BioShock Infinite

[ThunderPeel2001]

I played it for 2 hours yeasterday. I actually just wanted to install it, see the intro and then go to sleep (because I was tired as shit).

I don't get the plasmids in this bioshock, why do they even exist? Or the handy man for that matter, I saw one during the non combat intro, but he feels out of place. It's a worker that it not really needed anymore?

 

Mouse sensitivity sucks on the PC. I can select between slow as hell, just a bit too fast, and various degrees of faster than "a bit too fast".

 

Just turn off "Mouse Acceleration" in the settings -- makes things MUCH better.

[Nappi]

I played it for 2 hours yeasterday. I actually just wanted to install it, see the intro and then go to sleep (because I was tired as shit).

I don't get the plasmids in this bioshock, why do they even exist? Or the handy man for that matter, I saw one during the non combat intro, but he feels out of place. It's a worker that it not really needed anymore?

 

Mouse sensitivity sucks on the PC. I can select between slow as hell, just a bit too fast, and various degrees of faster than "a bit too fast".

 

Disappointment of the year 2013.

 

Anyway, I bought the game after watching the GiantBomb Quick Look, despite my hatred for monsters that keep running towards me. I haven't played the game yet, but I like how the benchmark utility opens in cmd.exe, and later the the raw date can be opened in Excel.

[chummer]

I don't get the plasmids in this bioshock, why do they even exist? Or the handy man for that matter, I saw one during the non combat intro, but he feels out of place. It's a worker that it not really needed anymore?

 

In regard to your second question, those Handymen are advertised as ways for people to live forever in the fair. I imagine they're people on their deathbed who just didn't want to die. I think their combat shouts indicate that, though I'm not sure.

 

Regarding your second question, it's a bit spoilery but fits into the fiction at least:

 

It's revealed that the game exists in a multi-universe world. Tears in those places allow one of the Fink brothers to steal music from other times (which is why those anachronistic tunes exist) while the industrious Fink steals scientific information. This leads one to  believe that he stole plasmid technology from Rapture and marketed it as Vigors.

[elmuerte]

Just turn off "Mouse Acceleration" in the settings -- makes things MUCH better.

That was with mouse acceleration off. When turned on I at least have some accuracy. Anyway, RPS has some useful tips

[mjukis]

re: handyman

In one audio log (dont get me started on these) it's revealed that a man who got cancer from working in the tower got turned into a handyman because "I suppose a handyman is better than a dead one"

[soggybagel]

Absolutely loving the game. I can totally see how the gameplay for some could be a total turn off. It's certainly deeply familiar if you've played the past two bioshocks and that might not be a good thing for everyone. The world that you see, the world that you heard, and the world that is evoked in the first couple hours is something very special. I'm having a blast but part of me does disagree with some decisions. I can't help that I'm OCD about trying to find every audio log and pick every lock and search every garbage can but that is how I am and it does kind of make the game decisions more stark in some manner. I.E. Me running around after clearing an area to just snoop through every garbage can is kind of weird when you think about it.

Also I'm always torn on a game when it makes you decide what power ups you want to assign to...or rather the vitality things. From my understanding you won't ever get to max out every meter and I'm always the lame guy who tries to evenly distribute those upgrades but it would seem that is a mistake as I should probably just pump up one or two things to a higher max.

Either way I'm probably about five to six hours in and having a great time.

[mjukis]

Story stuff

 

Game has jumped the shark. I am now in a columbia where there are living dead people which bleed from their orifices because Elizabeth opened up a tear and we went through it. People who were killed in universe A remember being dead in universe B. Actually I'm sort of thinking Irrational Games is intentionally fucking with me. The G-man and woman is just to much to take.

[soggybagel]

Also does anyone think the melee kills are fucking ridiculous? And not in a good way.

[melmer]

^ yeah utterly ridiculous I like the one when he embeds it into their chest then fires them off rag dolling through the air.

[soggybagel]

It feels like the type of video gamey excess that for example, the Thumbs Crew rails against. The first time you pull it off was shocking and not in a good way. I was kind of like, "Oh, so its going to be like that."

[mjukis]

The second time I used the melee kill (by accident) Booker had already sprung Elizabeth, and as I watched my avatar of death drive a mini outboard motor into the neck and throat of this poor NPC I heard a sickened woman sputter "oh my god". Quit to desktop.

[Brannigan]

Story stuff

 

Game has jumped the shark. I am now in a columbia where there are living dead people which bleed from their orifices because Elizabeth opened up a tear and we went through it. People who were killed in universe A remember being dead in universe B. Actually I'm sort of thinking Irrational Games is intentionally fucking with me. The G-man and woman is just to much to take.

Don't worry, it gets a bit crazier!

[Scipio]

I really, really like that [play guitar] doesn't get an introduction, and is seemingly never brought up again.

[soggybagel]

I assume there is no new game plus? Since that 1999 mode is supposed to be the badass mode. Does that mean if we don't collect all the audio logs on one playthrough the ones we missed will still be there but so will all the ones we got? I don't care about the achievement as much as i care about hearing every piece of content.

[Reyturner]

Story stuff

Game has jumped the shark. I am now in a columbia where there are living dead people which bleed from their orifices because Elizabeth opened up a tear and we went through it. People who were killed in universe A remember being dead in universe B. Actually I'm sort of thinking Irrational Games is intentionally fucking with me. The G-man and woman is just to much to take.

The second time I used the melee kill (by accident) Booker had already sprung Elizabeth, and as I watched my avatar of death drive a mini outboard motor into the neck and throat of this poor NPC I heard a sickened woman sputter "oh my god". Quit to desktop.

I'm not going to lie; everything you're saying is actually starting to sell me on this game.

[soggybagel]

If you're interested just watch the quick look on Giant Bomb. It's about 30 minutes, it's past the very beginning so it doesn't spoil any of the really cool opening but it shows you some of the gameplay without spoiling really any story beats.

[Reyturner]

IMHO, any story that spoilers can ruin probably isn't a very good story to begin with (but don't worry, I won't insist on pushing my radical a-spoiler-ist agenda around here). 

 

Everything I've seen about this game tells me that the gameplay is too be tolerated, that the choices offered in the mechanics really render down to being expressive in nature and that what you're really there for is to experience the story and be immersed in the world. These are all usually huge red flags for me (the original Bioshock didn't do anything for me). I'm not saying these things are necessarily bad (other than gameplay which is satisfied with being just tolerable), they're just not what I typically look for in video games. 

 

I am, however, a big fan of 1. dumb, 2. crazy and 3. excess (also see: my undying love for MGS). 

[soggybagel]

Well my point was that there is a lot of evocative stuff early on that helps build a world and that many people prefer experiencing those things entirely fresh.

I do agree with you to a point. I don't get people freaking out about movie trailers for the most part unless they are very very blatant about things. That said YOU ARE INSANE!!!!

[tronhound]

IMHO, any story that spoilers can ruin probably isn't a very good story to begin with (but don't worry, I won't insist on pushing my radical a-spoiler-ist agenda around here).  

 

Tell me more about this, are you just not a fan of plot twists?

[Sno]

I just finished it, i absolutely loved it.

I'm tired, so i'm just going to ramble incoherently about general game things a bit:

- I thought the skyrails were a ton of fun and brought a lot of really exciting possibilities to some of the bigger battles in the game. I feel like the game could have used more of the skyrails, actually. You go for some really long stretches without ever seeing any. I hope it's a gameplay concept Irrational revisits in some form or another for future games. (Or maybe 2k Marin can do it when they're assigned to make BioShock Infinite 2. That's plausible, right? I'm starting that rumor right now.)

- I played through on hard and felt like the experience was right about where it should be, difficulty-wise. It was challenging without being frustrating. Everything seemed to find a role, but i was never drowning in resources. I think it's a very well balanced game, i had a great time with it.

- This is the first time i've found the trap powers to actually be important for surviving encounters in a BioShock game, so that's good.

- The addition of a shield perhaps inadvertently makes their funky food scavenging thing actually make sense from a gameplay standpoint, the top layer of regenerating health making the second layer more permanent to a point where the gradual increments of health restoration make sense.

- What exactly does 1999 mode do? I want to give it a shot, i've been under the impression that i am probably the kind of person it is specifically for.

- I don't like their "gear" system. The nonsensical contextualization for the odd assortment of abilities conferred seems particularly arbitrary and careless. (In fact, a lot of these elements in the game are feeling quite vestigial, barely any of BioShock's RPG roots are visible at this point.)

- I don't like that a single currency is shared between buying miscellaneous expendable supplies and buying into the primary mechanisms for character progression. (It also seems dangerous to penalize you by taking away from this particular currency when you die.)

- The levels are uncharacteristically... linear is the wrong word for it, but in System Shock 2 and the first BioShock, you had these big open spaces that were, if not plausible, at least believable. You could look at them and imagine people existing in those spaces day-to-day. The spaces in Infinite, on the other hand, are more transparently designed to facilitate gameplay. It's a distinction that probably makes for a better action game, but i think they've lost some of the unique atmosphere these sorts of games have.

- The non-combat bits i kind of wish were either a bit shorter, or had more going on. They're very like the non-combat interludes in Half-life games, but they tend to drag on for even longer. When i first started the game up, i was a little bewildered by how long you go without shooting anything, and that was awesome! A slow build with a lot of restraint, it was splendid. Sequences like that keep happening though, and they frequently don't have much going on.

- Elizabeth is kind of fascinating to watch, just such expressive body language and so many facial expressions, and so many incidental little environmental interactions. In general, i think Elizabeth is one of the big triumphs of the game. (Though her footsteps seem crazy loud, i found it actually quite annoying in quiet moments.)

- Holy shit though, it's so crazy when they have her stand next to and interact with other NPC's, forcing you to realize she's the only character in this game that is rendered in a stylized manner.

- Are Vigors literally never explained? I definitely didn't find any justification for them.

- It seemed quite long, maybe in part because i was so carefully combing the environments for narrative and ammo. There was some stuff in the middle section of the game that i felt dragged a bit.

- The subtle bit of tech that orients you to the surface of whatever object you're standing on, as all the buildings rock back and forth independent of eachother, never stopped being cool to me. Just the way your perspective on the city around you can immediately change as you move from building to build.

[Twig]

Tell me more about this, are you just not a fan of plot twists?

Just because you know what the twist is doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. I've had more than one SUPER TWIST spoiled for me across various mediums and still been fully able to enjoy and appreciate the stories.

[tronhound]

Just because you know what the twist is doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. I've had more than one SUPER TWIST spoiled for me across various mediums and still been fully able to enjoy and appreciate the stories.

 

That's true, I guess it doesn't necessarily ruin the film but if someone knew what was going to happen in the usual suspects going into the film they are having a huge 'oh shit' moment ruined. That moment is easily the high point of the film, everything builds up to it.

[Argobot]

UC San Diego published a study last summer that argues spoilers actually help people enjoy the story more. The theory goes, if you already know what twists the plot is going to take, you'll have more freedom to examine the smaller details you might have missed if you enter into the story completely blind. http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/soc/2011_08spoilers.asp

 

Obviously this is all a matter of preference; some people do not mind spoilers and others want to go completely blind into a story. There's no right or wrong way to enjoy something. (Although personally I don't have a huge problem with spoilers, but I will admit that accidentally hearing some of the plot details for Infinite has slightly deflated my enthusiasm for playing the game.

[Reyturner]

Tell me more about this, are you just not a fan of plot twists?

I mostly just agree with this.

edit: triple ninja'd :-P

I'm sorry for derailing the thread.

[I Saw Dasein]

Also does anyone think the melee kills are fucking ridiculous? And not in a good way.

I'm not usually a fan of the old ultraviolence, but it kind of works for me in this game, I think because the whole thing is so ludicrous,cartoony, and over-the-top. For example, if you kill a guy with the fire power, he will instantly burn down to a skeleton, then the skeleton remains upright for a second or so before collapsing to the floor. I'm nearly 100% sure the same thing happens in an Itchy and Scratchy cartoon.