BreakfastMan said:
Well, it appears I am the only one who deeply loved the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite. Really don't see what others hate in the combat...
Still, I agree with Jim on this one: Bioshock Infinite is definitely one of the best games released this year. I have it tied with Saints Row IV and Super Mario 3D World as my favorite game of the year.
People hate on the combat because they are pretty much FPS junkies, and miss the point that Bioshock is still trying to make pretensions of being an RPG even if it isn't one anymore, it actually has become a substandard FPS game when it comes to the mechanics. The idea being that in Bioshock the number of options you have is supposed to counterbalance the core mechanics being somewhat less than a dedicated shooter. What's more being based around super-abilities and crazy stunts it really is kind of floaty in an attempt to balance the gunplay with the use powers and such compared to other games that are priding themselves on the kind of realism that pretty much has you feeling the recoil of each shot.
In general the complaint about combat being "floaty" nowadays generally comes from people who primarily play games that have trained them to balance their reflexs with more realistic expectations, so they tend to automatically aim as if they expect a gun to be more off the mark based on it's recoil, compensate for simulated bullet drop, and similar things, and when that isn't there, and is replaced more by video game logic, it tends to be noticible. Compared to the amount of work a lot of games have put into their gunplay and making each gun "feel different" even over a computer, Bioshock is very much a "bad" game because Booker does all the assumed compensation as opposed to you the player.
In the overall scheme of things this is not bad, despite making it a bad FPS, I'd normally argue it's the best way to handle things in an RPG right behind simply making the gunshots stat based since it's supposed to be an RPG. The problem of course being that Bioshock also tends to fail as an RPG because Booker tends to wind up being able to do everything and pretty much solves most of the assigned problems in the same exact way, your choices in how to build him usually come down to what FX you like to watch when he kills.
Basically Bioshock started as a spiritual successor to "System Shock" especially the classic "System Shock 2" which in of itself was an attempt to pretty much transpose "Ultima Underworld" into a science fiction environment. This was done alongside the basic assumption that your typical gamer nowadays is too dumb or impatient to really deal with something like "System Shock 2" and to try and increasingly simplify it while trying to maintain the premise.
In System Shock 2, you pretty much had three major "paths" of skills, psionics, navy, and marines each of which had their own ways past problems, and specific things that could only be done by one skill set. You could also pick up abilities from each of the paths as you progressed and found the materials to unlock more abilities, but there was limited advancement opportunities and it was virtually impossible to make a perfect character who could get/see/do everything, not to mention if you spread yourself out too much it was possible to kind of put yourself into a sort of "Fail state" where progression would be almost impossible (say facing a battle your not tough enough to take on head to head, while lacking any of the abilities to circumvent the fight).
In Bioshock it pretty much removes the technical skills (Naval Path), and gives you what amounts to gunplay and psionics, with the psionics being used for the problem solving, and every ability being unlocked to it's basic level automatically which is sufficient to bypass any of the "puzzles" you run into if you use the right thing in the right place. Ultimatly it comes down to a choice of how you decide to deconstruct each area of enemies in front of you with the puzzles being ways of blocking arena to arena. You don't have to make choices like "do I want telekinesis, or lock picking, or the ability to have someone not laugh at me as much when I shoot them" and then being forced to apply your choice to problems from there on out, intentionally choosing to miss/close off options for a while. By the time you might have the ability to gain more than one, you wind up having more options and have to weigh the potential benefits of say becoming better at something than gaining a more versatile selection of skills. Nothing really closes out quite the same way in Bioshock... which is simpler, and more to the liking of people who want to do it all, but leads to less of an RPG-type experience as well.
Not sure if I'm articulating this particularly well.
The thing is that Bioshock is a good game, especially with what it's up against this year, but it's flaws are many and myriad, and that includes it's disadvantages coming from it's origin. In an attempt to at least seem like it's maintaining some RPG elements from it's spiritual predeccesor when it really isn't (powers just being basically more weapons that also act as keys) it's kind of become a lite FPS, "lite" being pretty accurate due to the amount of work FPS games put into the elements Bioshock is overlooking intentionally by being specialist games.
Those who complain about Bioshock being floaty, seem to mostly be argueing that the game should ultimately feel like a vintage gun simulation, and require the same kind of ingrained reflexes and adaption from other FPS games, especially seeing as it can be as hard to unlearn reflexs for compensation as it is to learn them.