Jimquisition: Jimquisition Awards 2013 - BioShock Infinite
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
I too really liked bioshock infinite, didn?t know there was such a big backlash.
I did think that the ending was confusing and poorly explained, also while I didn?t mind that the game was so violent It did bug me that booker was a one man army capable of gunning down a entire army, that?s already bad in most video games but in this one it?s ridiculous .
I did think that the ending was confusing and poorly explained, also while I didn?t mind that the game was so violent It did bug me that booker was a one man army capable of gunning down a entire army, that?s already bad in most video games but in this one it?s ridiculous .
If I were Ken Levine right now I'd wear that badge with fucking pride! Just sayin'.
Bioshock: Infinite is easily my game of the generation, let alone this year. It undoubtedly deserves a place in Jim's top 5 list for sure.
Bioshock: Infinite is easily my game of the generation, let alone this year. It undoubtedly deserves a place in Jim's top 5 list for sure.
I was too really confused at the ending at first. It made really little sense and didn't explain much. Then i tried it again and it turned out i got a bug the first time, that ended the game 5 minutes too early. :-Dthemilo504 said:
Basically after you go through the door i just saw the priest and then cut to credits. :-D
I did an analysis paper on Bioshock Infinite for class once.
It's mechanically stripped out combat, inconsistent scope, underwhelming batshit story, and ME3-tier bullshit ending made me view in, shall we say, less than rosy terms.
Then again, I've never been a huge fan of the Shock Series; Bioshock 2 was the only one I actually felt was fun to play, and doesn't that say all kinds of unflattering things about me. If I was making a list, I'd probably put Infinite in the bottom five.
It's mechanically stripped out combat, inconsistent scope, underwhelming batshit story, and ME3-tier bullshit ending made me view in, shall we say, less than rosy terms.
Then again, I've never been a huge fan of the Shock Series; Bioshock 2 was the only one I actually felt was fun to play, and doesn't that say all kinds of unflattering things about me. If I was making a list, I'd probably put Infinite in the bottom five.
Looking forward to 5 days of Jim.
As for the subject of your video: absolutely agree. Totally worthy winner. I only bought Infinite a few weeks ago because I'd been put off for a very long time with how much I disliked the first Bioshock. But the massive amount of praise plus the cheap price (Steam sale) pushed me over the edge to give it a shot on visuals alone.
And it was magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. Compelling story, gripping characters, solid gameplay (I'm very, very picky about how my shooters "feel"; almost anything that isn't on the Source engine feels awful to me, so Bioshock Infinite was a rarity). Easily made it onto my personal list of favourite games.
As for the subject of your video: absolutely agree. Totally worthy winner. I only bought Infinite a few weeks ago because I'd been put off for a very long time with how much I disliked the first Bioshock. But the massive amount of praise plus the cheap price (Steam sale) pushed me over the edge to give it a shot on visuals alone.
And it was magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. Compelling story, gripping characters, solid gameplay (I'm very, very picky about how my shooters "feel"; almost anything that isn't on the Source engine feels awful to me, so Bioshock Infinite was a rarity). Easily made it onto my personal list of favourite games.
I don't get it Jim, did people REALLY hate this game? I loved it SO god damned much. Arguably the best of the Bioshock games. And where was the ludo-narrative dissonance? Booker was a cold hearted war vet who killed without compassion or hesitancy...and that's how gameplay went.
Maybe I was absent from the forums 'cause I was playing it too much, but where was the hate? All I've heard about this game was glowing, star-spangled review after review.
Maybe I was absent from the forums 'cause I was playing it too much, but where was the hate? All I've heard about this game was glowing, star-spangled review after review.
The best explanation for "Why does everyone hate Bioshock Infinite now?" came from Campstar on Reddit [http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/]). His response is lengthy so I'll hide it behind a spoiler tag:
TL/DR:
1) The hype machine and marketing behind new releases is obviously going to proclaim any game it can as the Second Coming, and often the audience gets swept up in the hype.
2) The initial reviewers from the mainstream, consumer-oriented publications aren't going to deviate too far from the expectations generated by the hype machine, to avoid being labelled link-baity trolls or corporate shills.
3) When the game is released, no matter how good it is, it can't possibly live up to the hype, and eventually becomes Just Another Game in your collection.
4) Weeks or months later, more self-appointed game critics are able to contemplate and investigate the game long after the hype and rush of release have faded, and are better able to articulate its shortcomings.
Really I think there are two factors at play when talking about how games seem to have these sorts of severe dropoffs in popularity or popular consensus about their reception.
The first is hardly controversial: The hype train for games tends to naturally result in this pattern. Game marketing is designed to build hype and anticipation up to the day of release. The most important thing the PR team for a game can do is make sure that everyone is talking about/excited for a game the very day of its launch. After that who cares? The majority of sales are made in the first few weeks after release.
So the goal of games marketers is to hype everyone up as much as they possibly can going up to the release, giving people who haven't had access to the game yet the impression that it's going to be the most fan-dabby-babulous title they've ever played. We've seen this a lot this year, especially with Bioshock Infinite and GTAV both getting really gross (borderline pornographic, really) pieces in IGN that are designed to entice potential consumers into boarding the hype train and getting excited sight unseen.
Then the game comes out and (even if it's a darned good game) the reality never reflects the hype. GTAV wasn't the second coming (especially its online components), and while people enjoyed it and its massive scope it's not some flawless work that brings a tear to the eye simply for experiencing it. It becomes Just Another Game - maybe a game you have fond memories of or a game you pull out for years to come, but still just another disk in your collection rather than this intangible idea of perfection. So yeah, general consensus fades because the hype train is designed to build up to the game's release and then immediately cool off.
But the second reason this tends to happen, I think, is the rather stark contrast between reviewers in major publications and genuine critics who aren't usually beholden to all the pressures that a traditional review entails.
We can talk about the grey area between "critic" and "reviewer" and how all reviewers are critics, but let's get real here: Reviewers for publications like IGN or GameSpot or JoyStiq are, like it or not, held to certain standards that more self-appointed critics are not. Stuff like the need to be quote-unquote "objective," the idea that most games should score between a 7.5 and an 8.5, that sort of thing. Generally speaking there's public pressure to stay within bounds of consensus - too far negative and neckbeardy internet trolls insist you're linkbaiting, too far positive and they turn around and insist you're a moneyhat. It's a lose/lose situation the gamers themselves enforce that results in game reviews generally being super milquetoast and usually quite overly flattering to highly anticipated titles.
Add to that: Those flattering reviews from major publications come out first. Those big IGN 10.0 jerkoff reviews for Bioshock Infinite and GTAV? Those happened with big countdowns and week-long promotions and fanfare before anyone else had gotten their hands on the game. So early consensus is always that these games are absolutely amazing because the only people who have seen the game at that point are tied to that system of high expectations.
Independent critics then come by after buying the games themselves and spending time playing it. They post articles as they finish, and a more reasonable consensus forms. "The game is beautiful in this way." "The game is broken in these ways." "The game does harmful or ugly things here and here." It's a more open and honest discussion than in the confines of an 8.5 to 10.0 score these things normally get, and the result (especially for these big shooty games) tends to be far less glowing than the IGNs of the world originally report. And slowly a block of more serious games writing emerges where two or three weeks after the release there's a body of writing where the merits of the game are really espoused and its flaws examined. These ideas then slowly trickle down from erudite game critics to the general public (already slowly realizing the game isn't the Nirvana they'd been promised) and add to the overall feeling that the game was much worse than those initial reviews made it seem.
The first is hardly controversial: The hype train for games tends to naturally result in this pattern. Game marketing is designed to build hype and anticipation up to the day of release. The most important thing the PR team for a game can do is make sure that everyone is talking about/excited for a game the very day of its launch. After that who cares? The majority of sales are made in the first few weeks after release.
So the goal of games marketers is to hype everyone up as much as they possibly can going up to the release, giving people who haven't had access to the game yet the impression that it's going to be the most fan-dabby-babulous title they've ever played. We've seen this a lot this year, especially with Bioshock Infinite and GTAV both getting really gross (borderline pornographic, really) pieces in IGN that are designed to entice potential consumers into boarding the hype train and getting excited sight unseen.
Then the game comes out and (even if it's a darned good game) the reality never reflects the hype. GTAV wasn't the second coming (especially its online components), and while people enjoyed it and its massive scope it's not some flawless work that brings a tear to the eye simply for experiencing it. It becomes Just Another Game - maybe a game you have fond memories of or a game you pull out for years to come, but still just another disk in your collection rather than this intangible idea of perfection. So yeah, general consensus fades because the hype train is designed to build up to the game's release and then immediately cool off.
But the second reason this tends to happen, I think, is the rather stark contrast between reviewers in major publications and genuine critics who aren't usually beholden to all the pressures that a traditional review entails.
We can talk about the grey area between "critic" and "reviewer" and how all reviewers are critics, but let's get real here: Reviewers for publications like IGN or GameSpot or JoyStiq are, like it or not, held to certain standards that more self-appointed critics are not. Stuff like the need to be quote-unquote "objective," the idea that most games should score between a 7.5 and an 8.5, that sort of thing. Generally speaking there's public pressure to stay within bounds of consensus - too far negative and neckbeardy internet trolls insist you're linkbaiting, too far positive and they turn around and insist you're a moneyhat. It's a lose/lose situation the gamers themselves enforce that results in game reviews generally being super milquetoast and usually quite overly flattering to highly anticipated titles.
Add to that: Those flattering reviews from major publications come out first. Those big IGN 10.0 jerkoff reviews for Bioshock Infinite and GTAV? Those happened with big countdowns and week-long promotions and fanfare before anyone else had gotten their hands on the game. So early consensus is always that these games are absolutely amazing because the only people who have seen the game at that point are tied to that system of high expectations.
Independent critics then come by after buying the games themselves and spending time playing it. They post articles as they finish, and a more reasonable consensus forms. "The game is beautiful in this way." "The game is broken in these ways." "The game does harmful or ugly things here and here." It's a more open and honest discussion than in the confines of an 8.5 to 10.0 score these things normally get, and the result (especially for these big shooty games) tends to be far less glowing than the IGNs of the world originally report. And slowly a block of more serious games writing emerges where two or three weeks after the release there's a body of writing where the merits of the game are really espoused and its flaws examined. These ideas then slowly trickle down from erudite game critics to the general public (already slowly realizing the game isn't the Nirvana they'd been promised) and add to the overall feeling that the game was much worse than those initial reviews made it seem.
TL/DR:
1) The hype machine and marketing behind new releases is obviously going to proclaim any game it can as the Second Coming, and often the audience gets swept up in the hype.
2) The initial reviewers from the mainstream, consumer-oriented publications aren't going to deviate too far from the expectations generated by the hype machine, to avoid being labelled link-baity trolls or corporate shills.
3) When the game is released, no matter how good it is, it can't possibly live up to the hype, and eventually becomes Just Another Game in your collection.
4) Weeks or months later, more self-appointed game critics are able to contemplate and investigate the game long after the hype and rush of release have faded, and are better able to articulate its shortcomings.
Infinite, TLoU and GTA V are the three BEST GAMES EVARRRR!!! of 2013, I don't know about you but if I get bashed on the head 50 times a day for weeks on end about how great it is I'm going to feel cynical (especially since I played both GTA V and Infinite and hated them both).Mcoffey said:
Yeah, no. There's this whole thing called "subjectivity" and to some Infinite's gameplay was utter shite and/or mediocre, Elizabeth was a crap character and as a whole the game was bland.109 said:
Of course not, Infinite's story is SO good that it excuses it. Same with The Last of Us (I've seen entire reviews that don't mention the gameplay of that, nevermind Top 5s).Full Metal Bolshevik said:
Most criticism I've heard these days is leveled at the gameplay, the combat not being as interesting or fun as the previous games (BioShock 2 as well) outside of the rail sequences and I'm inclined to agree but everything else from the characters to the world to the themes are still great.
At least it got flack later, most popular games these days get it immediately (see GTAV), although the Last of Us has avoided as much for now.
At least it got flack later, most popular games these days get it immediately (see GTAV), although the Last of Us has avoided as much for now.