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Bioshock Infinite ships over 6 million units

From a gameplay perspective, Infinite is decidedly mediocre. Great first twenty minutes and a thought-provoking ending.

If developers learn anything from Bioshock Inifitite is make a great impression and you can laugh all the way into GOTY awards.

From a story perspective, it's pretty bad, too. There's a reason sci-fi publishers tend to reject multiple worlds stories. The idea that all stories are basically the same with slight differences isn't really that profound, new, or interesting. The idea that no choice we make matters because multiple realities exist just makes for terrible stories free of drama (because good stories are about choice and consequence, and in Bioshock Infinite, there can be no consequences, because there are multiple divergent realities).

It's just like the original Bioshock: it seems profound, but it's actually stupid and harms the narrative.
 
when it first came out I was like ''meh, old gen, guns and stuff, major downgrade since reveal''

but after playing it last month because it was free with psn+, I have to say it is one of the best games I have played last gen, with the best story of last gen.
 
That's what happens when you have 100+ people working on a game for 4+ years.

And the guy who couldn't get a game to market gets to kill off an entire studio to work on other games while everyone else gets laid off is what gets me. Doesn't matter if Levine is the second coming of Christ, real artists ship. Will be interesting to see if he has that problem with a smaller team.
 
Maybe I just have higher standards than you

I always laugh when ppl think there's "objective quality". It's the reason shit games like this sell 6m copies; critics are complicit in this "oh well it has great graphics and oh gosh look college level social awareness we have to respect that" and bam 9.5 for a game that's awful.

College level social awareness? What does that mean?
 
Please tell me you're kidding. I don't like First Person Shooters, yet this one hooked me enough to actually finish it. The game oozes style and the story was pretty good.

Now that I think about it, I think this is the only FPS that I have actually finished...
Story and style were great, but the gameplay was so boring compared to the first two. Just waves of enemies. So sick of it by the end.
 
Because it's showing that extremism of all kinds is toxic?
This is a horribly simplistic view of the world. Martin Luthor King Jr was considered an extremist. There is no objective standard for what is extremist.
On a certain level I don't want to harp on them too much for Fitzroy, since that section of the game seems like a remnant of the rumored rebels vs. authorities multiplayer mode. It was an awkward way of recycling ideas and content that they had obviously put some work into.

It was really just another one of the game's many disappointing twists and turns.
I will harp them for the Songbird. Good God, what a tease.
 
Not the worst game I ever played... But it had the biggest gulf between quality and expected quality that I've ever experienced in a video game. Hugely disappointing.
 
Well, a lot about the plot of Booker Dewitt/Comstock can be found mirrored in the plot of Adam Warlock and The Magus from Warlock #9 back in 1975. The way Warlock deals with the Magus is VERY similar. I had that comic as a kid.

Ignorance - "This was a breakthrough for Levine. He explained that writing Comstock, the religious, ultranationalist antagonist of BioShock Infinite, had been a long and difficult struggle due to his lack of personal religious knowledge."

Ignorance - noun
lack of knowledge or information.

Racism.. is everywhere in it, not only from it's gross depictions of black people being abused, and how callously they are just thrown out one after the other, but key story points just adhere to the ignorant world view that is omnipresent in the game.

Interesting stuff. I don't think the game explored these themes (religion and racism) very well, but I didn't find it particularly offensive.
 
Good for them, though I was fairly disappointed. Everything felt sort of half-baked, despite having some fun with a few of the vigors and rail system. Liked the ending though. It's nothing fresh or new to that genre, but it did fairly well for what it was.
 
Poorly designed game with a nonsensical plot. Pretty much everything I dislike about modern game design. I strongly recommend watching this critical analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdNhwb7iuI4 He pretty much nails why it doesn't really work. Especially the bit about the baseball. How much contempt can one game have for the player? Do they really think we're that dumb?
 
In before the NeoGAF Infinite hate train... those sales are well deserved. I've played through it over eight times now; the combat is god tier. Still my fave game of last gen. I thought TLoU was better initially but after replaying it recently it's nowhere near as good in retrospect.

Ya this game suffers from a severe hipster contrarian backlash against it. It's shooting wasn't the best but good enough that I had fun with it and I LOVED Columbia. Beautiful game, great story (though the ending was a tad sloppy yes), amazing music, I loved the eerie mood of it all.

Easily an 8.5 or 9 out of 10.

But if you spend too much time on Gaf, you think this game is competing with Colonial Marines for worst game of 2013 or something. Like I said above, they are entitled to their wrong opinions.
 
I guess i'm one of those who really adored Infinate. Intriguing story, unique and beautiful world and some of the funnest combat to fuck around with in a first person shooter. Changing up gameplay with the salts and gear and what not.

Charging and flying around smashing and burning enemies was just so satisfying.
 
Infinite was rad. Y'all high on that reefer.

It was better on reefer. I played Infinite almost exclusively higher than the milky way and it was a fantastic experience while playing it as Tangerine Dream's entire discography played in absence of the original music.

That is an experience I cultivated on day 1, when it unlocked on Steam. Got all achievements. I want the 2 Burial at Sea DLC's. Currently working on BS2, though. (never played it)
 
seriousface.jpg


Completely. Look, this is my serious face.

I 100% disagree btw but I'm too lazy to refute your points and it'd be a waste of effort anyway. I'm not going to convert you and you aren't going to convince me that my 8+ playthroughs of the game weren't ridiculously fun. God tier combat is god tier.

If you think Infinite is God tier FPS game-play, then you haven't actually played FPS the entire history of the genre.

End of story.
 
Still in disbelief this game was seen as a failure.

I thought it was excellent. Sad we won't see any more.
There's no way that there won't be another Bioshock. Yeah, it'll be sans Irrational and 2k Marin, but I'm sure a faster development time, cheaper studio and other factors will be very lucrative for Take-Two.
 
Christ, people are vicious to this game.

If nothing else, it's certainly an aesthetic achievement. But it's also a great example of why gameplay should always be the primary focus of a full-length game.
 
This thread seems a little silly to me on both sides.

Only thing I will say is that when studios of all kinds are falling left and right, it just seems exceedingly silly to hope for or declare that a video game should have sold less because you didn't care for it.
 
If you think Infinite is God tier FPS game-play, then you haven't actually played FPS the entire history of the genre.

End of story.

Conversely, it IS possible to have been playing FPS for the entire history of the genre and find the shooting in Bio Infinite enjoyable. They way to have a good time is to pump all your upgrades into salts, and go wild with the vigors. Don't stop moving, shoot from the hip and just embrace the chaos.

The hit detection, enemy AI, and feel of the guns is pretty bland... but I'd take skylines, tears and vigors over stop and pop COD-esque shooters any day of the week. At least it felt somewhat unique!
 
Conversely, it IS possible to have been playing FPS for the entire history of the genre and find the shooting in Bio Infinite enjoyable. They way to have a good time is to pump all your upgrades into salts, and go wild with the vigors. Don't stop moving, shoot from the hip and just embrace the chaos.

The hit detection, enemy AI, and feel of the guns is pretty bland... but I'd take skylines, tears and vigors over stop and pop COD-esque shooters any day of the week. At least it felt somewhat unique!
Nearly every fight was an arena battle where the best vigors and weapons to use were the ones you had near the start of of the game. There was very little variety and almost no challenge, except for the handimen. But they sucked compared to the Big Daddies, since they were all the same, and your main way of taking them down was just throwing everything you had at them. There was far more tactics involved in COD's horde mode than ever was in Infinite.
 
Bioshock Infinite has an incredible art style. And...that´s it. Found it pretty boring and linear. Still, numbers show how broken the AAA model has been in the last years.
 
Nearly every fight was an arena battle where the best vigors and weapons to use were the ones you had near the start of of the game. There was very little variety and almost no challenge, except for the handimen. But they sucked compared to the Big Daddies, since they were all the same, and your main way of taking them down was just throwing everything you had at them. There was far more tactics involved in COD's horde mode than ever was in Infinite.

Most fights were arena battles, but the game was based around the Halo school of thought so that's not a surprise. Playing on hard mode, you actually did need to manage your inventory so you couldn't use a particular weapon as a crutch. It actually provided a pretty decent challenge. Sure, the sniper rifle was absurdly overpowered and practically nothing about the game was well balanced... but you had plenty of tools at your disposal to make things more interesting/fun. If people stuck with one or two vigors, well, that's your choice... there were plenty of others available.

Agreed about Handymen being lame compared to Big Daddies though, and the combat was far from perfect but I had plenty of fun and never got bored.
 
Worth it for the story, atmosphere and art direction alone.

Bingo.

I honestly didn't mind the gameplay but still feel that there was too much gunplay and it got tedious. The game shined best during the times where there was no gun fights whatsoever.



.....I really need to play Burial at Sea.
 
I hope you're right.


I hope he's not. Without Ken Levine the game just won't be the same. The game was what it was because of his vision and writing.

Without him I feel, IMO, the best anyone can hope for is a Minerva's Den. A solid story with a less inspiring game to go with it. But frankly I would bet - if it is done at all - it will be one of those series that loses all its magic due to corporate meddling.
 
Nearly every fight was an arena battle where the best vigors and weapons to use were the ones you had near the start of of the game. There was very little variety and almost no challenge, except for the handimen. But they sucked compared to the Big Daddies, since they were all the same, and your main way of taking them down was just throwing everything you had at them. There was far more tactics involved in COD's horde mode than ever was in Infinite.

Actually by far the best most overpowered vigors for me were Charge, Undertow and Return to Sender which were the last 3 you get. For handimen there are a lot of strategies people have come up with, imo the best being undertow stunlocking or skyline gear divebombing. More conventionally pistol is actually surprisingly good against them along with traps.
 
6 million and the studio got closed up?

360 million in revenue (if they were all retail priced), and it's somehow not enough.

These publishers badly need to cut costs, if that isn't enough to make a huge profit.

I hope he's not. Without Ken Levine the game just won't be the same. The game was what it was because of his vision and writing.

Without him I feel, IMO, the best anyone can hope for is a Minerva's Den. A solid story with a less inspiring game to go with it. But frankly I would bet - if it is done at all - it will be one of those series that loses all its magic due to corporate meddling.

Honestly I would not hesitate to put Bioshock 2 ahead of 1 and Infinite in a few categories. If I can get a few more Bioshock games that are on the level of Bioshock 2, I would be elated.
 
What game that has a story isn't linear. Once you have begun that mission it is linear. Same with GTA or any other game in that genre. As far as the linear map of Bioshock Infinite vs System Shock. Which one had backtracking through a lot of it? Is that a fun gameplay mechanic in a story based game?
 
6 million and the studio got closed up?

360 million in revenue (if they were all retail priced), and it's somehow not enough.

These publishers badly need to cut costs, if that isn't enough to make a huge profit.



Honestly I would not hesitate to put Bioshock 2 ahead of 1 and Infinite in a few categories. If I can get a few more Bioshock games that are on the level of Bioshock 2, I would be elated.

BioShock 2 is my favorite, and it has the best sequence of any of the games, where you
see the world through the eyes of a Little Sister.
 
How can a studio that sells that much with a game be destroyed?

Because the sales aren't particularly good for the project in question. Similarly, if GTAVI sold 7M copies total (it won't), that probably wouldn't make substantive money for Take 2..
 
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