BioShock Infinite Review: A Head in the Clouds

[Doug]

While I found the story and characters enjoyable, and the ending very kickass, the setting wasn't explored to it's fullest potential, and the gameplay leaned too much on the dude-bro shooter formula, making it overly shallow.

I'm very curious what you would have liked to see. How could the setting be better explored? How could the gameplay be made deeper? If you can't put it into words, use examples from other games that did it better.

Man, I feel like I'm monopolizing the conversation, responding to everybody. I should take a break.

Spoiler

Bringing back the alternating upgrades for the weapons would have been good. They just upped the number and made them too painfully generic. I ended up cycling through them a lot, meaning that it didn't really matter which ones I upgraded, near the end I just took what I could find. Would have helped if the weapon limit was set to at least 4, but honestly, not a lot, with the weapons they had, they all seemed too meh. Not even secondary ammo types.
They could have done more with Liz's power than just have her spawn cover and supplies. She could have shifted enemies, turned regions of the map into gaping holes in space, bring a velociraptor to the fight. This thing could have had velociraptors in it, and it would have made sense. It just became dull after a time, to the point where it was barely present in the final fight. Sure, before that she summoned tornadoes, but nope!
The hook was a fairly useless melee weapon when compared to the wrench, absolutely no sneak-up-bash-em-over-the-head action unless execution was involved. No sneaking whatsoever, until that last bit, was a letdown.
Absolutely no sense of exploration, Liz would just point out the only other place of interest in a level before we got to the exit, and that was that. No hunting for codes and secrets, just a couple of keys and books.
As for the setting, it starts out with a very nice Anachronoxian feeling, but it never delivers on it, After the first scene, you never see buildings moving around, rearranging themselves. And you never go into the belly of the beast. It floats because of exotic particles, ok, I want to see those things, the control mechanism, the steering. In Rapture you got to see everything.
More random tears, with stuff you could actually do, or influence in and around theme would have been good. Heck, replacing the voxaphones with tears or tear-ghots would have been fantastic.
I feel they underused Songbird, and instead of having him be the focus of the second quarter of the post-Liz game, you meander around looking for some gunsmith.

The overabundance of indoor shooting scenes with generic armed thugs were a poor decision when they could have had more battles that utilize the skylines. As it stands, combat tends to become bogged down in resources. On hard, I rarely had enough of what I wanted to have fun with it, but an overabundance of the stuff I didn't care about. Lack of self applying salt was a let down, it meant I couldn't really go all out, I kept having to go around the level picking salt or waiting for Liz to find some. Resources really got on my nerves during the ghost fight, the things would just endlessly respawn, to the point where, in the vault, I ran out of ammo and would just let myself get killed in order to get more. That part got annoying, but the idea of it was one of the best combat situations in the game, a nice change of pace.

And also, Halo called, it wants its shield back.

Yes! These are not small mistakes! I made a post in another thread about more of these.

Spoiler: To begin with...(spoilers)

I totally agree with your assessment of the weapons, I had the carbine the entire game, and while I tried the other weapons none of them felt particularly useful. I felt the same way about the vigors, half of them stun enemies in different ways and only four of them can kill, one is situational, one is a single enemy only, one of them puts you directly in the middle of situation you don't want to be in and one of them works rather well.

Why are there vigors in Columbia? In Rapture genetic intervention is a way of life, their society is geared around turning yourself into a super smart, super strong apex of humanity, ubermensch but why do these sheltered people in Columbia need the ability to shoot weaponized balls of flame, control robots and charge things and kill them?

What purpose do handymen serve in this society? Why don't we ever see them moving those freight containers or something. They have no connection to the society and as such it just feels like they exist to be video game enemies, which they are, it feels hollow.

Why are there no unique tears that aren't story driven? The tears themselves are a really dull mechanic, honestly how different would the game be if all of the tears you can open were already open. It's not as if it takes effort to find them or uses resources, the consequences for choosing one over another are non-existant. If you have a rocket bot open, and you need health you just point to the health, open it, take the health and point back at the rocket bot to reopen it, there's no consequence in choosing so why even have a choice? The one you need is always open either way.

Why are there skylines that are completely closed loops that lead nowhere and don't carry cargo?

Anybody else feel the environments became very similar after the Heroes Memorial?

Spoiler

Re: Handymen/Vigours: Columbia wasn't driving around making one's selff a genetic apex, but it was driving around superiority, racial superiority, and keeping the slave/servant classes down; from Dimwit and Duke with their 'readiness is all' song to the videos showing the police/army - its a nationalist/facist state, meaning force of arms is vial. Handymen and Vigours would give the rich white masters a clear force to keep the lower orders inline and out of the hair of the rich folks. Additionally, tears into other realities gave Fink the insights into some technologies - songbird seems to be a massive version of the Big-Daddy's from the original Bioshock. The handymen are probably based on that too. Their role in society is as apart of the military ba

As for non-story tears, their is at least 1 I spotted; in the large hub-type area outside comstock house, their is a tear inside the building of a musician. A nearby Voxaphone recording makes it clear the musician is copying music from another universe to make record hits, and gave Fink the ideas

My 2 cents:

Overall: good story, ok gameplay (guns and abilities were meh but enjoyable) - two first acts dragged on a bit - last third was a thrillride that did not prepare me for the ending at all... which was... weird, but neat

Now, for the EXTREMELY spoilerific sidenotes:

Unresolved stuff that I'd have loved to have learned more about:

Spoiler

1) The Letuce characters. I would really have liked to have gotten some more info on them earlier in the game - and what little exposition we're given (That sister brougth her brother from another reality into her own via quantum technobabble) is never really followed up on. This doesn't need much, just an anwer to 'why' and perhaps how they are able to move around everywhere... which leads to:

Spoiler

The 'why' is pretty simple: Someone who's just as smart as her, just as curious, similar temperament, AND at the same time, a major scientific challenge to meet. AND possibly give you insights into yourself and a similar but different view on the world.

For a pair like the Lutece's, most of those reasons would be worth doing it for.

Spoiler

2) The whole tear/vigor/floating city at 1912 thing. I want the tech explained. In Bioshock the 1950s tech and the ADAM more or less perfectly explained the setting. Here I'm at a loss. How do the buildings fly? Quantum particles locked at a certain height? Ok, but that should have been told a lot earlier - I just feel that this is never used.

The setting could have been a LOT more interesting if comstock had used the vigors to present 'divine powers' to his flock, along with all the other tech. Heck, we're never told how vigors work or why they drain your 'salts' (sounds like they needed some Brawndo, its got what Vigor's need!) Equally, if the idea was that much of the city's tech was gleamed from tears into the future/alternate realities, then I would have loved to have seen more of this... make Columbia a strange mix of sci-fi and retro and 1912 all mixed together.

Also: we got what felt like a more violent rehash of bioshock 2's communist uprising with the Vox Populi who honestly seemed tacked on to pad the game with you running around to first find them guns, then suddenly become their leader, then an imposter, then... ya - it just seemed like padding ultimately. I got the idea of them, but its not really a part of the story you can ever work with, since they just turn on you in the end anyway.

Spoiler

The tech could have been explained better, yes - But I don't think Bioshock's tech is any better explained frankly - the technology to build underwater structures able to withstand that kind of pressure was never explained, I don't think the big-daddy's/little sister tech was explained, and I don't think the ADAM/plasmids where explained beyond 'magic genetics'... all of which is ok, because steam-type-punk stuff doesn't really need explaining.

I think the air-city thing was pretty well used and made a great setting, but thats just my opinion.

And finally, regarding the ending

Spoiler

3) Ok, so she can do the alternate reality shuffle. Cool beans. I liked the final explanation to "give the baby/wipe the dept" - but at the same time the finale where you're drowned? Nah that didn't make that much sense. Could IMO have been resolved better, a la Dewitt having accepted why he came to Columbia and who he is in relation to Elizabeth, could now live happily ever after... or something, but instead they just up and kill him? What, so he couldn't sell her in the first place? This doesn't make that much sense, but I'll accept it.

Ultimately the finale had a strange 'anti mass effect" vibe to it: You're told that your choices now don't matter - because you've already done it in some alternate reality, so you have to do it now. That's kinda weird. Would have been interesting to have see the game take on a more "fighting your destiny" approach, with the Letuce pair and Comstock trying to force your hand while you fight back

Spoiler

The idea was that the "Comstock DeWitt" realities all spawned from that one moment at the bapism; by drowning DeWitt at that point, it removes all instances of Comstock from all the realities. However, I'm assuming you didn't watch pass the end of the trailers..?


Anyway, from the point-of-view of the infinite/many realities shown, all choices available where made - and by DeWitt allowing that instance of himself to be killed in that manner, all the Comstock's stopped existing whilst the other DeWitts had their lives and hopefully their daughters.

Also, for the bioshock fans

Spoiler

I loved the bioshock shoutout when birdy got terminated - but damn if that character, considering how big a part birdy had in the early trailers and whatnot, didn't get criminally under-used. What, turned into a point-n-kill weapon wtih a cooldown? Not cool.

Yeah, gotta admit, that sucked.

 

[creamy5000]

I dont understand, everyone is talking about how pretty this game is but every video I have watched is blurry or bloomly.
At first I assumed it was the capture method used but every video is the same no matter the source. I can understand using bloom when looking out over the city. But even when standing right next to people you cant see detail in there face just blur.

 

[F'Angus]

Was not going to buy this...but luckily I cancelled my Colonial Marines Preorder so I had money to spare. Thank God for that.

 

[Sharonturn123]

One of the best games of 2013