xhonzi said:
Brute splicers and security bots? You must have had an easier time with the handymen than I did. I found them to be bullet sponges. I could unload all the ammo I had in both guns and still not take them out. I always liked fighting the Big Daddies, because I could plan out my attack. They were brutal, but I thought they were fair. For whatever reasons, the handymen seemed more 'cheap' to me than fair.
I only played it on normal, to be fair, but it felt like if you just kept running and shooting the heart they went down really easy.
I've been replaying it on PC- actually playing Clash in the Clouds. I've alternated betwixt mouse, xbox controller, and laptop touchpad. It's a lot easier to hit the heart with the mouse than the other two... that does make them easier to take out.
When I was a PC gamer I always played on my laptop and never mucked around with attaching an external mouse, so I got really good with WASD and touchpad controls for shooters, which most people say is the worst possible combo ever. Maybe that is why I appreciate game controllers so much, they are just much more simple than a touchpad and I haven't used an actual mouse for gaming since I was 13.
In fact, anytime I have to use a desktop for anything, I find using a mouse kind of awkward and uncomfortable.
I know some people are really into finding a direct counterpart for every character, but I don't think there necessarily has to be.
Yeah... I think the game itself started it. There's always a girl, always a lighthouse. Plasmids/vigors... Comstock/Ryan. It was on the surface, but the game narrative made it part of the lore.
It's actually always a man, lighthouse, and city. Elizabeth is a variable.
Getting into the metaphysics of it all, I don't think the game means there has to be an analogous piece in Colombia for every piece in Rapture. Elizabeth explains that in every reality she has seen, there is always a man (Ryan/Comstock/maybe others), always a lighthouse, and always a city (Rapture/Colombia/maybe others).*
The commonalities between the cities was explained via tears, while the nifty gadgets and technologies found in Rapture wasn't part of this reality, the tears caused by the Lutteces experiments allowed Frink to be able to see into different realities and base his inventions off of them before their time. Tears into Rapture inspired the creation of the vending machines and the Handymen, as well as the Songbird and other things.
I don't feel like the similarities between Rapture tech and Colombian tech are an inevitability, but rather a contingency. Without Raptures safe haven for creativity and ingenuity coupled with Lutteces crazy flying city and tear creating quantum mechanic experiments, that tech wouldn't exist in Colombia.
That is what I really loved about Infinite. In the original Bioshock, Rapture exists because a man had a dream to build an objectivist utopia. It is all really linear, and super awesome. It's far fetched, but you can still roll with it and imagine it happening.
Playing Bioshock Infinite for the first while, I wasn't its biggest fan. It was fun, it was Bioshocky, and it was kind of nifty they tried to do something new with it by changing the setting. I appreciated not having just another rehash, even if the combat wasn't as good as it was in the first two. It was different enough to make it fresh. The problem was it wasn't that fresh. On the surface it is the same game, but with watered down combat, some interesting game mechanics gutted (Big Daddies/Little Sisters; hacking; Big Sisters; boss encounters/fights; bots; cams; etc.). The new setting is pretty much just a surface detail.
BUT, once you look pasted the watered down and simplified game play, and toward the characters and the quantum mechanic of the story, it is a really fun little romp.
I think that is what made the first Bioshock so great above all else, it delivered a fun and fantastic story that made you keep thinking about it even after it was over. I feel like Bioshock Infinite managed to do the exact same thing story wise. The story was just a ton of fun, and it made you keep thinking about it long after it was over.
Out of all the games I've played over the past few years, Bioshock Infinite is by far one of the best. I think it is a shame the game play had to get watered down from the first two games, but the first two games were light years beyond most games, leaving Bioshock Infinite still far above and beyond its contemporary competitors. I can't help but think this move may have been for the same reason we got the machismo cowboy boxart... Attempting to appeal to a wider range of dumber gamers. It is frustrating in a way, but I still can't deny that the final product is solid.
I could spend my time feeling really disappointed that it isn't what it could have been, and it's not. But what it is, even in not being what it could have been, is so much more than what everything else is.
*My thoughts are that Rapture is to Colombia as the chicken is to the egg. Without Rapture, there wouldn't have been a Colombia, making Infinite truly a sequel rather than a prequel. It seems in worlds with a Rapture, there was no Colombia coming before it, and I like to think in worlds with a Colombia, there will never be a Rapture, for whatever reason. If a Luttece succeeded in breaking holes in time and space, then a Colombia was made heavily modeled off of the future city from a different reality. Luttece needed a charismatic character to fill Ryan's shoes and rally people and resources to make her/his experiments possible, and Comstock happened to be the right sort of man for this role. I don't feel like the Ryan/Comstock, Rapture/Colombia, always a man, always a city, connection has to be anything more than that. I feel like their connection are incidental rather than some predetermined/preordained roles the universe has chosen them to play.
I'd actually kind of like to see System Shock rebooted and tied into the Bioshock universe.
Also, the 'weak minded' who were gifted their rating by the jedi mink tricking reviewers who gave it a 94%, probably haven't come up with their own opinion.
With games like Uncharted 3, Assassins Creed: Flavor of the Week, and Call of Duty IX getting 90% or above, is it really fair to say that reviewers who gave Infinite high scores are being Jedi mind tricked? Compare it to every other shooter or high profile franchise game released in 2013, and I feel like it more than stands on its own against them.
