So, I've finally given Bioshock Infinite a chance. [SPOILERS]

[Frankster]

I gave up on the game pretty much at the point you did and had a similar experience. Glad to know I'm not totally weird (got reprimanded once by a bioshock infinite fan pointing to glowing reviews and tons of positive customer reviews on steam as proof I just dont know a good game when I play one), or maybe we both are.

Anyways I count Infinite as one of them overhyped and overpraised games whose popularity just proves I'm not in touch with the gaming zeitgeist. People also tend to overpraise the story or exagerate its "deepness" a bit too much for my tastes.

I really don't get why people find the combat so poor.

Because prior to playing Infinite I had played Shadow Warrior (the remake). The difference was like night and day, especially when it came to feeling you were firing weapons that had actual impact. Also when it comes to fun but I guess that one is more subjective.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

So, crap gameplay, crap story, crap setting and crap challenge...but at least the graphics are nice (typical modern trash)

Still, you finished it twice. I can't bring myself to finish it even once.

I don't really play games for fun anymore...i do it to show how piss-poor most gamers are at gaming. So many games i've rented and then trudged through because someone said 'it's too hard' and i thought 'you're just shit, i'll show you'. My gamerscore reflects this madness...

Nevermind though, i've found a game that kinda appeals to my obsessive desire for challenge...Super meat boy. I like a game that gets me growling in frustration

 

[ninja666]

If you're playing the game like a Modern Military Shooter, you're playing it wrong.

I played it like Quake. Still found the combat terribly unsatisfying and okay at best.

Also, Gear: If you get given it, I highly recommend Overkill. It causes nearby enemies to be stunned when you use "excessive" damage on one of them.

Am I the only one that found the whole idea of gear to be unnecessary and stupid? The game basically forces you to have some kind of magical powers you don't need (because the game is easy enough) because there's no "neutral" gear and you can't take anything off.

 

[Flammablezeus]

Yeah it's basically Bioshock but with all of the combat options whittled away and with more corridor sections. If you didn't like the first one, I don't see how you could like Infinite. The focus went from gameplay and atmosphere to story, and the story in Infinite really isn't that great. Like the first one, the only memorable part of the story is the end. The difference being that in the first one, the story was simply there to fuel the gameplay.

 

[MerlinCross]

If you're playing the game like a Modern Military Shooter, you're playing it wrong.

I played it like Bioshock. It still felt clunky and enemy still were bullet sponges.

The game gives you a nice varied arsenal to deal with the wide variety of enemies it throws at you.

Not really. You're limited to what guns are in the area due to how many bullets enemies take. Otherwise you're gonna be running back to the machines after every other firefight or relying on Elizabeth to give you ammo. So you had to upgrade EVERYTHING rather than upgrading your favorite weapons.

The vigors didn't feel strong enough to really make that much of a difference. Devil's Kiss and Murder of Crows seemed to be the best for like any thing so that's where all I put all the points.

Now, I must explain one thing. When gear first started to show up, I got pretty unlucky(though some would say lucky, not me). I picked up a gear named "Tunnel Vision". 25% damage up when looking through the sights but 25% damage reduction when hip firing. This colored my veiw of the combat even more so since I was forced to use the carbine most the game(whenever it could be found).

 

[ninja666]

Now, I must explain one thing. When gear first started to show up, I got pretty unlucky(though some would say lucky, not me). I picked up a gear named "Tunnel Vision". 25% damage up when looking through the sights but 25% damage reduction when hip firing. This colored my veiw of the combat even more so since I was forced to use the carbine most the game(whenever it could be found).

Uhh... there was a menu where you could swap your current gear for whatever else you found. Seems like you didn't know it, did you?

 

[MerlinCross]

Uhh... there was a menu where you could swap your current gear for whatever else you found. Seems like you didn't know it, did you?

Oh I knew. But there didn't seem a way to Unequip said gear if you didn't have any. And it took me awhile to find another boot slot. Now maybe I could unequip the gear but that still colors my opinion of the game. Just getting that out in the open, part of my opinion could just be me being blind to the Unequip button.

It was also the first boot slot I had found which I believe auto equips if you interact with it. Though I could be wrong.

 

[ninja666]

Oh I knew. But there didn't seem a way to Unequip said gear if you didn't have any. And it took me awhile to find another boot slot. Now maybe I could unequip the gear but that still colors my opinion of the game. Just getting that out in the open, part of my opinion could just be me being blind to the Unequip button.

Nah, you're right - there was no way to unequip anything. That said, either you are bad at searching or the equipment locations are random because:

a) I remember finding Tunnel Vision around halfway through the game.
b) I remember acquiring copious amounts of gear, boots included, pretty quickly.

 

[MerlinCross]

Nah, you're right - there was no way to unequip anything. That said, either you are bad at searching or the equipment locations are random because:

a) I remember finding Tunnel Vision around halfway through the game.
b) I remember acquiring copious amounts of gear, boots included, pretty quickly.

I think it's pseudo-random. What I mean is certain pieces are assigned to certain spots. All other gear is random. Sure you'll find it in the same spot over and over again but replay(maybe reload) and it could be a different piece. But this is turning to a gear complaint so I'll stop. Just wanted to give a possible explaination to why I think the enemies were bullet sponges. I mean they could be but I'd have to play the game again without this gear taking a slot.

Side note, I ended with a lot of shirts but only like 3 boots.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

The game explains why Comstock doesn't have an Elizabeth and why he wants one.

I'm not saying there isn't the occasional plothole or odd decision in the game, but that isn't one of them.

I don't recall any mention of why any of the "other" Comstocks needed your Elizabeth. Firstly, there's no point in Booker & Elizabeth going to get guns for Fitzroy after they go through that 1st tear because they only have that deal for an airship with their Fitzroy. There was no point in even going through the tear to begin with. I love the core story but most of the middle chunk is a pointless sidequest.

Actually, you had plasmids for the entirety of Bioshock and Bioshock 2, it's pretty much the first thing you get after the melee weapon in both games. Plus you didn't have to wait on Elizabeth to search trash for Eve- I mean 'Smelling Salts' since you collected them yourself and had more to choose from. With plasmids, I always preferred how they worked in Bioshock 2 where the upgrades actually functioned differently from each other. Speaking of upgrades, I was somewhat disappointed how half-assed it was in Infinite due to the disposable nature of weaponry.

I think you misread my post as I said I don't think it was possible to basically use nothing but "power weapons" in the 1st Bioshock. I never played Bioshock 2 because I didn't much care for the 1st one.

I really don't get why people find the combat so poor.

Because prior to playing Infinite I had played Shadow Warrior (the remake). The difference was like night and day, especially when it came to feeling you were firing weapons that had actual impact. Also when it comes to fun but I guess that one is more subjective.

I've been playing Shadow Warrior off and on since release on PS4 and Infinite is better than it in some regards. Infinite has better powers. Shadow Warrior's enemies are even more bullet spongy than Infinite's when using a standard automatic guns. The only thing I'd say Shadow Warrior has on Infinite in the melee.

 

[drummond13]

The game explains why Comstock doesn't have an Elizabeth and why he wants one.

I'm not saying there isn't the occasional plothole or odd decision in the game, but that isn't one of them.

I don't recall any mention of why any of the "other" Comstocks needed your Elizabeth. Firstly, there's no point in Booker & Elizabeth going to get guns for Fitzroy after they go through that 1st tear because they only have that deal for an airship with their Fitzroy. There was no point in even going through the tear to begin with. I love the core story but most of the middle chunk is a pointless sidequest.

We're talking about two different things here.

Comstock needed Elizabeth, or thought he did, because he knew he needed a daughter of his own bloodline to continue his work. I think he came to this conclusion by looking through various tears, though it's been a little while since I've played the game. Comstock was rendered sterile through his work with the rifts, so no, he didn't have his own Elizabeth or any way to get one of his own, nor did any variation of Comstock who chose to go through with the baptism. Hence his decision to steal one from another version of himself who didn't become Comstock and wasn't rendered sterile.

As for your point about the guns and Fitzroy I think you're absolutely right. I wondered the same thing, and decided that maybe Booker and Elizabeth simply hadn't realized the full extent of what going through the rifts meant. This bothered me, but only a little. It certainly didn't stop me from enjoying the game.

Are the guns a pointless sidequest? I think that's a matter of perspective. I feel like Mass Effect 2 was 90% sidequests to gather a crew, and yet I loved it. I grew up on JRPGs with sidequests galore. Deus Ex is one of my all time faves, and my favorite sections of it are the city hubs that have tons of sidequests that don't connect to the main plot. I know FPSs tend to be a bit shorter and more intense, but having to get the guns in the midst of Bioshock Infinite really didn't bug me as much as it seems to have bugged you. I wasn't even bothered by Sander Cohen's section of Bioshock, even though it put the main plot on hold, because I liked how it changed the tone of the game for a bit mid-way through.

 

[Dalisclock]

I don't recall any mention of why any of the "other" Comstocks needed your Elizabeth. Firstly, there's no point in Booker & Elizabeth going to get guns for Fitzroy after they go through that 1st tear because they only have that deal for an airship with their Fitzroy. There was no point in even going through the tear to begin with. I love the core story but most of the middle chunk is a pointless sidequest.

As someone else pointed out, I'm pretty sure Booker and Elizabeth didn't quite realize what was going on when they started going through/expanding the tears(I'm of the opinion they weren't going into other universes so much as merging elements of two universes, thus the tear sickness). Notice that when they meet the Gunmakers wife the second time around it takes them a minute to realize this totally different person is his wife.

And yeah, the guns sidquest ends up being fairly pointless and when I first heard about it, I sighed to myself because my least favorite part of the original bioshock(other then the big daddy escort mission near the end) was the rampant sidequests to open the next door(Yep, the door to where you need to go is right there. Now, go to the other side of the level to get it open). I was kind of glad when they eventually said "fuck it" and the next universe has the revolution already going and you're done with the guns thing.

But Finkton is one of the low points of the game for me, frankly, and that's speaking as someone who really liked the game.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Yeah, Bioshock: Infinite had problems. So many problems that I could go on for a very long time about everything that was wrong with the game and its story. But, I won't do that. I'll just go on for a little while and refer you to smudboy's excellent 5 part analysis of the game's nonsensical plot.

First off two weapon restriction completely ruined the gameplay. Okay so the two weapons limit is supposed to encourage me to switch up weapons, but why then is there an upgrade system for weapons? As soon as I pour any money into a weapon I then have to stick with the weapon forever because otherwise there was no point in upgrading it at all. So basically I played most of the game with the same two weapons (carbine and shotgun), never really getting a chance to play around with the other weapons because I was scared that if I dropped one of my guns to try out a different one I wouldn't be able to find another one of my upgraded guns when I needed it.

Second, the people were so static and really didn't fit with the story that the game was trying to tell. For about a quarter of the game I was under the impression that everybody in Columbia was insane due to the way that they were built up in a similar fashion to the splicers in Bioshock, what with all the dead mutilated bodies and the fact that all these guys charge at Booker with so much gusto when he is clearly a walking genocide. Around the time that I got to some shipping yard and saw all the regular people standing around and cowering I started to suspect that I was actually supposed to sympathise with these cardboard cutout people and wasn't supposed to have concluded that the entire city was an insane cult or something.

Another thing that really bothered me was the whole deal of trying to get that stupid airship back. It was nonsensical, even disregarding all of the retarded alternate dimension stupidity. Booker blows up like 5 more airships, why can't we take one of those? Seriously, we just hijacked that first airship, why did Booker immediately form such an intense bond with the first blimp he steps foot on?

Lastly, why do we have to stop Comstock from existing in all realities? Seriously, there are infinite dimensions, why can't those other Bookers and Elizabeths just look after their own crap? And it's just one tyrant, there have been thousands throughout history, multiply that by infinity for every possible tyrant in the multiverse. What's next, a quest to stop every single person who has ever done a bad thing in any possible reality across all planets over the entire history of time? Because that's only slightly more unrealistic that deciding that it's your job to stop every instance of Comstock over an infinite number of realities. It's like if I see a starving person and I go and feed them, and then I decide that I now have to go and feed every single hungry person that ever existed, exists, or will exist. Like holy cow, you don't have to personally take responsibility to fight every evil there ever was, there's only so much one person can do.

So now that I've gotten that out I want to refer everyone to watch smudboy's analysis for a great in depth dissection of everything that was wrong with Bioshock: Infinite's story.

Seriously, if you want in-depth analysis of Bioshock: Infinite, here it is. This is about the most depth you will find on the subject, 90 minutes of it to be approximate.


One last thing, I find it kind of funny how many people there are in this thread saying how bad Bioshock: Infinite was when at launch it was pretty much lauded across the board. I guess most of the cynical critical people don't buy games at launch, which would make sense.

 

[Azahul]

Lastly, why do we have to stop Comstock from existing in all realities? Seriously, there are infinite dimensions, why can't those other Bookers and Elizabeths just look after their own crap? And it's just one tyrant, there have been thousands throughout history, multiply that by infinity for every possible tyrant in the multiverse. What's next, a quest to stop every single person who has ever done a bad thing in any possible reality across all planets over the entire history of time? Because that's only slightly more unrealistic that deciding that it's your job to stop every instance of Comstock over an infinite number of realities. It's like if I see a starving person and I go and feed them, and then I decide that I now have to go and feed every single hungry person that ever existed, exists, or will exist. Like holy cow, you don't have to personally take responsibility to fight every evil there ever was, there's only so much one person can do.

For good or for ill, that's down to the game trying to use its story as a metaphor for games. In the same way that the first game used its plot twist as a metaphorical barb against the idea of agency in video games, Infinite uses its ending to make a deliberate statement about the meaning of... well, anything you do in a video game (namely, that any action is meaningless, because there is always someone out there in the universe playing the same game in just a slightly different way with the same inevitable end result).

The game's ending is a suggested "solution". Any instance of Bioshock Infinite ends in a situation in which the events of Bioshock Infinite cannot take place. Anytime, anywhere. You "win" the game by erasing everything that happened in the game. It's remarkably similar in concept, if not in tone, to Spec Ops: The Line's idea of "the only way to win is not to play".

Ken Levine loves this kind of stuff. Your preference for messages and story-through-symbolism may vary wildly (I personally enjoy it a great deal, but I acknowledge that it hardly appeals to everyone), but you should expect something on this level when going into a Bioshock game. This kind of statement was what made the first game famous, it was only to be expected that something weird would happen in the sequel with a similar idea behind it.

 

[ninja666]

So now that I've gotten that out I want to refer everyone to watch smudboy's analysis for a great in depth dissection of everything that was wrong with Bioshock: Infinite's story.

Just finished watching it. Holy shit, this game's story has so many holes, it could've been used as a pasta colander. This game is easily the Indigo Prophecy of video games.

 

[RJ 17]

Snip.

I really enjoyed the game...to start. I never liked the combat, though. As you pointed out, they seemed to believe that "difficulty" equates to "enemies that can take 3 full clips to the face and keep fighting". As for the vigors, stick with the crows. Once you get a couple upgrades for it they pretty much take care of combat for you, spreading from one corpse to the next target over and over, soon filling the entire area with crows until everyone's dead. As for the story...well besides the fact that it's a point-to-point retread of BS2 (which I find funny seeing as how people who enjoy this game praise it's story above all else while saying that BS2 is the bastard-child of the series with a crap story just because Levine wasn't involved in creating it), I can't say I liked it that much. At least in hindsight. I enjoyed the story all the way through the ending, but when you put some thought into the ending - and the multiverse theory that the game's story is based around - it doesn't work. The problem is that when you're working with the multiverse theory in which quite literally anything and everything can, will, and has already happened, you can quite literally just start making up plot-holes and they're perfectly valid.

Without spoiling, they come up with a plan to basically erase Comstock from existence...and there's no possible way it can work, the game just says it will work.

So you take in the fact that the story just doesn't work combined with combat mechanics that are broken at best, horrendously slogging at worst, and in the end I really have to say I didn't like the game at all. As I said, this was a realization I came to only a couple days after beating the game the first time. It was kinda weird, I was on my 2nd playthrough and it just occurred to me: "You know...I really don't like this game...like, at all..." So I stopped playing and haven't touched it since.

 

[3asytarg3t]

In my book this one was rather brilliant, and any game that makes repeated references to "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" is very much a good thing.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/bioshock-infinite-rosencrantz-and-guildenstern-are-dead-continue

P.S. OP, here's a little Shakespeare for you:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

We're talking about two different things here.

Comstock needed Elizabeth, or thought he did, because he knew he needed a daughter of his own bloodline to continue his work. I think he came to this conclusion by looking through various tears, though it's been a little while since I've played the game. Comstock was rendered sterile through his work with the rifts, so no, he didn't have his own Elizabeth or any way to get one of his own, nor did any variation of Comstock who chose to go through with the baptism. Hence his decision to steal one from another version of himself who didn't become Comstock and wasn't rendered sterile.

As for your point about the guns and Fitzroy I think you're absolutely right. I wondered the same thing, and decided that maybe Booker and Elizabeth simply hadn't realized the full extent of what going through the rifts meant. This bothered me, but only a little. It certainly didn't stop me from enjoying the game.

Are the guns a pointless sidequest? I think that's a matter of perspective. I feel like Mass Effect 2 was 90% sidequests to gather a crew, and yet I loved it. I grew up on JRPGs with sidequests galore. Deus Ex is one of my all time faves, and my favorite sections of it are the city hubs that have tons of sidequests that don't connect to the main plot. I know FPSs tend to be a bit shorter and more intense, but having to get the guns in the midst of Bioshock Infinite really didn't bug me as much as it seems to have bugged you. I wasn't even bothered by Sander Cohen's section of Bioshock, even though it put the main plot on hold, because I liked how it changed the tone of the game for a bit mid-way through.

Yeah, I know why Comstock needs Elizabeth. My point was when you go to a different universe, why does that Comstock need your Elizabeth when he should already have his own Elizabeth?

I'm almost certain Elizabeth says we can't go back before you go through the 1st tear. That alone makes going through the tear pointless.

A large chunk of the 1st Bioshock is a sidequest, the Cohen section of the sidequest just so happened to be good, the rest was busy work without being very good.

As someone else pointed out, I'm pretty sure Booker and Elizabeth didn't quite realize what was going on when they started going through/expanding the tears(I'm of the opinion they weren't going into other universes so much as merging elements of two universes, thus the tear sickness). Notice that when they meet the Gunmakers wife the second time around it takes them a minute to realize this totally different person is his wife.

And yeah, the guns sidquest ends up being fairly pointless and when I first heard about it, I sighed to myself because my least favorite part of the original bioshock(other then the big daddy escort mission near the end) was the rampant sidequests to open the next door(Yep, the door to where you need to go is right there. Now, go to the other side of the level to get it open). I was kind of glad when they eventually said "fuck it" and the next universe has the revolution already going and you're done with the guns thing.

But Finkton is one of the low points of the game for me, frankly, and that's speaking as someone who really liked the game.

Like I said above, Elizabeth knows they can't go back before the 1st tear. I know the explanation of Elizabeth pulling stuff into your universe is the only thing that makes any kind of sense. But I really think that the writers' intention was that you indeed were going to different universes.

 

[RJ 17]

As for the vigors, stick with the crows. Once you get a couple upgrades for it they pretty much take care of combat for you, spreading from one corpse to the next target over and over, soon filling the entire area with crows until everyone's dead.

I did that, and the funniest thing happened.

On the way to getting the Vox's guns back from the police lockup, you fight some dudes in a very run-down back-alley place. I used crows to take them all out, and the entire place was filled with crows when I moved on.
On my way back through that part (because the game forces you to backtrack, after having got the guns), suddenly my screen was spammed with 'friendly fire' messages. "Don't attack friendlies" or whatever it said.

On your way back, the same area becomes filled with non-hostile Vox soldiers. But in *my* game, the area was also filled with crows from the fight earlier. And crows apparently don't have any IFF ability, they just attack everyone indiscriminately.

So the crows were laying waste to all these dudes, while the dudes were all complaining about "friendly fire", and I was just standing there laughing my head off.

Yeah, the crows were ridiculous in that game. In a way they helped balance out the bullet-sponginess of the enemies...but that means you'll be using nothing but the crows the entire game...which is exactly what I ended up doing about half-way through it when I realized "Holy crap these crows kill everything!" Certainly helps that the crow corpse-traps never despawn. From a practicality standpoint, there's no reason to use any other Vigor, though since I went through the game with a sniper rifle as my primary weapon (another thing I didn't like about the game: only 2 weapons...I don't care that it makes the game seem more realistic, I prefer being a walking arsenal like in the first two games ), the bronco vigor was pretty useful too.

Gotta admit, though...I missed the bees from the first two games. Granted, the crows are far deadlier and capable of completely wiping out an enemy attack squad while the bees were mainly just used to momentarily stun an enemy, but come on...you're shooting BEES at people!
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!