Sign in to follow this  
Jake

Idle Thumbs 101: Introduction to Video Games

Recommended Posts

Hey guys, first time poster here.  I was bit suprised that Bioshock Infinite's story didn't get more love!  It's the first time my opinion has differed so wildly from all y'alls in all the 100 episodes prior.  I was amazed by all the subtleties in the story and how they all came together in the end.

 

Have you checked out this article on Bioshock's story?  It may help clear up some of the incohesiveness you mentioned experiecing (massive spoliers, obviously):

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/understanding-bioshock-infinites-ending-ending-explanation/

 

That said, love the show and proud to be a backer!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, Ninja Fishing is the clone of Ridiculous Fishing. Or more accurately it's a clone of Vlambeer's original Flash prototype, Radical Fishing. Ninja Fishing was created and put out on iOS before Vlambeer could put Ridiculous Fishing out and stole its thunder, resulting in them burning out on the project and releasing it almost a year later.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I agree though I wish you all would have expanded a bit when (I'm not sure who said this now) but pointed out the race and segregation issues were largely toothless. They were made rather toothless by the narrative shifting but it was something I wish you all explored a bit more.

 

If you want more discussion on how Infinite may have squandered certain thematic elements, check out this article:  BioShock Infinite: an Intelligent, Violent Video Game? by Daniel Golding http://www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s3733057.htm

 

It more generally talks about how being a shooter undermines things, as has been a topic of discussion around here. 

 

I haven't played the game, but it's been interesting to hear and read about.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yes, Ninja Fishing is the clone of Ridiculous Fishing. Or more accurately it's a clone of Vlambeer's original Flash prototype, Radical Fishing. Ninja Fishing was created and put out on iOS before Vlambeer could put Ridiculous Fishing out and stole its thunder, resulting in them burning out on the project and releasing it almost a year later.

 

I figured there was some sort of cloning shenanigans going on, but I didn't know the history of either fishing game so I wasn't sure which one was first.  But since Ridiculous Fishing isn't on Android, I guess I'm stuck with Ninja Fishing for goofy fishing on the go.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Have you checked out this article on Bioshock's story?  It may help clear up some of the incohesiveness you mentioned experiecing (massive spoliers, obviously):

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/understanding-bioshock-infinites-ending-ending-explanation/

 

According to that article, Booker is the false Shepard. I look forward to the Mass Effect / Infinite crossover DLC, even though I haven't played either of those series!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Speaking of the "oops wrong button" incident in Bioshock Infinite Sean talked about, that happened to me a couple of times. Although a bit differently. I have been playing some other FPS/TPS games where right mouse button is "zoom". So I accidentally unleashed a murder of crows which murdered friendlies, or initiated a fight premature. That was rather annoying.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On accidental interactions:

When storming fink with the vox, I was riding a skyline, went to dismount, accidently sky-punched a vox instead. He forgave me surprisngly.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Although my overall impression of BSI is more favorable than the Thumbs', I wholeheartedly agree that the fact that the game is a shooter hurts the interactivity with the world.  When the game told me, early on, that I didn't need to shoot everyone, I was excited.  If I play it cool in certain scenarios, will everyone leave me alone?  Will certain behaviors tip off the cops that I'm the guy they're looking for?  Are there things I can do to calm people down?  But there was no such nuance in practice.  In sections where people were cool with me, everyone pretty much just ignored me as long as I didn't start shooting (that I was walking around holding a shotgun while my left hand rippled with evil bird feathers apparently did not raise suspicions).  In sections where the cops were after me, they just stood around corners waiting until I would step close enough to cause them to start spraying bullets at my face.  The warning about interacting with the public, as with the 'choice' 'system' in the game, seemed like it was part of a game that they intended to build, but didn't belong in the game they actually shipped.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Have you checked out this article on Bioshock's story?  It may help clear up some of the incohesiveness you mentioned experiecing (massive spoliers, obviously):

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/understanding-bioshock-infinites-ending-ending-explanation/

Huh. That's a lot of things I already realized, but a few I didn't. The 122 thing in particular is a nice touch.

 

As an aside: it kind of amazes me that the cast's favorite fight in Infinite was the

siren

. That was by far the most boring fight in the game for me. It takes so goddamn long. Even the first time, I was just annoyed, and not really enjoying it. In contrast, I loved the Handyman fights. Speaking purely from a mechanical perspective, anyway. They weren't as personal, story-wise, sure, but they were a lot more dynamic and mobile and fun and SKYLINES. Although I think the first one doesn't have any skylines, which was annoying. It did have hooks, though! 

 

I have a lot of things to say about Bioshock Infinite in response to the 'cast but I'm at work so I wonder if I'll ever remember to actually type any of it up. X:

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Have you checked out this article on Bioshock's story?  It may help clear up some of the incohesiveness you mentioned experiecing (massive spoliers, obviously):

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/understanding-bioshock-infinites-ending-ending-explanation/

 

It's a nice concept, but it just doesn't work, even by the game's internal fiction.

 

I dig that giving your life to prevent Comstock from ever existing is a touching narrative end, but it simply doesn't make sense in any version of the world they made. Even if Liz did take the player to some root reality where they could kill that version of Booker at the baptism, it wouldn't be the player that does the drowning, but the "local" Booker in that reality. Just going to a different reality doesn't turn the Player-Booker into the local-Booker, or else the player would have taken Comstock's place in the main game.

 

Furthermore, if the entire point of the game is that there are infinite realities where each variable changes, then killing the Baptism-Booker still wouldn't prevent Comstock, because there would be an infinite number of realities that split off from that decision point based on you *not* choosing to kill Booker.

 

I mean, it's a very pretty idea, but it falls apart the moment you actually start considering it. And that's before getting into the unpleasantness of it casually bringing up a bunch of heavy themes (racism in America, morality of fighting against it< religious zealotry and brainwashing) and then entirely punting on the idea of treating them with depth and respect. And, of course, the fact that the narrative and the gameplay are deeply at odds against each other.

 

Sorry to rant, but it drives me crazy that so many sources are praising it as a good story without realizing that the story doesn't actually work.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Bummer you guys didn't enjoy Infinite, but understandable. I enjoyed my time with it more than the original Bioshock, but I think I'm in the minority opinion on that one so I'll leave it at that.

 

I think your criticism about the audiologs is 100% spot on though. I remember when the game was first announced Ken Levine mentioned how he didn't want to be the guy known for the innovation of having guys talk to you from behind a glass wall. I assume that audio logs were included in that critique, but that doesn't appear to be the case. The use of audio logs is even more egregious when they are used to fill in major plot details as opposed to just providing more background detail to the world you are in. Also like so many games are using audio logs now... Borderlands, Dishonored, etc. It's time to give that a rest, and let people discover a world by other means.

 

I wonder if people's disappointment with Infinite is going to spill over into the Dishonored DLC because I think both games suffer from a lot of similar problems, but it was maybe easier to not notice these things in Dishonored because it was new & shiny.

 

I think the actual question about what journalism should do was maybe a false either/or sort of thing. Like, there should be a lot of different forms of journalism all doing different things, serving different purposes. I'd also point out that the playing a game to completion thing is sometimes more ambiguous than it sounds. Like, when are you done with a strategy game? There isn't any simple answer to that...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

And that's before getting into the unpleasantness of it casually bringing up a bunch of heavy themes (racism in America, morality of fighting against it< religious zealotry and brainwashing) and then entirely punting on the idea of treating them with depth and respect.

I understand expecting and wanting more from the game, because Bioshock 1/2 did such a good job of presenting a story in a way that the combat at the very least wasn't nearly as UGH LUDONARRATIVELY DISSONANT UGH as Infinite. I also understand expecting and wanting more from the game because we all want gaming to be SOMETHING MORE. But Infinite, to me, never pretended to be anything BUT a bombastic IN YOUR FACE BLOW YOU AWAY kind of experience. It's totally just a dumb, fun comic book in video game form. Comic books and fantasy and sci-fi novels and all kinds of Fiction Like That frequently toss in gross-facts-of-society just for the sake of doing it, and I don't really fault them for it, because they're not trying to be anything more.

 

I said this in the Infinite thread, but I still believe it, so I'll say it again: give it time. It'll happen eventually!

 

Also, I want to emphasize that I am absolutely not trying to be dismissive of people's complaints about the game presenting a rough topic and then throwing it to the wind. I just feel like... this isn't the right game to fight that battle? It never even seemed like it WOULD be, to me, even just from the previews.

 

My number one complaint about the game, of course, runs almost completely contradictory to everything I said above! The first few hours of the game are far and away my favorite moments, and I want want want more than most things in Video Games a fully-realized triple-ayyyyy world that isn't full of combat for combat's sake. A world that does try to address Things. I'm completely with Chris on the beginning of this game (just like Mass Effect) being the best part.

 

And, well, I still super love SKYLINE ZIPPIN, JUMPIN ON DUDES, BASHIN FACES, ETC, and that game absolutely works for me, even with the first couple hours, but. But. I don't think the game was ever trying to be anything different. Of course what do I know I wasn't a developer on the game.

 

Oh.  I accidentally got absorbed in typing and lost all the time.

 

Since I'm already here: completely hate the way audio logs work in Infinite. They're awkward and out of place. In Bio1 you'd find them in a context that made at least some sense. On a lab table. In some overturned property. Whatever. Not all the time, but definitely a good deal of the time. And the important ones would be in your face. And, like Jake said, they wouldn't be given to you at the same time someone decided to talk to you. ELIZABETH. In Infinite, you find them in seemingly random places at awkward times and gyruuugh. It's unfortunate, too, because so much of the plot is found in them. Much of the sub-plot and even plain-plot doesn't really make sense unless you find all the logs.

 

EDIT: Also a final thought summary: I think it's totally fair to say "I wish Bioshock Infinite was more", but just say that and accept that it's not and move on. Judge the game for what it's actually trying to be, rather than what you wish it was trying to be? I hope this isn't coming off too mean-like. ):

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess that's because I don't really believe that you need to get to the ending of a game to know if it's good or not; usually that's something you can tell in the first few hours of game play. Expecting someone to have finished the game just puts way too much of an emphasis on the ending, which I often find to be the weakest part of most games.

 

But you can also argue that endings are generally weak are because most reviewers and players don't play them, so they don't get as much of the attention. I can't see anything healthy about that situation, and an important step to changing it would be for prominent writers to actually play all the way through and call-out games with middling endings, or praising ones that finish strong.

 

There's also something to be said about game reviewing vs. game criticism, with the great writers—like Ebert—able to write a piece that works as both. I think criticism has a higher expectation of finishing than reviewing, though again we can imagine pieces where we didn't finish the game. It's a tough question.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Also sorry to hear about Idle Thumbs getting scammed. As a warning that should you guys ever have anything trademarked to be wary about scams as the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office maintains a public database, and so there are a lot of scams out there preying on people that have trademark registrations.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm only partway through the episode now, but while it's still fresh in my mind: You guys mentioned a hypothetical version of Bioshock Infinite that would change playstyles entirely to accommodate the narrative. Have any of you ever played Nier, the action-RPG from like 2010 that nobody cared about? It's very love-it-or-hate-it, but it does just this. There's a Diablo-styled dungeon, a text adventure dungeon, a Resident Evil dungeon (complete with weird fixed camera angles), etc.; and most of the bosses are modeled after bullet hell shooters of all things. It also kind of does the Bioshock Infinite ending by

having an ending option where your character can choose to erase his own existence for the sake of the people he loves. If you decide to do so, it erases all of your save data.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You can count me as another person who respectfully but strongly disagrees with your guys' assessment of Infinite.  I think it might just come down to your extreme reverence and adoration of the original Bioshock, which I don't share and frankly find sort of baffling.  Maybe it's just because I had somewhat measured expectations due to my coolness on the original, but I found Infinite to be surprisingly good, and both more enjoyable and more interesting than the first two.

 

The relationship between Booker and Elizabeth was sometimes hit and miss, but on the whole I thought they were interesting characters who I felt a genuine connection with, something I found impossible to do with any of the characters in the original Bioshock, due to their one dimensional nature.  When Infinite started jumping around (being as non spoilery as possible here), I didn't really mind so much because the principle characters seemed to remain outside of that, and they were the important part of the story, while the city was just a really nice looking backdrop.

 

If I had to pick the biggest problem with Infinite's story other than the oft mentioned extreme head explosion extravaganza getting in the way, I'd say it was

The way it sort of glossed over the atrocities Booker committed in the battle of Wounded Knee.  It's something that informs the core of Booker's character and the emotional journey of the game and acts as the precipitating event for the entire plot, yet it feels like some tidbit of background information that you have to suss out rather than a core part of the story.  Even knowing about it doesn't really deliver the emotional punch the way a story about such things should.  I can sort of understand why they shied away from it, because you don't want to end up making "Indian Murder Simulator: The Game", but I'm sure they could've done something more than what they did.

 

I was also surprised to hear Jake mention being concerned about what actually did and did not happen in a fictional universe (a phenomenon also known as "canon", but maybe that's just me projecting Chris' (and my own) distaste for that kind of thing on the entire crew.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's totally just a dumb, fun comic book in video game form. Comic books and fantasy and sci-fi novels and all kinds of Fiction Like That frequently toss in gross-facts-of-society just for the sake of doing it, and I don't really fault them for it, because they're not trying to be anything more.

 

I said this in the Infinite thread, but I still believe it, so I'll say it again: give it time. It'll happen eventually!

 

Also, I want to emphasize that I am absolutely not trying to be dismissive of people's complaints about the game presenting a rough topic and then throwing it to the wind. I just feel like... this isn't the right game to fight that battle?

This is just where we fundamentally disagree, I guess.

To me, it's not a matter of "fighting the battle." It's a matter of critiquing the game that exists in front of my face. My criticisms of it are not out of a sense of advocacy; they're a direct result of the experience I had while playing. I'm not going to have an opinion about a game and then say "Well this probably isn't the right time to bring this up;" that would be pointlessly dishonest in my opinion. (Obviously if you don't have those criticisms then it's totally fair not to bring them up.)

I don't often read comic books or sci-fi or fantasy novels, so I don't give a video game a pass because it's like them; but even if I did read those things, I'd like to think I wouldn't make arbitrary distinctions about what's allowed to get a critical pass and what isn't.

The main point where I disagree with you in practice about this specific game (rather than just in a general philosophical way about the role of criticism) is about what Infinite is "trying" to do. I absolutely think it's trying to be more than just another dumb fun video game. To me it feels like a game that's trying to Say Something at every turn (I think Jake felt this way on the cast as well), and say it very loudly, but the thing it's trying to say is, to me, muddled and in some cases actually objectionable.

But again, even if it wasn't "trying" to present a nuanced perspective on American racism and exceptionalism, it still raised the topics--a LOT of them, not just passing references--and so in my opinion it's 100% open for critique on its treatment of those matters.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

You can count me as another person who respectfully but strongly disagrees with your guys' assessment of Infinite.  I think it might just come down to your extreme reverence and adoration of the original Bioshock, which I don't share and frankly find sort of baffling.  Maybe it's just because I had somewhat measured expectations due to my coolness on the original, but I found Infinite to be surprisingly good, and both more enjoyable and more interesting than the first two.

 

That's a good point. I really liked Bioshock a lot, but I didn't like it as much as System Shock 2 in part because the twist wasn't really a surprise to me because it was the same type of twist as System Shock 2. I also didn't find many of the characters to be especially interesting except for the woman who takes it upon herself to act as the guardian of the little sisters. Most of the characters just felt like philosophical positions personified.

 

If I had to pick the biggest problem with Infinite's story other than the oft mentioned extreme head explosion extravaganza getting in the way, I'd say it was

The way it sort of glossed over the atrocities Booker committed in the battle of Wounded Knee.  It's something that informs the core of Booker's character and the emotional journey of the game and acts as the precipitating event for the entire plot, yet it feels like some tidbit of background information that you have to suss out rather than a core part of the story.  Even knowing about it doesn't really deliver the emotional punch the way a story about such things should.  I can sort of understand why they shied away from it, because you don't want to end up making "Indian Murder Simulator: The Game", but I'm sure they could've done something more than what they did.

 

I was also surprised to hear Jake mention being concerned about what actually did and did not happen in a fictional universe (a phenomenon also known as "canon", but maybe that's just me projecting Chris' (and my own) distaste for that kind of thing on the entire crew.

 

This is also sort of how I felt as well. Colombia never felt like an actual place to me, but more this sort of symbolic mytheo-poetic journey that evoked the idea of American Exceptionalism rather than a believable place that might have existed had we lived in a universe where there was enough helium for a cloud city to exist.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I must say that after Jake's ascension on the previous episode, I'm just a little disappointed the title for this one isn't "The Fall of Jake Rodkin".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey guys, first time poster here.  I was bit suprised that Bioshock Infinite's story didn't get more love!  It's the first time my opinion has differed so wildly from all y'alls in all the 100 episodes prior.  I was amazed by all the subtleties in the story and how they all came together in the end.

 

Have you checked out this article on Bioshock's story?  It may help clear up some of the incohesiveness you mentioned experiecing (massive spoliers, obviously):

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/28/understanding-bioshock-infinites-ending-ending-explanation/

 

That said, love the show and proud to be a backer!

This probably sounds more dismissive than it's meant to, but I feel like I should not have to read a breakdown of BioShock's story to enjoy it.

As an example just within the realm of video games, as a counter point consider Half Life 2. I enjoyed Half Life 2's story quite a lot, just through the act of playing the game, without reading any of the insane fan breakdowns of what everything was supposed to mean, what every briefly and ambiguously peeked-at detail meant. But Half Life 2 does not wear its world history, its plot, or its meaning on its sleeve. Half Life 2 contains ambiguity, and it asks its audience to take pieces of its narrative on faith, it asks its audience to make leaps and connections on their own, and it does a better job of not leaving things behind. Half Life 2 doesn't feel like it's trying to simultaneously treat me like I'm intelligent, while also seeming to hold me in disdain for engaging with it.*

With BioShock Infinite, at the end, my response was "what did I just play?" but not in the good way. I felt that, though I played through on hard, though I listened to an above-average number of audio logs, though I stuck my nose into every corner of the world I could find, I still missed what the game was about, I missed why the game was trying to tell me what it was telling me, and even in some cases what the detail of the plot were. That's not a great playthrough experience. It's not one which motivates me to deep dive into the game's lore from sources outside the game itself.

In the case of Half Life 2 I DID eventually read all of the crazy fan theories, the obsessive poring over of every note and environmental touch, but only because I already loved the experience of playing Half Life 2 and experiencing the story it chose to tell within the work itself.

* Note: I'm not intending to hold Half Life 2 up as some perfect gold standard of ambiguous and interesting narrative in gaming. That game has some serious issues which have been talked about to death. It is, however, a game whose story and narrative experience I enjoyed on its own terms, within itself, without having to look externally for answers, even though the story was one which was made to feel complex through the tools ambiguity and half-revealed/player-discovered lore.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm of two minds about the racism.  While it is kind of weird that the game doesn't really seem to have anything to say directly about the racism it depicts, I do think they are trying to say something with it.  It's just that that something is about Comstock's character, which then loops its way back to being about American exceptionalism, a subject which happens to involve racism, by way of metaphor, in an ouroboros-like fashion.

 

I think it's yet another aspect of the story that would've made a lot more sense if they had handled the thing in my spoiler better.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm not done with Infinite, so I can't comment on the story, but I think the combat is a huge step back from Bioshock 1 and 2. And that's what I care about more than anything. That's what I'm actually doing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this