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Dude, every fan and her mother would argue that the girl/young woman/Elizabeth/Anna was supposed to be locked away for her whole live so how could she know? But, on the other side, it's completely retardet that she doesn't know anything about segregation (or actual politics/world history). Because she mentions very often that she had spend much time of her imprisonment reading books.
My question for any 'reviewer' of this game is this: How much time do you think you'd spend reviewing the story, art style, aesthetics, etc. versus the actual gameplay? Most of the 'professional' reviews I've seen barely spend a fourth of the article mentioning it.
The combat is actually pretty fun, and usually takes place in large open spaces with skyrails, lots of weird robots to summon and other such things. This isn't Call of Duty and you just look ignorant when you act like they're the same.
As someone else said, the reviews look pretty damn stupid in their over-praise but so do many here with their over-bashing.
Can't speak for others here but for me, this game is simply disappointing, for all the potentials it showed in the trailers and gameplay videos.
They hinted at quantum mechanics in the trailers, but only use it as a massive deus ex machina in the final game.
Same goes for Songbird, which becomes something unlike an automated turret that guards Elizabeth. I mean, what is he? What does he want? I think the developers intended to make me feel "emotional engagement" when Songbird died in the end, but because I don't know a damn thing about him, I feel nothing.
Social commentaries become non-existent in the final game: in the gameplay videos, it looked like the game was about Tea Parties against "Occupy Wall Street" liberals, which I guess is kinda relevant; but in the final game, the theme becomes "the Evil White Religious Nuts vs. the Evil Niggers", and is presented in such a heavy-handed way that I feel being hammered.
And the gameplay: they ditched the inventory-based gameplay shown in the promo videos and levels becomes super-linear.
In the end, the game becomes just mediocre and even a stepback from Bioshock 1.
Tried this after reading the plot was the best thing evah and since i love multi universes shit, but i really can't play first person FPS to save my life. As soon the game started throwing waves of armed policemen at me, i knew i had to it the distintall button.
First person from a narrative and control perspective. "You" are being talked to by other characters, and "you" are controlling "yourself", which makes something first person. The distinction between a shooter in third person camera and a shooter in first person camera is basically irrelevant anyway (and good games should allow you to pick which camera angle you like) , so you may as well refer to them both as FPS.
Major problem I have with the game thus far is that this game's equivalent of Plasmids are fucking weak. They're all the bare basic "Throw fireball/lightningbolt/Distraction" fare that barely have any oomph. Haven't even bothered with most other weapons since the restrictive weapon count lead to me sticking with the starter pistol and a variation of Shotgun/Heater which carried me through most of it.
And if Bioshock 1 was a spiritual successor to System Shock 2, and Bioshock 2 a move away from that in favour of general popamole action, then this is definitely the series' final step to full-fledged linear popamole with a magic throwing gimmick spliced on. Only time when I really thought the game stood out was the beginning levels where Columbia was being fleshed out, game's narrative took a steady slide downhill once I got my hands on a weapon and just started completely fucking itself over the moment Alternate realities were introduced. Really think this would've been better if it didn't have to find some reason to give us something to shoot at every five minutes and just became an adventure game instead.
This game is... I don't want to say it's "terrible"... eh, here it goes. There are't a lot of spoilers exept for the last parts.
- First impressions from presentation and graphics wash away fast. If you keep the bloom and all the effects, it looks like a shiny lollipop and is very hard to play. If you remove them, then be prepared to see all the ugly textures and some terrific work with polygons. It's not that important, but those blurry roses and cubic little hills stick from the picture and you can't help but notice them, unless you're in a fight.
- Visual style is oversaturated with detail to the point when it breaks the immersion. It's Uncle Sam hitting you in the head with a very heavy blunt weapon. Wherever you go, you'll see tons of artwork, tones of posters, all doors are ornated, all walls are filled, and, just like Bioshock 1, it quickly gets old. The pacing of information you get in the game sometimes is so fucked, that two or three voices mix together into a cacofony and you just don't care. Elizabeth says something, while you just picked up another diary, and meanwhile there are videos to watch and posters to read. They had a lot of art assets, a lot of money, and they dumped it all inside, I don't know, 15 hours long shooter? I think it's around that long.
- When mechanics starts to work with the setting and story together, game does't. Make. Any. Fucking. Sense. It's all the same shit I hated in the first game: who in their rightful mind place all those booths with powerups, ridicilous amount of ammo and upgrades? Why would they look like that? How can somebody live in such a place where you can get ammo for sniper rifle for 8 bucks? What is even that pattern in locked doors, when one door can be locked, but other property is't? Just how stupid that is that Elizabeth gets all the rocket launchers from air and has a specific desposition to summon metagaming elements like turrets and cranes? (seriously? cranes? uhhhh). And why, oh god why there are all those voiced diaries with important secrets and preaching lying around?
Even Elizabeth feature gets old. It would be fine if she found you some money once, maybe twice. But she will do that. for the whole. fucking. game. Girl, be a good doggy and dig me up a shotgun, would ya?
- I don't care for the setting one bit. No. Niet. Nein. Zero. From my slavic point of view, the setting of this game is on purpose pulled from all the american tropes and controversy to specifically summon a "reply" on a cultural level, and create as much fuss as possible. All the racist shit happening somewhere on the side, the automated Washington's or whoever with multibarrelled machine guns, they are there on a purpose to either "be cool", or to make people talk about the game. And developers statements that we should take everything "as is", because it's just the setting, it's bullshit. You can't dismiss allegory in a setting when it is based on it, bathes in it, grows from it. And I hate goddamn bible quotes and the pathos. Quoting bible does not make story more "deep". Why is there even bible to begin with? Story is not about that. The whole "worshipping the Founders" thing is put aside relatively quickly in a massive slaughterhouse, where protagonist's story is given the most light.
And I've already seen it! I seen the tortured teen with "powers" a hundred times. I've seen that way of trying to get me care. I know how you stitched together your girl from disney princess, miyazaki girl (hey, Howl's Castle) and chick from Half Life 2. And all the sublimal messages, her voice acting, and shouting at that one specific scene, please stop, you embarrass yourself. I am not going to care more for her, because I don't care for her at all. I don't. I don't like Elizabeth, she is empty, she has nothing really interesting to say. Or wait, no, I actually do care a little: she is such a synthetic way to make player care about the game, that I feel sorry for her.
- The story is a mess. It has a lot of foreshadowing, but there is nothing to be learned. And if there is the other side of catharsis, then it's Bioshock Infinite ending. Once again, there is a grand reveal which makes player, who is supposed to be the agent in the story, to feel guilty and confused. The ending just makes you feel dirty. It's a false attempt at trying to be intellectual and artsy, but after, you just feel like you've wasted a part of your life on nothing.
- There are no interesting characters to talk in this game. You are just an observer, often dialogies are spoken through Elizabeth, not you. You are the dick carrier... er, the gun carrier. She is the hero. And no grand reveal changed that for me, because ending happens in *the end*, and speeches through radios, diaries, comms and similar ways are there for the whole game. There are literaly two, or if you count Songbird, three well written characters in the game, and other two are you and Elizabeth.
People in the city all even look the same. Same faces. Same characters.
And all the others are psychos. And you are kinda a psycho. And Elizabeth is a psycho, although if you compare her to the others, she would probably seem normal. Noone does anything remotely morally interesting in this game. Most of the leaders are megalomaniacs who will fucking die. The black rebel chick is a bitch who will get psycho and die. Your old friend from the war went nuts and he will die. Or worse than die. They are all nothing but lunatics and are boring. And the antagonist if boring. Elijah from Dead Money was more interesting as a preachy psycho... I can remember his name, at least! And here I only remembered those three I mentioned.
This game should have been about Elizabeth. It should have been some sort of adventure with stealth and a bit of scissors backstabbing, where you solve everything through opening tears in space and try to find out who you really are. It did't have to be shooter. All this violence makes 2deep4you stuff look completely out of place.
Okay. I vented out. So to hell with it, what about the gameplay? You talky russki, if you played the whole shit, you must have liked it?
Well, both yes and no.
It's a corridor shooter, but with some environmental gameplay. All choice in the story is fake. Your path will often twist and turn, but it is a straight path by it's nature. You can literally run around without thinking and you will reach your goal eventually. I reloaded a few times in the beginning where you choose what to do with the 77 ball. It does't matter. Game can't handle itself, it explodes in psychodelic violence all the time. Which kills the setting for me.
Game is not entirely easy. It has regenerating health (a shield), but it breaks fast (at least on Hard difficulty). So sometimes you should think about what are you going to shoot, or what powers you want to use. Although I only used two after a while - shock and possesion. Game is quite lethal. You can eat one sniper shot, but don't think you can eat two. A rocket in a face hurts. A shotgun in the balls hurts. Giant ogre-types can slaughter you and have a few very interesting tricks. For example, if you try and escape from them via rails sytem, they will shock the rails. Plasmid carries like ravens who constantly shift in space, or fire throwers who run into you on low health, or dudes with grenade launchers are mean. Sometimes mooks are mooks, but sometimes it can be hard.
But. It is all somewhat a fake difficulty. Because of two things:
a) You can run back to shops and replenish health and ammo.
b) You can do the MCA-rides-wolves and throw yourself at the enemies until they die. Because, you see, you can't die. Whenever you die, you just respawn at a safe point, AMMO REPLENISHED, and, if you have a small item, with full health and half of your "mana". It can become downright stupid, because sometimes the easiest tactic if you mess up is to run right into the enemy, unload all your weapons, die, respawn and go there again with new weapons. Seemed to me dead enemies stay dead, there are no random spaws, at least not like in Bioshock 1, and although they can replenish some of their health, it does't matter in the long run.
So it's okay to play for the first half of the game, but... it then starts to repeat itself. It's the same shit over and over again. You kill mooks. Stronger mooks spawn. You kill 'em. Maybe a robot with a big gun, too. Two or three times you'll meet a "brute". There is like one boss fight, where there's enemy flying around spawning zombies (yeah, game has zombies), which will repeat itself three of four times.
It's that feeling of "Oh god, when will it just fucking end?" after a while. When will the shooting end? When will I finally get to listen to the diaries sitting in a bathroom eating a stolen potato?
Kill some police psychos, collect coins and sigarettes. Kill some rebel psychos, collect some potatoes. Then go kill some real psychos with faces of Founder Fathers, collect... whatever drops from them.
Go all Skyrim on the game, open a chest with five lockpicks which contains money won't be enough to buy three lockpicks, go all Skyrim on barrells, collect coins and potatoes from toilets. Kill psychos some more. Yeah, fun.
I'd say the best part of the game is when you have big opened locations with rail systems and a lot of mooks to clean up. But they don't always happen.
And enjoy two weapons restriction while doing all that. Bleh.
- I don't care for the setting one bit. No. Niet. Nein. Zero. From my slavic point of view, the setting of this game is on purpose pulled out from all the american tropes and controversy to specifically summon a "reply" on a cultural level, and create as much fuss as possible. All the racist shit happening somewhere on the side, the automated Washington's or whoever with multibarrelled machine guns, they are there on a purpose to either "be cool", or to make people talk about the game. And their statements that we should take everything "as is", because it's just the setting, it's bullshit. You can't dismiss allegory in a setting when it is based on it, bathes in it, grows from it. And I hate goddamn bible quotes and it's pathos. Quoting bible does not make the story more "deep". Why is there even bible to begin with? Story is not about that. The whole "worshipping the Founders" thing is put aside relatively quickly in a massive slaughterhouse, where protagonist's story is given the most light.
I suppose if you live in Washington, DC, the setting will have more impact on you. This place is crawling with crazy fucks like the Founder worshipers, religious nuts, extreme liberals and whatnot.
I mean, I was playing Bioshock Infinite on Thursday and went out on Friday, and saw some propaganda truck with slogans like "Save us from the corrupted Sodom." with all the American flags and stuff, like straight out of the game.
America is full of those extremists running amok, from both the right and left side. Unfortunately, the game has to chicken out and talk about the more "safer" topic: racism.
It is also nothing like a metroidvania. You are constantly being shoved from one self-contained venue to the next. From time to time you'll use a magic power to access a new area, but it's the equivalent of shooting the lock off a door; there is no occasion of using magic to shield yourself through a toxic area that you could not access at the beginning of the game, no using agility powers (cuz there are none, all the powers are just different ways to murder people) to traverse a previously daunting chasm and to get to an entirely new section that you could see but not reach at an earlier juncture in your travels.
Finally gave video streaming a quick whirl. Due to bandwidth and CPU limitations the quality isn't that great, but it's mildly tolerable and doesn't have the hard drive issues recording video does.
Thanks to comrade Metro for verifying it was even working. Not sure I'll mess with it much beyond this but at least I gave it a shot. Is a spoilery clip if you're so concerned, and doesn't show anything interesting unless you want to see some piss poor lazy 1999 play. http://www.twitch.tv/m_hc/b/385123869
Edit: Oh yeah, and for anyone interested in the logistics of this VS recording video, this seems way harder on your CPU and your upstream bandwidth (Of course) but leaves your hard drive relatively unmolested. Since hard drive issues were what was fucking up my half-assed gameplay recording attempts this seems better.
'course, it'd work even better still if I had a faster CPU and more than a measly 1.5 megabit upstream. Was honestly surprised it seemed to work as well as it did with what I've got.
I've played about 5 hours and I'm just about sick of the "game" already. At this point I feel like just rushing through just to see how the story plays out. I found it pretty intriguing until the whole shit with the black woman and the Chinese guy, and then I couldn't find any fucks to give.
There are a lot of things that could have been done better. Sure, it's polished and very detailed, but the gameplay itself is barely there. It's not even the least bit challenging, especially with the shield mechanic, and this is coming from someone who is terrible at FPS games and playing on Hard. I've used the same 2 guns for almost the entire game so far. Plus most of the abilities are not even needed. Possession can be pretty good and there's that one that fucks up the robotic George Washingtons, but other than that you can kill almost anything in a few shots. And what's with Elizabeth magically throwing you coins/health/salt every 5 minutes?
At this point I'd say this is better off as an actual movie, not a movie with awful gameplay attached to it.
There's nothing to understand, it's simply not true, having played both 1999 mode and hard, I can tell this for certain: If there is a difference in HP between the two modes, it's insignificant, and hard mode doesn't have bloated hp compared to other classical-style FPS games either. Codex hipsters are so desperate, that they have to invent stuff to complain about, and they love repeating it too, even though it has been rebuked a hundred times.
Major problem I have with the game thus far is that this game's equivalent of Plasmids are fucking weak. They're all the bare basic "Throw fireball/lightningbolt/Distraction" fare that barely have any oomph. Haven't even bothered with most other weapons since the restrictive weapon count lead to me sticking with the starter pistol and a variation of Shotgun/Heater which carried me through most of it.
They aren't meant to be nukes, they are meant to be crowd control, try a fully upgraded bucking bronco, possession, murder of crows or shock jockey, charge (for melee/shotgun play), or return to sender, they are all powerful as hell
