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Eurogamer: Three years on, how does Bioshock Infinite hold up?

I loved it then and I love it now

I hope retroactively trashing games that were well received at release doesn't become a trend

Mostly because I don't know how I'll be able to deal with the wave of "Aha! I told you that game sucked!" people
Agree with every part of this post.
 
Some of the concept art initially portrayed the game as much darker, vigors like murder of crows creating half human half crow hybrids, bucking brunco half human rams and the whole elizabeth shifting timelines caused people to merge with their other half having multiple heads or arms ect.

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Seemed like as the game was costing them more and more money they needed to streamline and frankly *mainstream* the game into a more straightforward gallery shooter to attract a bigger crowd.

I'm playing through it again on PC and I'm just still not the biggest fan. IMO, it has the least interesting characters in the series and the worst pacing. From Soldier's Field to Hall of Heroes...it's just not fun to play. However, I will say that Infinite has the best ending of the three games. It's amazing.

Deep down I wish they kept these voice actors and the vibe of the 2010 demo. The speaker in the gazebo was a really interesting character & I wish he was in the final version.



Man, this is such a damn bummer. I enjoyed Infinite and look forward to playing it again but it's a shame they weren't able to pull it together before having to just get a game out.
 
I kept myself completely spoiler free after the initial Bioshock Infinite reveal. I was a true believer after listening to Shawn Elliot talk about it.

That game was totally full of shit. Gameplay and story.
 
I want to see something like this three years later about Uncharted 4.

It will still be seen as a game with genre topping combat and animations, beautiful graphics, strong characters, and a solid story, but bogged down by poor pacing leaving it as the 2nd best Uncharted game.

"best gameplay and writing of the series, amazing art, feels like a proper adventure but the slow pacing doesn't lend itself well to replays"

boom where's my check

fuck beaten
 
I have to disagree with the criticisms regarding plot but just about everything else is on the nose. Bioshock Infinite always struck me as an incomplete package: In terms of atmosphere it's unrivaled, the story? Great but not exceptional, and gameplay is downright mediocre.
 
The true quality of something reveals itself in time. You can't remove the time element and "get good" at criticism. There is no shortcut.

Yes you can. Bad critics are overwhelmed by presentation. Good critics ask why they feel the way they do and go from there.

Most game critics are bad critics overwhelmed by presentation. There are few good critics in games.

I'm pretty good at this, which is why I now have a job as a consultant.

By saying The Last of Us is actually a good game you're implying that Bioshock Infinite isn't a good game.

By saying The Last of Us is actually a good game, you're implying you have low standards.
 
I'll never forget that first shot of Columbia. Breathtaking stuff, especially for the time. I enjoyed myself and will probably play it again at some point.
 
I think for any game if you pick it a part it looks bad.


I still love it and although I would agree combat isn't anything special I wouldn't say it is bad or below standards.

It's a great game.
 
The story makes sense in Infinite but it's poorly told because the designers wanted to stick to some of the misguided notions of videogame storytelling.

I can't say much against the piece in Eurogamer simply because my memory is fuzzy on the game. Some of those criticisms, however, read about as simple as "I don't like thing..." which looks like the author wanted to throw shade at a good game just to say he's caught in the zeitgeist against the game. The least the guy could have done is point to some of the games in the genre that did what Infinite does a little better. Then I could probably consider that Infinite was a bit overrated.
 
The game sure is forgettable compared to the original BioShock.

maybe, but at least the gameplay wasn't shit even when it was released so

Bio 1 had god awful shooting, no way to use plasmids and the gun at the same time, and that terrible hacking minigame repeated ad nauseum. And I played it before Bioshock 2 even released and I was still horribly let down by everything other than Rapture and Ryan. Pacing was garbage as well.


the proper ranking is of course 2> infinite> 1
 
I loved the game back in 2013, it was my goty by a long shot, nothing I played that year came close. It wasn't as good as bioshock (which is my gotg), but still miles ahead of most games. I haven't replayed it yet, but I still think back at my time with it fondly.
 
I must admit, I barely used plasmids during my playthrough. Just wasn't quite as fun as in Bioshock 1 and you ran out of juice far too quickly.
 
Would've been my GOTY 2013 if it weren't for The Last of Us
The Wonderful 101

Great game, mind-bending story that worked in its own context. Wonderful score.
 
I didn't liked Infinite when it launched. Didn't liked the shooting and the story all things considered.

I was interested in it when they were showing trailers and impressions, but when I played it felt like they wanted and needed to do something much different than a Bioshock in the sky.
To me, Infinite should have been it's own series and the gameplay should have been something more like Deus Ex instead of your regular FPS. Columbia is, in theory, a great place to be explored and you should be able to talk to people and get to know them.

If I remember correctly, the mission was to get in quietly into Columbia, get Elizabeth and get out. No need to kill anyone. No need to usher total chaos in the city. No need for a single bullet if everything goes according to plan. By the time they started escaping and the whole city got up in arms, I knew Infinite was going to be something much different than what I expected and, even then, it wasn't a good experience at all.
 
Some of the concept art initially portrayed the game as much darker, vigor addicts like murder of crows creating half human half crow hybrids, bucking brunco half human rams and the whole elizabeth shifting timelines caused people to merge with their other half having multiple heads or arms ect.

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Seemed like as the game was costing them more and more money they needed to streamline and frankly *mainstream* the game into a more straightforward gallery shooter to attract a bigger crowd.

No problem with the darker tone, but the concept of vigour addicts and people merging with other animals puts it too close to a Bioshock rehash.
 
Man, this is such a damn bummer. I enjoyed Infinite and look forward to playing it again but it's a shame they weren't able to pull it together before having to just get a game out.

As a HUGE Fan of Bioshock Infinite at first looked like it was going in the messed up direction Bioshock was going then completely jumped ship.
Added more concept art if your interested.
 
What annoys me about the backlash to this game is it feels like everyone is trying really hard to overcompensate for overhype.

If you take a measured look at this game, it's clearly an enjoyable linear rollercoaster ride of an FPS with amazing art assets. Nothing more nothing less.

But everyone thinks they're fighting against some pretention of it being great art, so it suddenly becomes "terrible".
 
You know, I like games when they give me those special moments and Infinite had a lot of them. Gameplay was probably dull or at best servicable, but I will never forget that game.

And that is the important thing for me. That is also why I really like MGS4 and dislike MGSV.
 
I don't think it has any of the thematic cohesion of the first game, but I have to say I really enjoyed walking around and taking in the sights...

It's hard to be too critical of it when it felt so unique, but of course I acknowledge it has very serious issues. Matthewmatosis' review seems to me to be the best.
 
I think the story telling and characters work pretty well, at least most of the time. What drags the game down for me is the uninspired and excessive shooting sections.
 
It's a very devisive game, that's for sure. You either love it or hate it, I don't see a lot of opinions in the middle.

I found the game a chore to get through. I thought the story was stupid as hell and the gameplay and level design was a big step down from Bioshock 2 (aka the best one). Booker talking kind of had the opposite effect of the silent protags of the first two games - that sense of lonely desperation.

But the biggest failure was that Columbia was no where near as interesting to explore as Rapture was.

I *respect* that the team and Levine tried to do something very different, but I think they failed to deliver on the initial potential of the game.
 
They built three games' worth of content for Bioshock Infinite. At the end of the day--and this has been told to me by a few Irrational folks a few years back (I think this stuff is public knowledge by now)--it was the consoles and Levine that killed the game.

Levine, as I understand it, kept changing things and never really knew exactly what he wanted, but this was in part because a lot of what folks DID want literally could not work on consoles; they just weren't powerful enough to handle a lot of what we saw in the demos. So indecision+consoles ruined things.

Reminds me a bit of Terrence Malick in that sense--that guy had 250 hours of footage for Thin Red Line and his editors had to come in and fix it.
 
OFF COURRRSE.

The game was a victim of hype as repeatedly stated! People just refused to believe the game could be bad because that would mean their anticipation for this overhyped game based on its franchise name and the people working on it would be for nothing!
 
Why everthing has to be awful or amazing? I dont get it. Can it be just OK?

Worst game ever or best game ever is the only rating in gaming it seems
 
I played it again last year and still think it's an amazing game. It's really a different approach when compared to Bioshock 1 though.
 
After playing Infinite through a second time, I dug out my original review of the game (written for Custom PC Magazine) and was surprised to find myself describe it as "the pinnacle of what the mainstream FPS can offer." Three years down the line, I couldn't feel further from that assertion.

This is why I rarely read reviews these days. I just can't believe the hyperbole.

Who cares what you think 3 years down the line? A review is for the benefit of the consumer but it is useless if the reviewer keeps getting consumed by hype.

I can't begin to count the number of reviews that hype the latest AAAA game to the skies for it to be generally regarded as just an OK game down the line.
 
I always found it strange how people talked down on Bioshock 2 back when Infinite was coming out. Despite some of the flaws of Bio 2, I found it to be a much more enjoyable game. The Minerva's Den DLC was especially great.

I'm happy people seem more willing to criticize Infinite now that the hype period is long over. The fans were ultra defensive of that game for quite a time.
 
I didn't like it then. I remember meandering through loot feeling incredibly tedious, the plasmids being underwhelming, and the story being incredibly indecisive and uninteresting due to how indecisive it was with what it wanted to tell.

Like, I hated all the insane zealotry Last of Us inspired on Gaf, but it absolutely felt like it ate Bioshock Infinite's lunch as this kind of escort game with attachment and some sort of strong emphasis on story.

I wonder how long before game journalists come to their senses about Shadows of Mordor next?
 
It's gonna be awkward when Kevin Levine makes his next game and advertises it as "from the creator of Bioshock Infinite", and everyone is just upset instead of happy. Bad characters, terrible story, insultingly pretentious, good visuals and music.
 
It's gonna be awkward when Kevin Levine makes his next game and advertises it as "from the creator of Bioshock Infinite", and everyone is just upset instead of happy. Bad characters, terrible story, insultingly pretentious, good visuals and music.

you vastly overestimate how many people actually hated Infinite lol
 
If only journalists take a hard look at other games they gave high scores for, like say...Mass Effect 3 where they even defended the ending.

Bioshock Infinite was an amazing experience for me. The music, the atmosphere, the characters, the story, the ending and the essentially epilogue dlc. And this is coming from someone who consider fps as my least favorite genre next to annual sports game.
 
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