Jimquisition: Jimquisition Awards 2013 - BioShock Infinite

ACman

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My problems with Bioshock can be summed up as follows:

1) I got bored of the combat. The hit scan shooting combined with low health and regen + the respawn with little to no loss on death is not satisfying. I hated the vitachambers in Bioshock and I hate the mechanic here.
3) I saw the "twist" of
you being Comstock
about half way into the narrative.
4) The ending is batshit pseudo physics wank with
time travel dynamics
that make NO sense.
5) The heavy handed themes in the first half of the game are dropped in favour of focusing on this batshit ending.
6) One save slot? Fuck you Levine. What if I want to return to an area? Or maybe I want to play the game without your crappy respawn mechanic?
7) The ghost boss lady is deep fried bullshit.
8) Fucking 2 gun limit..... Oh wait, all the guns are the same.....



It is very pretty. I liked Elizabeth. But more interaction with people in the less combaty scenes would have been nice.


On the "Ludonarrative Dissonance" thing: I could never believe that mere humans would fight with the fanaticism that the armies of Comstock and the rebel lady do. Splicers were driven mad with addiction/experimentation so I could believe their single minded aggression against the player character. But Comstocks cops and soldiers? Even the SS surrendered occasionally.
 

Mikeyfell

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Aug 24, 2010
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Yay...
I mean I don't love Bioshock Infinite, but even though that's the case I still can't think of 5 better games.
It's a good game, which shouldn't be enough to qualify for game of the year... but that's the industry's fault

BSI is a fine choice for 1/5 of the GOTY's. I can't complain considering I only think 1 game is worthy of the title for 2013, and that's Surgeon Simulator Paper's Please
 

ACman

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109 said:
Full Metal Bolshevik said:
109 said:
Time to admit it folks: Bioshock Infinite is the best first-person shooter released since Half-Life 2.
'insert laugh harder futurama video'

Want me to make a list of fps with better mechanics than Bioshock Infinite?
You can try, I'm going to love proving you wrong.
Ugh. Bioshock shooting mechanics.

Too much undodgeable hitscan, too low health leading to a reliance on the godawful respawn with little to no penalty mechanic. It feels way too much like save scumming to me.




The reason the HL2 combat stands up is that health is a resource you have to manage. Enough is provided to you at the start of every major combat and if you die you go back to the start of the autosave. OR... You can save scum... If you want.

Oh and 10 carriable weapons versus a 2 weapon limit.

And Dishonored magical powers shit all over Bioshocks magical powers.


Bioshock is pretty, and it has a decentish story for the first 3 quarters (before it disappears into quantum leap nonsense). But I wish it had deemphasized combat which is of middling enjoyability with more exploration and perhaps some interaction with more NPCs.
 

Dragonbums

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May 9, 2013
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I honestly could not care about Bioshock Infinite getting a GOTY from Jim.

Not when my mind is still overclocking it's gears wondering why in the hell somebody sent Jim a Rottweiler plushie that was solely created to have a warm meat sausage inserted into it's fuzzy adorable underside.
 

Geo Da Sponge

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I love how Jim has managed to kick off a massive argument about FPS mechanics when he didn't actually say anything about the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite itself.
 

RJ 17

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Nov 27, 2011
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Grach said:
RJ 17 said:
Other than that, the typical "bullet sponge" complaint about most of the enemies beyond the standard dime-a-dozen soldiers. I'm not asking for CoD-style "one to three shots will kill any enemy" style combat, but good lord...you shouldn't have to unload 5 clips of ammo into some guy to bring him down.
I loved the game, because it actually engaged me in way other than shooting through russians. But I completely agree with you, especially on the case of the Handymen. I had to actually tone down the difficulty from hard to normal because I couldn't get past the second (or third? the one before you meet Daisy) handyman. That's frankly a first time for me.
And that's exactly the type of thing I'm talking about. And don't even get me started on the damn ghost fight...I called bull shit on that pretty much from the time it started to the time I finally killed the bastard.

2: I still say that the ending to the story doesn't work, and no one will be able to convince me otherwise. By that, I'm specifically referring to the plan to completely get rid of Comstock, permanently. To wipe him completely away from all of existence so that there's no way any of the madness he caused could happen again. For starters, if every choice you make spawns a universe in which the opposite of that choice is made, I don't think you can wipe out a choice by killing yourself before that choice is made. Why? Because you're making a choice to kill yourself, so that would create a universe in which you refused to make that sacrifice. "But...but...but the choice to kill Booker was made out in that Limbo area where all the lighthouses are! Therefor it doesn't really count!" Oh go fuck yourself with that explanation. That was never, not once, established during the ending that "any choices made in this area don't spawn a new universe" and beyond that it's highly debateable when the choice was actually made. If somehow killing himself in that ethereal baptism pond somehow has consequences on the universe, then that implies that any choice in that pond would have consequences. Such as, I don't know, allowing Elizabeth to hold you under and drown you? As opposed to flipping the fuck out, pushing all the hers off of you and trying to run away. I'd say THAT'S certainly a possible outcome of that situation, no matter how slim the chances are. Thus a new universe is spawned in which Booker refuses the suicidal sacrifice.

Beyond that, doesn't the very existence of Burial At Sea prove that the ending didn't work? Granted, I haven't played it yet, but if all the wrongs were righted by Booker's sacrifice, then Trans Universal Elizabeth shouldn't exist anymore if Comstock doesn't exist anymore. So what the fuck?
The problem with the ending is something that Yahtzee touched upon on his review of Infinite. It ends with Booker killing himself because it's suppoused to signify that by killing the player, it also kills the other side of player. The one that keeps causing misery in the world of Bioshock, since the player himself continues to play the game and continues the franchise for the sake of entertainment. That's what Yahtzee referred to as the point of maximum wanky metanarrative.

As for burial at sea, I just gather it's the story of another Booker whatsoever, one who was simply born into the world of the original Bioshock. Besides, "trasnuniversal Elizabeth" applies to more than one Elizabeth.
The thing is that I didn't even interpret the ending as Elizabeth wanting to end ALL the madness in the BS universe, but rather just specifically trying to end the madness that Comstock (and Booker, for that matter) caused. She wanted to prevent Columbia from going on to destroy the world. As such, Comstock had to go. Getting rid of Comstock/Booker would have absolutely no affect on Andrew Ryan and Rapture, in fact the way I see things Rapture can only exist in universes in which Columbia doesn't exist, so universes in which Booker refused the baptism.

As such, there'd be nothing wrong with making another BS game since, at least as far as I could tell, the drowning was supposed to simply ensure that Comstock and Columbia never exist.

Which brings me to my point about Burial At Sea: apparently it takes place in a universe in which Booker somehow ends up down in Rapture. Then Elizabeth just pops up out of nowhere (I actually have played it a bit, just not all the way through...I rage-quit after Elizabeth literally trapped me in a closet and I had no way to get out and I just haven't gotten back to it) with all this knowledge about Booker's supposedly dead-daughter, and she keeps making comments about how her father did this or taught her that, implying that it's actually the same Elizabeth from the main game. And what I'm saying is that her very existence completely negates the notion that every Comstock in all possible universes has been wiped out. Because if there's no Comstock in any of the universes, there's no Columbia. If there's no Columbia, then there's no TransUniversal Elizabeth to begin with...since there wouldn't be a Comstock to try and pull her through a wall and get her pinkie nipped off. That's why I say the very existence of Burial At Sea implies that indeed they can never fully get rid of Comstock or Columbia, and as such the ending to the original game doesn't work.

My prediction for Burial At Sea: By the end of this story (however many episodes there are), Elizabeth is going to help find this Booker's little girl and deliver her to the crib of Regular Booker (the one you wake up as at the very, very end of the original story and run to your daughter's room because you hear a baby crying). As I recall, Elizabeth says "I'm doing this to repay a debt" early on in Burial At Sea, that's what I'm basing my hunch off of.
 

Darth_Payn

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5 days of Jim in a row? Yay! But Bioshock Infinite's main criticism for me was it looked like the kind of game that called you (the player) out for using violence as the way to resolve conflict, but that was the only way to go.
 

chthonical

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The inherent irony is that the footage Jim used for BioShock Infinite was from a version of the game that NEVER EXISTED. It looks like a version of the game that could've been interesting and enjoyable. So we see either hypocrisy, or satire on Jim's part. Especially after the Aliens: Colonial Marines fiasco.

You have people fanning and Irrational rubbing one out, so I think it's been thoroughly missed.
 

LackofCertainty

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My biggest problem with bioshock infinite is that it was too similar to the previous titles. If infinite was your first rodeo, I'm sure it's fantastic. For me, I was already getting bored of bioshock's combat by the end of bioshock 1. Bioshock 2 briefly reinvigorated it for me, but I was very done with the combat by it's end. Infinite I didn't even bother finishing. I had some fun jumping around the rails, but it was mostly more of the same.
 

GonzoGamer

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I'm a little late to the Bioshock party. I rented Infinite then kept it when I realized that it also came with the first Bioshock and it would only cost me $5. I'm not too far into it but I like it. I feel like these guys are heavily inspired by Terry Gilliam movies.
 

Mikeyfell

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Aug 24, 2010
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109 said:
Time to admit it folks: Bioshock Infinite is the best first-person shooter released since Half-Life 2.
I feel like you need a finger wag and a stern talking to.
And then I remember that everyone is entitled to their opinion.
But then I remember that this is the internet, and this image came to mind.


So fuck common sense! Let's talk about this internet style!

I seriously hope that anybody calling the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite bad doesn't simultainiously mean to imply that the subpar, loose, clunky gameplay in the original Bioshock or anything in that piece of trash Bioshock 2 is deeper and more fun than Bioshock Infinite. The game easily outclasses every other first-person shooter released in its generation, not just for telling a superior story better than all of its competitors, but even as a game of just running around and shooting, dicking around with vigors and flying around on skylines.
The combat isn't bad, but cluttered and disorganized is a good way to put it.
Infinite's inventory system is trash I mean it's completely at odds with the structure of the weapon system. Money in Infinite is scarce (Which would be a good thing in any other game) In BSI that leads to the very real possibility that you'll blow all your cash upgrading a weapon you'll never see again Because you're limited to two weapons at a time.
(The thing I did was spend all my money upgrading the Pattywacker Hand Cannon (Because I fucking love that gun) and then I ended up carrying around a gun with no bullets for 2/3 of the game)
Then the problem gets exacerbated around the half way point when when they pile on a bunch of extraneous gun types for no reason.

The two slot limit adds another massive problem because Infinite is designed the same way as the first Bioshock (I mean situational terrain that forces you to modify your play style on the fly) So sometimes you'll want long range weapons, sometimes you'll want to be up close and personal, sometimes you'll want explosives. And in the first Bioshock that worked really well because you could hold all your guns at once. Keep your rockets on reserve for when you need them, use your cross bow at long range, machine gun at mid range, shotgun and wrench at close range.
In infinite you need to be holding the right weapons long before you get to where you need to use them. That's a problem even completely setting aside the upgrade shenanigans.

Then there are the Vigors (And to be honest I didn't notice this until Campster pointed it out but half the vigors are redundant.
Possession, Return to Sender, Charge, and Undertow are all unique
but Crows, Bronco, Devil's Kiss and Shock all serve the same purpose.

Plus with upgrades Murder of Crows is way OP... In the first Bioshock Shock Jock was way OP. Not really a complaint just an observation.
With Crows and Possession (And Charge to help you Cheese your way through the Siren fights(Oh god the Siren fights...) Your biggest threat is running out of salt)

Then you don't get to carry around a supply of Medkits or Salts with you. So if you're in a pickle you're completely at the mercy of a random number generator in a blue dress.

(Not to mention Bioshock Infinite has Elisabeth, the pinnacle of a companion character (okay, Ellie can count as well) instead of the half-baked, ultimately failed mechanic of the Little Sisters.)
oh... yeah...Ellie? seriously? Oh well back to Liz.
I don't know about other people, but I never thought the little sisters were well implemented. But Elizabeth isn't better (Mechanically. Narratively she's wonderful)
Liz wasn't optimized for the way Infinite works. In theory, supplies are scarce so she'll throw you ammo, health or Salts. Which she "probably" pulls through tares. But she's finicky and unreliable. (In my playthrough she never once threw me ammo for my Hand Cannon even though I had it for 2/3 of the game. Several times I had a sliver of health or Salt left and had to do a little dance for her amusement before she'd give me anything. (Jump up and down a few times, run around in circles, take a ride on the rails, obnoxious stuff like that. To make matters worse it hardly ever worked)

This was more of a problem during Clash in the Clouds but she'd often throw me the wrong thing. I'd have full health and she'd yell "Booker! Health!" "Okay? What am I supposed to do with it?"

The game is slick, tight, difficult, rewards experimentation and unique playstiles, oh and lest we forget that tears are the best innovation in the genre, hell, in the entire field of action games, since Bulletstorm's energy leash at least! Maybe even the gravity gun!
I wouldn't gush over tears so much. You realize that mechanically they are nothing more than pushing a "use" button to activate an environmental hazard. Which is hardly innovative at all. The most innovative part of the tear system is that you can activate them from the safety of cover or while moving around far away from them.

not just for telling a superior story better than all of its competitors
You mean all other FPS games this year... not all other narrative focused games this year right?
It's not perfect and it pales in comparison to the original Bioshock. The story's good, if a little silly at the end
Infinite universes means infinite possibilities right? Drowning Booker in one universe doesn't solve anybody's problems. It just kills that one Booker. I think they realized that in Burial at Sea though... I think. They didn't address it.

All that said I had fun with the game (In spite of all the stupid fucking design choices, the game is still fun)
But perspective, being "best" only by virtue of "nothing [sub](hardly anything. Paper's Please FTW!)[/sub]else was better" isn't really deserving of an award, is it?
 

jpoon

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I greatly enjoyed the game. It looked amazing on PC, the story was a trip and I was moved by it. Good vid Jim, it was a quality game in my book!
 

Mikeyfell

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Falseprophet said:
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:

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.

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.
I think Matthewmatosis's video on the subject is better

Campster accuses the game of "ludududududududududu" a lot and I side with Jim of that point.
I think the level of violence is appropriate for the context, and cutting down the amount would only really serve to shorten the game.

And Matthew picks the mechanics and narrative apart a lot better. IMO anyway.
Plus his accent rocks.
 

CardinalPiggles

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I liked the boring combat. It gave the player more time to think about the narrative and story and characters and all that good stuff.

Same with Spec Ops: The Line really, and people don't give that game nearly as much shit for it's mediocre combat. Hate on what's popular I guess.
 

ShakerSilver

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Nov 13, 2009
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It's funny that you picked Bioshock Infinite as a game of the year, Jim. I'm not calling you out for this decision, because I agree. If there was any one game to personify just how I felt about 2013, it would be that one, because it shows how shallow the medium has truly become.

Why do I feel this way? Well where do I start...
As far as gameplay goes, it's shallow and uninteresting. Enemies are nothing but bullet sponges on higher difficulties and shooting is boring. There's little variety in guns, and the 2 weapon limit makes finding ammo incredibly hard. The upgrade system is useless because of this limit, since it's highly likely you'll run out of ammo for any one gun you have and will be forced to pick up a new on instead. The levels are painfully linear with nothing but shooting galleries along the way, which is an awful shame when compared to the original Bioshock's environments, and kills any sense of exploration the games used to have. Removing the player's ability to hack or find medkits is a painfully shallow attempt to make Elizabeth seem like a helpful companion, especially since she does absolutely nothing else in the entire game. You don't even need to protect her from the people attempting to get her back for some reason, almost as if she doesn't even exist in the game world.
But hey, at least the story is good, right? Not really. Elizabeth didn't make sense as a character. For someone who had spent almost all her life locked away, she has the bright and vibrant personality of a Disney Princess. The motivation for main characters is completely lost half-way through the story once you make the first jump between dimensions, making most of the story from then on out contrived and pointless. Songbird was a disappointment. Booker is bland and uninteresting. The themes about ideology and morality that were being built upon early on in the game take a backseat to timey-wimey-dimension hoping shenanigans later on. And the ending? Jesus Christ that ending.

It makes no sense. No, I understand it, but it makes no sense within the universe. How does killing Booker in ONE timeline stop ALL other versions of Comstock? If there are an infinite amount of dimensions, then there is going to be one where Booker survives the baptism and becomes Comstock. There's probably a universe where none of the events in the game happen too. And there's also one where he might have become Comstock without the Baptism. If anything, killing the Booker of that ONE dimension just prevents Comstock from appearing in that particular dimension.
With all of games flaws and faults, I can only say this: it's damn good at looking good. From the outside, the story looks interesting, the visuals are beautiful, and the gameplay works. Apparently that's enough to sell a game these days, because people lapped it up. I bought this game on release and I was disappointed. But the media couldn't stop going on about it. About how it was a game for "smart people", when truthfully it's just as smart as Inception: appears complex on the outside, but when you actually think about it, it's pretty damn simple, and also riddled with plot holes. Not to mention that gameplay is boring and tedious, nothing smart or challenging about that either.

It's a Blockbuster of a videogame, but for 2013, it's damn near perfect. It exemplifies how shallow the industry has become. When a game with just a somewhat interesting but deeply flawed plot and some mediocre gameplay can get perfect scores across the board and when any criticism (be it valid or otherwise) of said game is met with hate and backlash, it's an obvious sign that this sign that this industry has gone to shit and our standards have been lowered that much.
CardinalPiggles said:
I liked the boring combat. It gave the player more time to think about the narrative and story and characters and all that good stuff.
Oh my God it's worse than I thought.
 

Drummodino

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Jan 2, 2011
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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. :D
I loved the gameplay too! Apparently that means I have terrible standards. I just loved how chaotic and frantic things could get. Nothing is as much fun as pulling someone up with the octopus or bucking bronco plasmids and shotgunning them in the face.
 

Machine Man 1992

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Trishbot said:
Full Metal Bolshevik said:
109 said:
Full Metal Bolshevik said:
109 said:
Time to admit it folks: Bioshock Infinite is the best first-person shooter released since Half-Life 2.
'insert laugh harder futurama video'

Want me to make a list of fps with better mechanics than Bioshock Infinite?
You can try, I'm going to love proving you wrong.
Call of Duty 4 and Call of Duty World at War.

Can you tell me with a straight face that BI had better gameplay than those COD's?
I'll go one or two better. Halo 1, Goldeneye, and Doom. Expertly crafted with the right amount of pacing, variety, level design, and player agency, all through genuinely new and exciting forms of gunplay and character alteration.

Though BI is in good company, I think.
I've got a few: Borderlands 2, Bulletstorm, Crysis 2, Far Cry 3, FEARs 1 and 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2 (crikey, that's a lot of twos.)

If we use the title of First Person Action Adventure, we can add Dishonored to the list.

BI has stiff competition.
 

Machine Man 1992

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Geo Da Sponge said:
I love how Jim has managed to kick off a massive argument about FPS mechanics when he didn't actually say anything about the gameplay of Bioshock Infinite itself.
That's the beauty of it; by not mentioning the mechanics, it implies things about the mechanics. Things that may or may not be true.

Instant recipe for flame war.
 

VanQ

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Oct 23, 2009
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There wasn't so much of a backlash as there was people that went back after their hype had died down and looked at the game from a critical perspective. They noticed a game that was obviously incomplete and a story full of loopholes and plot-holes. Something that Jim appears to be purposefully ignoring because he thought the game was fun.

Which is fine, if all you're after is a fun game. But some folks wanted more than a standard shooter with a standard story dressed up to be more than it really was. It was also a victim of misleading trailer syndrome, so some people felt a bit cheated in that regard.