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

[Jick Magger]

It's M. Night Charlemagne you dolts.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Shamalamadingdong!

 

[DeepOcean]

Wait a minute. A farce, recycling shit, not caring "as long as it's entertaining" and super mega plot twists? Game industry's M. Night Shyamalan spotted.

This is very offensive towards M. Night Shyamalan. At least the shit he recycles is better than this and you are not forced to play crappy minigames and popamole to watch it.

Yeah, Shyamalan bullshit still miles better than the story of this game. The characters of Columbia are crazy racists/elitists or boring oppression/revolutionary cliche machines. Hey, you know a great idea? Let's make a game to discuss racism/elitism/nacionalism/fundamentalism but make all characters unrelatable crazy caricatures. That industrialist Fink was terrible, you know a great idea, let's say this bullshit: "There is the lions and there is the cows and there is the hienas that stir the cows" or "You know the bee, they don't stop to rest so be the bee" or " industrialists like myself done a great job by using inferior man like you" to the whole factory for no reason, only to show the player how crazy elitist he is and how the poor workers suffer. There was an auction of labor where the worker that offered to finish the task for the the lowest amount of time win the job, it was used to show workers exploitation, it was so forced and ridiculous that made me ask: How nobody saw how ridiculous all characters sound?The only character that don't talk fundamentalist/nationalistic/elitism/oppression butthurt gibberish is Elizabeth. I made a rule for myself, next time I hear that someone want to discuss serious issues in their game, I'm going to stay the hell away because game developers are terrible at it. Boy, I'm so butt hurt to the see such awesome art direction go to waste in such a mediocre game.

 

[aris]

Strongly thematic characters without many nuances is charactersistic in the bioshock series, which of course is inherited from SS2. It helps to have an idea of what you're going to, when playing a game.

They were used better in bioshock for creating surreal moments though.

 

[DeepOcean]

Strongly thematic characters without many nuances is charactersistic in the bioshock series, which of course is inherited from SS2. It helps to have an idea of what you're going to, when playing a game.

They were used better in bioshock for creating surreal moments though.

I know it ,but Bioshock 1 and System Shock 2 didn't tried to say anything or discuss any social issue. Thematic characters made sense on a fucked up setting, a spaceship controled by an alien entity or a underwater city gone to hell full of psychotic murders but not on a supposed functional city, the way it is, all the characters appear to be crazy religious zelots or psychotic murders so the story is just a waste of time and the only remotely interesting moments are with Elizabeth that is the only one that isn't a religious zealot or a psychotic murder and you spend a decent amount of time with. I guess, Levine got out of his zone of comfort and failed to see the differences.

 

[Infinitron]

Spoony review: http://spoonyexperiment.com/2013/04/14/bioshock-infinite-review/

 

[Gelbvieh]

I'm ashamed I never heard of this guy before now. Great review.
The great pleasure of watching someone say the things you forgot about wanting to mention, well.

 

[RK47]

Are you sure yo.... oh wait, you're not Jasede.

 

[Gelbvieh]

Do I have his face?

 

[Infinitron]

Excellent sea article: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/Eric...ock_Infinites_Combat_Mechanics_Regression.php

I recently completed BioShock Infinite, mostly because it was one of those big releases that I "just had to play" in order to keep up with what's currently big and popular. While the game left an impression of sorts on me, mostly due to its artwork and its ending (which I will not discuss here), I found that the vast majority of the game was a serious, serious chore to play through.

The first BioShock was a great deal of fun to play for me, even with some of its immersion-killing mechanics, a story that wasn't nearly as clever as it thought it was, and a very weak final chapter to the game. Even when I found myself growing tired with Rapture, the gameplay remained consistently engaging for me despite the rather poor feel to the shooting and other action.

BioShock Infinite makes it clear that Irrational Games put a lot of effort into improving the actual kinesthetic aspects of the gameplay, from the punchiness of weapons to the way enemies react to your gunfire and special powers. Yet despite these positive changes, I found myself growing exceptionally bored with BioShock Infinite even just a few hours in. My only conclusion was that this was a result of a wide systemic regression in the sophistication, depth and quality of the combat mechanics on display.

In this article I'd like to discuss exactly why BioShock Infinite, while entertaining to look at, simply isn't all that much fun to actually play. Fair warning: this is a fairly long read.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

BioShock Decline. Even Morgfag didn't finish it and most likely won't because the whole fucking game is just one big waste of time.

 

[potatojohn]

Decline? Maybe, but all the bioshock games are trash. The marketing teams behind it should be given award for making hits out of such incoherent, ugly, clownish and boring shooters.

 

[aris]

Do I have his face?

you have the same profile picture

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Did they ever explain where Columbia came from? How Comstock got to where he was, etc?
Did they ever explain any of the mutated peoples, etc?

Comstock was somehow charismatic enough to get money from the U.S. government to fund Columbia, reasoning that it would be a show of American ingenuity and at the same time a subtle threat to other countries. A lot of the early technology (like what keeps the city afloat) was based off Luttece's Quantum Physics research, while the rest came from what Fink could learn/steal by looking into tears. Songbird and the Handymen were the result of Fink witnessing the creation of Big Daddies, for instance.

 

[sea]

Was Fink really that smart that he could create things which, in the BioShock universe, were technology about 50 years ahead of his time, even from just brief glimpses available through tears, and without possessing ADAM to do it?

Also, if the US government agreed to the project, is the surface world like Columbia as well? It's implied it's not and that their technology is the same as what would be historically accurate, but why would they agree to spend millions of dollars building a steampunk floating city using quantum technology, yet not demand everything be disclosed to them?

 

[poocolator]

Was hoping there was going to be some accidental incest between the protagonist and that anime chick he rescues, followed by discovery of the fact that he's her father and then regret, alcoholism, etc. Never happened. Also, space-time bullshit physics story was bullshit. And tiring. Otherwise game was purty and shooting americans is always pleasurable.

 

[aris]

Was Fink really that smart that he could create things which, in the BioShock universe, were technology about 50 years ahead of his time, even from just brief glimpses available through tears, and without possessing ADAM to do it?

Also, if the US government agreed to the project, is the surface world like Columbia as well? It's implied it's not and that their technology is the same as what would be historically accurate, but why would they agree to spend millions of dollars building a steampunk floating city using quantum technology, yet not demand everything be disclosed to them?

The rift allowed for time travel, as seen at multiple instances. He most likely got the technology from the Lutece's.

 

[AngryDude]

All time travel stories are bullshit, no matter if it is book video or game.

 

[sea]

That is what I'm saying. He got his tech from Rapture 40-50 years in the future. My complaint is that the tears are apparently open long enough for him to copy this technology and implement it without the same critical resources available to him (including ADAM), including Vigors and Songbird. When we see tears as well, they are only ever open for no more than a few seconds - enough to steal a song, as that one musician does, but enough to reverse-engineer extremely complex technology from the future and for which one does not have neither the capability or likely manufacturing and scientific know-how to accomplish in the first place? How the hell did he do that?

And furthermore, why was ADAM just not needed at all to do this? It's never even mentioned in the game. So not only does Infinite piss over the entire point of BioShock 1, which was that ADAM enabled human evolution and technological development outside the bounds of nature and led humanity to ruin, it actually makes less sense than it would have if it had just said "yeah it's just ADAM".

Was hoping there was going to be some accidental incest between the protagonist and that anime chick he rescues, followed by discovery of the fact that he's her father and then regret, alcoholism, etc. Never happened. Also, space-time bullshit physics story was bullshit. And tiring. Otherwise game was purty and shooting americans is always pleasurable.

That's actually kinda what they were playing up, I think, with Elizabeth's manic pixie dream girl/emo butterfly tendencies, and her conspicuously sexier hair and more visible cleavage as the game goes on (it was also meant to be a visual representation of her growing from a naive young girl into a hardened woman). And in marketing they of course used every attempt to turn her into a sex symbol without being outright offensive about it. I'll bet there are more than a few weirdos out there who were fapping to her or expecting romance, only to get cockblocked (or... not, for that matter).

 

[aris]

It's likely that he got it from the Lutece's. They didn't need any ADAM to use their "contraption", as far as I understood.

 

[sea]

Maybe Fink found a piece of Gear lying around a closest somewhere, like the Magic Pants of Infinite Power Source, so he didn't need ADAM.

 

[aris]

Where do you get ADAM from anyway? At no point in the game, can I remember ADAM being mentioned as being a necessity for opening rifts. Is it even mentioned at all? I can't remember.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

Also, if the US government agreed to the project, is the surface world like Columbia as well? It's implied it's not and that their technology is the same as what would be historically accurate, but why would they agree to spend millions of dollars building a steampunk floating city using quantum technology, yet not demand everything be disclosed to them?

Columbia was the crowning achievement of one of the World Fairs of the era, back when they were the showcase of technological advances from all over. Columbia was meant to shit all over anything the other countries could produce at the time while also being a testbed for new radical concepts. The citizenry wasn't all that different from normal 1900+ America in the beginning. Several instances throughout the game it's mentioned that Columbia's policies towards anyone non-white changed well after its founding. Combined with Fink's swiping future tech and Comstock upping the rhetoric etc the populace found itself disconnected from Joe Normal back on the ground. The Boxer Rebellion was the final straw and when America called for Columbia to come back and explain themselves...Comstock basically replied "Eat shit."

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

My question is how Columbia's supposed to be a threat in 19-frappin'-84. Unless we all got a bad case of the stupids a bunch of Zeppelins and Iron Patriots aren't *that* big a threat. Come to think of it, with that big a head start shouldn't Columbia be busting out the laser cannons or something? Bolting building sized tesla coils to the bottom of Columbia and weaponizing Shock Jockey?

 

[Gord]

Bioshock's setting only works if you can accept the stupid idea that it's easily possible to advance 50+ years in technological development by finding some magic stuff and giving it to some prodigy scientist.