The story and the journey are good, the combat and the game play are not great.

I'm guessing you were spec'd especially well. I, on the other hand wasn't. I haven't played it since it came out, so I forget how I was actually specialised.

@baillie: Yeah, I guess I was kind of over prepared (by that point I had fully spec out the powers and weapons I liked and had a bunch of armour perks that I was happy with). One armour perk, for example, froze your health making you immune to damage for about 2 seconds after eating/getting a health pick-up - for a majority of that game it was really overpowered, until the final eighth of the the game (when most of the health pick-ups were few and full-heal ones - which meant you couldn't spread out the healing to prolong the immune effect). Also, I found keeping moving with a pistol, darting around areas to scavenge for items as you fought, tended to make most fights not-too-much trouble. Although to do it effectively took a lot more effort than most probably cared to put in.

Yea...I spoke to soon its actually starting to get interesting the plot is still like wtf?to me though.The whole vigors thing seem like their just there to be there in the previous ones the plasmids actually had alot to do with everything and some of the vigors kinda seem like mods of the previous,but maybe im just nitpicking so far

I really dug the story but maybe it was due to me getting deep into Fringe at the time I played it. While I agree with your statement, to a degree, I think Infinite is a much more coherent experience. It Definitely has a stronger second half and a much better ending then the first Bioshock.

Once you hit the back quarter of the game, you'll be pining for the times when it was "too easy". It's never a HARD game, per se, it just gets a bit tedious on higher difficulties. It feels like they throw the entire population of Columbia at you two or three times, at points in the story where you just want to move on and see what happens next.

if your already meg on it already, because the first hour your already into columbia and you had your first combat then I say no, don't play through it. It's more of a nice game to play with a girlfriend who wants to see purrty things on the screen.

BioShock Infinite was the one that clicked for me for the series. I thought the first one was good, but not as good as everyone says it is. While the story does take a massive misstep in the middle, the ending is worth the play through at least once.

I think you are. Just see it through, I won't say more than that.

Absolutely! I'd say especially if you liked the other games you should stick with it.

Sold!

Bioshock Infinite is freaking amazing. Don't let the internet hipsters ruin it for you. It's a time travel story, of course there'll be plot holes, because there's ALWAYS plot holes in those stories. The combat is fine, the city is amazing, and the cast of characters is fantastic (Lutece twins, Booker, Elisabeth and Songbird).

Seems like you already found the answer yourself. I did my first run on 1999 mode. I did some amazing stuff with the combat and changed my approach frequently, either because I had to because of ammo constraints or because I wanted to try something new. It never felt boring to me, I even felt like I was playing a new game every half an hour.

An unexpected amount of hate in this thread.

I loved it, personally - for the story and atmosphere. I didn't care much for the combat.

Bioshock Infinite was an incredible game... easily one of the best I've played this year.

Potential spoilers below though I will try to avoid specifics:

I feel like a lot of the story criticism, particularly from Patrick Klepek in the game of the year discussions, misses the point. It sounds like he is wanting some sort of didactic Hollywood-style issue commentary/judgement without even noticing the fairly blatant allegory that Bioshock Infinite sets up between a collapsing time paradox and cycles of oppression and violence.

The story plays with the idea of universal law in both the choices that an individual makes and the nature of the larger societies that form the setting to the story. The overall story arc tells how a violation of the natural order results in an unsustainable and self destructive reality while making undisguised references to slavery, racism, totalitarianism, and corporate excess employed in the name of creating a "Utopia". Each distopic parallel reality within the collapsing time paradox showed various stages of the social collapse brought on by those violations of "natural order". The juxtaposition of sci-fi paradox with social paradox was clever and I felt it "paid off" exactly how it intended to... without tidy answers, but with an interesting perspective.

If you are into art direction and immersion, yes.

For purely gameplay purposes, maybe not.

"But how will I know which order of the 3 games in my backlog to play? Like, decide based on my own initial interest of each one individually? Pfft."

Well... yes. I think so. As a person who is strong believer that the first Bioshock is vastly superior, I still think for the story itself, Infinite is worth playing. Just don't spoil yourself on the ending or else then it truly won't be worth it.

Also, don't expect much from the gameplay. It's not as good as what Rapture provided you. The ammo, the lack of plasmids, the shooting itself and the environments are not as good in Infinite and it wears out its welcome before the end. I finished Infinite and then played through the original all over again. It's better! But even the "would you kindly" moment isn't as good as Infinites mind fuck. The story is better told. Play it. Finish it.

Still playing it through its a good game,but I honestly don't see how people keep calling this a amazing game...Its good at best

For some reason, I enjoyed the gameplay much more after I kicked the difficulty up to Hard. It made me be more cautious and learn how to use everything. When I was playing through on Normal, I was able to lean on my run and gun middling shooter skills. Once I finished the game, I only missed like 3 of the recordings, but I was confused to a lot of the story and it all really tied together. On the surface, it seemed perhaps... inconsistent. But after reading a lot of what other gamers wrote about the game, I realized how much more deliberate and well thought out the game was. There are so many things one can miss. Now you can blame the game for not engaging the player enough and that's a fair criticism, but I really enjoyed sitting there after my first play through and just thinking, trying to sort it all out. My second play through really made me appreciate the game much more. I loved it.

I didnt like the first two Bioshocks but liked this one. They are certainly different, but I still think its worth seeing.

This is a great game, if you disagree I will cry and call you a hater.

Someone might have to explain to me why people love hating things so much.

I mean, I kinda do the same thing for Dota 2 and WoW but that's more me, hating the part where those games seem to make people completly obsessed and make them say stuff like ''fuck every other game ever, I'm just going to play this one for the next 5 years''.

The world and story are great. It's really weird how everyone decided to hate this game. There's a reason there was so much talk about the ending.

Lets put it this way: If you are not hooked by the time you find Elizabeth and escape the tower with her, you are free to put the game down and say you are not into it. Its not even that far... a couple more hours should do.

At the point you are in, its like the introduction to the introduction to the prologue...

Also, don't worry about the difficulty. It ramps up rather quickly after a few sections.

I enjoyed it a bit. I would say normal was a bit too easy.

@joshwent said:

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Get outta here with your logical thought process! 'Round these parts we laugh at and make fun of people with different opinions!

You say that like people know that they've enjoyed a game before they've actually played it.

Umm, I'm not sure I get what you're getting at here. I'm certainly not saying that people can like or dislike a game before they've played it. And I think that one should give any media a decent chance before they dismiss it. (I try to give any TV series 4 episodes before I make up my mind. I call it the LOST principle, after that fantastic "Walkabout" episode changed everything.)

But there's a strange sentiment some have that people should like a game/show/whatever, and that you're missing something if you don't. I love turn based strategy games, I love sci-fi, but X-com just never clicked for me even after starting the game twice. And that's okay.

So when someone says, "I started playing ___ and I don't like it. Should I?" I think the only answer is, "Decide for yourself".

And that's the part that makes this all make sense. Of course, somebody could argue that the game gets better over time, but that's a completely separate argument.

I've still thought it was great since the day I played it, but if you're not having fun then don't force yourself to play it. I would say keep going a little longer, since it seems like you're pretty early in the game.

You have to understand, there's this running joke with Bioshock where everyone in the press gives the games high marks for a laugh. And then forum users join in, and eventually it's impossible to distinguish if you're not in the loop.

There are even people who say they don't like it and then give intentionally silly reasons. Like they say Infinite's story is bad, as a sort of ironic reference to the first game's even worse story. It's like an ARG where the goal is just to trick people into buying these terrible games

At least the RPG elements and the environment/sound design kept SS2 interesting. Co-oping that game was fun as hell. I'm still waiting for SS3. @flameboy298 if you aren't enjoying it now then you may as well stop, there is no point at which the game suddenly gets way better.

If you didn't like the beginning, then you already didn't like one of the two best parts of the game. It's probably not worth your time. That said, if I remember where you're at right, you're not quite done with the beginning yet.

where's your "b" bioshock

Oh I get it, you mean't to say, "you're a bioshock" . Silly me, not inferring what people mean instead of what they actually write.

If you're going to complain about someone else's grammar, you ought to check your own.

I know this thread is nearly two months old but I'm not going to miss a chance to say that I thought Bioshock Infinite was bloomin' fantastic and just mentioning the name is enough to make me want to play it again. I don't know why. It's definitely a game that should be played on Medium, though, as the game's shooting simply doesn't hold up when it wants to be challenging.

I was going to wait 2 months before I brought it up, sick burns take time, everyone knows that.

The game is fantastic. You shouldn't play it though.

I have some misgivings about some of the Bioshock-infinite dislike. Bio shock or Ken Levine dislike, whatever it really is. I myself loved the game, played it on both medium and then hard to completion. But damned if I am not now having trouble after leaving, playing Dishonored and Dark souls inbetween. For some reason I am having a hell of a time getting back into Burial at Sea. Jarring for some reason.

Sorry 'bout the misspelling, I know it changed the meaning completely. Anyway, I agree totally. Infinite ended up being one of my favorite games last year. I played it twice back to back. Started a third play through the other day after the Irrational news.. Sounds like a tough situation, the game didn't sell quite what it needed to make the publisher satisfied. IMO the team was maybe too big for Levine to manage efficiently, I have a feeling a smaller studio is the right move at present.

Sounds like there is a lot of people who are down on Ken Levine at the moment, but I like the things he makes, and am curious what will be next. Maybe after R&D and they have a solid plan for what the next game will be, then they will bring on more devs once they move into full production. Maybe not the size Irrational was for Infinite, but I'd bet they could make a worthwhile product with a moderate size studio, I think they were only like 40-50 people that made the original Bioshock. I think that's right, they talked about it on one of the Irrational podcasts a while back.

this was totally intentinal btw

I thought it was fantastic, I can't wait for the final story DLC to show up.

Game is great. People hate on it because thats in vogue.

@pweidman said:

+1

The ending's kind of interesting. If you're really disliking the combat (which I was), I'd suggest switching to easy and press on to the ending.

If you dont like a game, stop playing it? That's what I do at least, rather than starting a thread about it.

When's the last time you played the first one? It really doesn't hold up as a game even a few years later.

Most of the podcasts that I've heard complain about combat played it on normal or easy. I found the combat very rewarding but I only played on hard and 1999 mode. It's worth playing, but if it's already been overhyped to you, then stop playing.

It is an incredible game.

Coupe of years ago. I stand by my statement =)