Zero Punctuation: Top 5 Games of 2013
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I'm getting a lot of mixed emotions in this thread but I think I'll like it. I arrived pretty late at the 7th gen party so there're higher chances of me getting phazed by graphics and such. And I did play through Infinite until around my arrival to Columbia, to test the game, and looked very promising thus far. I don't mind plot holes or soi disant pretentiousness so long as the gameplay is fun.Gunner 51 said:
I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite quite a lot. It felt like a fresh take on shooters altogether, with a strong story to back it up. It just invoked a strange feeling of a universe thrown off-balance, being created, torn down and re-created as you went along with it, and it worked quite well.
And there will always be people who don't enjoy certain games or movies etc, and we all have our reasons. I don't like Neon Genesis Evangelion. One of my friends doesn't like Silent Hill 2. Everyone has a say in it, I suppose.
But yes, I had a great time with Infinite. I'd say it's probably my game of the year as well.
And there will always be people who don't enjoy certain games or movies etc, and we all have our reasons. I don't like Neon Genesis Evangelion. One of my friends doesn't like Silent Hill 2. Everyone has a say in it, I suppose.
But yes, I had a great time with Infinite. I'd say it's probably my game of the year as well.
Sorry but that's not the point. The candidates were handpicked by the Escapist staff. During the voting, barely no one from the community actually voted for that horrible game.mrdude2010 said:
I wonder if they just got lazy on their selection or put it there as a joke. Either way, it's a shame an actual good game didn't get the slot.
SPOILERcanadamus_prime said:
Well, their way of writing around this seems to be that Elizabeth actually makes most of the decisions and does the driving. I don't think time travel was ever really involved, so much as visiting different realities where different things had happened or where time had moved along at a different pace.
To begin with it's fairly straightforward where the plan is to simply visit a parallel dimension where a bunch of guns were constructed and bring them through to arm a revolution. However Booker winds up getting caught up in the events of that alternate world as opposed to the simple act of finding and bringing through some gun crates. This is where the game starts to really fall apart in terms of it's narrative, since really everything happening at that point is out of context of the beginning of the game, and any character you meet can be argued to be potentially very different from the ones Booker was dealing with to begin with. Basically the longer the game goes on, the less anything you do potentially matters because your no longer even working with the world you started with.
The "Future Elizabeth" meeting is one where she more or less pulled *A* Booker through, but half the point is that it's basically impossible to say if it's your Elizabeth, if your her Booker, and if it's simply a case where a couple of specific events match up. Something made clear when you see tons of alternative Elizabeths and Bookers during the finale.
Pretty much things wind up mattering so little your basic objective is "let's go to Paris" which makes sense because how do you even meet up with the people you think hired you when they are in a totally separate reality. The whole ending after the big skyship battle is pretty much a giant "Stop, okay this is just kind of pointless" moment because really the Comstock you whacked isn't even the guy from your original dimension, and really I was kind of wondering briefly if as a surprise it was going to turn out there wasn't a Paris in the dimension you were in (and say fly over empty ocean when you hit the coordinates) but it didn't go that far.
At the end of the day it seems like Booker is being kind of guided into the "solution" though he makes the decision to sacrifice himself. Presumably Elizabeth hatched the plan you see with other Elizabeths since you had them all converging at once.
Overall yeah... it's a mess, it makes a degree of sense, but it was a cop out "infinite paradox" ending. I get the impression that the developers made this game, couldn't think of a profound ending for it, so just basically squeezed out one of the most stereotypical "artsy" sci-fi resolutions.
Perhaps some of the DLC will wrap it up better, but I doubt it. Before you get into the "Anna crying" scene the basic gist of the thing is that nothing that happened during the game happened anywhere, and what's more as the "twins" point out even Booker's own recollections (what you think happened) could be considered spotty. Booker/Comstock and Elizabeth cease to exist, there is never a Columbia and apparently "real world history" happens as a result.
To begin with it's fairly straightforward where the plan is to simply visit a parallel dimension where a bunch of guns were constructed and bring them through to arm a revolution. However Booker winds up getting caught up in the events of that alternate world as opposed to the simple act of finding and bringing through some gun crates. This is where the game starts to really fall apart in terms of it's narrative, since really everything happening at that point is out of context of the beginning of the game, and any character you meet can be argued to be potentially very different from the ones Booker was dealing with to begin with. Basically the longer the game goes on, the less anything you do potentially matters because your no longer even working with the world you started with.
The "Future Elizabeth" meeting is one where she more or less pulled *A* Booker through, but half the point is that it's basically impossible to say if it's your Elizabeth, if your her Booker, and if it's simply a case where a couple of specific events match up. Something made clear when you see tons of alternative Elizabeths and Bookers during the finale.
Pretty much things wind up mattering so little your basic objective is "let's go to Paris" which makes sense because how do you even meet up with the people you think hired you when they are in a totally separate reality. The whole ending after the big skyship battle is pretty much a giant "Stop, okay this is just kind of pointless" moment because really the Comstock you whacked isn't even the guy from your original dimension, and really I was kind of wondering briefly if as a surprise it was going to turn out there wasn't a Paris in the dimension you were in (and say fly over empty ocean when you hit the coordinates) but it didn't go that far.
At the end of the day it seems like Booker is being kind of guided into the "solution" though he makes the decision to sacrifice himself. Presumably Elizabeth hatched the plan you see with other Elizabeths since you had them all converging at once.
Overall yeah... it's a mess, it makes a degree of sense, but it was a cop out "infinite paradox" ending. I get the impression that the developers made this game, couldn't think of a profound ending for it, so just basically squeezed out one of the most stereotypical "artsy" sci-fi resolutions.
Perhaps some of the DLC will wrap it up better, but I doubt it. Before you get into the "Anna crying" scene the basic gist of the thing is that nothing that happened during the game happened anywhere, and what's more as the "twins" point out even Booker's own recollections (what you think happened) could be considered spotty. Booker/Comstock and Elizabeth cease to exist, there is never a Columbia and apparently "real world history" happens as a result.
I am a bit surprised that Y-Man picked Bioshock Infinite as G.O.T.Y. There were some glaring flaws in it that just couldn't be ignored.
#1 What did Elizabeth think was going to happen when she supported the Rebels - Comstock would admit he was wrong and give minorities the right to vote?? Of course there was going to be a war.
"Nothing worse than a monster who thinks he's right with God"
- Mal (TV Show Firefly)
#2 How does the game go from making a tangible, passionate case regarding social inequality/slavery (arguably THE issue of our day) to a soft-science yarn-ball on the subject of alternate reality? What waste of great material.
#3 It was hard enough to believe that Andrew Ryan was able to scare up the resource to make Rapture from the bottom of the sea, but where exactly are the steel/wood/bronze mines in the clouds? OR, if anyone was importing that much material from the surface, how would nobody notice and start hiking commodity prices, thus making people on the surface go looking for someone to blame/sue/kill over it????
#4 Many props in the game are from much later in time (the radios are late 1930's/1940's design).
#5 W.T.F. is it with every building having a ticket booth (even in some of the homes). It is possible to reuse the same textures too much.
#6 The "Song Bird" plot line is lame. Not nearly well enough explained and its connection with Elizabeth is very arbitrary.
#7 Feels like a game that simply lost its way, or lacked firm direction to keep the pieces in sync. I would vote it "Biggest Disappointment of the Year".
#1 What did Elizabeth think was going to happen when she supported the Rebels - Comstock would admit he was wrong and give minorities the right to vote?? Of course there was going to be a war.
"Nothing worse than a monster who thinks he's right with God"
- Mal (TV Show Firefly)
#2 How does the game go from making a tangible, passionate case regarding social inequality/slavery (arguably THE issue of our day) to a soft-science yarn-ball on the subject of alternate reality? What waste of great material.
#3 It was hard enough to believe that Andrew Ryan was able to scare up the resource to make Rapture from the bottom of the sea, but where exactly are the steel/wood/bronze mines in the clouds? OR, if anyone was importing that much material from the surface, how would nobody notice and start hiking commodity prices, thus making people on the surface go looking for someone to blame/sue/kill over it????
#4 Many props in the game are from much later in time (the radios are late 1930's/1940's design).
#5 W.T.F. is it with every building having a ticket booth (even in some of the homes). It is possible to reuse the same textures too much.
#6 The "Song Bird" plot line is lame. Not nearly well enough explained and its connection with Elizabeth is very arbitrary.
#7 Feels like a game that simply lost its way, or lacked firm direction to keep the pieces in sync. I would vote it "Biggest Disappointment of the Year".
Really glad to see Revengeance made it onto the list... the good side of the list, I mean. Also those description for each rank were by far the most entertaining of any top five list yet.
still glad to experience it!
I'm surprised how hard he came down on Beyond: Two Souls. He basically said that David Cage's stories keep getting more "laughably bad" despite the fact that he gave Heavy Rain a pretty solid review and it has almost nothing besides story. I also bought Indigo Prophecy purely on recommendation from Yahtzee and that was a Cage game too.
"once it get's going Heavy Rain actually has some really good bits..that whole scene gripped me by the bellend...for what it's worth, Heavy Rain does get better later"
"once it get's going Heavy Rain actually has some really good bits..that whole scene gripped me by the bellend...for what it's worth, Heavy Rain does get better later"