Your Biggest Experience With Hype Backlash

[Fox12]

Easy. Citizen Kane.

The greatest film of all time. A masterpiece of film making. The golden standard by which all film are judged. When we want to label something as groundbreaking, we compare it to Citizen Kane. Heck, Bioshock Infinite is apparently the Citizen Kane of gaming. And I agree, it is, in the sense that they're both monstrously overrated, and not nearly as intellectual as people claim.

I was expecting to be blown away, but instead I was disappointed. It began with what must have been one of the clumsiest exposition dumps in the history of cinema. You're supposed to weave exposition into the narrative. The pacing was stilted and weird, some of the scenes made little to no sense, and the acting was a mixed bag.

The film wasn't bad, of course. Several of the scenes were very powerful, especially the ones dealing with Kane's second marriage, and Orson Welles commands the screen, sometimes saving the film from less competent actors. You really see him breaking at the end, and it hurts. Dorothy Comingore does a decent job as well, though some of her dialogue is rather weak. All of this can't save the film, however. I can think of numerous films off of the top of my head that a superior in almost every way. I understand that Kane was ground breaking, but objectively it just doesn't hold up as well as the critics would have you believe.

Bioshock Infinite is a wonderful game... And nowhere near as close as Citizen Kane is. Sorry, but it's true. Story telling for games still hasn't approached even the beginings of the height of other media, but that's okay; video games are still young, and we have Telltale's The Walking Dead Season 1, Portal and Spec Ops: The Line which are amazing pieces of media which I would hold up as a gold standard.

The exposition dump is there to then be taken apart by the audience; it also provides context for the rest of the story as the narrative jumps back and forth, and finally, it's meant to show this great man and then show what a broken thing he was.

The camera work, the direction, the acting, the narrative, the sets, everything is precise and near perfect; I cannot think of a single better camera shot than after his second wife leaves and he stands by the mirror.

However, I think that this is very much now a film for film buffs; it's intellectual wanking. To say it's bad is to not appreciate why it's good, to miss the point of why it is so beloved. And that's fine, everyone has things which are loved and they dislike. For example, you'll see I am not the biggest fan of Bioshock Infinite.

Also, because I can't think of a smooth way to put this in there, I think that the "Would you kindly..." reveal is possibly the best reveal in video games, and one of the best scenes for gutpunching the audience that I have EVER seen, in film or not (yes, even better than the mirror shot). This is why I think that eventually, video games will overcome film as superior.

And I should emphasize that I though citizen Kane was a good film, it's just, when you hype something up as the greatest thing thing ever, in a way you're doing it a disservice, because it can never meet audiences expectations. The technical aspects of the film were great, I had more issue with the story.

It's true that games haven't reached that height yet, though I expect that will change. The closest we've gotten, I think, is silent hill 2. It's far from perfect, and the dialogue and voice acting need some work, but it's a masterpiece of visual story telling. Every action is symbolic. Something as mundane as killing monsters represents the characters violence towards his wife. The narrative and mechanics are weaves together, and they use game progression to tell the story. When you find the flashlight, it's connected to a mannequin in a dark room. The light draws attention to the mannequin, which is symbolically wearing your wife's clothes. We really need more developers like team silent trying to create a more artistic experiance.

 

[Evonisia]

Bioshock Infinite. That game was soooooooooooooooooooo boring. Yet people claim it to be the pinnacle of human achievement. Story wasn't bad, but that gameplay was just horrible.

Hasn't the last year or so been all about hating Bioshock Infinite a few months after release? I thought it was pretty good until I finally got around to playing the first BioShock. Infinite's flaws really popped out after that and pales in comparison.

I didn't really notice the backlash until about autumn 2013 personally, and I personally had managed to play it before then (June). At the time though it was ridiculously hyped and I might have even said B:I in my post seeing as I played BioShock 1 just before it (I bought both, alongside Mirror's Edge and Remember Me on the same day), had GTA V not managed to be even more of a disappointment (though I much preferred it).