I've played the first ten or so minutes of this to test some hardware, and I remember the production values being hugely impressive. I think it's mostly fallen out of favour as a game and a philosophical discussion, but hopefully I'll find stuff to enjoy.
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It's a shame that this (according to many) isn't nearly as good as the previous games. I have to say, it does feel a lot more showy so I can't help but wonder if they got caught up in the acclaim of the first game and focused on their environmental storytelling and political themes rather than the gameplay or narrative. It's amazing walking around Columbia at the start, but it also does feel a little aimless, and I feel like the game wants me to be picking up vigors and coins and looting trashcans even though it doesn't really make sense for DeWitt to just start doing that when all he needs to do at the moment is find the girl. I've avoided most of that except the free sample (I felt it was in character to take that) of machine possession.
Still, the environmental storytelling is gorgeous and full of detail. The barbershop quartet is fantastic. Also all very intriguing - a quote on trans-dimensional travel and then a place that mirrors Rapture in many ways.
I've taken the baseball (that show - wow, they are fully tackling the racism thing head-on) and got in a fire-fight. The juxtaposition of this idyllic city and then suddenly the brutal gore of the melee fights (and the eruption of racism, fanaticism and violence) is really effective. Unfortunately the game crashed when I possessed the sentry gun (love the metal-man design) a second time. Not sure if it was a scripted event or I got too close when I did it and something just borked. When I go back to play, I'm going to see whether there's any way around taking part in the raffle (and if not, how well they accomplish that).
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Bioshock Infinite feels really linear compared to the other games. I've got to the Hall Of Heroes, which is I guess a couple of hours in, and I don't feel like I've been let loose yet. It's all very nicely presented and everything, so it's not a big problem, but combined with the simplification of the mechanics (two-weapon system, no holding onto medkits, autosave only) and a lot of hand-holding with health/salts/ammo never in short supply, a regenerating shield, and Booker and Elizabeth waffling on at me to make sure I understand what to do at all times, it feels closer to a walking simulator than a shooter at the moment. I really hope it opens up soon and lets me use the skylines and vigors tactically for firefights. I don't necessarily mind them making more of a linear shooter than the previous games, but it at least needs some proper action bubbles - so far it feels like I'm stuck in a loop of the first fight in an RPG where I'm really just quickly shooting a couple of people so I can get back to admiring the art design and then rummaging through it for spare change.
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I played a little more of this today, and I am getting really bored of it. Once you get used to the level of production values, you're left with the gameplay and storytelling, both of which are pretty damn sluggish. I just played through a fight where I'm supposed to be using the ziplines and Elizabeth's tears, but the layout was a mess and combined with how difficult it is to locate enemies and the imprecise shooting, it really fell flat.
I'm starting to wonder if I need to increase the FOV, because it feels pretty boxed in at times. That might help with locating stuff. I've never bothered touching it in other games. [EDIT: I've now put the slider up to full.]
I've just got to Finkton Docks and apparently I'm only a third of the way through the game. I'm not sure how much more of this I can be bothered with. I might try to just run through it as quickly as possible without taking detours or looking for coins and the like, and see if I can enjoy it that way.
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I just played another huge chunk of it and holy shit I'm still only about 75% through (I just fought Elizabeth's mother in her ghost-ish form in the graveyard). It's feeling really repetitive and the balancing of the powers/weapons/health really does not encourage experimental play or proper use of the levelling-up system, especially the two-weapon system. I also never find the ziplines particularly useful or fun in a firefight because I can never tell where the hell I'm going.
I'm tempted to quit, but as I'm not actually stuck and they're still throwing lots of production value at me, I might push through to the end. I hope it's close, I don't know if I can handle being told that Comstock and Fitzroy are the same, or that maybe Elizabeth is creating the other universes, many more dozen times...
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Finished. The ending was, as with most of the game, impressive while didactic and hollow. It was cool going to Rapture and then all those other places in quick succession, going through a looping series of doors, but my reaction to the story was finally "so what?"
This is why Half Life 2 is heralded as great storytelling - it doesn't tell a story that would be good for a book or a movie or an RPG, it takes a pared down, tropey storyline and tells it mostly through the environment with the occasional fun vignette filled with believable characters. With BI, I barely had a handle on the story most of the time because so many layers of backstory and ongoing twists were being thrown at me, and yet at the same time certain points and themes got hammered over and over again.
Rating: Orange.
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