I never played BioShock 2 or Infinite, but I watched full playthroughs of each, and I thought infinite was great! Different to be sure in most ways, but it was a neat expansion of the world and themes hinted at in the first two games.
I seem to remember a lot of sideline criticism when it came out that boiled down to “NPC sidekick not love interest but hot so I don’t like game”. I thought, and think that is ridiculous, and fortunately I think that criticism has faded with time because Elizabeth is such a positive part of the game, from my view.
I really liked BioShock Infinite. I enjoyed the story, I enjoyed that it was a deviation from the previous two, I liked the characters and the dimension travel. I especially liked the “fake facade” of it all, versus the overt, grimy dystopia of Rapture (which was fine). It gets extra points for being playable with ReShade on solely a Ryzen 5600G.
I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite a lot back on the Xbox 360. The whole city in the clouds but also it’s the early 20th century setting was really attractive to me, and I enjoyed it pretty much throughout. Elizabeth being an actually useful NPC sidekick that you don’t have to do endless shitty escort missions for was a great move. I don’t understand the hate it gets after a few years have passed.
It was criticized when and after it came out, so it isn’t something that’s come up recently. But as you mentioned, there were some praises as well, as NPC escort missions were a bane in gaming at the time and this game did get praise for Elizabeth for that.
However, much like the comment “the medium is the message”, I think also Bioshock was a series that was very close to people’s hearts and they had a specific idea about what exactly made it feel like that atmosphere. My stance has always been, Bioshock Infinite is a phenomenal game that isn’t quite Bioshock, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s like… It’s like the entirety of the series Metroid, and then Other M. Had Other M been literally any other name and character, it would have been a perfectly fine game.
But since it, and Bioshock Infinite, are tied to their namesakes, staying in line with that atmosphere that they create is imperative for a fanbase. For all of the faults that Bioshock 2 had, they still nailed the thematic portion of the world that appealed to so many people in Bioshock 1. They’re dark, gritty, a musk of musty air fills the entirety of the game and characterization. They’re also quite creepy, with that setting on top of the insanity and tight enclosed spaces under the oppression of the ocean.
Bioshock Infinite seems to abandon that thematic element almost entirely. And mind you, they did the bright and airy world very well, I can only imagine what it would have been like if they had been able to complete the entirety of their vision! I suspect something like Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom size was always the goal, given all the details shared about what they had to cut out.
That tonal shift I am almost certain is a majority of the cause for the issues with Bioshock Infinite - as this was the sentiment I gathered upon release and the coming years. It was two-fold though too, because by changing the nature of the tonality of the game, the gameplay itself seemed to be “brightened”, maybe in an attempt to make it more accessible, maybe to make it more engaging, but it seems pretty commonly agreed that Bioshock Infinite is just easier. The puzzles seemed toned down (IMO almost more of a point a -> point b puzzle), and while yeah the ending was a very well done version of this, I think many also felt like it somewhat removed the agency the players were struggling with, just to toss in a “you have and always will be” multiversal moment.
Anyway, all this to say, these aren’t explicitly my opinions on Bioshock, I’m just an analyst. I enjoyed most of Bioshock Infinite, but it is clear to see that there is a difference in the show-don’t-tell of Bioshock and the tell-show-tell of Bioshock Infinite. I actually am able to replay Infinite, where I have a hard time replaying 1 and especially 2, just because they’re so goddamn scary for me, lol. Much of the gameplay of Infinite is also just slightly more modern, with 1 and 2 just being slightly slower and clunkier without the movement option of the grappling hook.
I think another way of putting this is to look at an entirely different game, We Happy Few. It seems to me that We Happy Few wanted to make the atmosphere of Bioshock 1 but with the brighter narrative style of Bioshock Infinite, which inevitably resulted in the clashing of those two themes. In the case of Bioshock Infinite, it is that very same clashing of themes which I think heavily affected the players perception of the game. Again, had it been named, like, “Sky Cultist: Enigma” or something like that, it would have been perfectly well received and would have maybe even gone down in gaming history positively. Instead, it was tied to Bioshock and is kinda seen as “it’s good but meh” as a byproduct of such a drastic shift. I also think the desire to go from sea to sky is just a little cheesy, and while it was done well enough I’m also sort of hmmmeehh on that whole side of it. Fun areas to play in, but… not very Bioshocky, even with the steam punk elements.
Which is too bad. It had many technically good qualities about it, from the story arcs, from memory I feel like the pacing was pretty good, I remember the gameplay early and mid-way being fun although I do feel like I remember just a little bit of bullet spongeyness and resource/ammo collection mid-late sections of the game. Obviously the ending was quite good, and I really enjoyed the cult story. However, the bright sky world is very contrasting to the murderdeath cult and gore of it all, and I personally wasn’t as big of a fan of the thematic shift, both in the overworld but also in the march towards the Industrial Revolution. It just felt so out of place to me (specifically the Patriots, or maybe I just hated fighting so many of them) considering we had this entire underwater industrial complex in Rapture. However this is alleviated somewhat by the ending of Infinite, since these are all infinite possibilities oooooohhhh the name makes sense nowwwww!
So yeah, all in all I think it turned a bit underwater espionage revealing the secret project to the world to floating cult investigation revealing the… secret project to the world.
Was confused for a second there, the title doesn’t specify that the article is about Infinite, so for a minute I thought we were discussing the first game, or the franchise in general.
The first game obviously has a lot to say where rampant freedom is concerned. You might consider it anti-capitalist, but really it’s anti-anarchy, if anything.
I always found the games to be more potent as a starting point for tackling the bad shit a lot of humans will try to pull given power, but Rapture was twice the setting that Colombia was in that regard.
Rapture pulled me into Bioshock.
But Colombia didn’t pull me into Infinite. Booker and Elizabeth did.
As a cleverly written and somewhat complex personal story, Infinite shines. It’s got compelling characters that make you care, and then it puts those characters through the wringer in their search for contentment.
I cared a whole lot about where Elizabeth and Booker would end up, but I can’t say I ever spared Colombia at large a second thought.
Oh snap, thanks for catching that! I edited the title.
As a cleverly written and somewhat complex personal story, Infinite shines. It’s got compelling characters that make you care, and then it puts those characters through the wringer in their search for contentment.
That’s a great point I hadn’t considered, and can’t believe I hadn’t. Rapture felt like its own character to the story in a way that Colombia never really did, but it’s undeniable how well-done the characterization between them was.
For me, the game was very boring and lacked any real challenge. I found myself forcing myself to beat it around halfway through, which did not add to the fun.
An article that discusses and re-examines if a game you like is good is not a personal attack.
I encourage anyone who thinks it is indeed a good game (hey I also enjoyed it back in the day) take the time to read the article and at least respond to the content posted.
It is absolutely fine to disagree with what the article is saying. And it’s fine if you don’t want to read it. But I don’t think it’s bee-ing nice to comment that you refused to read an innocent article because you disagree with the headline and it’s source. The article was posted to discuss its contents (as the body of the post pointed out). Not whether or not polygon is worthwhile.
If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all ya know?
Space Colony is an older game that was like Sims in space. I got this at Big Lots years ago and played some of it and apparently this is the remastered version on Steam.
The screenshots and video on the Steam page doesn’t go into the detail of what you can do when it comes to controlling your Sim-like characters. But this video shows more of that aspect of the game youtu.be/BEys39TsRdw?si=t3HU3vFlNO9q0O0T
Granted, it’s a lot of games in one like other top down tycoon manager games and has some elements of tower defense.
I played some Tiny Life recently. I liked it, but it is a bit simple, and the bigger issue I had with it is just that there isn't much to it, especially to build. There's like two counters, two fridges, one shower... from my perspective it really needs an artist to just go ham and make tons of options so there's stuff to actually decorate with, even if stats are the same.
Yeah but that game is either (depending on how you view early access) woefully unfinished and shat out in such an incomplete state, or not released yet and possibly years away from release.
The art style was “what if we target the uncanny valley specifically?” It was the strangest thing that seemed to target realism but without the technology that actually makes it look reasonable. I didn’t really care about what it looked like though. Just having some game competing with Maxis would have been nice. Cities: Skylines brought the city builder out of the pit it had been festering in with no competition. I was hoping this would do the same. Hopefully the other projects can do that still.
That’s a tough decision to make, especially in today’s gaming marketing, but I applaud them for stepping back and recognizing what they had wasn’t good enough to sell. Blizzard made that decisions years ago with Starcraft Ghost, the Blizzard of today wouldn’t make that same call any more.
I was obsessed with Wizardry and Ultima growing up… but I can’t stomach the node-based, turn-based conceit any more. I had a hard time finishing Wizardry 8 back in… ok, maybe I don’t want to know how long ago that was.
But I was spoiled by the real-time evolutions of the concept… stuff like Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire, Ultima Underworld, Descent to Undermountain, and the like (also, shout-out to Arx Fatalis).
I would love more epic dungeon crawlers, with the soul of these classics but all the modern conveniences, graphics, and gameplay advances.
You are older than me, I suppose. I was playing it at 11 years old or so. My first CRPG, although my dad had run a D&D game for the family a few years prior so I had a reference point.
I remember my cousin telling us about the Creeping Coins and my imagination went wild, assuming you could loot them and they’d attack you later from your inventory.
Wizardry inspired a lot of games, but the three games listed have greater influences elsewhere. (FF and DQ in particular are more like Ultima.) Sadly the games that were most inspired by Wizardry, sometimes called “blobbers,” have mostly died out: The classic Bard’s Tale games, Might & Magic, Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder. Etrian Odyssey and the Japanese Wizardry games hold the torch but are pretty niche these days.
The demise of the original Wizardry series is one of the greatest injustices in the history of computer gaming, up there with the closing of the original Atari.
You might enjoy CRPG Addict’s blog posts about his adventure in Wizardry for DOS.
I beat it through emulation and save scumming, but his playthrough was a lot more tactical, and now Im starting to understand I’m not support to just hit the attack button over and over again!
polygon.com
Aktywne