I'm over the moon right now. I just finished up my Bioshock Infinite playthrough. It's been quite the journey. In more than the obvious way. You know the type of thing that only gets better, as it moves along? Well Bioshock Infinite is just that. At the end, all was forgiven, for it finally reached a magnitude of awesome that transcends its flaws completely.

At the beginning however, whilst enjoying the atmosphere and elaborate set-up, the nitpicks quickly began to pile-up. So much so, that I had the hardest time not jumping in on the boards and venting my frustrations (and risking massive spoilers), before finishing the game. I made it though, and now it's time to take my dumb. Don't get me wrong, I loved this meal, but now I've got some bombs to drop.

So here it goes...

• Clones. So many friggin' deadeyed clones. Execute Order 66.
• Zero meaningful interactions with *Non-Elisabeth* NPCs. I felt like walking through a layman's theater production, with NPCs blatantly waiting for me to pass by, for them to recite their line, and then fall back into deadeyed stare mode.
• Ugly birds. Not British gals, but the ravens and doves in-game. Never seen a less adequate representation of a thing in-game in many years.
• Columbia feels just as dead as Rapture, even though it's not supposed to be a Dead City. It merely succeeds in creating an interesting backdrop, but not in creating the illusion of a living breathing world. Dead scenery like animatronics in a themepark ride.
• Completely surprised by what a straightforward action game it starts out as. At first, it's essentially DOOM, just more linear, and in a more elaborate setting.

The action becomes much more enticing in the elaborate skyrail infused combat arenas of the latter half of the game. With more powers unlocked, Elisabeth and the Tears, and plentyfold weaponry at my disposal, combat eventually became the stand-out feature of the game - but at first it felt archaic and backwards - almost like an actual DOOM-era FPS, with mindless fodder running at me, and me sidestepping fireballs constantly. Yes - when it all comes together in the end, it is one of the most impressive and challenging and all-out awesome FPS experiences to date, but that's certainly not how it started out.

Outside of the comparatively bad first impressions it made on me, not everything is golden otherwise either...

• Money is XP. Money is primarily obtained by scavenging the environments. I can't help myself, but to scavenge every last scrap I can find. It has been to the detriment of the game, as it's definitely been a strain on its pacing. It's partially my fault for playing that way. On the other hand, it shouldn't have been handled like that in the first place. I think XP should be earned for feats of actual progression. In Bioshock Infinite, that's combat, and combat only. So in my opinion, the currency of player progression should have been earned in combat, and not by behaving like a cleaning lady, cleaning up XP out of trashbins. The whole scavenging angle of looting *rotten apple* out of *bank deposit box* is silly to begin with, and should have been toned down.
• Punitive & demeaning death mechanics, rather than just resetting the skill challenges as per usual, upon player death. I hate punitive death mechanics (here, the player loses money AKA XP). There are exceptions, like Dark Souls, where it adds to the tension, and the combat mechanics are deliberate enough to support such a thing. Bioshock Infinite is designed to be played playfully, and its death mechanics just don't mesh well with that circumstance. In this case, it adds only the frustration of losing XP, as well as giving me the shitty feeling of *not having properly beaten* the skill challenge, since it does not reset upon death. It's a shit way of handling failure. It demeans me as a player by letting me automatically cheese past challenges despite my failures, and thus robs me of the achievement of properly overcoming it. Good thing this didn't apply to the final encounter, it would have been a shame if it felt as cheesy as the many other encounters, where failure occurred. A kingdom for a proper fail state.

I'm sure I've got more to nitpick, but it's time to give the good lord some push-ups.

If to strengthen thine flesh is to strengthen thine lord's flesh, then by doing so, you strengthen thine devotion to thine lord's will.*Blurb for Push-ups*

Um, copied from another thread:

• I would have liked some way to properly save.
• The skyline potential was a little squandered; also, it seemed a bit arbitrary where you could land from a skyline.
• Why was there an upper limit to lockpicks?
• I felt Handymen were a little too hard on Hard compared to everything else.
• No way to disable/toggle hud.
• In some parts where you exit an area, it's not entirely clear that you will be able to return or not =(

@seppli said:

I liked the hummingbirds but i am no ornithologist

As far as the gameplay goes I hated being restricted to two weapons.
I had some bigger issues with the story but I took them in another thread.

Yeah, these were some of my largest complaints after the first 2 hours (along with the saving thing). It made me put down the game for a day, seriously offput and thinking the press were crazy for liking it.

I mean, I even asked other people who were playing the game whether I had missed something - there HAD to be a "interact with NPC" button, right?

In general, people would say their dialogue and then just stand there staring. A radio would have a news report, play one song then just sit there buzzing (cos that's how radio stations work, right?). Some NPCs would just loop what they were saying over and over again. You barely ever seem to walk in on a sermon in its middle - it's either the whole thing or right at the meaningful part at the end.

Theme-park ride is definitely how I would describe Columbia and how it was built.

Thankfully, I wholly agree that the rest of the game more than makes up for these shortcomings.

At first I wasn't bothered about the absence of a save-anywhere, though it was a little annoying that I had to "exit to main menu" to see the timestamp of my last checkpoint. However when you return to Downtown Columbia, after the final rail arena outside the bank/broken elevator, the objective is to go to Comstock House to see Songbird. But the way I've been playing whenever the objective marker tells me to go one way, I go the opposite direction to explore for goodies. And since Downtown Columbia is a big loop I went counterclockwise down this rabbit hole of enemies and looting shops, passing Lutece's house before even triggering Mother's Ghost, but eventually got killed by snipers. Since I went the wrong direction none of my progress was saved resetting me all the way back to outside the bank.

Oh and verbose vending machines - I was so glad that they muted them in B2, but then they were back and more annoying than ever in BI...

Man, there were a lot, which is why I'm curious to see how a second play through will go when nothing's a surprise anymore. That to me defines what makes a "game" good; I've got to enjoy when it boils down to just the mechanics and the variety and the story/art is all familiar. I will say that I expect most of the game to settle in quite nicely, but man...

- Abrupt shifts in the story: Let's ignore the ending, because I thought that was handled as well as a story that's about that sort of stuff can be handled. It's the story they wanted to tell and a part of me digs that story; the whole of me respects that this was clearly the Bioshock Infinite story and there wasn't much concession-making. However, the plot is heavily twist-based, and I feel like without the voxophones these twists by and large aren't earned. The worst for me was when Elizabeth knocks you out; by then I was already well-trained to fear levers as a tithe to the Bird-God so I figured that flight would crash land, but the way Elizabeth goes from completely distrusting you to back on your side in a matter of minutes would have completely derailed this game if it were a film.

- Overall lack of gameplay curiosity: People who are more familiar with FPS gameplay (this is the first I've spent any real time with since the original Modern Warfare and Killzone 2) probably have an easier time balancing the Vigors and Guns, making for a more variable experience in combat than I had. But even with mastery of that system (which has a lot of charm and I'm eager to explore it on a second play) so much of this game boils down to running into an arena and waiting for the awesome violin riff to signal the colosseum was closed. Even in the drearier segments of the game I was more interested in getting to know the world than fighting a crew of Vox, but much like Uncharted I wasn't allowed that privilege.

- The loot game: One thing I took notice of early - and enjoyed for the most part - was how Bioshock Infinite seemed to so obviously be a culmination of everything that was signature about games this generation (one other big one that's been mentioned elsewhere is the Fallout-like NPCs, without the random cast of minor characters). It had everything and did much of it as good or better than the games it was cribbing from. The Diablo/MMORPG/'other'-like looting was one of these aspects that I enjoyed purely out of some OCD-like evil, but it's clearly ridiculous to be this cavalier stranger in a new country digging through trashcans (and so MANY trashcans in a variety of formats), mailboxes and barrels for a single Silver Eagle, or that has-to-be moldy banana that's still healthy to eat because, hey, Columbia.

I want to actually get some of the game in before tonight's live show so I'm going to get back to it, but these were probably the three biggest bugs I had with the game other than the save issue, which boned me two separate times when I was trying to play the game before work and just didn't have time to find a checkpoint and log the last ten-twenty minutes of gameplay. Other times I had to just leave the system on for stretches when I wanted to take a break and watch some of March Madness.

My biggest nitpick was a huge confusion of when to shoot people or not in seemingly friendly areas. I think my confusion comes from two parts.

1. Early in the game a tool tip says "Violence is not always the answer, sometimes you shouldn't go in gun's blazing".
2. Coming into certain areas fresh has NPC walking around looking friendly, when some aren't.

My example of these two colliding is after Elizabeth knocks you out and the Vox Populi drop you out of the airship into the dock area. In this area there are workers working, and guards walking around. I was weary of the gaurds at first, but after one walked into me and didn't do anything, i figured I was in the clear.(which was odd to me, since I was clearly known as the false shepard at this point). After a few minutes of walking around the dock area looking for things, everyone(besides the workers, who just crouched in fear) started attacking me for no reason. In fact, I saw the gaurd who bumped into me earlier spring into action and try to beat me down with a club.

This happened to me about 2 other times during the game. It is far from a game breaker for me, but it certainly was frustrating while playing.

I like that the Handymen are hella meaty but I understand what you mean about the difficulty. I thought the same thing at first, too. It wasn't until I experimented with different weapons/tonics that I started to really enjoy these fights. Crows in particular are useful since they stun Handymen and add a damage buff but my favorite combo was Charge with the short invincibility upgrade and clothes that added a short damage buff against melee'd enemies.

You can tell where content is cut, I get the feeling the choices were meant to be mean much more, and further content is likely cut when the game tells you "Stealing has consequences" then you proceed to never do anything in that area again.

I really like the whole ending of the game but as for the journey, I feel it could have been so much more if it had less combat or at least better weaponry to play around with. I don't think the combat was ever close to being the strong point of the game. The beginning few hours and then the entire end sequence rocked my socks.

Ken Levine should make a Deus Ex or Dishonored-esque game.

Isn't this already a Dishonored-esque game. It even involves lighthouses and rescuing girls.

• Hate sequences where having the gun out feels out of place, and there's no way of holstering it.

@sooty:

I think Bioshock Infinite owes its critical success mainly to how well it sticks the landing, both in the gameplay and story department. How doesn't the final combat encounter rank amongst the top FPS game encounters to date? All fights in arenas with skyrails are amazing.

After the intial reveal trailer, I've tuned out of coverage for the game, because I knew I will have to play it, when it comes out. I was surprised by how it wasn't more like Deus Ex or Dishonored. I expected a lot more player agency, and a lot less straight forward action. Albeit I found by the end combat to be incredibly strong, much opposed to your opinion.

However, I agree that its combat makes a bad first impression, and doesn't really get any good until somewhere past the halfway point, and even then, it only truely shines, as soon as skyrails come into play, which is sadly far from always.

@ravenlight:

btw. did you know that gear is completely randomized? There's a sequence on Battleship Bay, where one gets two pieces of gear right after a checkpoint - you can reload and get two different ones everytime. Odd design choice to be honest, but nice to know. Didn't know that in my first playthrough, and I got so much worthless loot. That +dmg buff after melee piece of gear sounds amazing. Shame I never got that.

Ram & Shotgun/Handcannon to the heart is really the way to go against Handymen.

Yeah, my first playthrough my first piece of gear was one that shocks nearby enemies with lightning every time you "overkill" someone (which is 90% of all kills), so during that playthrough everyone was in stunlock hell at ALL times, which made Hard a cakewalk, except for the fkkn ghost lady and some handymen. My second playthrough I'm right near the end and I haven't found it yet :( But I'm having fun Charging at everything this time out, feels like playing my ME2/3 Vanguard.

As for my nitpicks, the combat isn't as good as it could've been, most vigors just aren't very exciting to me, and there aren't enough big open Skyrail arenas. When there are, combat's pretty fun, but most of the time it's just too easy and straightforward. Tying in to not enough skyrails, they just don't get as much mileage out of Columbia being a floating city as they could have. I never got that feeling of HOLY SHIT except the first time escaping Songbird when you break Liz out of the tower. Compared to Bioshock, which nails that feeling of claustrophobia (even though never going outside of Rapture was a missed opportunity, and wasn't as good as it could've been even in 2), and the setting of Columbia feels a bit wasted. It's awesome in the first few hours, and the airship battle at the end is rad, but for most of it you might as well not even be on a flying city from a gameplay perspective, which is a shame.

Also, Vigors are barely contextualized in the story. There's one audio log that references them, but few enemies use them, we don't know if they have the side effects of Tonics, or what the Columbians think about them. In general, there isn't quite as much detail in the setting of Columbia from a lore pov as there was for Rapture, but I can forgive that because Bioshock was all about Rapture, whereas Infinite is much more about the story, ie. Booker and Elizabeth. Columbia's more just a backdrop, and I'm mostly okay with that.

@oni:

I expected a more Metroidvania-type of openish gameworld, kinda like Dark Souls, where everything is somehow connected to everything else. Interconnected floating islands in the sky, and skyrails being integral to every moment in the game.

It is quite disappointing that it's a mostly linear corridor, with some plazas of minute openess.

Columbia feels just as dead as Rapture, even though it's not supposed to be a Dead City. It merely succeeds in creating an interesting backdrop, but not in creating the illusion of a living breathing world. Dead scenery like animatronics in a themepark ride.

I completely disagree, but then I also wasn't looking to interact with a bunch of people.

Otherwise, my complaints are summarized as:

• The death system sucks. Losing money on death is terrible; you also don't get any ammo back, so there's the potential for you to exhaust an area's resources in a hard fight and be left with not much to use. I would have greatly preferred a traditional checkpoint system. Which leads me into...
• ...the checkpoint system, which is also terrible. Why can't I save like I could in the original Bioshock? Or at least make the checkpoint system better? There were times when I was ready to take a break from the game but I had to play for a little while longer just to get another checkpoint so I wouldn't lose twenty minutes of gameplay. It's 2013, not 1993, we shouldn't have to deal with this issue in first person shooters.
• Also, one that I'm really surprised isn't complained about more.

You are pretty much the only other person I've seen level this complaint, and just why people don't mind being limited to two guns baffles the hell out of me, but even worse than that is the design decision. Why? Who thought that Bioshock Infinite would be a better game if you were limited to two guns? One of the most refreshing things about Resistance 3 and Rage was being able to hold all of them at once, I think this game's combat could be much, much more fun with all of the weapons at your disposal at once. It was a frustrating mechanic in this game.

I did notice the clones of npc's early on. I kind of just ignored it. Stuff like that is hard to judge too much because I understand that they would have to create unique faces for every person in the game and that's very time consuming.

I forgot what the final encounter was, defending the airship?

If so then I don't know how people can say that's good fun, it bored me, it was just more wave combat vs waves of spongey enemies. Sending Songbird to annihilate fools was the highlight, skylines are fun.

It would have been more enjoyable if they allowed you to carry more than 2 weapons, wtf is with that seriously.

In that last encounter I RPG'd one guy like 4 times and he was still alive. (bazooka enemies)

As mentioned in other threads the combat in this game is just not good. It is like the worst parts of trying to play Legendary in Halo where all you need to do is be visible and everything in the area knows where you are and hits so hard that some times you don't even get chances to react and can lead into a dire "ammo starvation" and death loop. And since money is exp you, if you run into a place where things are hard you can't upgrade to make the game easier.

This is kind of a bummer because the other facets of the game are so damn good where you can go for stretches without dying then get to a boss fight that where you are forced to whittle down and using death to just to get ammo and salt back because there isn't another weapon available and you've farmed out the area of all available ammo.

In 1993 if you forgot to save, you would have to start the game over, and sometimes, starting the game over was a better decisions even if you did save, because a lot of times it was very much possible to screw yourself.

Also I understand why they limited you to two guns. Probably because they wanted to emphasis your use of tonics, and make tonics more valuable. The only Tonic I ever used in Bioshock was the one that would get the big daddy to fight for me, that's the only one. This game, I was using tonics just as often, or more then I used my gun.

The problem is, that gamers want to see all of the game. They want to use all of the weapons, they want to see all of the endings, they want to know all of the story.

I loved the game, but I'll like to see Irrational not doing a shooter.. really the "shooter" part felt like a chore, the world, the characters and the story is where the appeal is.

I wish there was a publisher/dev ballsy enough to just put a good first person adventure game, with choices, dialogues and what not, without "shooting" in it. Just imagine what could irrational achieve world/story wise if they don't need to focus so much in combat.

Part of the tragedy is that the game has mechanisms to feed resources to player in context. Elizabeth can just say "here is a bunch of ammo and salt I found" when she rescues you. Or just redrop ammo around the arena. Or anything....

In a difficult boss encounter being stuck with a weapon or a vigor that turns out isn't suited for the fight is a big problem along with limited ammo and salt you can quickly end up with your only resource is try to zerg it or restart at the check point where both are unappealing.

I don't buy that, I didn't use a ton of the tonics in this game and I used Plasmids very often in the original.

And yes, you're right, in 1993 saving was sometimes an issue. It should not be an issue now. I do not want to have to re-do 20 minutes of gameplay.

That sucks. What a weird design choice. On both of my playthroughs, I got that piece of gear before the first Handyman fight. I guess I'm lucky?

the nonchalant way you wondered through populated areas with your gun out, I get that they wanted to let you shoot at (almost) any time, but having a gun out while wondering through the beach/shop areas felt odd.

A dedicated holster button would have been great - personally, I think that's something that all non-balls-out-action-FPSs should have.

The only things that bothered me about the game were all small things, besides one big complaint and these are:

• "Clones" as OP said. It baffles me that this game was being worked on for 5 years and they couldn't make at least 3 distinct male & female character models. Having 3 woman calling Booker a stud and they all look the same was weird.
• My only real complaint is no weapon wheel. @believer258 & @atwa: . You're not the only ones who was completely thrown off by the 2 weapon limit. When I first found a 3rd gun, I picked it up and tried to open the wheel but it only switched to my other gun. When I looked at the floor and saw my pistol laying there, I was disappointed. I couldn't believe they switched out the weapon wheel for a 2 gun limit.
• Rotten food. Whenever I scavenged for supplies, I mashed "X" on every thing so when I would eat a rotten pineapple and lose health, it was pretty stupid.
• The lack of creative secondary uses for the Vigor's. Why did the secondary use for all the Vigor's all have to be traps? It could've been better. I didn't even use the traps.
• Possesion. That Vigor only worked for like 5 seconds on heavy hitters which was kind of annoying. Or maybe when you shoot them they turn back bad? I don't know. A lot of the time, they'd turn back bad really fast.
• While I do dislike the checkpoint & save system, it really didn't bother me since I played long stretches of time and when I wanted to get off, I just started a new chapter. Only once did this bother me but as I said, not much of an issue.
• The "Stealing is bad!" & "Violence isn't always the answer" things was pretty dumb to since they didn't actually effect the game.
• Quoting @ssully: here. "Coming into certain areas fresh has NPC walking around looking friendly, when some aren't." That was a bit annoying.

What difficulty did you play on? I played on Normal and only died like 4 times which was the part where you fight the Ghost Lady Comstock in front of Mr. Comstocks house and that's because there were a lot of enemies and barely any cover.

I think the 2 complaints worth making are that the way death was handled was poor and the way saves was handled was poor. Way I see it rest of the game is at the very least fine.

How can I forget my first biggest problem?!

THE GAMES TEXTURES ARE TERRIBLE

From your list of complaints it seems like you wanted this game to be Skyrim or something. Nitpicking thread, I know. But you need to keep in mind what the game is before you say it lacks features. It's an FPS with RPG elements like Rage of course the NPCs are going to be mindless drones.

My biggest complaint is the linearity. I really wanted to explore Columbia but the lack of a map or any way of tracking optional objectives lead me to just follow the main path. I felt like this game was being sold on the idea that it was open and that the skylines would allow you to seamlessly go between different areas.

And yeah, a weapon wheel would be nice.

Hm, are you playing on PC? Some textures are still crappy, but overall, the texture quality seemed pretty good.

Inter-dimensional travel :P

@awesomeusername: Basically Medium is fine (maybe too easy?) and Hard is to aggravating with the way recovery works. I played on Hard all the way to point in story where you have a series of encounters with Lady Comstock and the aggravation skyrocketed with way too many fights with too few weapons and ammo doing too little damage. I couldn't take it any more once I got to Bank Vault literally going through running out of money and ammo dying over and over and over again (fyi, you can go to 0 SC, nothing happens). I set it to Medium and ran through the rest of the game.

Looking back at it, it seems to be entirely a resource problem. Increasing the amount of health targets have is okay but to balance it the game should have increased the ammo drops just a little bit. If a target has double the life on Hard, it isn't necessary to drop double the amount of ammo but it is necessary to increase the drop amounts to offset the fact that even if the player is performing very accurately they would have to pump more shots into targets anyway.

Played on PS3. Everything from a distance looked great but when you got up close, yuck.

Man, the Lucete's really screwed up. They were able to get one Booker in the world at once but bought everyone else over. RIDICULOUS!

@extomar: Agh, I see. I can see why you'd lose ammo quick playing on hard. On top of that, the guns hold little ammo for a Hard playthrough. It's fine on Normal but I know it'd be a bitch on Hard. I generally don't play FPS games on Hard or above because they're to difficult, unless you're Killzone 3. But yeah, FPS games on Hard and above are generally terrible experiences. (I'm looking at you Call of Duty: World at War)

My thoughts exactly. The only reason I can imagine why they still kept the loot was because they want you to discover and explore all these fancy areas they've designed, but if we needed loot to do that then maybe they aren't that interesting. I can also imagine it has something to do with giving you more of an incentive to discover voxophones, but that's already an outdated concept and another issue by itself. The overarching problem though is that they made a world designed for an rpg-shooter (like the old system shocks were), but they veered away from almost all rpg gameplay.

The subtitles pissed me off. They're done the bad way. Display the text after the speaker speaks, not before.

My biggest complain is that exploration and combat were so separate from each other. Despite having a fascinating world, you never really get to feel like you're exploring it.

If they could have made it similar to Human Revolution or Dishonored, it would have been perfect.

It's dumb how they display subtitles when you watch those silent film things. lolwut.

• No map.
• No way of detecting enemies. Sometimes I would clear out a big area of enemies except for one and I would just hear his dialogue and have to hunt him down. Other times I would get shot by guys I couldn't see before it was too late.
• The final zeppelin sequence was awful.
• Vigor upgrades are CRAZY expensive.
• Audio is all fucked up. Voxophones would quiet down while I pick an infusion so I would miss the whole thing. Dialogue between Elizabeth and Booker would be cut off by dialogue between Elizabeth and Booker.
• Manual saves would be helpful.
• Columbia is a really disjointed and uninteresting setting, especially compared to Rapture. There's no consistent atmosphere. Towards the end the areas just feel like videogame areas, unlike Rapture.
• Traps are stupid and more creative secondary abilities for the vigors would make combat a lot more interesting.
• I wasn't a fan of the ending.

The fights are easy, if you use well-suited powers and weapons. Like the Lady Comstock fights are a breeze using the Blazing Broncos Vigor. Just levitate and ignore all NPCs, then focus fire her with a hard hitting weapon. I used a tricked out handcannon for tough enemies, such as her and handymen. And yes, I played on hard too.

It all comes down to what vigors and weapons you use. Most tough encounters, where I died a lot at first, figuring out what works and what doesn't and exploring the possibilities of an arena, are a complete cakewalk once you find the right combinations, and know the lay of the land. I hate the way failure is handled in the game, and simply restarted at a checkpoint, when it felt too cheesy - and then usually blazed through the whole encounter without much effort.

There's so many cool opportunities hidden in the larger combat arenas, it's a shame how the player is being cheesed past the challenge one death at a time, because once you are familiar with the environments, you can pull off some amazing and fun feats of great heroism. So much willfully wasted potential. Oh well - I just didn't allow myself to cheese past the challenges, and got the full the experience out of the fights most of the time.

What a hassle though. And the Graveyard fight was a bitch the first time around.

I have a couple concerns despite recommending the game to everyone thanks to it's great (really clever) story and storytelling.

Now, my biggest issue are the weapons and certain enemy encounters. Let me preface that by saying that I played on hard for my first walkthrough.

The weapons are basic, tame weapons, not even upgrading changes much about them. They don't even compare to some of the cool stuff from e.g. BS1/2 and Dead Space 1/2 (and 3 to a degree). Worse, some of the weapons share almost the same functionality, such as the Shotgun and Heater, Machine Gun and Repeater, Volley Gun and Hailfire Gun. Considering that I already don't really want to experiment much because I'd like to use the weapons I upgraded, having unnecessarily many (similar!) weapons is just stupid. I was constantly annoyed by running out of ammo. Now you can say "well just pick up other weapons and experiment, it's fun too!" To that I reply that I was reluctant to do that. Because of how many weapons there are and how scarcely they're placed you can easily end up going without a certain weapon for over an hour of playtime. In fact the Hailfire Gun, which I decided to put my last upgrade into, starting before the third Lady C. battle, didn't show up once for the rest 3-4 hours. Yes, not once. Maybe I missed a spot but if I'm not mistaken (after two additional playthroughs) there really is just no Hailfire Gun placed anymore and I'm not even sure if a single enemy appears that could drop it later on. That may be the case but you still need to hope the weapon actually ends up dropping.

So I really think my reluctance to switch weapons was kinda understandable. To make things worse, I upgraded the Pistol and the Machine Gun, 2 weapons which I felt like were fucking terrible in comparison to the Sniper Rifle, RPG, Carbine and Handgun. Fortunately I also upgraded the Sniper Rifle as third weapon. Overall precision and high damage weapons, such as the ones I just named (except RPG but that's huge splash), easily take the cake in this game. Because you can take damage extremely quickly taking out enemies from far, far away with the Sniper Rifle is a blessing. And the Pistol and Machine Gun just don't deal nearly enough damage to even compare to a Sniper Rifle or Handgun headshot. The machine Gun also runs out of ammo way too quickly for what it's worth. The whole weapon situation ended up being quite a problem in...

the fucking Handyman and Lady C. battles. Now let me begin with my first complain about these enemies: Their actions a really, really hard to read at first. Understanding what the Handyman can and can't do made the first 2 encounters rather frustrating. For example he can jump any distance. Period. He (or a Handyman I guess) has a ground AoE stomp attack, which means you just shouldn't even be near him if he isn't temporarily stunned. He hits hard as a brick. He can fire electro balls at you, which means the first encounter that doesn't have any rails (only hooks to hang on) requires you to use the ground only. He can electrocute the rails, which I think is his fairest and clearest ability (as he announces it every time). He can throw objects (corpses) at you. This meant that the first Hanydman encounter meant running around like a moron (but not just straight ahead, because if you just run a straight line he will catch up to you), turning around, at best casting crows, taking a couple shots, if possible hit the heart (good thing that tip immediately disappeared, granted I expected this anyways for obvious reasons, and rinse and repeat a billion times. Because by god are those guys bullet sponges.

When you really understand how the Handyman works the third fight, which occurs in the most awesome area with great rails, rifts and structure, can actually be loads of fun. However I don't really think that this will be the case in the walkthrough of most players. Also, by all means, hard is supposed to be hard. But the Handyman and Lady C. just shit on everything else in terms of difficulty.

Anyways, the first Handyman encounter is seriously a terrible bossfight with lots of frustrating moments.

Even worse though for me was the first Lady C: encounter. Which I had no other chance but cheesing. I think I lost 700$ or so, meaning I died 14 times, because the weapons I went with weren't the best choice for the fight at first. I mean I at least took the Sniper Rifle which, if you know what you do and especially if you cheese her is the best, but whatever else I had did nothing to her. First of all that thing too is a huge bullet sponge. Secondly unless the AI bugs out (which you can actively do by cheesing in certain positions) fighting her head on is barely possible unless you know exactly what you're doing, which you most likely don't at first. To add to that, she's so fucking hard to read. Like when she revives soldiers as ghosts she seems to be invincible for some time, but I still can't say for how much exactly. Because when she does this, she actually looks less transparent and like she's in "take damage mode". But no, for that time she actually is briefly immune it appears. Then she has a stupid huge AoE attack which is certainly as hell not obvious and has quite the damage and knockback. Then there's the problem with the stupid save point system. The more you die in that fight, the worse your position. You first of all of course keep losing money, but you also run out of weapons and medpack rifts. Sure, when you die both your weapons get like 2 clips worth of ammo, but that's often not even close enough to kill Lady C. when you restart after dying. I and a friend who got to that part a bit later basically got fucked big time in this battle. I couldn't take out the ghosts quickly enough because I ran out of Salt and Ammo, especially since I wasn't in the greatest situation after having died in the fight already and I couldn't take out Lady C. quick enough by ignoring or trying to disable the ghosts. So at some point I realized I may be able to cheese her by hiding in a certain s pot and taking shots with the Sniper Rifle, which worked because the AI wasn't that great.

Now I know that other people did fair much better against her, on hard or maybe even 1999 mode, but I also know that a fuckton of people got overwhelmed by this stupid boss fight, for rather unfair reasons. The difficulty spike just didn't feel right and the whole encounter is plain and simply not well designed in my opinion. Yes, I was able to do much better in the 2nd and 3rd battle (because the location is better for fighting for once) and I think only died once in the 2nd one. But my friend actually had to reduce the difficulty to medium because with his weapons etc. he was caught in another terrible situation in the 2nd battle and just didn't want to deal with the crap any longer. I don't even think her battle is any fun when you've got it completely figured out. Sure, it's rather easy then but that's it.

/endlongrant (again though, I mostly do enjoy the gameplay and thanks to the amazing story(telling) I can't recommend this game enough

@seppli: The problem in those fights is that ammo and salt is limited. Of course I was using the AE effect stuff like BB but in a protracted boss fight I ran out, there aren't enough desks or containers to search in fights to refuel, and Elizabeth wasn't finding enough to replenish fast enough. Then you die where you only get back some ammo and some Salt. Meanwhile, Lady Comstock is floating there surrounded by ghost soldiers. I quickly got stuck in this loop where I was was whittle away Lady Comstock by expending everything I had then dying so I could get back at least some ammo and some salt to attack her again. Once the arena door shuts you are stuck with what ever is in the area and what you brought in and I found it wasn't enough and I cleaned out the arena with the boss still very much alive and attacking.

As I wrote in other places, this could have been corrected by leveraging in game mechanisms. When Elizabeth pulls you up she could have immediately handed extra ammo or full salt instead of trying to dance around the arena till the "F"/"Accept her help" prompt pops up. Or when you stand up have Elizabeth give you the option of a different weapon in the case you brought along a weak weapon. I would have even accepted an option to spend extra money to completely restock my salt after recovering or to switch weapons.

In any event, I agree there is a lot that can be leveraged in combat where I really noticed it when I abandoned Hard. There are a lot of fun things to do if you have the money, ammo, and salt to use it all in combination with each other where I rarely got the chance to do that in Hard. I'm kind of sorry I played so much of it on Hard and robbed myself of really experimenting.

Weird.

I had a moment when I first started playing the original bioshock where i was confused and upset because I was expecting it to be more of an RPG where it was clearly a level based FPS game.

But after played that game and Bioshock 2, it was very clear to me that it was going to be an FPS and that there was not going to be any interactinng with NPCs. Afterall, why would Booker do that? He's incognito and has a mission.

I forgot about that. The subtitles were done so poorly that I turned them off before I finished the first chapter. I really think they're the worst subtitles of any game I've played in a long time. Can't think of a game that does it worse.

I'm no spy but gathering intelligence about the world around you when on a mission strikes me as a key tactical requirement, even if you're incognito.

I think the example I would use would be the story of Frank Abagnale (the real life person portrayed in Catch Me If You Can) - he would talk to as many people as possible from the field he was impersonating to establish the jargon, the basic operational procedures and the culture to allow him to emulate it more effectively. He would do this both before and while on the job.

He was, of course, one of the most successful con artists of all time.

First off, I loved the game and I'm looking forward to a second play through. Many of my nitpicks have already been posted - the save system, not being able to hold more weapons, etc.

One thing that I haven't seen anybody comment on (and maybe I'm alone on this) is a general feeling of simplificaiton.

• The absence of hacking. I liked hacking turrets, cameras, and safes in Bioshock 1 & 2, and I felt that the Possession vigor (or just pressing a button to have Elizabeth open a safe) was overly simplified and kind of dull. As somebody else posted, the Possession effect is too short. There was an element of risk/reward in Bioshock because you had to get close enough to the turret to hack it, but then it was yours until it was destroyed.
• Tonics vs Gear. Perhaps I lucked out, but the first four pieces of gear that I found carried me through the game. I suppose I should be happy that the randomization treated me so well, but instead, I was left feeling like the gear was kind of dumb. Ultimately, I looked back at the Tonics system and thought that worked better - controlled progression through a larger variety of increasingly powerful bonuses and effects.
• It's been said, and I mentioned it above, but being able to carry only two weapons made me feel like my combat choices were far more limited, particularly with Booker's relatively low ammo capacity.

I guess to sum up, to me, the combat in Infinite felt much more "shooter" compared with, for lack of a better word, the more "tactical" combat of the earlier games.