinite-bad-gaming

...

First, and most obviously, it’s a first person shooter and it’s a conspicuously bad one. Everything takes place in a series of arena battles, with the plot occurring in the times between them. This is a really bad sign. It tells us that the story is written and the game, that bit that you’re paying for, the bit that really anything calling itself a game ought to be focused on, that’s just filler. That’s the stuff you do to pad the running time out. That the actual game part of the game has been relegated to the fringes of the experience is evidenced by just how below-par the combat actually is. The mechanics, the arbitrary limitations, the repetition of it all . . . on a mechanical level this is the sort of thing that was done better in Half Life back in 1998.
...

But here’s the thing. All this said, Bioshock: Infinite has been wildly applauded by critics. This blood-spattered series of fetch quests, arena fights and pseudo intellectualism is being talked about as one of the best games in recent years. Mathematics departments around the world have been struggling for weeks to find a new whole number above ten but less than eleven just to use for reviewing this game. The team at the Oxford English Dictionary are in the process of removing the existing definition of the word airship from the dictionary to be replaced by the term ‘wonderful floating thing found in Bioshock: Infinite’. This game is, as far as most of the gaming press and public are concerned, the greatest thing ever.

That should worry fans of video games because when something as completely wrongheaded and primitive as Bioshock: Infinite is lauded as a masterpiece, the fallout can only be toxic.

...

 

[circ]

Incline from the strangest of places.

 

[Minttunator]

That's an absolutely great article!

 

[DalekFlay]

Pretty damn good analysis from somewhere I have never even heard of.

 

[funky_koval]

Fantastic article! Someone should send it to Levine! I'll bet it would sting like a motherfucker.

 

[Sodafish]

Incline from the strangest of places.

Not really. Like that dude from Reuters before, he can afford to tell the unvarnished truth because their salaries don't depend on filthy games industry advertising lucre.

 

[circ]

Yes really. NewStatesman isn't the first thing that pops to mind when you think "critical videogame criticism on metacritic".

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Games aren't trying to figure stuff out. All the major publishers are forcing developers to chase 'Call of Duty' money, which is both morally and creatively bankrupt. Morally, because 'COD''s success comes solely from sales to underage players (their sales would shrink if age-ratings were enforced), and creatively because not everything needs to be a shooter.

In the past we did have a golden age of gaming, compared to now, because there was a genuine depth of genre-diversity. Microsoft have utterly butchered this in exactly the way that was predicted when the first Xbox launched: at the time, everyone said they would just churn out FPSs and nothing else, and though it took a console generation, you'd be hard pressed to find much on the Xbox these days that doesn't conform to being an FPS.

Somebody needs to invite this man to the Codex, he has all the right ideas.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Bioshock: Infinite is just such a game. It deserves a place in history as being the world’s most successfully polished turd.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Well, from what I've heard it's not that well polished.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

Just completed Bioshock Infinite.

Wow, that was frustrating. The gameplay was so repetitive and boring, I honestly wanted to give up half way through. And I didn't like the story at all.

Spoiler

After a quick visit to Wikipedia I now understand all that nonsense at the end, but I still don't appreciate it. It actually feels like the entire game was pointless and without meaning. What did I achieve? Nothing.

In terms of visuals and presentation its ok, but the mechanics haven't moved on from the first Bioshock and there is nothing that sets it apart from other first-person shooters. It irritates me that this thing is getting 10/10s and 9/10s from reviewers. What is so amazing about it?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Well, from what I've heard it's not that well polished.

It says "successfully polished", not "well polished"

 

[grotsnik]

Not really. Like that dude from Reuters before, he can afford to tell the unvarnished truth because their salaries don't depend on filthy games industry advertising lucre.

The disappointing thing is that it so rarely seems to work this way with the mainstream press, though. Take the Guardian; in the same very, very general ballpark as the New Statesman, it's broadsheet press, skewing relatively left, young, sophisticated and trendy, with a hefty branch dedicated to culture criticism, including a good few respected ivory-tower types who come and write columns for them about Art N Shit. Clearly it's not going to care if EA gets pissed, clearly it should be able to take a half-intelligent stab at game criticism. Its gaming coverage is, however, much the same tired churnalist shite as everywhere else. Articles discussing trailers. Enthusiast reviews that are too busy overusing superlatives and blandly listing all the game features to actually apply any in-depth analysis. Bioshock Infinite, its reporter declares, "could fuel a dozen or so pHD dissertations". (Fuck off. Fuck off, it could not. He also calls the mechanics 'sublime' without getting around to explaining why) Dross previews that add nothing to anything.

In general, going by what I've read, the mainstream publications just don't seem to be harbouring the right kind of 'outsider' journalists who can really take their subject matter by the scruff of the neck, probably because the publications (rightly?) don't really care about it, and it's easiest from an outsider's point of view to hire freelancers who've already drunk the Kool-Aid who are already well-travelled members of the gaming press and just leave them to get on with it in their little sub-section. (Although I'd love to be proved wrong in this.)

 

[evdk]

Not really. Like that dude from Reuters before, he can afford to tell the unvarnished truth because their salaries don't depend on filthy games industry advertising lucre.

The disappointing thing is that it so rarely seems to work this way with the mainstream press, though. Take the Guardian; in the same very, very general ballpark as the New Statesman, it's broadsheet press, skewing relatively left, young, sophisticated and trendy, with a hefty branch dedicated to culture criticism, including a good few respected ivory-tower types who come and write columns for them about Art N Shit. Clearly it's not going to care if EA gets pissed, clearly it should be able to take a half-intelligent stab at game criticism. Its gaming coverage is, however, much the same tired churnalist shite as everywhere else. Articles discussing trailers. Enthusiast reviews that are too busy overusing superlatives and blandly listing all the game features to actually apply any in-depth analysis. Bioshock Infinite, its reporter declares, "could fuel a dozen or so pHD dissertations". (Fuck off. Fuck off, it could not. He also calls the mechanics 'sublime' without getting around to explaining why) Dross previews that add nothing to anything.

In general, going by what I've read, the mainstream publications just don't seem to be harbouring the right kind of 'outsider' journalists who can really take their subject matter by the scruff of the neck, probably because the publications (rightly?) don't really care about it, and it's easiest from an outsider's point of view to hire freelancers who've already drunk the Kool-Aid who are already well-travelled members of the gaming press and just leave them to get on with it in their little sub-section. (Although I'd love to be proved wrong in this.)

No, that is exactly what happens. IIRC our dear friend Ms Lauren Wainwright wrote articles for the gaming sections of UK newspapers as well.