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Bioshock Infinite |OT| No Gods, Kings, or Irrational Games

megalowho

Member
I'm not the most critical FPS player around, but I thought the combat in Infinite was a highlight. With all the tools the game makes available to you it can be positively exhilarating. Satisfying melee attacks, encounters are hectic but they don't overstay their welcome, and while guns may not be conceptually wild they're dependable and worth mixing up. The juxtaposition of extreme violence in what's basically heaven at the start of the game was striking enough to carry the gunplay for me until things opened up with skylines, tears and more vigors/traps.

I'm lamenting a NG+ now mostly because I want more time to mess around with the late game vigors, seems like they could have frontloaded those a bit to ensure they all get their time to shine. If I had one complaint it would be that the harder enemies feel like bullet sponges to take out by means of brute force over strategy, but as a whole I think the gameplay served the universe and story well.
 
Overkill kinda made Shock Jockey redundant to me. Pretty much EVERY enemy you kill is overkilled, other dudes get shocked, kill them, THEY send out another shock, etc
 

Kade

Member
Right, but someone said something about maxing it out to possess vending machines, which confused me. So I can just possess them adn they'll spit out money/discount stuff?

Yep. The only upgrades for it as far as I know are the possess humans enemies and the salt cost reduction.
 

ironcreed

Banned
Any tips against turrets early on? All my deaths seem to be related to those (clear room of baddies, get mowed down by turret). I can use the possess ability and get enemies to kill it or pop shots at it every now and then while waiting for shields to reload.

Am I missing anything?

I do find it hilarious that you can have borderlands style numbers popping off enemies. Do you level up or something in this?

Use possession on the turret and work your way behind it or simply use cover and time your shots to destroy them. Having the RPG handy as your second weapon comes in real handy later on.
 

KorrZ

Member
Shock Jockey + Storm gear really is completely devastating. Ever since I got that, the normal enemies fall like dominos. Works very well with Bucking Bronco too when I wanna change it up a bit.

I can't see how people could possibly be bored of the combat. Once you get to the wider areas where they integrate the skylines into the combat...like nothing I've ever played before.

GOTF.
 

Zeliard

Member
Shock Jockey + Storm gear really is completely devastating. Ever since I got that, the normal enemies fall like dominos. Works very well with Bucking Bronco too when I wanna change it up a bit.

I can't see how people could possibly be bored of the combat. Once you get to the wider areas where they integrate the skylines into the combat...like nothing I've ever played before.

GOTF.

Pulling with Undertow first makes it even nastier because you get that water + electricity combination.
 
D

Deleted member 30609

Unconfirmed Member
Every vigor in the game is ridiculously fun to use. I want to gush about them all. They're all my favourite.
 

Zeliard

Member
Yeah, this was my end-game go to, moreorless. The overkill shock gear was working wonders for me.

Also, maxed out charge is so good. Invulnerability plus shield charge. Godly.

There's a lot you can do even on 1999 that doesn't involve guns. Heck take vigors out of the equation. Know what I've been doing lately?

Oh my fucking god dude, this gear combination is hilariously fun and potent, even on 1999. Fools getting lit on fire all over the place and giving me health when they die with distant melee lunges. Toss some crows into the mix with Crow Trap Aid and you have a recipe for fun.

Burning Halo hat - 70% chance to light an enemy's ass on fire with melee, 300 damage over 4 secs
Pyromaniac chest - 50% to burn enemies when you get hit, 400 damage over 3 secs
Deadly Lunger pants - 3x increase melee strike range
Vampire's Embrace boots - melee kills restore health

Skyhook has been on the menu tonight, my friends.

:D
 

Hylian7

Member
1999 mode is still rough. Here's where I am right now:
The fight before trying to get back on the First Lady after you run into the Vox Populi leader and she thinks you're an imposter.

The Club in Finkton took me a really long time to get through. I had to come up with a ridiculous strategy to get through it. I would just set a trap with Devil's Kiss where the curtain opened for the initial wave of guys, then that would leave me 1v1 with the Fireman. I just stayed on the upper level, and took shots when I could, running when he threw grenades. For the crow I just would keep shocking him and shooting him, then taking care of the others. The Patriot took me the longest. I would take out the ground turrets with no problem, but then the Mosquitos always ruined my day. On the try I made it, I managed to take the Mosquitoes out, so I could focus on shocking the Patriot and taking shots when I could. I had to save the RPG rounds for the last wave.
 

Neiteio

Member
I'm at Soldier's Field, but do they ever explain why the people aren't freezing and/or oxygen-starved at 20,000 feet in the sky? And do they ever explain vigors in the way they explained plasmids in BioShock 1 and 2 (in that case, raw stem cells harvested from sea slugs)?
 

WanderingWind

Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
There's a lot you can do even on 1999 that doesn't involve guns. Heck take vigors out of the equation. Know what I've been doing lately?



:D

Personally, I went with gear that made me invincible for most of the game. Eat food? Invincible! Jump on or off a skyline? That's an invicibleing.
 
1999 mode is still rough. Here's where I am right now:
The fight before trying to get back on the First Lady after you run into the Vox Populi leader and she thinks you're an imposter.

The Club in Finkton took me a really long time to get through. I had to come up with a ridiculous strategy to get through it. I would just set a trap with Devil's Kiss where the curtain opened for the initial wave of guys, then that would leave me 1v1 with the Fireman. I just stayed on the upper level, and took shots when I could, running when he threw grenades. For the crow I just would keep shocking him and shooting him, then taking care of the others. The Patriot took me the longest. I would take out the ground turrets with no problem, but then the Mosquitos always ruined my day. On the try I made it, I managed to take the Mosquitoes out, so I could focus on shocking the Patriot and taking shots when I could. I had to save the RPG rounds for the last wave.

I don't know if placement changes, but it's pretty dumb that they placed the med kits in an area where you're most likely to be cornered.
 

Sullichin

Member
Personally I have no problems with the gameplay being somewhat typical FPS fare -- although I think that's underselling how fun and fresh the shooting/vigor combat is for me, perhaps not compared to Bioshock, but with other FPS games. There are, after all, a lot of FPS games that get the shooting right, but few offer the combat options that this does. Bioshock 1/2 are old enough for this to feel fresh again. I understand the complaints about the gameplay feeling disjointed from the narrative, but I don't feel the contrast is as large as some other people think. The first time you kill people with Elizabeth around,
she thinks you're a monster -- but by the end of the conversation she accepts this as a necessity and then you go back to being a murderer like it's no big deal. It kind of seems like an easy way to justify your violence and stealing. You concede really early on that there's no other way to progress. I'm nowhere near done with the game so I can't say if this theme is revisited or not. But, it does give you reason to kill these people beyond what most FPS games bother with.
Anyway, I'm happy that it's still an FPS, because I wanted more Bioshock gameplay, not just more Bioshock atmosphere/narrative.

Note on the spoiler, it's not much of a spoiler at all and I've only played a few hours.
 

Hylian7

Member
I don't know if placement changes, but it's pretty dumb that they placed the med kits in an area where you're most likely to be cornered.

Yeah, that made things worse too. So many deaths I would find myself being shot at from behind while I was focused on something in front of me. I had to hang around that area though because of those Medkits and the Salts phial sitting on the bar.

Forgot to mention this also, (Spoilers through Shantytown)
Hearing Fortunate Son in a tear?! Then a lady is singing it later?! The fuck?! Also, Tainted Love in the bar in Shantown. What. The. Fuck. I thought this might be a "The Village" type of situation, but I think the tears disprove that.
 
Yeah, that made things worse too. So many deaths I would find myself being shot at from behind while I was focused on something in front of me. I had to hang around that area though because of those Medkits and the Salts phial sitting on the bar.

That segment stood out cuz it's probably the only bit of combat so far that could be labelled, "how did they think this was gonna be fun?"

That and the first Handyman fight, but that was because I couldn't get the freight hooks to work so evading him was impossible. Might've just been a bug.
 
I only managed to play an hour last night before I got too tired and went to bed. My thoughts, which are late compared to everyone's.

It was an odd feeling of nostalgia and sense of newness while I climbed the steps of the lighthouse. I thought it was a bit peculiar how you never got to see the faces of the two rowing you to the lighthouse. Given BioShock, I'm keeping an eye for anything out of the ordinary and keeping it in my head.

Opening the door to the top of the lighthouse was fantastic. I was terrifyingly curious when the red lights and the huge horn started. Made me want to get out of there.

The ascension was marvelous, and when you finally arrive at that...church (?), the music in the background coupled with the sound of running water and the lighting really puts you in the mood to explore a new world. Highly suspicious of what exactly happened while you were unconscious during the baptism scene.

After that, I experienced something I've never had in a game before, and that was this weird sense of
vertigo as the building your on connects with another, and you're looking at the other floating parts of the city in the distance
. Took a few moments for me to adjust.

Again, I played an hour, and I quit when I got to the
carnival scene
. Everything's great so far, though I do know that the lack of a "save anywhere" feature is going to get on my nerves.
 

Hylian7

Member
Something else I forgot to mention in Shantytown:
That guitar scene in the bar. Wow. Also, I never found the locked box for the key there, have I missed it?
 
Prior to picking up the game a few days back, I was listening to the song

DO NOT HIGHLIGHT UNLESS YOU'VE COMPLETED INFINITE
The Well and the Lighthouse by Arcade Fire

As I was driving to pick up the game, thinking it'd make for a good song to cut a trailer to. Now that I've beaten the game, I'm kind of stunned at the parallels between its lyrics and the overall narrative in Inifinite. Pretty cool
 
Speaking of trailer/voicework from trailers, I didn't hear that one scene from the video clip where Troy and Ken berate and yell at Courtnee to get her crying in the studio. Did I just miss it?
 

hey_it's_that_dog

benevolent sexism
I'm at Soldier's Field, but do they ever explain why the people aren't freezing and/or oxygen-starved at 20,000 feet in the sky? And do they ever explain vigors in the way they explained plasmids in BioShock 1 and 2 (in that case, raw stem cells harvested from sea slugs)?

From Levine's twitter:
Q: Is the issue of air pressure/elevation discussed in the game?
A: No. I thought it would be too exciting.

Then he says he did think about it a lot but everything he came up with was boring.

To your second question, are stem cells harvested from sea slugs really an explanation, though? Is it more satisfying than not knowing that? I don't think so. (I don't know if they explain vigors other than contextualizing them as goofy tonics that actually work.)
 

Hylian7

Member
Something I wonder about is where all this water is coming from? They have running water and can afford to let the artificial ocean water run off the edges of the city, yet where are they getting more from?
 
I can't help but feel that people really aren't using vigors to their full potential. Comments like "the plasmids were much more useful" and "the enemies are bullet-sponges" leads me to think that people are heavily using guns over plasmids.

Well, don't. :p

Vigors are enormously devastating in this game, and they combine with each other and with gear in ways that can fuck up an entire room.

Try this.

Undertow level 3, Storm gear, Shock Jockey chain. You pull three enemies with Undertow, you shock one, and if he dies, everybody else is shocked twice consecutively, and if they die, the lightning chains again.

Yup. It's really like Bulletstorm and Borderlands just straight up went AT it at the company Christmas party and someone faxed the copy machine copies to Irrational and they were like "We can work with this."
 

Derrick01

Banned
Something I wonder about is where all this water is coming from? They have running water and can afford to let the artificial ocean water run off the edges of the city, yet where are they getting more from?

I think you guys would be better off not worrying about every detail like that in a Levine game. He tends to not worry about it and just do something like create a floating city and ask you to go with it.
 

t-ramp

Member
Something I wonder about is where all this water is coming from? They have running water and can afford to let the artificial ocean water run off the edges of the city, yet where are they getting more from?
I think at
Battleship Bay
an NPC comments that the water is caught and recycled. I would imagine other technologies would be used to reuse water in other situations as well.
 

Milchjon

Member
Anyone else having a hard time getting into the game in the beginning? I just saved Elizabeth and we're heading to a blimp to take us away from Columbia, but up until that point fighting enemies has been really boring. There's no planning anything, and I'm playing on Hard, so it can't be the difficulty.

I felt like a wasn't even into gaming anymore early on, and a few hours later, I couldn't get away from Bioshock. Give it time.
 

Zemm

Member
All I could think about today was the story and ending. I think this is the best story told in a videogame (atleast one that I've played), up there with Demon and Dark Souls, and in a manner that was easy enough to understand. Really have to applaud the writers on this game, amazing job.
 

Zeth

Member
Did anyone notice the recurring tool-tip that refers to Vigors as Plasmids? I wonder if it was intentional or not. (PC version)
 

JHall

Member
Something I wonder about is where all this water is coming from? They have running water and can afford to let the artificial ocean water run off the edges of the city, yet where are they getting more from?

They were collecting rain water from the clouds. Also, it was caught and recycled.
 

Chronoja

Member
I'm sure this has been mentioned, but ending aside this game was basically "Tangled: the game".
A girl, locked in a tower, is therefore booksmart, rescued by a "rogueish type", dreams of Paris (the lights) and has a freakish power (hair). Down to the moment that the dude gets hurt and she helps him. She even at one point cuts off her own hair. Even has the whole "he's only interested in me for the money (crown)" stuff.

Good game but I hope not everyone is getting so completely blown away by the ending that they overlook the flaws the game has though, cause it was a damn good ending.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
Status: Shipment Delayed.

But... It was so close :(

Did I do something wrong? Was it because I didn't want to order from Amazon ever again? Gah, I'm sick of this.

"Special delivery arrangement requested by customer which may delay shipment"

What is that even supposed to mean?! I didn't ask for a special delivery arrangement!
 

Neiteio

Member
From Levine's twitter:


Then he says he did think about it a lot but everything he came up with was boring.

To your second question, are stem cells harvested from sea slugs really an explanation, though? Is it more satisfying than not knowing that? I don't think so. (I don't know if they explain vigors other than contextualizing them as goofy tonics that actually work.)
OK, no big deal. I haven't finished the game yet, so I don't know how much of the world is "as it seems," but at this point in the game (Soldier's Field), perhaps my imagination could devise there's some special tech devised to provide for the appropriate oxygen levels and warmth in the atmosphere.
 

Ricker

Member
The site has an option for what platform you got the game on, and if you say you bought it on Steam, it asks you to log in through Steam. I suspect it checks your account that way, so you don't need a code at all.

So where are they...? I had to come back to open a safe because I only had 4 lockpicks and this pre-order thing on Steam say I'm suppose to get 5 and 5,000 bucks and some extra gear...?
 

RetroMG

Member
"Just repeat to yourself, it's just a game, I should really just relax."

I was joking to a co-worker that I wanted to call in sick to finish this, and I wound up actually getting sick, so I think I'm going to spend the day finishing it. (I hope. I'm at
Comstock House
) But at the same time, there's a little part of me that wants to just go back and replay the beginning so I can re-experience this game. I don't think I'll have time to do it later. :(
 

AkuMifune

Banned
Agreed. In my top 10-20 games of all time, and hopefully it'll stay there after the hype bubble bursts.

Well, don't be too generous with it. ;)

I'm very near the end, will wrap it up tonight then maybe run through on an easier difficulty over the weekend just to hit the story beats again.

It's a great game, really great game. But at points it feels like it suffers because it has to be a game. I felt the same about Bioshock actually, that at points the systems got in the way of the world, made it feel silly at times. I dunno, have to see it through and run through again to actually quantify how I feel about it overall, which I rarely do with any game anymore, so that's praise in itself.
 

Guevara

Member
This game reminds me to use vigors so much it's ridiculous. There's a pop-up after many fights saying something like "Vigors are devastating in combat" and now Elizabeth keeps telling me something like "Those vigors look really powerful, you should try them in combat (hint hint)"

I already got (trophy related)
trophies for kills using the machine gun, sniper rifle, shotgun and almost there on RPG and pistol.
Maybe I do use the guns too much lol.

I get it, it's not purely a shooter, I just think it's funny. I'm putting all my upgrades
into shields and salt. I just alternate every other. Hope that works out well.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
So as much as I'm loving the combat in this game, the damage stacking over shield to health is utter horseshit and leads to nothing but frustration in some of the more difficult shoot outs on hard. Instead of giving you brief room for recovery when you make a mistake, by having your shield break from a high damage shot and knowing that you need to retreat immediately, the game just negates the shield breaking, stacks the damage, and punishes you regardless.

In a game with a lot of hitscan weapons I do not find this design choice favourable. There doesn't need to be a window of invincibility after the shield breaks, but damage stacking is arse.
 

Guevara

Member
So as much as I'm loving the combat in this game, the damage stacking over shield to health is utter horseshit and leads to nothing but frustration in some of the more difficult shoot outs on hard. Instead of giving you brief room for recovery when you make a mistake, by having your shield break from a high damage shot and knowing that you need to retreat immediately, the game just negates the shield breaking, stacks the damage, and punishes you regardless.

In a game with a lot of hitscan weapons I do not find this design choice favourable. There doesn't need to be a window of invincibility after the shield breaks, but damage stacking is arse.

Isn't there some gear
that does this?

Edit: Actually maybe I made that up. I thought I picked up something like this last night.
 
From Levine's twitter:

Q: Is the issue of air pressure/elevation discussed in the game?
A: No. I thought it would be too exciting.

This is probably one of the best answers any writer of popular fiction could ever come up with

Something I wonder about is where all this water is coming from? They have running water and can afford to let the artificial ocean water run off the edges of the city, yet where are they getting more from?

It's funny, I wasn't concerned with where the water was coming from, but I was concerned about their method of maintaining water pressure. I'm on a floating city watching kids in suits not getting soaked while playing with an open fire hydrant, and the water pressure is the thing my brain latches on to.
 

REV 09

Member
So as much as I'm loving the combat in this game, the damage stacking over shield to health is utter horseshit and leads to nothing but frustration in some of the more difficult shoot outs on hard. Instead of giving you brief room for recovery when you make a mistake, by having your shield break from a high damage shot and knowing that you need to retreat immediately, the game just negates the shield breaking, stacks the damage, and punishes you regardless.

In a game with a lot of hitscan weapons I do not find this design choice favourable. There doesn't need to be a window of invincibility after the shield breaks, but damage stacking is arse.

i'm finding the combat in general to be just ok. There are a few oddities like the one you mentioned, but overall it just isn't super fun to engage enemies in the game. the artwork is phenomenal though.
 
D

Deleted member 80556

Unconfirmed Member
Apparently my delivery was delayed because of a national holiday. I'm hating this Easter Break, I was supposed to be playing this game! Not freaking waiting for it to arrive the day I start class.
 

mrlion

Member
Its funny that GameFAQs think this game is so-so and NeoGAF thinks its the best think ever since MGS1.

lol that's why I love this site.
 
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