Bioshock Infinite is a piece of shit

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Solely due to the inability to let you save where you want.

I am STUNNED that someone could invest this much time into something and then go, "Herp derp! No saving unless we decide for you!"

Buy it if you want, but this is kind of a shitty game even without the quicksave nonsense. Anyone saying it is "art" is so overcome by the fact that it's outside (runs great on my PC, by the way!) that they can no longer differentiate between art and slop. This is slop.

I've been burned twice now by games with Bioshock in the title. Never again!

[AArdvark]

Someone thinks it's art

[RetroRomper]

The lack of saving is questionable (didn't we already explore "check points" and why they didn't work with Turok in 1998?), but my biggest complaint is that certain machine gun turrets are essentially hidden from view in key parts of the first section of the game. Forced me to lower the difficulty to medium from hard (though the FPS elements aren't that difficult).

And... AND.... Harping on the save system again, check points aren't cleared after killing say, a mini-boss (the first Fireman you encounter doesn't flag the game to autosave). Holy christ is this game horrible to play when I need to get going.

[ChainGangGuy]

Hurry up and get that game to save, RR, you've got cookies to bake.

Bake It Up!!!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I played it a bit more. It's not that bad. It is n-- the title is not correct.

[AArdvark]

I watched some of the gameplay on Youtube. there seems to be a strong religious theme going on. Is that something to do with the plot or are the programmers weird zealots?



THE
CHURCH OF LATTER DAY CODE
AARDVARK

[hygraed]

I watched some of the gameplay on Youtube. there seems to be a strong religious theme going on. Is that something to do with the plot or are the programmers weird zealots?



THE
CHURCH OF LATTER DAY CODE
AARDVARK

That's one of the main "things" of the game. It's set in an oppressively racist Christian theocracy, which the player works to bring down.

SPOILERS DON'T READ BELOW THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS










Ok so here's the deal. Bioshock Infinite casts the player as a white dude, Booker DeWitt, who shows up in Rapture and is, I guess, justifiably appalled at the segregation and oppression. One of the first choices (I think the first CHOOSE YOUR FATE-type choice) is whether to throw a baseball at an interracial couple as part of a carnival attraction, or throw it at the carnival barker. Either way, a fight breaks out and you go on to murder a million billion dudes. Throwing the baseball at the barker instead of the couple makes them show up about an hour later and give you some consumable items.

This scene is an example of the bullshit choices that pass for moral dilemmas in many modern games, something I've heard described as "dogkicking": do you feed this dog, or do you kick it? There's no dilemma and there's no choice. If you're playing a good character, you do the obviously good thing, and if you're playing a bad character, you do the opposite. Ken Levine made a big deal in some interview about how it speaks to how far we've come as a society that he never saw anyone throw the ball at the couple during playtesting or prerelease demos. No shit. Who's going to do that when someone's watching you? It doesn't speak to the eradication of racism among gamers; listen to five minutes of any Call of Duty public multiplayer match to give lie to this notion.

Now let us turn our attention to the main story of the game. The main conflict is between the Founders, the Christian white nationalist followers of Comstock, the founder of Columbia, and the Vox Populi, a group of radical anti-racist revolutionaries led by black emancipationist Daisy Fitzroy. The way the game treats this conflict is a double dose of reactionary bullshit. Not only do you get a whole bunch of white savior nonsense where the oppressed black population of Columbia sits idly by while the white protagonist works to free them from subjugation, near the end of the game the protagonist turns on the Vox Populi because he feels that their use of violence makes them just as bad as their oppressors. This is honestly the most absurd thing in the game to me: it completely ignores the vast numbers of black people in the 19th and early 20th centuries who worked materially to free themselves and other black people from slavery and oppression, and it completely ignores the fact that by the time Booker condemns the Vox Populi for their violent tactics, he's killed hundreds and hundreds of people.

Anyway, this is why Bioshock Infinite is a crock of shit. It uses early 20th-century racist attitudes as an aesthetic crutch, a way to point and say "Look! Games are art now! This one's about racism!" despite the fact that it never, ever makes a salient point about racism other than saying "racism is bad" in the broadest way possible, or engaging with the real-world history of the time period it explores. What a waste. What a lazy, arrogant paean to reactionary centrism. I discard it.

[AArdvark]

It's set in an oppressively racist Christian theocracy

So... it takes place in Kansas?




THE
OR UTAH
AARDVARK

[RealNC]

The game is almost good. The reason it isn't is because they fucked up the run/walk controls. It almost feels like they're broken on purpose. No one could possibly design it that badly by accident. It's impossible.

Oh, and it also runs like crap. You get a nice, smooth 60FPS most of the time, and then for no apparent reason, performance drops like a brick. Every 30 seconds. This also happens to a dude running it on two NVidia Titan cards on SLI (that's $1000 per card.)

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Ha, thanks for posting that. I was considering getting a new video card for this game but I guess there is no point.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I didn't read all of hygraed's post because I thought I might finish Bioshock Infinite. But that will never happen, it is a fairly terrible game.

Ken Levine made a big deal in some interview about how it speaks to how far we've come as a society that he never saw anyone throw the ball at the couple during playtesting or prerelease demos. No shit. Who's going to do that when someone's watching you? It doesn't speak to the eradication of racism among gamers; listen to five minutes of any Call of Duty public multiplayer match to give lie to this notion.

Haha, what a clown. Yes, Ken is not living in the real world. People HATE each other more than ever because we meet many different kinds of people all the time thanks to the Internet. Therefore, our hatred is justified. I think in terms of physical actions, sure, it's better. A town can't decide to kill a black guy.

But in terms of thoughts and words? Much much much much worse. I can pick some group at random, find out what site they all like going to and insult hundreds of them with a few chosen words. In the 1950s, to do that, I would have had to leave the state and go find them.

I have now been burned twice by Bioshock games and will never give this franchise another positive thought. They got lucky with the first one and considering that System Shock II is terrible, it is time to come to grips with the fact that everyone involved with these games are full of shit. I enjoyed the first one, but I can't think of a franchise I gave more money to and had less fun and had more pretentious people working on the games.

[lethargic]

Bioshock Infinite on Metacritic - 94
Bioshock Infinite on Jonseycritic - 2

I love Bizarro World. haha

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

That is the one thing I hope that we can offer you, a different take on games.

Bioshock had the best FPS tactical combat ever.

Bioshock Infinite, well, to play it it's pretty certain that I would have to have the audio off and judge it as a combat game.

[lethargic]

I thought the first Bioshock was a bit of a letdown gameplay wise, only the story and atmosphere made it worth playing.

[pinback]

I thought the first Bioshock was a bit of a letdown gameplay wise, only the story and atmosphere made it worth playing.

I agree with this up until you get to throw bees at people. Then the gameplay lived up to the story and atmosphere.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I thought the first Bioshock was a bit of a letdown gameplay wise, only the story and atmosphere made it worth playing.

I agree with this up until you get to throw bees at people. Then the gameplay lived up to the story and atmosphere.

I've heard lethargic's take before. And I don't get it. How can the combat not be viewed as anything other than the pinnacle of FPS combat? Oh the options, the dandy options!! And yes, throwing bees at people.

I want this cleared up right now.

[pinback]

I thought the first Bioshock was a bit of a letdown gameplay wise, only the story and atmosphere made it worth playing.

I agree with this up until you get to throw bees at people. Then the gameplay lived up to the story and atmosphere.

I've heard lethargic's take before. And I don't get it. How can the combat not be viewed as anything other than the pinnacle of FPS combat? Oh the options, the dandy options!! And yes, throwing bees at people.

I want this cleared up right now.

Because the enemies came in two flavors:

1. Don't notice you.

2. Notice you and come running and flailing straight for you like hysterical orangutans.

[RealNC]

It also won't let you side with the white people and join them in killing the black people. Bah.

[pinback]

I got Infinite for Christmas. I just played some of it!

I feel like Bioshock Original was only tolerable because it was the greatest environment, the greatest conceived world in the history of video games. It still is that, and I feel like that's still the only reason to play it.

I am not enthralled with Columbia, because it is not Rapture. It's the same stupid shit as Bioshock Original, but the environment is not nearly as amazing.

I do not think I will continue.

The fact that "throwing bees" is what Jonsey equates with the height of tactical gameplay in an FPS, and is pretty much right is a condemnation of FPSes as a whole.

Either further the goddamn art, or just admit everything is Wolfenstein and Doom. Which is fine. We all had fun with those.

[RealNC]

The only game I played recently that felt like it's actually "furthering the goddamn art", is Metro Last Light. If Infinite was even half as good a game as Last Light, it would have been a great game.