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.
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.
I honestly felt it was weaker than both Bioshock and System Shock 2. It was stronger than Bioshock 2, but I mean… that doesn’t take a lot.
Both System Shock 2 and Bioshock built the game systems first and foremost to be fun and engaging, and then wrote an engaging story around those mechanics. Bioshock was literally taking dumbed down systems from System Shock 2 and rewriting a more engaging and thoughtful story around the familiar systems. Bioshock Infinite seemed much more like they had a story idea first and then tried to adapt Bioshock-esque gameplay hamfistedly stapled onto said story. The others feel like the gameplay came first, and the story evolved naturally to align with the gameplay.
Games like Neir Automata really show where a synthesis of game systems design and game story design are really important and become even more impactful to the story, and in this Bioshock Infinite failed in comparison to earlier installments in the series (and its spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2).
I feel like it’s hard to talk about Bioshock as a series at all without discussing System Shock 2, because that’s where Levine first pioneered his story with the engaging antagonist who speaks to you through a radio, and Bioshock is where he refined it into what comes close to literature. Bioshock Infinite marks a regression, more worried about the story that Levine wanted to tell than the gameplay to support it. Due to that the story falls flat, feels stilted, and Levine’s generic take of “everyone can be a bad guy” feels hollow, because it’s not backed up by compelling gameplay that supports it.
As McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message” and video games inherently work better through a synthesis of gameplay and story, without one dominating over the other. Games that lean too far in one direction or the other (Metal Gear Solid’s interminably long cut-scenes for instance) take you too far out of the gaming medium and too far into other, more detached mediums.
As McLuhan put it, “the medium is the message” and video games inherently work better through a synthesis of gameplay and story, without one dominating over the other. Games that lean too far in one direction or the other (Metal Gear Solid’s interminably long cut-scenes for instance) take you too far out of the gaming medium and too far into other, more detached mediums.
Absolutely banger take, I agree completely. Games have a difficult needle to thread, unlike a book or movie that can be strictly narrative-based, a video game has to somehow give the player enough agency while taking it away to allow the story to progress. And now I have DND on the mind again.
I’m reminded of a comment my older brother made about Final Fantasy X, all those years ago. He described it as basically playing a movie. Go figure, I liked the cutscenes!
I came back because I read a bunch about Levine’s new game, Judas… and it sounds like his approach to Judas is exactly what I’m asking for.
He talks about “narrative legos” a lot while developing this game, and I think that’s the kind of thing he really needed to implement to be able to tell the story he actually wanted to tell.
I found one interview (already forgot which one) where he described Bioshock Infinite’s linear story as holding him back, and that’s part of why it’s a weaker installment, because it can’t change the story in response to your actions. That’s clearly what Levine was trying to do with stuff like the choice of harvesting of the Little Sisters or not, or in Infinite, choosing to be a racist piece of shit or not. He was held back technologically, and I think the “narrative legos” idea is why Judas languished so long in development hell.
Here’s hoping Levine learned his lessons this time around.
That’s great! I remember myself enjoying the gameplay a lot, and it ran surprisingly well on my PC at the time. Any thoughts beyond that, anything about the article specifically? The article isn’t over here saying, “This award-winning game was bad!” it’s more so trying to take a closer look at the story and themes of the game as a whole from a 2024 perspective and how our current world can reflect them. Though to be fair ™, it is definitely meant to be a click-bait article that’s part of a greater “Spicey Takes” section.
Was pretty obviously clickbait, so I didn’t read it, and still don’t plan to even after you provided that additional context. I’m afraid that I added all that I could, sorry.
I had a gut reaction to the headline. Lemmy is small and people get mad if you don’t contribute. And maybe a little to troll you since you reposted because you didn’t like the original threads comments ;)
At this point just assume that anything even slightly not “wholesome” is going to be deleted by the mods here. I wouldn’t be surprised if this comment also got deleted for pointing that out.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
polygon.com
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