Bioshock Infinite Catch-All

B2 is difficult to get into initially, but about 1/4 of the way in it becomes one of my all time favourite game experiences. It does the opposite of the usual videogame thing of front-loading the game and petering out, it gets smoother and more interesting and more ambitious as it goes along. I think it's actually kind of helpful to think of B1 and 2 as one long story with a slow middle act.

I still need to install the Steam version to play Minerva's Den.

Even Infinite, despite its failings, is worth a play if you get it at a good price. It has ambitious ideas that don't quite land, and I always respect that. And it's not super long.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Even Infinite, despite its failings, is worth a play if you get it at a good price. It has ambitious ideas that don't quite land, and I always respect that. And it's not super long.

This. I think I got it for a quid, or a similarly ridiculous price, it took me 10 hours, and had a story that really got me thinking. Overall it was worth pushing through the mediocre gunplay.

I honestly cannot remember the story from Infinite. I'm drawing a blank. I did not see it through, yet I put in a fair amount of time, enough that there should be an impression of sorts.

Let's see. You're a detective, I think, with some traumatic past he'd rather forget. You find a girl named Elizabeth who has abilities and would like to escape from her captors. Let's team up. City in the clouds. Racism. Civil unrest. Shooty bits. Sky hook bits. Elizabeth finding some ammunition bits. Then my memory reel stops.

I found the gameplay uninspiring, the narrative mundane, and the story lacklustre. The visuals were great with a cracking good art style. I remember going in with high expectations only to bounce off. The combat wasn't completely terrible, but the story gave no incentive to push through.

Personally I found Infinite to be the best Bioshock game of the three. Plot, setting, characters, music... all of it really. I couldn't tell you anything that happened in Bioshock 2 and the original had some really meh plot wrapped around a really cool moment. Not to mention everything that happened after that moment was just plain bad.

With time and the input of others to reflect on, I think a lot of the mixed reactions are because, at a certain point, B:I went super super meta and turned into a non-story about Constants and Variables. It left a much more specific story about turn of the century America behind to move on to a more abstract question about what history itself is.

In some sense, it's a game with a story with the point that you shouldn't play games for their story.

In some sense, it's a game that at some point understands it is irrelevant to the conversations that are coming to the culture, and shuffles off the stage.

I don't know if I can recommend it at this point. I had to read this book a bunch of years ago, so I loved the dystopian Coney Island setting. Your mileage may vary.

I plan to get the collection at some point to replay the first two games and finish Infinite. The second is my favorite, but I don't think any of them are flawless.

The shooting in Bioshock Infinite was easily as competent as in any of the other two games (playing through on normal). I did give up on 1999 mode though because that was too much of a slog for me.

I can understand the story not working for everyone though but it definitely worked for me.

So basically, getting all this:

BioShock
BioShock Base Game
Museum of Orphaned Concepts
Challenge Rooms
BioShock 2
BioShock 2 Base Game
Protector Trials
Minerva's Den
BioShock Infinite
BioShock Infinite Base Game
Clash in the Clouds
Burial at Sea: Episode 1 & 2
Columbia's Finest Pack

For AU$54, half of what I paid for Bioshock 1 on the 360, is a pretty sweet deal "warts and all".

Thanks everyone for the discussion. I look forward to finally getting through Bioshock 2 and 3 with this collection as the impetus.

Maybe I'll even take the Songbird out of it's box, being as I sprung for the Collector's Edition, and only played about 2 hours of it in total...

IMAGE(http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/182jcppw45brtjpg/original.jpg)

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

In some sense, it's a game with a story with the point that you shouldn't play games for their story.

Yeah, that's part of my objection to it, that's it's a game that loathes itself and what it's trying to do. I've described it as 'nihilistic', a game to tell you that playing games is pointless.

Malor wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

In some sense, it's a game with a story with the point that you shouldn't play games for their story.

Yeah, that's part of my objection to it, that's it's a game that loathes itself and what it's trying to do. I've described it as 'nihilistic', a game to tell you that playing games is pointless.

Totally. It's one of those things that I finish and am angry at the creators, although I keep thinking about it for a couple days - not unlike the finale of How I Met Your Mother.

(spoilers for safety)

Spoiler:

Yes, it's one of those things where they seem to be criticizing you, the player, for wanting that kind of hyper-violent murder simulator with ultimately pointless moral choices. This criticism falls pretty flat if you didn't really want that sort of game and were disappointed that Infinite turned out to be exactly that. It's also only representative of a pretty narrow band of AAA games, which I don't play a whole lot of.

I realize this is a lot to ask from a 42 page thread, but can someone give me a recap of how it's criticizing the player for playing it? I got that vibe from Bioshock, but I'm having a hard time seeing it from what I know of Bioshock Infinite.

That songbird was very nice but I sold it and all my BI figures recently

Malor wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

In some sense, it's a game with a story with the point that you shouldn't play games for their story.

Yeah, that's part of my objection to it, that's it's a game that loathes itself and what it's trying to do. I've described it as 'nihilistic', a game to tell you that playing games is pointless.

I can't object to it because I've come to think it was right in an almost self-fulfilling prophecy.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I realize this is a lot to ask from a 42 page thread, but can someone give me a recap of how it's criticizing the player for playing it? I got that vibe from Bioshock, but I'm having a hard time seeing it from what I know of Bioshock Infinite.

It was my experience because:

Spoiler:

It starts out as this game about a very particular time in American history and imagines an America without cities capable of dealing with immigration, both foreign and internal. Obviously real world history failed, but not as terribly as it could have.

As the game goes on it leaves that behind and gets into the idea of Constants and Variables. Like, how much of our tragic history was a function of big, impersonal forces of history? How far back do you have to go to change something that leaves us with a better history?

In the end, though, that's an abstract question in a game that puts historical problems front and center that feel very real and contemporary. It's not a comfortable fit.

I'm along for the ride (read) here and surprised, because I quite liked Bioshock: Infinite, both story and gameplay. Like, enough to play all the DLC, including the one that was just basically a combat arena, despite characterizing myself as somebody who generally hates first-person shooters. (I wouldn't go as far as JeremyK to say it's my "favorite," but it's a close race, where I have largely positive feelings about all three games.)

I lack the eloquence to explain why, at least without thinking about it for a while... but like the old wisdom about wine, even if you lack palate, you like what you like.

I was a little throwaway with my down vote of Infinite's gameplay. To give some worth to it.

The powers weren't as cool in Infinite. I had fun with them in Bioshock. You could only carry two weapons in Infinite. I had more choices in Bioshock to change up on the fly. The stock enemy types in Infinite were more generic soldiers than the chaotic splicers of Rapture. These differences notched the shooting/combat down for me in relation to Infinite.

Rapture. Big Daddies. Little Sisters. The plot twist. This all created a more interesting story and a more interesting world to explore, in tandem with a more engaging combat loop.

I also liked the hacking in Bioshock.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
Spoiler:

In the end, though, that's an abstract question in a game that puts historical problems front and center that feel very real and contemporary. It's not a comfortable fit.

Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but

Spoiler:

This was not at all my objection to Bioshock Infinite. If anything, I was thoroughly disappointed that it started out exploring thorny questions of history, and then midway through ditched all of that to give us a lazy "oh look both sides are evil and violent" narrative to justify the fact that the gameplay didn't have anything to offer beyond shooting your way out of problems.

And the big twist is that Booker, hyper violent villain protagonist, becomes a different flavor of hyper violent villain in other timelines, and so he needs to die. The weird thing is that you're ever expected to feel anything different. I enjoyed the ending when I played it because some of the visuals are interesting, but I can't imagine who is supposed to relate to Booker or feel anything because he has to die, and I'm the sort of person who cries at the drop of a hat in any media.

Demyx wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:
Spoiler:

In the end, though, that's an abstract question in a game that puts historical problems front and center that feel very real and contemporary. It's not a comfortable fit.

Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but

Spoiler:

This was not at all my objection to Bioshock Infinite. If anything, I was thoroughly disappointed that it started out exploring thorny questions of history, and then midway through ditched all of that to give us a lazy "oh look both sides are evil and violent" narrative to justify the fact that the gameplay didn't have anything to offer beyond shooting your way out of problems.

Spoiler:

I don't think it said "both sides are evil and violent." I thought it said "evil and violent actions have evil and violent reactions." I know Elizabeth says it, but I don't think she's (ironically) the voice of god here. She's a character that falls in love with the revolution and then has an equally unrealistic reaction when it disappoints her.

Like I said, I think it was a dystopian version of our own history. Our own history which is far from perfect, but did have some progressive mechanisms. Columbia is a world without those mechanisms, and so it's a world doomed to an evil and violent future.

Again, I don't think it ditched history. I think it just got too abstract given how real the legacy of that history is. Which leads to:

Demyx wrote:
Spoiler:

And the big twist is that Booker, hyper violent villain protagonist, becomes a different flavor of hyper violent villain in other timelines, and so he needs to die. The weird thing is that you're ever expected to feel anything different. I enjoyed the ending when I played it because some of the visuals are interesting, but I can't imagine who is supposed to relate to Booker or feel anything because he has to die, and I'm the sort of person who cries at the drop of a hat in any media.

Spoiler:

He dies when history turns from a Constant into a Variable around him. If he died earlier, the United States still would have spread violently across North America. Even Custer dying didn't prevent that. The event I thought of was when Roman expansion in Europe was halted when they lost three legions in Germany. No one battle was going to halt U.S. expansion, though. Whether Booker was a hero or a pacifist, there were big, impersonal forces of history in which he was just a cog. It's when he turns into Comstock that we're back into a Great Man theory of history, and that's why he has to die when he does.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
Spoiler:

I don't think it said "both sides are evil and violent." I thought it said "evil and violent actions have evil and violent reactions."

Spoiler:

But it does seem to take at face value the idea that the reactions are equally abhorrent to the actions that created the society in the first place, which is a controversial viewpoint for good reason.

Spoiler:

Like I said, I think it was a dystopian version of our own history. Our own history which is far from perfect, but did have some progressive mechanisms. Columbia is a world without those mechanisms, and so it's a world doomed to an evil and violent future.

Spoiler:

I mean, it's without those mechanisms because they were artificially avoided in the game. Because gameplay other than violent shooting is difficult to create and doesn't sell well, it didn't exist in the world of Columbia. That's not a commentary on history, that's commentary on the gaming industry, and it really isn't saying anything new or interesting. People have had that criticism for years.

Spoiler:

He dies when history turns from a Constant into a Variable around him. If he died earlier, the United States still would have spread violently across North America. Even Custer dying didn't prevent that. The event I thought of was when Roman expansion in Europe was halted when they lost three legions in Germany. No one battle was going to halt U.S. expansion, though. Whether Booker was a hero or a pacifist, there were big, impersonal forces of history in which he was just a cog. It's when he turns into Comstock that we're back into a Great Man theory of history, and that's why he has to die when he does.

Spoiler:

I mean... if the whole point is debunking the Great Man theory of history, I guess then it's no wonder it doesn't resonate with people who never subscribed to that theory in the first place.

Demyx wrote:
Spoiler:

But it does seem to take at face value the idea that the reactions are equally abhorrent to the actions that created the society in the first place, which is a controversial viewpoint for good reason.

Maybe, but just because something is controversial doesn't mean it's lazy.

Spoiler:

I mean, it's without those mechanisms because they were artificially avoided in the game. Because gameplay other than violent shooting is difficult to create and doesn't sell well, it didn't exist in the world of Columbia. That's not a commentary on history, that's commentary on the gaming industry, and it really isn't saying anything new or interesting. People have had that criticism for years.

Sorry, bad choice of words on my part: I don't mean mechanisms as in a game mechanism. I mean in history, mechanisms like social institutions that made the cities of that time capable of making progress without having to turn into Columbia.

Spoiler:

I mean... if the whole point is debunking the Great Man theory of history, I guess then it's no wonder it doesn't resonate with people who never subscribed to that theory in the first place.

I don't know--I've always enjoyed history that shifted the focus away from a 'Great Man' theory, and it resonated with me.

cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Maybe, but just because something is controversial doesn't mean it's lazy.

The fact that the game includes the view uncritically and there's no reason to think anyone who worked on the game would find it controversial is lazy.

Sorry, bad choice of words on my part: I don't mean mechanisms as in a game mechanism. I mean in history, mechanisms like social institutions that made the cities of that time capable of making progress without having to turn into Columbia.

And I mean that big budget AAA games generally don't depict those kinds of historical mechanisms in their settings or gameplay because it gets in the way of shooty murder fun time. There are reasons why so many AAA games are set in violent dystopias and post-apocalyptic settings.

I don't know--I've always enjoyed history that shifted the focus away from a 'Great Man' theory, and it resonated with me.
Spoiler:

Depicting a stereotypical Great Man of History kind of view and then debunking it at the last second isn't really "shifting focus away", is it?

You guys put much more effort into analyzing the plot than I did. I just thought it was a cool sci-fi blockbuster that had some amazing moments. Those opening and ending segments are two of my favorite sections in a game ever. Just stunning. Then the music... Wow.

Demyx wrote:
cheeze_pavilion wrote:

Maybe, but just because something is controversial doesn't mean it's lazy.

The fact that the game includes the view uncritically and there's no reason to think anyone who worked on the game would find it controversial is lazy.

Well, like I said, I don't think it was included uncritically.

And I mean that big budget AAA games generally don't depict those kinds of historical mechanisms in their settings or gameplay because it gets in the way of shooty murder fun time. There are reasons why so many AAA games are set in violent dystopias and post-apocalyptic settings.

Okay, but I was talking about something different.

Spoiler:

Depicting a stereotypical Great Man of History kind of view and then debunking it at the last second isn't really "shifting focus away", is it?

Spoiler:

I don't think it debunked it at the end. I think the whole game was about that difference between Booker Booker and Comstock Booker. Or like I said in one of the comments above, the difference between Cheap Amusments in turn of the century New York City and Columbia's Battleship Bay(?)

JeremyK wrote:

You guys put much more effort into analyzing the plot than I did.

Heh--I loved it and still do, but it's the game that made me feel it's maybe kinda silly to put too much (or at least, the wrong kind of) effort into analysing the plots of video games.

It will be interesting to see if these "Golden Reels" that they've added to the new games will add to the understanding/interpretations of the designers.

They are meant to be little nuggets of information/interviews that expand the understanding motivation for certain things (like a commentary, but more specific).

Also, appreciate the use of spoiler tags on a game way past the spoiler date, etc. Thank you!

I loved Bioshock: Infinite. Gameplay was fun, the world was super neat.

SallyNasty wrote:

I loved Bioshock: Infinite. Gameplay was fun, the world was super neat.

And they finally made a Bioshock game without screwed up achievements ; D

(I think--I never did try for all the achievements in Infinite)

cheeze_pavilion wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:

I loved Bioshock: Infinite. Gameplay was fun, the world was super neat.

And they finally made a Bioshock game without screwed up achievements ; D

(I think--I never did try for all the achievements in Infinite)

Nah, the first one is an easy 1K. The second one would be if not for the multiplayer achievements.

SallyNasty wrote:

I loved Bioshock: Infinite. Gameplay was fun, the world was super neat.

I just want to echo this sentiment.

I just ordered the collection.

Very happy. Might even break out this bad boy and try playing the game whilst wearing it!

IMAGE(http://www.raccoongames.es/img/productos/bioshock-infinite-sky-hook-replica/159653_detail_v3.jpg)

Yep, between that thing, and the Songbird statue, I pretty much "blew up" the collector's edition tolerance from my other half

It's really a good thing I didn't play BioShock 2 before Infinite. I'm not too far into my first playthrough ever of 2, but it's already heads above what I wanted a BioShock sequel to be like. Infinite isn't a bad game (and 2 is not perfect so far either), but BioShock 2 is already making it pretty clear how bad some of the design decisions on Infinite were in retrospect.