Zero Punctuation: BioShock: Infinite

Parakeettheprawn

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That Guy Ya Know said:
I see. Never realised you're meant to sneak past those guys I just killed them all, I was only on medium so I didn't have any trouble. Actually I found that section quite interesting as it was the only part of the game where I had to worry about ammo.
Yeah, well unfortunately for me I was already low on salts and only had the pistol and hand cannon at the time, so my efficacy at taking out mobs of mindless melee enemies were rather limited. It was challenging, but not in a Dark Souls sort of way, more in a Halo 2 Legendary Difficulty sort of way.
 

DrunkenMonkey

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Abandon4093 said:
AdamG3691 said:
Marik Bentusi said:
My experience with Infinite was basically this. [http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2013/093/6/b/bioshock_infinite_retrospect__spoilers__by_marikbentusi-d60bgxk.jpg]

No idea how Yahtzee thought Bioshock Infinite's ending was tied up tho
considering we're ending on an after-credits cliffhanger. Which I really hope is a respawned Booker.
think of it this way:
elizabeth drowns any booker that takes the baptism, and any bookers that refuse it go on to live a happy and full life.
because of this elizabeth and our bookers never existed, but if elizabeth never existed then how does she drown comstock? because if the choice is made in the past again and comstock is created, the events of the game start all over again, resulting in all the comstocks dying and retroactively never existing to start with, she's made her own existence a failsafe to stop any more comstocks from being made or ever have been made. (hence the "infinite" part of the title, the game happens an infinite number of times because we need to keep erasing (or keep erased) the timelines whenever comstock does survive)

it's a sort of predestination paradox in that when that reality is created, it also creates the method of preventing its own creation

since no universe now contains a successful baptism, all bookers live out the rest of their lives normally, and ours gets paradox'd back to his office with the memories of the game, making him ask "anna, is that you?"

now if you've been excusing me, I'll need to have been sitting down to get my sense of time back in order
It just suffers from Terminator syndrome.

It makes a story that has the "OMG, didn't see that shit coming" factor, but it doesn't hold up to any kind of scrutiny.

By virtue of the way the multiverse works. All she would have accomplished was to make a splinter universe that differed from any of the universes we were shown. All the events that we experienced must still have happened in some universe. Unless they're also planning on fucking with Thermodynamics too.

I know we witness time travel, but it's never revealed whether they are simply travelling to another universe that is at a different point in time, or whether they're actively affecting their own timeline.

And the latter makes less sense than the former in context of Elizabeth's powers.

And the universe that they created would have to have existed already anyway.... you know... infinite possibilities and all that jazz.

It's been explained and demonstrated in the game that there are constants and variables, which means there are not an infinite amount of possibilities, although infinite worlds if that makes sense. Elizabeth does not take you back into one specific timeline, but to the metaphysical focal point where Booker makes the choices to be Comstock. That way any Booker that takes the Baptism gets drowned, thus all the branches with Comstock get eviscerated, including any Elizabeth, as well as the events of the game.



You have to take the story with a grain of salt, and realize that it is not trying too hard to follow real world science.
 

bluepotatosack

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uchytjes said:
MiskWisk said:
The significance was they were singing "God only knows" by the Beach boys in 1966. It is a hint that they are abusing the tears to advance themselves by taking things from the future and other worlds.

OT: Nice review. Surprised he didn't mention certain things but the "Get out" part was more than worth it.
That makes so much sense now. I guess it is because I don't know the song. The only time I really noticed the whole "abuse" of the tears was when that lady was singing "Fortunate Son" in the slums.
For more anachronistic music, I've heard a calliope version of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" playing at the beach, and a fantastic version of "Tainted Love" being played in a bar. And looking around youtube there's plenty more that I either missed or haven't gotten to yet.

 

Aardvaarkman

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warmachine said:
What is the significance of the gay quartet other than they're ripping off The Beach Boys?
By "ripping off," do you mean "paying generous royalties to use the song"? That would be a rather strange definition of "ripping off."
 

uchytjes

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bluepotatosack said:
uchytjes said:
MiskWisk said:
The significance was they were singing "God only knows" by the Beach boys in 1966. It is a hint that they are abusing the tears to advance themselves by taking things from the future and other worlds.

OT: Nice review. Surprised he didn't mention certain things but the "Get out" part was more than worth it.
That makes so much sense now. I guess it is because I don't know the song. The only time I really noticed the whole "abuse" of the tears was when that lady was singing "Fortunate Son" in the slums.
For more anachronistic music, I've heard a calliope version of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" playing at the beach, and a fantastic version of "Tainted Love" being played in a bar. And looking around youtube there's plenty more that I either missed or haven't gotten to yet.

I think I faintly remember the "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" song but didn't think anything of it when I encountered it. The only reason I remember "Fortunate Son" is because it is heard through a rift earlier.
 

hotelsdown

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I am actually genuinely amazed you managed to successfully incorporate the concept of 'being up your own butt' into such a high-brow review...
 

Kris D'Arienzo

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Friederich said:
Dear Yahtzee, what does Bioshock Infinite have to do with Infinite Jest ? Which I'm currently halfway through, so don't spoil it for me.
Or is it just for the infinite?
Very likely he's referring the line from Hamlet. Where Hamlet holds the skull of the court jester in his hand and says, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!"

The point being a double reference on the surface to the fact that Yahtzee is very funny guy. But on a deeper level he's also claiming to be much less happy than he appears. All of which he is saying ironically (I think).

And good on you for reading DFW's master work. It's a brilliant book and should be read with access to an online OED, DSM IV-TR, Stedman's Medical Dictionary, and the smartest philosophy major you can kidnap. At least that was what I needed in order to understand what was going on.
 

gphjr14

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Evil Smurf said:
Based on this I'm going to buy it once I finish Bioshock 1 & 2
PS3 version had Bioshock 1 on the disc and 2 sucked at least the first 15 minutes I played did...
Anyways there's no point because Infinite has nothing to do with the other 2. Although there's kind of a shout out towards the end and the main character doesn't believe the whole concept of an underwater city (even though he's in a cloud city).
 

immortalfrieza

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Steve the Pocket said:
It's been three years, and Yahtzee still has yet to adequately explain why he hated BioShock 2 so much. His actual review came down to a load of silly nitpicks of the sort he would normally reserve for games he likes and has to fill time complaining about anyway, and he hasn't said anything beyond "Grr sequels" since.
A bunch of silly nitpicky and mostly invalid crap is what all the haters including Yahtzee always complain about when it comes to Bioshock 2. Everybody looooved Bioshock 1 soooo much, but when they later make a direct sequel that not only has everything Bioshock 1 had, it has more, and B2 even addresses quite a few things that were wrong with the B1 as well, they hate on it for being everything they loved the previous game for. The most common complaint I hear is [really whinny unpleaseable fans] "the story of Rapture was over! This is just a lazy cash grab![/fans]" No, the real truth is you just have a complete lack of imagination, you can't think of a way for Rapture's story to be continued so you think that it can't happen, so when the folks a 2K manage to do exactly that, coming up with a great story that makes plenty of sense, you whine because you're jealous that they are more imaginative than you.

boradis said:
I'm sorry, but the Vox were utterly, utterly in the right. And turning them into the enemies for the final acts of the game is amazingly unfair to the cause of oppressed peoples. Even after they shoehorned in the scene of Daisy trying to murder a kid it didn't undermine the cause of equal rights, it just showed that she was a psycho. So while I didn't mind it when Elizabeth killed her, my stomach was in knots for the rest of the game as I was forced to kill people who only wanted to be treated like people. Granted, my Irish grandfather whom I'm named after was a union organizer in the 20s so I'm a bit biased. But I would have disagreed with Dewitt in his comparison of Comstock and Fitzroy regardless.

In short, while there are bad people everywhere not all causes are morally equivalent, which is what it seemed like Levine was trying to say. Basically it pushed me out of the story.
Maybe what the Vox claimed they were fighting for was right, but it's pretty clear long before Fitzroy went completely off the deep end that equality isn't what the Vox ever were fighting for, only to replace the Columbians' bigotry and oppression with their own, and it only becomes more obvious as time goes on that if the Vox were either going to genocide all the Columbians who weren't part of their movement or kill all who opposed them and enslave the rest. Even if the Vox WERE truly fighting for equality, their methods were anything but noble or moral, or even fit into I-did-what-I-had-to-do by any reasonable standard. Booker knew that people by their very nature want to control and leech off others, he knew that the Vox would barely be any better in the end than Comstock, and that's exactly what ends up happening.

C117 said:
The ending - Okay, the ending in itself is not what's bad. What is bad is the rushed feel of it, and the fact that you contribute squat to it. You and Elizabeth travel through a few different worlds, she explains the plot to you because the game hasn't done that already, a twist is revealed, some more world-jumping, another twist, and then it's over. All within 5 minutes. Okay, so I know Bioshock had a slightly rushed ending as well, but at least there the twist was presented to you and the plot was explained quite a while before the game was over. This gave the player time to absorb what had just occured, what it meant for them, and ponder just how they should act henceforth. In Bioshock Infinite, a majority of the plot is given to you in the last 10 minutes, before the game abruptly tells you to sod off. And you might have different ways of interpreting the ending, or explaining the plot, but the fact is that the whole existential world gobble-di-goo just comes right out of nowhere. It just feels like it could have been better handled, is all.
My biggest problem with the ending is unlike the other 2 Bioshock games there's no multiple endings to it, that makes every one of those choices they threw at you at various points throughout the game COMPLETELY pointless, and it also means the game has basically 0 replay value.
I've also never cared much for games which the ending has the player character erase the entire events of the game from ever happening, because it makes me feel like both the player character and I never actually accomplished anything.

Despite this, Infinite has managed to do 2 things that a video game only does once in a blue moon these days, 1, it made me sad at the end when the game was over, not because the ending was sad, but because the game itself was over, and 2, when I put it down, it made me desire to have a sequel RIGHT THE F&*K NOW!!! Very, very few games are good enough do that to me much anymore.
 

I.Muir

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I have pet peeves about the ending
Same kind of thing I feel about using time paradoxes
So when Liz drowns Booker she somehow drowns all those people who would become Comstock which causes her to no longer exist as it were. If this was the case and she never existed then how did she drown Booker? Why does drowning a single Booker that is not likely to become Comstock at that stage kill all the Comstock"s that might occur? If it does then wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that all Booker's present at the baptism were all drowned? So assuming Liz gains her power by having part of her in another dimension that was specifically removed during the closing of that first tear on her pinky rather than leaving hair, skin cells or anything people have drop off them all the time then.... whaaaaaaaattttt? Why does suddenly turn omniscient after gaining her power back? She can "see through all the doors".... not buying that one. Why are they trying to mix the idea of constants with multiverse theory, that just does not work. Supposing that they (They being the not/twins) are merely exploring events that have branched only partially down a single path and what keeps that a 'single' path are these constants... nope it still does not really work.

This shit ain't logical
Still I enjoyed it more or less but prefer the first bio shock
No doubt Infinite is a success due to how much discussion it's generating but it's annoying having pseudo intellectuals try and tell me I just don't understand as a means of deflecting questions like this
For some reason sea slugs and little girls making mystic goo seems more plausible
 

ShiningMetaLord

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Gonna post my thoughts here, I was gonna make a full review, but meh I couldn't find a way to tie all of the points together. No spoilers, so don't worry if you haven't played the game.

Story points:

One thing that always stuck out in my head was the dialogue. Booker barely ever talks with other people in the game outside plot-important characters which I felt was a missed chance to bring more character and charm into the world. The NPCs talk to Booker sometimes but her never really gives a reply, he just looks around containers for money and food and shooting at things which are out to shoot him. A chance was wasted here in my eyes.

The other thing which took all immersion I had away from me was how Elizabeth acts the exact same way towards locks or something when it makes no sense in the context of the scenario. An example being I had just went through the scarier part of the game and was making my way to the final area. Elizabeth was rightfully upset at this point in the game for reasons I won't mention, but the instant I ask her to pick a nearby lock to pick up an upgrade she happily skips over to the lock as if the previous event never happened. This isn't to say Elizabeth was a bad character, I love her stronger points and how she grows up over the events of the game, but that just broke all emotional tension that I had at that point.

Combat Points:

All the enemies are either bullet-spongy or they got shredded like paper depending on who I was fighting. Those Vox rocket guys are the worst offenders in this case in terms of normal foes. The special enemies like the Fireman or the Crow I can forgive for being bullet-spongy because they were a cut above the rest and I genuinely enjoyed fighting them. To touch on the Heavy Hitters real quick they range from decent to down right annoying, with the majority taking up the annoying slot. I liked the patriots because they required strategy in order to beat, having you to hit the gears as much as you could. The other three I found were annoying as hell. The Handymen were more of a chore then anything and because they're so quick you can't do much in order to dodge his attacks. The siren was interesting but a bit more bullet spongy then I would have liked. The absolute worst was the Boy of Silence. Because they have turret properties one would think you could just avoid being seen and get away from them, especially considering the area they reside in has barely any ammo so you had to conserve your shots, but no they had to be triggered in order to proceed, leaving me without ammo or salts to defend myself.

Speaking of which, Elizabeth's ability to throw salts/health/ammo/money your way is a blessing. A blessing because you can be in tight situations where you need your health recharged and she can save you in hairier moments, and I appreciated that she had a cool-down so you couldn't abuse that mechanic.

One last thing before I end this post, the game felt like it had so much more potential but failed to meet that potential. A lot of the areas felt small and didn't have as much verticality that I figured this game would have especially when you throw in the sky-lines which I feel were used so rarely that they didn't matter in the long run. The fact that they were rarely used outside a couple arenas surprised me. You would think that a mechanic that's been talked about since the first public announcement would have a much bigger effect on the gameplay and combat (and to that extent the world) but no it's rare to see skylines in Infinite, and while I'm glad that they don't shoe-horn them in to the point of annoyance, having them in here as little more then a way from getting to place to place smacks me as missed potential outside of the aerial attack which hits about one enemy and really has no strategic value whatsoever besides being flashy. Maybe they have a bigger role in the future DLC, I wouldn't know. I'm not going to hold my breath and wait for it.

With all of this said I do love the game and I had a blast playing it. However, it's not a perfect game (what game is?) and these are nothing more than the opinions that I had after playing the game and letting everything sink in.
 

V da Mighty Taco

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Worgen said:
I'm kinda surprised he liked it since we are starting to get people who are ragging on it for all the perfect reviews it got when it came out.
You say that likes there's something wrong with one expressing disapproval at the common consensus that it's a completely flawless game.

Now I haven't played the game for myself, but from what I've seen most people complaining about the perfect reviews actually liked the game quite a bit, but are bothered by how most critics are not listing any of the games faults whatsoever and many people are already heralding it Game of the Year or even Game of the Generation. I've seen people mention some pretty legitimate faults (including Yahtzee in this very review), which many are overlooking completely. That's where the naysayers' issues lie - not with people liking the game, but with the notion that the game has no faults at all and is absolutely perfect.

Before someone points this out to me - yes, those who love the game are entitled to express their opinions. So are those who don't find the game to be flawless and who don't agree with the perfect reviews.
 

Worgen

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V da Mighty Taco said:
Worgen said:
I'm kinda surprised he liked it since we are starting to get people who are ragging on it for all the perfect reviews it got when it came out.
You say that likes there's something wrong with one expressing disapproval at the common consensus that it's a completely flawless game.

Now I haven't played the game for myself, but from what I've seen most people complaining about the perfect reviews actually liked the game quite a bit, but are bothered by how most critics are not listing any of the games faults whatsoever and many people are already heralding it Game of the Year or even Game of the Generation. I've seen people mention some pretty legitimate faults (including Yahtzee in this very review), which many are overlooking completely. That's where the naysayers' issues lie - not with people liking the game, but with the notion that the game has no faults at all and is absolutely perfect.

Before someone points this out to me - yes, those who love the game are entitled to express their opinions. So are those who don't find the game to be flawless and who don't agree with the perfect reviews.
I've been having to deal with a friend of mine bitching about every little damn thing about the game. Its one thing to not like it but she also liked to say that anyone who liked certain parts of it, like the story, is an idiot. Yes she is a bit of a ***** at times.
 

Nowhere Man

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I would love a Ken Levine as God DLC. Make it happen Irrational! You know what would also be cool? If there was a DLC where you enter a continuity where Songbird is revealed as none other than Ken Levine in a steam-punk bird suit.