Bioshock Infinite was a terrible sequel to Bioshock

They could have name it differently and let it be a spiritual successor of Bioshock.

Awesome game though, very unic and enjoyable. Addictive.
 
Loved Bioshock 1 & 2. Really disliked Infinite.

I think a large part of my dislike, aside from the tedious gun play, was that the environment didn't do much for me, I found it really dull. It also appeared to be some sort of uber religious society in the clouds, yet they sell vigours/plasmids at local fairs that let you mind control another person until they kill themselves. It just didn't fit. Rapture seemed a far more cohesive environment to me.
 
Hated Bioshock 1, thought that Bioshock 2 was a better game than its predecessor, loved Bioshock Infinite. Come at me.

Played them all on PC if that matters.
 
Setting was fantastic, just a shame that the rest of the package didn't hold up for me. Gunplay didn't feel exciting or satisfying to me, and the latter half of the game felt like it was rushed in design and narratave to get it out the door on time. If it wasn't for the actual world itself, I doubt it would've left an impression on me.

Bioshock 2 is a much better Bioshock game to me. Infinite felt like a different product alltogether.
 
Levine thought he was playing chess, that shit was checkers.

Serious Sam gameplay with a narrative as deep as a tween drama. I hate the game more every time I think about it. How Levine threw away his team on that game. What a waste.
 
Bioshock Infinite was certainly flawed, and I agree that it's a worse game than Bioshock. But it certainly still had a lot of appeal.

The idea that whether a game (or even just it's story) is good or not is dependent on what level of socio-political commentary or allegory or whatever it fits in there and how well it meshes with the game is nonsense. It was the stunning, almost unprecedented (for a videogame) strength of Bioshock, indeed, but it's not necessary for a narrative to be good. A narrative can work on an emotional level or a character development level. Bioshock Infinite failed utterly at the social commentary stuff, but as the story of the journey of Booker and Elizabeth it was engrossing, and it set out to do what it wanted to do.

To add to that the setting was just as stunning and iconic as Rapture (more so to me) the music was beautiful, and the game was fairly well paced and not bloated. Sure, the gunplay sucked, but it did in the original Bioshock too. Having less options added to weaker level design is what made Infinite the weaker experience from a gameplay perspective.

Infinite wasn't a great game. It won't go down in history that way. And it was a mediocre or worse shooter. But as an experience? It was pretty good. It wasn't bad. And I'd defend it as such. The first hour or two alone almost made the entire thing worthwhile, and the last hour atoned for some of the sins of the middle part.

I just don't like the idea of criticising it just because it's a character-based, emotional narrative rather than a philosophy-based, intellectual one. That rubs me the wrong way a little bit.

bosseye said:
Loved Bioshock 1 & 2. Really disliked Infinite.

I think a large part of my dislike, aside from the tedious gun play, was that the environment didn't do much for me, I found it really dull. It also appeared to be some sort of uber religious society in the clouds, yet they sell vigours/plasmids at local fairs that let you mind control another person until they kill themselves. It just didn't fit. Rapture seemed a far more cohesive environment to me.
Click to expand...

If there's one thing I'll agree on, it's that the vigors absolutely didn't fit. Then again, I didn't think they fit in the original Bioshock either, but that's a minority opinion. They were presented as genetic mods but functioned as magic. Having magic in that environment took me out of the game world rather than tying me to it.
 
Griss said:
I just don't like the idea of criticising it just because it's a character-based, emotional narrative rather than a philosophy-based, intellectual one. That rubs me the wrong way a little bit.
Click to expand...

The problem is that it was A) repeatedly sold as being the latter and B) made several attempts at being the latter which consistently failed.
 
Funny fact I played all BioShocks games but...

I just remember of BioShock and BioShock Infinite... outside the MP I don't remember nothing from BioShock 2.
 
The only thing I didn't like about Infinite was the transition from more open levels to linear set pieces. Even if there was only an illusion to exploration in BS1, what they did there in terms of level design was much better. Burial At Sea episode 2 was pretty good in this regard, though the story there was disappointing.

I enjoyed the stories for 1, Minerva's Den and Infinite. 2 & Burial At Sea are pretty bad.
 
And Bioshock was a disappointing spiritual successor to System Shock 2. I'm not exactly sure what the point of a thread like this is. The game was praised highly by critics when it came out and a lot of people did enjoy the game. If I already enjoyed my time with Infinite, am I supposed change my mind now because you didn't enjoy it the same way? Is it because my expectations for what Infinite was supposed to be was wrong? I didn't even know the game had changed several times over the course of its development so I didn't know I wasn't supposed to dislike it before hand.
 
I felt like Bioshock enjoyed a traditional followup I'm the form of Bioshock 2, so I didn't mind Infinite and how different it was. It was the antithesis of Bioshock in a lot of ways, which is a very interesting route to go for the sequel. It was flawed and admittedly didn't have half the depth of the original, but I can honestly say I had more fun with it.
 
I never played the original Bioshock (I know, I know) so Infinite was very fun for me. The gameplay definitely could've been improved in a few aspects, but I loved the atmosphere and story which more than made it up for me.
 
I've played through the first hour and a half of Bioshock three times and it's never grabbed me.

I played all of Infinite in a weekend.
 
I've never seen the knives come out for Bioshock Infinite the way I have for any other game.

That's what happens when a games gets perfect 10s and is repeatedly compared to being as good as a movie, as emotional and powerful as a movie, on equal footing with that holy medium.

I do agree its not as good, gameplay wise, as the first one. The gameplay in first one, just worked much better, imo. But that wasn't the problem, what was criticized was mostly a single narrative mistep, that perhaps wasn't a mistep at all.

Specifically making the rebel leader out to be as bad as the tyrants, that came across as commentary to many people, and pissed them off. But, even if you disagree with this notion, that doesn't make the game or even that single instance in the narrative bad. It's a wonderful and engrossing creative expression by a game creator, you don't have to agree with every idea it presents, just as you don't agree with every idea presented by movies, like Back to the Future ( shamelessly pro materialism ), or every book. Those pieces of art can still be amazing, even if they are flawed or if you disagree with their commentary.

I did find the gameplay lacking compared to the first one, and didn't get that sense of badassness of upgrades and new weapons and powers, but my god, Infinite was so incredibly immersive and beautiful. Unprecedentedly so. And it also has the single best animated character in all of games, till now, imo. Such a stunning game. Too bad the gameplay didn't quite live up.

But this later legacy of being slightly disappointing is mostly just backlash from culture critics resentful that this game was being compared to movies and being held up as proof that games are also legitimate art. It's this backlash rather than the game itself that has created its legacy.
 
Overall, I really like Infinite due to its setting and story (and in particular, how it got told). But no question, the gameplay and level design was a significant step back from the previous games, and it didn't live up to the promise of its earlier demos.

I still had fun playing it, but it's fair to describe the combat as being merely adequate and serviceable. It would be a run-of-the-mill shooter if not for what it achieved on the narrative and aesthetics side of things.
 
It's a great game with lots to look at. Infinite was really fun, but I enjoyed it on PC. The 360 version needs some updates. I played the 360 version and it felt different than the PC version did.

I think it still holds production value if you increase the graphics and just chill out to it. There's lots of fun areas to explore.

If anything they need to add more to look at. BI is great, but you can tell someone is trying to bash on it just by its splender and sorta simplistic shooter mechanics at times.

The original was amazing. I played it at launch on 360. The world, characters, sound, and upgrading. I thought they were all wonderful, but they are also a particular shooter for some people. It may be too easy or you don't look beyond aesthetics.

Entering Columbia is still jaw dropping, but anymore you can probably hear someone screaming at the helm because it doesn't fancy their tastes.

I replayed the opening area just recently on console. The PC was better looking. I finished the two expansions on PC.

I just wish we'd get more games like these. If anything it added more for the fan who wanted a new world to explore, but some people just think of it at as a single trip. It's worth seeing and being mesmerized just once or maybe twice.

I played it with a beefed up PC and my G35 headset. The sound, graphics, and controls were perfect at the time. I feel like I would have had less had I played it on console at the time and I rarely feel that way.
 
I replayed the first two games last month, and oddly enough, I enjoyed 2 a lot more than 1, mostly because the story feels a lot more personal. While the setting and world building in 1 are pretty great, there is always a big disconnect between the player and what is happening on screen imo, to the point where you really just don't care about what you're doing, and without proper motivation, you can only kill so many splicers before you get bored.

This same argument favours Infinite a bit, because Elizabeth keeps you more invested in the story (as non-sensical as it ends up being). I think the only real issue with Infinite is that it doesn't take the franchise further, and the original is definitely the freshest of the bunch by far. In that sense, I feel many are overly critical of Infinite because of overblown expectations. Taken by itself, it's really not nearly as bad a game as many make it out to be.
 
Guess Who said:
The problem is that it was A) repeatedly sold as being the latter and B) made several attempts at being the latter which consistently failed.
Click to expand...

Was it sold as the latter? I wasn't sure. I certainly wasn't expecting to see racial commentary or criticism of nationalism in there when I bought it.

As for the 'several failed attempts':
-Yes it did, but these were restricted to the first half of the game. The second half of the game abandons this entirely to focus on the sci-fi elements. And yes, this whiplash in narrative focus is, in and of itself, worthy of criticism, but I thought it rescued the game.
-Just because the social commentary doesn't come off doesn't mean that those parts didn't still work from a conventional action narrative sense. As an action narrative the pacing is pretty good.
-While they didn't come off properly, the fact that they were there assisted the world-building that the game was so strong at. From an atmosphere / immersion point of view that stuff still had value.
 
My main problem with the game starts after you throw that baseball. After that it turns into a shooting gallery, then exposition, then shooting gallery again. Also spend way too long in that factory.

Then again I suppose people come to Bioshock because it is a shooter with a good story. However, the world and the inhabitants of Infinite didn't fit the rampant violence in my opinion. Had Columbia been like a Nazi base in the sky I could see it, but it seemed many of the people there were just bystanders.
 
It was really disappointing in everything except story from what I remember. I'd like to play it again one day if they re-release it though.
 
Bioshock is amazing, Bioshock 2 is ok, and Bioshock infinite was more than ok but more dissapointing due to its potential.
 
I think trying to have the same kind of impact and freshness of the first bioshock is difficult to recreate. For what it was, I thought it was a good.
 
DocSeuss said:
Sounds like someone didn't play Bioshock 2.
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I played Bioshock 2 and gameplay-wise it's the best. I also prefer BS2's story over the first one. Infinite's story is still king, though. There were so many mindblows in that game, whereas the only mindblowing thing in BS2 is
...nothing basically. The Minerva's Den DLC had an awesome twist that I actually didn't see coming, but it's still not as big as MULTIPLE UNIVERSES AND WTF I just love this stuff
.

So basically for me it's (overall):

BS:I > BS2 > BS

They're all very close together, though.

EDIT: Also in terms of DLC episodes:
BS:I - Burial At Sea 2 > BS2 - Minerva's Den > BS:I - Burial At Sea 1

The only gripe I have with Minerva's Den was that it was loading sooooooo looooooong because the whole DLC chapter was only one or two HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE maps. Which is a really stupid thing to do.
 
BocoDragon said:
Are the people who revere Bioshock and shit on Bioshock Infinite all people who played them 6 years apart upon each release? It's clearly a little bit of nostalgic reverence, and people growing up a bit, that causes them to trash Bioshock Infinite so gleefully while praising Bio 1 as some godsend.

Anyone else played them for the first time back to back and found them to be very similar in quality? Bio1 is better. There is more of an open world back-and-forth, and the gunplay is superior....

...but the ideas? The intellectual angle? The story? They're both highly shallow takes on philosophy. All the people who railed on Infinite for not following through on the themes of slavery or wealth inequality.... Yet Bio1 wasn't exactly a deep thinker about Ayn Rand. It's essentially "what if people did whatever they wanted?"... and the answer is that they became monsters for you to target practice. Deep.
Click to expand...

Could not agree more with this. As someone who played the collection in 1 month recently, I couldn't see what makes Bioshock 1 so "much better" than Inifinite. The gameplay on Bioshock 1 was worse in my opinion and while the writting of Infinite can be subject to a lot criticism, the narrative and atmosphere are incredible. Granted I played it at 60fps on PC and it's a huge difference.

I also love how people who "hated" the game bother to write extensive 1 page critiques about it, with details I didn't even notice. There is a lot of hyperbole surrounding this game and I bet nostalgia plays a big angle in this.
 
While the gameplay was "only" solid, i absolutely loved the art direction, voice acting and story of Bioshock Infinite. For me it still is one of the prettiest games out there and one of the first good examples to cross my mind when i think about storytelling in games.
 
Never felt Bioshock was anything special, but Infinite actually grabbed me (for its story, its gameplay, just like bioshock, was shit). Horrible gun play, horrible platforming (if you can even call it that given how sparse it was) and didnt live up to any of its gameplay promises (none of the bioshocks have). But story wise, Infinte was good when it got going, where as Bioshock was predictable to the extreme (oh this guy I've never seen giving me instructions is the bad guy, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT! *groans*).
 
Amibguous Cad said:
-Environmental manipulation. The Randian hero is above all clever. She does not only triumph through force of arms. And Bioshock is very, very good at making you feel clever, at using everything in your disposal to eke out a victory. Again, just blowing shit up wouldn't have worked as well for a game about human intelligence gone awry.
Click to expand...

I played all of Bioshock with a wrench basically. I ran forward and would bash a big daddy with a wrench a couple of times, die, revive at a chamber and run forward and bash him again. Rinse and repeat until he was dead. I didn't feel clever at all. I didn't use almost anything at my disposal because the game didn't make me.

I actually don't love Bioshock. I love the opening. I love the setting and I love the "twist". The rest of it, I could do without which is why I never played Bioshock 2.

I actually had more fun with Infinite even though I don't particularly love that game either. It's very rare for me though to finish a game and immediately start looking up essay's about it and that's what the ending of Bioshock Infinite did. It was an amazing ending.

Both games are flawed with some really cool elements.
 
I don't agree with you at all. Infinite blew my mind. I thought the combat was fun. Vigors were unique. But most important the environments were sensationally Bioshock to me. The baptism introduction to Columbia was so captivating. As memorable as the reveal to Rapture. And as the setting and story revealed more and more of itself throughout the game, the game as a whole just became more and more impressive to me. Crap I loved that game so much. After that ending I just had to put the controller down and sit quietly for a couple of minutes.

I'm new around here, but I find it upsetting how many of you didn't like this game.
 
Also thought Infinite was shit, but it was dumb fun with the PS Move. Terrible 'Shock' game though.
 
If nothing else the game helped me realize how large the disconnect was between my viewpoints and that of gamers at large.
 
Applebite said:
People rightfully critique popular game and a fan is unable to deal with it. More at 8.
Click to expand...

Hate without giving good long arguments and shouting that all the reviewers got paid (cue "I don't know how that game even got those scores") because people don't agree with the good things this game did is not rightful critique, it's hating.
 
I actually liked Infinite, but I do agree it definitely had some issues. Unlike the first Bioshock where the game seemed to focus on Rapture as much if not more so than actual characters, once Infinite goes full
alternate dimension plot
halfway through the game Columbia feels like it takes a backseat.
 
BSI has a great story and art. Play it on a PC in 4K if you can. Shit will blow your mind. The fighting was so so, and didn't really hold up to the initial reveal gameplay walk through. But man did the story want me to keep pushing forward. Did not like the ending boss fight though. Tis crap.

Still don't have anything like BS1 or BSI on current systems. Decent gameplay and a really good narrative. I'm not talking about remasters of old gen. Like new IPs. The order could have been great. But...
 
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