The horrible Bioshock infinite DLCs

[Thanas]

Choice doesn't matter in infinite, it is linear gameplay.

[Dread Not]

You missed the spring/summer Steam sales when it was going for $7.50?

Shit. Yea, I was basically logging in to WoW exclusively during the early parts of the sale. We only recently put the game down like 2 weeks ago.

If you missed out on the Steam sales you might still want to check out the Humble 2K Bundle. If you have interest in any of the other games on offer it might be a good value at $20. I picked up Infinite during the sale myself and am kicking myself in the jewels now since XCOM has also been on my wishlist.

What makes combat better than the original Bioshock?

Slightly better feel with the gunplay and weapons. And using skyhooks to leap to higher ground and whatnot can be pretty thrilling at times. But overall it still feels pretty amateurish at times. Iron sights are still toggle only, which irritates me to no end. Enemy AI is pretty weak for this day and age with them exhibiting very little self preservation. Hacking bots/turrets feels a lot less worthwhile now since you just hit machines with a vigor that fairly quickly wears off, and hitting human enemies with the same vigor will also make them fight for you, plus they'll commit suicide once it wears off. And hacking med stations and stuff is right out since health packs are gone entirely. If you take damage after your regenerating Spartan shield runs out and want to heal yourself you have to scrounge around the environment for food, point yourself directly at it and hit the use key, really breaking the flow of combat. Or you can hope Elizabeth happens to chuck a health item at you.

I'd stay it's still enjoyable but not at all revolutionary, and I would say the gameplay has regressed rather than "evolved." It feels like a pretty standard FPS with excellent art assets and some questionable design decisions. It makes me chuckle sadly to remember Ken Levine saying he wanted the original Bioshock to "put a stake in the heart of all those cliches you've been playing for years in first-person shooters: the linear corridors, the very static environments, and the cookie-cutter AI."

[Simon_Jester]

To be fair, gameplay in Bioshock I was a pretty significant step up from the games that defined what he was trying to stake- say, the old "Medal of Duty/Call of Honor" type games I played as a kid.

On the other hand, in many respects it wasn't a noticeable step up from Deus Ex which dates back to the same era. Maybe the enemy AI was better, there's that I guess.

But yes, it's sad if they can't improve on that benchmark.

[TheFeniX]

Game sounds boring except for short sprints.

Bioshock 1 delivered on pretty much every promise I recall and is one of my favorite games. Levine (or whoever) seems to be gunshy about boss fights since the Fontaine fight not only came out of nowhere, but was pretty underwhelming. Still, it didn't kill the game for me or millions of other fans.

Bioshock 2 started a slide down and Infinite seems to be an extremely simplified game focusing on "the narrative" which is a straight decent into snooze-ville for me when the gameplay doesn't back it up. Just the fact there's no actual confrontation with Songbird was almost as big a letdown as finding out "Big Sisters" were being turned into generic boss-mooks in Bioshock 2.

The Humble Bundle isn't bad, but I'd be rebuying 4 games, one of them for the $20. I've got a big enough backlog right now, but thanks for the info.

[FaxModem1]

Okay, I finished playing through of Bioshock Infinite and the way I interpret Elizabeth is that, she's always been sadistic and impotent. Keep in mind, after being tortured and experimented on for the (six months/one month/one week/one day/whatever), that when Booker rescues her, she no longer cares about Paris, about freedom, even about Booker herself, as she commits herself to killing Comstock, and then killing Booker to ensure that Comstock would never exist.

If she really is a infinite pathways god, there really was no reason at all that Elizabeth couldn't just choose a fork in the road where Comstock goes into missonary work instead of somehow funding a flying city, and then she and Booker go to Paris and we get a nice epilogue of them sightseeing. Instead, the point of the original story seems to be that no matter how innocent or wronged, you will eventually become a murderer and plot the cruel deaths of those in your path? Because that's what I took from Elizabeth's character development as she turned against her only friend and killed him.

[Thanas]

The end of infinite is one giant plothole and handwaving. The explanation is that once she starts on a timeline she cannot change it (or wouldn't know that she changed it for change would be instantaneous). Thus, the general paths are defined unless they are cut off. And yet, the exact opposite happens throughout the game due to player actions - and even the ending. Booker still exists and Anna presumably will not become Elizabeth. Yet Elizabeth also still exists.

And then the DLCs are just instant LOL as they completely forget about all the superpowers she presumably has (with the BS excuse that once you reenter a timeline you lose all your powers and become human because...magic?).