Adventure Gamers - Forums

It is quite good, yeah.

Finished.

Pros

Artistic level design,Intense Skyrail use in battles, Music, Sound etc.
Story execution has plenty of highs, very cleverly used ... you will know what

Cons

Repetitve enemies.
Some of the Voiceacting is not as good as i hoped.
Not all Vigors are interesting and dont tie in with story.

This game is Arthouse of Gaming.

10/10

And guys finish the game, so that we can discuss the story.

Wow! That was fast.

Still taking it nice and slow, myself;  but - though maybe I don’t quite agree so far on it being the arthouse of gaming (I think there are games that have done and are doing more with the narrative possibilities of interactive games) - I can’t say I totally disagree with it either.

I’d love to see more games tackling deeper themes and aspiring to be more artistic and for more game developer ‘auteurs’.

Hammerite - 27 March 2013 08:57 AM

Wow! That was fast.

Still taking it nice and slow, myself;  but - though maybe I don’t quite agree so far on it being the arthouse of gaming (I think there are games that have done and are doing more with the narrative possibilities of interactive games) - I can’t say I totally disagree with it either.

I’d love to see more games tackling deeper themes and aspiring to be more artistic and for more game developer ‘auteurs’.

Yeah keep playing, high points will come later, the approach is not to different from BS1, but there are some really clever narrative threads and blending thereunder.

People have mixed reactions to it, some calling it pretentious some hamfisted, so
lets see how many of you will like it.

Even more excited than I was already!

My only gripe so far is HOW MUCH I HATE AUTOSAVING GODDAMMIT (if you must have save points, do it in the Final Fantasy / Silent Hill / loadsa other games style… not so I have to make a decision to stop playing because I might not have time, or to keep playing because I still think I might have enough time).

I’ve played Infinite for a couple of hours (I just now got Elizabeth as a teammate), and so far, I don’t agree with all the “10/10” reviews. It’s beautiful, and it seems to have a story beyond “save America by shooting men”, so that’s great. Elizabeth must be the first FPS NPC companion I don’t want to strangle, which I also like.

Yet, the gameplay—apart from the NPC companion—is nothing new or exciting and the “exploration” feels like a walk through a museum; the whole city doesn’t feel alive at all. Your ability to interact with the world is very limited, all the secondary “characters” are basically your generic FPS-automatons that only activate when you approach them, which kills the immersion for me.

I realize that those are exactly the gripes people had with Dear Esther and The Walking Dead, games that I’ve vocally defended on AGS. Still, I feel like Dear Esther was never meant to be anything other than an experimental (and short) walk through a museum, while TWD’s attention was on believable human interactions, and I could excuse its lack of involving gameplay beyond choosing a path in a dialogue tree with its low budget.

Besides, for a shooter, the mouse/keyboard-controls are atrocious. Absolutely no thought has gone into them, it’s obvious we’re all supposed to play the game with a controller. I’ve tried that, and it’s still very different from and subjectively worse than games like Bulletstorm or Halo.

I might be criticizing a linear console shooter for being a linear console shooter, and I’m sure it continues to be a fun ride. Still, I feel like it could be much so more, and I’m sad to see the beautiful cityscape used only as a pretty background for shootouts (which are not even that much fun). For a game that tries to sell me on an unusual set and setting, the first feels too artificial and the second limits your interaction with the world to triggering scripts and shooting a gun.

Disclaimer: I haven’t played much of the predecessors, mainly because of their clunky controls and the horror-themed setting. I’ll continue playing Infinite, because I am mildly intrigued by the city and the Elizabeth character, but I doubt I’ll remember anything about the game other than what they both look like (pretty) in a few months. And just to clarify, since most of you obviously like the game: I do too, I just disagree that it deserves quite as much praise as it’s getting.

EDIT: regarding the controls, tweaking some INI files helped a lot.

You have to play previous BS games , even SystemShock2 to understand sensibilities of the plot and narrative style and other things i cannot spoil that HAVE link. You will MISS bigtime.

Yes its boring in beginning, it will pick up pace, the highlight is skyrail around beautiful world and fighting , jumping, plasmids, shooting , rails again, taking down airships , rinse repeat. The World detail is their way of expressing story and narrative, same style used in BS1.

At the end of the game you will realize all things done to support the story which is
complex like hell,and there are hints in every dialogue and in environment, that you could easily miss but cleverly used to part of the story which in turn is driving plenty of theories, its like Killer7 of west, with lots of open threads to make your own theories, in the end the effort they put in the art, music and whatnot is something you aint gonna get anywhere in gaming world anytime soon. But it makes the 1999 throwback hard
mode pretty much afterthought, since you still cannot skip Liz drama and forced cutscenes,
and there is tehnically no item management UI option. Feels like shoehorned basically.

Note: Since there are so many threads and inference of plot going on , i am compiling all of them, so that later we can make things easier to grasp.

nomadsoul - 27 March 2013 11:14 AM

You have to play previous BS games , even SystemShock2 to understand sensibilities of the plot and narrative style and other things i cannot spoil that HAVE link. You will MISS bigtime.

So you mean that even though the games are not related story- or setting-wise, I’ll not be able to follow and enjoy the narration of Infinite as a stand-alone installment? I might as well give up now, since I’m not going to play the prequels; I’d love to give SS2 a shot, but I still haven’t found the cheat code that disables the 1999 mode.

nomadsoul - 27 March 2013 11:14 AM

You have to play previous BS games , even SystemShock2 to understand sensibilities of the plot and narrative style and other things i cannot spoil that HAVE link. You will MISS bigtime.

Intriguing. I look forward to thinking bout / discussing these when I’ve finished.

kuze - 27 March 2013 12:51 PM

nomadsoul - 27 March 2013 11:14 AM

You have to play previous BS games , even SystemShock2 to understand sensibilities of the plot and narrative style and other things i cannot spoil that HAVE link. You will MISS bigtime.

So you mean that even though the games are not related story- or setting-wise, I’ll not be able to follow and enjoy the narration of Infinite as a stand-alone installment? I might as well give up now, since I’m not going to play the prequels; I’d love to give SS2 a shot, but I still haven’t found the cheat code that disables the 1999 mode.

It depends, chose my words carefully since rest will be spoilers. I enjoyed Dishonored
more thanks to my love for Thief series same case here. Give it a shot, at least some
things are really well executed you might like them.

It’s just getting better and better.

Those Looking Glass alumni sure are good at making games.

Monolith - 28 March 2013 07:14 AM

So…how is the gameplay in the Bioshock series nothing new? Care to elaborate because no other FPS tackles gameplay quite like these.

I’m quite early in the game, so I probably should have reserved judgment until finishing it, but I doubt much will change.

I appreciate the idea of an immortal and helpful NPC that doesn’t get in your way, as I’ve mentioned. This is new to me, and I cannot help wondering why it hasn’t been done before like this.

The skylines as a means of transportation are also a welcome and fun addition to how you traverse a level, even though so far it hasn’t been too dissimilar from riding a mine cart. I can see their potential, but I also hear that I won’t be spending much time riding them as the story progresses.

Everything else has been done in Bioshock (and most of it in other shooters as well): the slightly awkward shooting mechanics, the “magic”, the corridor levels with a few side-arms hiding coins and audio-tapes, the heavy scripting, even the rudimentary “RPG-elements”. Again, I’m criticizing a shooter sequel for being a shooter sequel, and I’m complementing it on being somewhat less generic than usual as far as gameplay goes. It’s a variation on what’s been done, so yes, no other FPS is “quite like this”, but it’s not radically different either.

It might be a question of (unrealistic) expectations; after seeing the gushing reviews, I went in hoping to spend my time not doing the same man-popping as I do in every other game. I was just disappointed to see that, once again, my interaction with a seemingly deep story and a lush world is limited to just that.

PS: There was a scene where you have to choose Elizabeth’s necklace, which could easily be my favorite part in the game so far. I don’t even know the significance of it, but it made me feel way more involved than when I was listening to pages after pages of read text or had to clear an area from baddies.

kuze - 28 March 2013 08:18 AM

Monolith - 28 March 2013 07:14 AM

So…how is the gameplay in the Bioshock series nothing new? Care to elaborate because no other FPS tackles gameplay quite like these.

Everything else has been done in Bioshock (and most of it in other shooters as well): the slightly awkward shooting mechanics, the “magic”, the corridor levels with a few side-arms hiding coins and audio-tapes, the heavy scripting, even the rudimentary “RPG-elements”. Again, I’m criticizing a shooter sequel for being a shooter sequel, and I’m complementing it on being somewhat less generic than usual as far as gameplay goes. It’s a variation on what’s been done, so yes, no other FPS is “quite like this”, but it’s not radically different either.

It might be a question of (unrealistic) expectations; after seeing the gushing reviews, I went in hoping to spend my time not doing the same man-popping as I do in every other game. I was just disappointed to see that, once again, my interaction with a seemingly deep story and a lush world is limited to just that.

PS: There was a scene where you have to choose Elizabeth’s necklace, which could easily be my favorite part in the game so far. I don’t even know the significance of it, but it made me feel way more involved than when I was listening to pages after pages of read text or had to clear an area from baddies.

And the shooting mechanics, weapons and all are redundant, specially after Borderlands2, i have lost fun in FPS, though Skyrails save the day yet they are underused, but kicks up adrenaline in large scale battles.

As far as significance goes , that matters to the plot, and take heed of everything, in
the end all of you will be pushed to either play the game again or curse the game.
The story is very convoluted and adventure game in itself .

Which i liked actually to give full rating though Dishonored was way better in gameplay mechanics and playground freedom. And since i always advocate gameplay over
stories in videogames , MGRising still my GOTY