I just made a Bioshock 2 thread and I didn't want to do another, but after finishing the main game I couldn't help it. Now I did redbox Infinite on release day, but I rushed through it and played it on Easy, so this playthrough really felt like the first time I really gave the game a chance. I got to listen to all the audio tapes and really take in the experience.

Now what I mean by last three hours are after the Lady Comstock fights which were admittedly not my favorite parts of the game. However once you make your way to the Comstock House, the game made me play straight through and not even go to the bathroom cause I was so into it. I'll explain why those last three hours were the among the best I've ever played...

Gameplay

Bioshock Infinite gets shit on a lot for its supposed mediocre to bad gameplay. The first time I played it through (on easy) I thought it was fine, but nothing special. However, playing on Hard, I really appreciated the gameplay even though it needed some tweaks here and there. A major one being I really wish they could have integrated a weapon wheel and given some alternate ammo.

The last three hours were exquisite though because you had all your vigors and Undertow and Return to Sender were my favorites. It came to an absolute gameplay peak when you were making your assault on the "Hand of Comstock". It was like the convoy chase in Uncharted 2 except you were midair and I was boarding the enemies small airships Undertowing their ass overboard, using my shield and then collecting their rockets and bullets and taking down some heavy hitters. Then lining up some killer shots with my upgraded Carbine rifle. Then hopping back on the hooks and dropping on another airship while setting a whole group on fire. Now I thought the game had good gameplay all the way through but it really took it up a notch toward the end of the game. They really should have let you upgrade your vigors more fully earlier in the game. They should have also made return to sender as maybe your 6th vigor instead of your last one.

The Three sections of the Comstock ship to end the game seemed tedious my first time through because of all the waves of enemies. However, this time when I actually knew how to do combos and really play around with my vigors, I had a blast. When it started to really wear on me, the game gave a new mechanic. Control the freaking songbird and make President Washingtons your bitches!!!

Moving through the creepy Comstock house with a mixture of stealth and blowing away zombie things was a great change. Then there were some fun encounters when saving Elizabeth from the siphon machine, and then the whole sequence with the Comstock air chase that I felt was exquisite. The updated graphics on the remastered version probably helped with my opinion. As far as spectacle, locales, and gunplay/vigor play, I thought it was downright awesome. My gamer side that could give two shits about story was thrilled. Now onto the story...

Story

Straight off let me say, that any multi universe time traveling story is going to have some inconsistencies, cause well time traveling is kind of that way ya know?

With that said, I followed the game's logic well and felt that the puzzle pieces fit for the most part and I thought even if it was over ambitious at times (the man and lighthouse comment was a bit much), it mostly worked. I thought the art, images, music, presentation and style were spot on and I was glued to the tv for the end.

To the specifics, the story for me really took off again once you enter the Comstock house. The sequence of seeing Elizabeth being tortured, brainwashed and made into a monster and you being too late, completely helpless was downright brilliant. I wanted to kill Comstock so bad. It showed us that anyone can turn into a monster if the conditions are right, and seeing tears slowly telling you how you never came and you contributed to Elizabeth's insanity was brilliantly told. It was like the mini Christmas Carol for Booker inside of the larger Christmas Carol of the whole game if that makes sense. For me the Comstock house was the storytelling peak of the game. The audio tapes and tears and gameplay mixed very nicely to tell of how this girl that you love could become a mini Comstock (or a mini you with different choices in life).

Now fast forward to the ending sequence. The circle has been broken and we have broken the cycle of Booker getting his butt kicked by songbird. We have rescued Elizabeth back and nothing can stop us, not even big bird daddy. Then things get loopy. We take fan service tour through Rapture, we see the lighthouses of millions of choices and timelines (The omniscience of God would sort of look like those lighthouses, loved the image!), then we are told how our Booker sold his daughter who is now Elizabeth and cut off the poor girls finger in a tragic world hopping mission. At this time your mind is kind of numb from all the information going on, but it really had to be at the end cause it would have been even more messy if they explained it in bits and pieces. Elizabeth really held the ending together for me because it was her fate that was being blown this way and that and I felt for her.

The themes came together well for me.

How one small decision (being baptized or not) can lead to things we can't even imagine.

What redeems us from our sins (nicely foreshadowed by how our Booker can't get over Wounded Knee)?

How does a god like character act morally with time and free will? This was my favorite theme and even if this was nothing new, I likes thinking about it in a video game which was cool.

Many more themes that were both human and the type that freshman philosophy majors argue about in their dorm.

All in all the last three hours from a story perspective left me hooked and pretty satisfied by the end. Mixed with the gameplay I thought the ending was great and put a fat exclamation on a fantastic game.





I want to end with one question

After Elizabeth and Booker kill Comstock and leave Columbia, why does she feel compelled to stop all Comstocks? Her and Booker could have went to Paris and lived life in peace... There will always be evil timelines and people, is Elizabeth gonna end all of them? It was a nice question of God's responsibility, but if God is omniscient, he knows all infinite timelines, but those timelines aren't real. Elizabeth's infinite timelines were all real so is she just morally obligated to change all the worse timelines she can?

Ok that's it I'm done.

Well I'd say the first hour is definitely up there too. One of my all-time favorites. Amazing game. Finished it at least 7 times so far. Might even be better than the original Bioshock but only time will tell that.

Funny, that was my least favorite part of the game.

It's definetly one of my favorite games of all time-and I don't understand the shit it gets.

I dunno, the ending is nonsensical and the combat leading up to it is monotonous with tons of bullet sponges. It was a god damn slog to get through the parts on the ships

fuck no

Dalek said:

It's definetly one of my favorite games of all time-and I don't understand the shit it gets.

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I can see some people disappointed with the game, but for me it was fantastic. The ending had my friend and I talking about it for days

I felt the last 3 hours were super repetitive gameplay wise and the story is nonsensical as all fuck. It was a chore to finish infinite, i did not feel the same about bio 1/2 which were joys to play.

I would argue that the Blood Baron quest in The Witcher 3 is gaming at its best. I would even go so far to say that the Blood & Wine expansion is all gaming at its very best.

Nah, I really didn't like the ending, it was frustrating and disappointing.

The beginning however was really good.

It was really good. My jaw dropped at the story reveals.

pauljeremiah said:

I would argue that the Blood Baron quest in The Witcher 3 is gaming at its best. I would even go so far to say that the Blood & Wine expansion is all gaming at its very best.

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Is Reddit gamingcirclejerk leaking?

Thought the beginning was much more thought out and satisfying than the end.

Boy do I disagree. Ruined the series for me.

The last three hours of every Bioshock game ended up being spectacular. I doubt there is much of a strong argument to make against this, gameplay-wise at least.

While I did enjoy my time with the game I was pretty mixed on the ending sections. The combat became an absolute chore and the enemies made it a slog to fight. Worse yet it felt like for all the high mindedness and out there thinking of the ending that a lot of it felt like they just wanted to end the game and tie up all those many different plot points as easily as possible.

Songbird for example was a complete red herring and barely in the game proper but lets just shove it in the ending battle and then kill it off unceremoniously so we don't leave that thread hanging. This is after tons of advertising and trailers made a huge deal about that character and its relationship to the world of Columbia and Elizabeth herself. It didn't feel clever or well earned and instead it felt piece meal and like its job was to clean up the very messy story and characters.

That's why opinions are cool!

The last 2-3 hours of Infinite destroyed my love for the opening 2 hours.

I'm glad you enjoyed it though!

one of the only times in my life a game has audibly made me say "wow". It was so good.

The first hour or so were the only part that stuck with me. The ending was a complete mess that just drove home how boring the combat was.

I guess I wouldn't know since the first few hours were so massively disappointing, I never made it anywhere near the end.

I may revisit one distant day, but it left a huge sour taste in my mouth so not sure how soon I'll shake that.

Bioshock & Bioshock Infinite is easily the the best FPS campaigns I've played.
The atmosphere in these games are fantastic, and I really liked the story in both of 'em too.

aBarreras said:

fuck no

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fuck yes

The end of Infinite is fucking terrific and set up the universe for an... infinite....number of Bioshock worlds and games. The Infinite DLC is cancer and should be purged from human memory however.

The opposite for me, in general the game just didn't take

Tangentially related to OP.. I always meant to go back and give 1999 Mode a shot. Any opinions on how well it is balanced from anyone who completed it? Particularly the mid to late game/last 3 hours?

I quite the game After the sky hook. Thats Not a bioshock game. Sorry

Eh.. the game in general is pretty mediocre, the last 3 hours as well.

I think she feels that since there are so many timelines, Comstock will continue kidnapping Anna and transforming her into Elizabeth. And of course, that also leads to possibilities that Booker fails and Elizabeth is tortured and converted by Comstock.

But, I also don't understand why killing our Booker prevents Comstock from being born. If there are infinite timelines, regardless of what Elizabeth does, Booker in some timelines will accept be baptized.

Burial at Sea spoiler:

Anyways, just finished it recently. Excellent game, but flawed. The art is beautiful, and my next artbook I will buy will probably be Bioshock Infinite.

QuackkAttack said:

That's why opinions are cool!

The last 2-3 hours of Infinite destroyed my love for the opening 2 hours.

I'm glad you enjoyed it though!

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Agreed.

The entire Bioshock infinite is gaming at its best, period. (Please don't kill me Gaf).

I didn't finish Bioshock 1 when it come out (the main factor was playing the ending at a playable kiosk at a store without knowing it. Different story, have no idea how that was even possible, was there an employee playing through the game? A bunch of people playing it till completion?).
Never played 2.

So when Infinite came out I didn't even look twice. The first "gameplay" video was mind blowing but it sure felt "staged" and full of smoke and mirrors.
But then it come out on ps plus and I decided to give it a go. Couldn't let it down.
Gameplay is not the best but is not as bad as people make it to be, it does more than it needs to service that game, playing with vigors is cool as always, gunplay while not near the quality of other shooters from that time (mainly the mp games) is alright and fun.
Now, the world and atmosphere are incredible (NPC's, the covers band, the environments, etc), I have no idea why the backlash when it comes to this as it is pretty much on par with the first reveal (maybe not graphically, but everything else). Main characters where great and so were the secondary ones.

And yes, the final hours were incredibly fun and engaging, leading up to an ending that is, in my humble opinion, one of the best in all of gaming.
So sue me and my low standards, I guess

I don't necessarily think it's a perfect ending, but I was able to see what it was trying to do and really appreciated the exercise. Some of my other favorite themes:

- Do we really have free will?
- We are culpable for actions we would have taken if our circumstances were different?
- What about the self/reality is constant, and what about the self/reality is variable?

Kevin Shields said:

After Elizabeth and Booker kill Comstock and leave Columbia, why does she feel compelled to stop all Comstocks? Her and Booker could have went to Paris and lived life in peace... There will always be evil timelines and people, is Elizabeth gonna end all of them? It was a nice question of God's responsibility, but if God is omniscient, he knows all infinite timelines, but those timelines aren't real. Elizabeth's infinite timelines were all real so is she just morally obligated to change all the worse timelines she can?

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Infinite Comstocks = .

Dalek said:

It's definetly one of my favorite games of all time-and I don't understand the shit it gets.

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Not my favorite game of all time, but i really liked it, including the gameplay (played on hard), so i dont understand all the hate either.

The only two things I remember from the game are the "epilogue" which I didn't like much, and their rendition of Will the Circle Be Unbroken. That I did like.

I found the last segments of the game to be by far the worst actually.

The intro and the initial levels are much better paced.

Edit: I liked the ending though

It's actually the worse. The game itself was not fun to me.

Bog said:

Boy do I disagree. Ruined the series for me.

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I can see it ruining the game for someone, but how in the world did it ruin the series for you?? It retroactively ruined Bioshock 1 and 2 for you because of that little snippet when they go back to Rapture??


Forgot to mention. Please don't spoil Burial at Sea as I'm going to start playing it tonight!!

You and I would get along well OP.

The game is an incredible achievement.

The GAF negativity towards the game couldn't be more misguided.

For me, it represents the peak of the narrative and artistic ambitions of that generation of gaming.

is this the part where you walk slowly through a bunch of portals, wind up in Rapture, and then end up at a baptism?

Bioshock Infinite was my game of the year. I loved the story and characters personally. The gameplay was fine/serviceable and had no problems with it. In fact, I think the gunplay of Bioshock 1 is terrible and feels bad which was drastically improved in infinite.

ChoklitReign said:

Funny, that was my least favorite part of the game.

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Yeah, me too. The plot goes in baffling directions and it teased a boss fight with Songbird that never happens. IMO the game starts strong but I found it was weaker the further through I got.

I thought the last few hours were when the game completely fell apart.

Story: Forgets its own logic while the characters neglect to pay any attention to what timeline they're actually in. Weighs too heavily on a reveal that it gave away through too much foreshadowing. Can't decide whether it wants to be a straight time-travel story or many-worlds story, thus fails at both.

Theme: Blows up an interesting critique of America First jingoism by then retroactively proving that the Columbians were right because the underclass are literally child-murdering, possibly cannibalistic, savages.

Gameplay: The last gauntlet of fights are such a goddamn slog. Couldn't even manage a decent sky-hook arena for the last section.

Points for doing the really well though.

Game started so strong, but wasn't as clever as it thought it was and couldn't carry off the story it was trying to tell. Failed as a critique of American patriotism-as-worship and couldn't carry decent encounter design through its last act.

nhlducks35 said:

I dunno, the ending is nonsensical and the combat leading up to it is monotonous with tons of bullet sponges. It was a god damn slog to get through the parts on the ships

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Couldn't agree more - I distinctly remember at that point of the game just wanting it to be over it was so boring and monotonous.

Beautiful game though visually.

Erevador said:

The game is an incredible achievement.

The GAF negativity towards the game couldn't be more misguided.

For me, it represents the peak of the narrative and artistic ambitions of that generation of gaming.

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It all felt pretty sloppy and hap hazard to me with a lot of different messages that never really got time to shine and were often muddled because of how transient the game was in terms of what it seemed to want to be. It was a jack of all trades but a master of none and it shows. A lot of story elements seemed shoe horned in and then never properly developed and I feel the ending was their attempt to tie up the huge Frankenstein style narrative they'd pieced together over the years before release.

There were some great ideas and elements in the game but most felt very shallow as they never got much focus and when they did it often felt misguided. I brought up Songbird in my original post in this thread but there are so many elements in the game that felt like they had so much potential then were completely squandered, or in some cases, just out right dropped to keep the train on the tracks, and just barely by the end.

As cool as the ending itself was in a lot of ways, it felt like it had come from a totally different game and story by the time we got to it. The multiverse story often felt like a cover and a cop out when other elements weren't coming together and this felt especially true at the ending. For many it seemed to come off as profound and insightful but to me it just felt hokey and like they had to slap something on the end to make it all sort of make sense and tie up the many different plot lines.

I found the last part to be really bad. Songbird never goes anywhere. The shooting never felt good and the buildup battle wise never went anywhere interesting for me. Same for the plot. I liked the setup of the environment at the beginning though and am glad you enjoyed the entire game OP!

UCBooties said:

I thought the last few hours were when the game completely fell apart.

Story: Forgets its own logic while the characters neglect to pay any attention to what timeline they're actually in. Weighs too heavily on a reveal that it gave away through too much foreshadowing. Can't decide whether it wants to be a straight time-travel story or many-worlds story, thus fails at both.

Theme: Blows up an interesting critique of America First jingoism by then retroactively proving that the Columbians were right because the underclass are literally child-murdering, possibly cannibalistic, savages.

Gameplay: The last gauntlet of fights are such a goddamn slog. Couldn't even manage a decent sky-hook arena for the last section.

Points for doing the

Spoiler

death of the songbird

really well though.

Game started so strong, but wasn't as clever as it thought it was and couldn't carry off the story it was trying to tell. Failed as a critique of American patriotism-as-worship and couldn't carry decent encounter design through its last act.

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Also my feelings - the intro was incredibly strong and then it just gradually went downhill.

Absolutely, loved the game the whole way through.

The story was nonsense, the gameplay was nothing new the other games hadnt done already.

Visual design was outstanding, but not enough to make up for the losses.

Thats my take on the game.

UCBooties said:

Game started so strong, but wasn't as clever as it thought it was and couldn't carry off the story it was trying to tell. Failed as a critique of American patriotism-as-worship and couldn't carry decent encounter design through its last act.

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This is exactly my main complaint of Infinite. If it tried to do a critique to racism, nationalism and religion, it failed miserably. Daisy and the Vox were just as crazy and evil as Comstock and his followers.

As a science fiction game, it also failed hard with the multiple timelines and the ending.

The ending is nonsensical and the combat throughout the game is subpar at best and trash at worst.

I loved the story-telling and I especially loved the last 30 or so minutes of the game.

The gameplay itself I think is neither good nor bad, it was just pretty rudimentary. I didn't find the combat to be that fun, and the level design is so linear and basic that it can't elevate things any further in that regard.

Overall, I enjoyed it enough to replay it a second time for the story alone. It's a really good, memorable game. I don't think any one aspect of the game is bad, but everything beyond the presentation and story is very average.