Im way too big a nerd. Just ordered the limited edition strategy guide even though i've completed the game. Just want to look at the pretty pictures grabbed the art book too
Finished the game tonight. My mind has been blown. The gameplay variety was kind of meh but I'm a fan of characters and stories first and foremost so I can forgive the dull gameplay here. Here's a take on the ending I never considered that puts a whole different spin on the series. Be forewarned there are major spoilers for the original Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertc...ck-infinite-you-might-have-missed-completely/
I started playing yesterday. I'm intrigued by the beautiful environment and the story. However I was put off by the rather abrupt introduction of violent gameplay. I mean, I'm not sure what I was expecting - I knew combat would be central to the game. I guess what bothered me is I felt like I had no choice and the game was going to force me to slaughter what seemed like innocent people. I actually decided to try running past enemies but ultimately had to fight. It's not the violence itself that bothers me. It's that I didn't feel I had enough information about Booker or Columbia to understand the reason why I had to start killing. Mostly I've rationalized it by telling myself the citizenry is mostly fanatical, that they've been repeatedly told to look out for the false prophet, and that the player as Booker must react first in self defense. I found it unsettling for the first couple hours of play, though I've adjusted now. Perhaps I'm too comfortable with the stealth components of recent games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Dishonored.
So, I finally picked this up last week on PC for $25 and played through it. First off, wow, what a visual marvel this game is. You can tell the production values are through the roof. I loaded up Dishonored after I finished Bioshock Infinite and it looked like a total turd. Like 5 years out of date in comparison. I'm warming up to the visuals in that game, as it's simply not the same big budget super title and it does have a lot going for it. The gameplay didn't really evolve much from the original Bioshock. Vigors felt a bit out of place. The combat was decently fun when I was headshotting normal enemies and bringing them down fairly quickly, but got tedious as I progressed and was exposed to the various bullet-sponge enemies. I really only died in one sequence (on hard difficulty): Spoiler: Annoying Lady Comstock Ghost raising the dead and me not having any ammo led to a bit of a loop with her regening health on my death about as fast as I could take it down. This happened in all her appearances too, was really obnoxious. Anyway there just isn't a ton to the shooter gameplay. Comparing to Dishonored again, it really lacks depth. Combat is not exciting in this game. There should have been at least one truly crazy skyline ride, ya know, where you have to keep hopping from rail to rail at top speed to avoid smashing yourself all the while shooting enemies that are also on the skylines trying to chase you. But that never really happens. Finding the audio logs was a bit tedious as well. And I only got around 80% of them despite spending a lot of time checking every nook and cranny. I'm much preferring Dishonored on that front, though I'm starting to find myself skipping or skimming a lot of the books you pick up. But at least it doesn't seem to force you to search endlessly to have the plot revealed to you. Speaking of the plot, it was highly entertaining. I pretty much saw every twist well before it hit though. The section with Slate is what helped me piece it all together. Probably helps that I was primed to expect a 'twist' after having played the original Bioshock when it was released. Oh, and I really hate the searching for ammo/food. Panning over every single box/barrel I can see mashing the F button endlessly. Boring. I did have some technical issues. I needed to manually set a memory pool variable which required lots of research, adding a parameter to the game launcher and modifying an ini file. It was just trying to use too much GPU memory, which caused it to stutter like crazy anytime it streamed in a texture. Really annoying. Really high frame rates, yet so many second-long drops that it was nearly unplayable. Once I got that resolved I got percetly smooth 60 fps with adaptive vsync on maxed out settings and as I said before, it looked absolutely stunning. Maybe a little too crazy on the HDR/Bloom/WhateverItIs but then again that kind of works anyway with the religious heaven in the sky themes. And they get props for the awesome use of licensed music. Clever. Overall it was an excellent game, 9/10 territory but I don't think it quite matches up to the original Bioshock. That was a more interesting story, and a better realized, more consistent world.
The wait for the DLC has been nigh on disgraceful so far. A lot of people bought the season pass so i dont get whats taking so long. Better be good once it arrives is all i'm saying.
Speaking of which, i went ahead and picked up the Season Pass discounted to $14. Seems like an OK deal, I'll try and have some faith on this one that they'll ship something good soon. Supposedly a 'reveal' is happening by the end of the month. Greenmangaming literally have a code on the store page for the Pass to get the discount if anyone is interested. Might be region specific though, says (NA) in the title which I assume means North America.
How much of a price drop do you want? The PC version has spent a lot of time in the $24-$30 range in the past month, and Amazon has the console versions for $40. It's not it's been holding full MSRP.
So happy about the DLC, couldn't have asked for a better concept imo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpgvZay10jE
I've seen it at $40 a few times... I'm waiting for $25 or $30... maybe in November, it'll be six months old then...
I finally went ahead and bought the game! Love it! The story and setting are absolutely fascinating. As great as Rapture was, I think this is even more interesting with the dimensional tear mystery. And I love having Elizabeth with me. One thing is driving me up a wall. The save system. I can't save the game it only auto saves. I play to the end of a chapter where I load a new location, then make sure it auto saved and turn off the game. TWICE now I have had to replay AN ENTIRE HOUR of the game because when I turn the game back on it doesn't remember I finished that damn level!!! Did anyone else have this problem?!
ARGH! So I waited SIX MONTHS to buy this game because it was never cheap. I finally decide to spoil myself and buy it for $40. And what happens? The NEXT WEEK it finally falls to $30 for the first time ever. Typical!
It's not completely clear based on how you phrased it. But if you sign up for an Xbox Live free account you can still get the patches. Seems worth it to me, *shrug*. Seems like if there is a legit save bug that bad then it would probably be covered in one of the patches.
You have to pay to play multiplayer. A free ("Silver") account can still download patches and buy digital content.