Bioshock. Was it really that good?

So I have just finished playing bioshock infinite. I've read soooo many opinions about how amazing this game is (someone even said "best life experience" - or something along these lines). Anyway I finished it and don't think it was "that good". I was wondering what our smart teksyndicate ppl have to say about it. Am I the only one who is glad they got the game for free as its not really worth the 30-40 pounds ?

No, it isn't. Gamers are just starved for a FPS with a decent story.

I swear, people's fanaticism with this game mirriors that of the people of Columbia. They are faithfully devoted to this game as if it was the absolute epitmy of what a game could be.

With that said, I really like this game.

I think the story is really good (for a game) and the gameplay is fun and a lot faster pace than that of Bioshock 1 and 2. Visuals speak for themselves. Overall a great experience.

I disagree that this game wasn't worth the money. I initially pirated it then deleted my pirated version and purchased it legally. Why? Because I really enjoyed it and felt that Irrational games deserved my 46.99 for it.

Now this game is not perfect. Not being able to make your own saves is annoying and combat is too easy (even in the highest difficulty). The enemy AI was both bad and good, I liked the fact that enemies would attempt to flank you and provide covering fire for their rushing comrades. However, me being a natural sniper, I was taken out of the experience when they would just run out into the open and stand perfectly still for their respective headshots.

This is balanced only by stronger enemies, not smarter ones.

I don't know about, "best life experience", but it was definetly fun for me.

I have to say that I'm flabbergasted by is possible with the Unreal 3 Engine. It's not the most modern engine, but the implementation in Bioshock Infinite is above par. That said, it's just a crazily well made game, the ideas are over the top, the sense of immersion is definitely there, the interface is right, the visuals are great (except for some bitmaps that are a bit soso for a project this ambitious), and the game runs very smooth with great fps and little screen tearing.

I don't really agree that it's just an fps, the added value is in the details, there is always some surprise, and the game is just a roller coaster ride, and is long enough if you take your time to see everything there is to see.

I got both Bioshock and Tomb Raider from AMD vouchers, and Bioshock is imo a better game experience. Tomb Raider felt very console to me, although the graphics with the TressFX are not bad at all. I did enjoy Bioshock more than Crysis 3 tbh, even though the graphics in Crysis 3 are of a higher level. I also liked Bioshock better than Borderlands 2. I would recommend Bioshock Infinite to anyone that is looking for a refreshing experience.

I actually really disliked it. I had replayed Bioshock 1 and 2 before infinite released, and it was just a downgrade on every level for me. 2 weapon limit and recharging shield turned combat into a supremely console-ized version of an already console-ized game. The changes to powers were pretty weak across the board, and turning weapon upgrades into a normal purchaseable made resource management way more tedious. The animations weren't much better, as in still pretty damn awful, but now with so many more NPCs it's just hugely distracting. Losing hacking sucked, and melee was like controlling a character with cerebral palsy. "Finishing" moves didn't help in the slightest.

For me personally, nothing in the story was enjoyable by comparison either. Bioshock 1 had an interesting narrative on the larger scale and mostly left you to the atmosphere and to puzzle on how the place developed/crashed. 2 followed up with a fitting though predictable follow-up. The design left you spending way too much time just wandering through interchangeable french luxury, and just forces everything it has down your throat, with ZERO concept of subtlety; Just "LOOK HOW RACIST THESE CRAZY RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE" and then seals it with some multi-verse time-wankery that conforms to NO remotely sensible understanding of causality.

 

I haven't actually hated a sequel in a while, but I really despised Infinite for trashing up an already weak (but still solid and enjoyable) successor to system shock. /rant off

I haven't played 1 or 2 yet. Friend told me that they were really good, so they are next on my to play list after DI riptide.  

I also got my BioShock and tomb raider on Amd vouchers and yes tom raider was console damaged, but it was waaaaay better than BioShock in my opinion. Possibly because I loved lost and the atmosphere was somewhat the same. 

The story telling aspect was quite good. Execution rainging from average to WTF were they thinking (http://tepeserwery.pl/screen/BioShockInfinite%202013-04-19%2016-38-11-088.png)?

bioshock 2 wasnt good but the first and infinite were my favorite games as of yet they were very good

I really liked Bioshock infinite apart from the ending which i would of liked to have choice like in the previous games. I liked the environments and the combat, for the first time in a long while i actually care about the characters.

Plus this game didnt feel like a bad console port.

Thats just me though.

Yes. The themes in the story is deep and thought provoking. the gameplay feels good. The ending was mindblowing and theres so much to discover in the beautiful world of columbia. Also, the voice acting is incredible and you actually care about the characters in the game. Watching the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth is wonderfully emotional.  For crying out loud, it scored a 10/10 on more sites than I can count!Trust me man, play through to the end, because Its amazing.

I wrote a whole review of it! If anyone's interested: http://www.gtmsanctuary.com/2013/04/review-bioshock-infinite-pc.html

But the short of it is:

I absolutely loved the setting. Columbia is a an amazing environment to be in. With that, however, came my first issue - it doesn't feel like a massive, open city, but more like a bunch of shooting galleries.

The sound design and voice acting was great. So was the story and the ending was pretty awesome.

Another issue I had with the game is the absolutely retarded enemy AI. They simply run into any "cover" and simply stay there, with their asses, or heads, or other body parts sticking out. I've had a few times when enemies took cover in front of me. As in towards me. 

It's a great game, but not perfect.

Yes it is that good, couldn't get in to 1 or 2 but Infinite was the second best shooter I have ever played after Half-life 2. It had its flaws like boringly easy AI and was quite linear (but then again that type of game should be linear) but anyway it's a great game, easily in my top 10.

I really enjoyed BioShock Infinite, I thought that the city of columbia looked incredibly nice and it had a great story. However, I prefer the atmopshere of rapture in BioShock, and I was not a fan of the slaughter fest combat in Bioshock Infinite. I still would say it is a great game and well worth the £30 I had payed for it.

I wouldn't say it's in my top list of games however I still adored it.

I would very much of liked to explore Columbia. "A bunch of shooting galleries" pretty much sums it up the areas in one. I loved exploring the city before the combat started and it would of been great if there could of been more times like that in the game.

nice rant

It was a solid game, one of the few games that i've finished in 2 straight sessions during the first week. I couldn't force myself to finish my second playthrough, it just hasn't got much replayability. I just stuck to the same two weapons and the same two vigors throughout the whole game because they worked well.

 

jumping in late in the convo, but i played it and enjoyed it. But I'd give it nothing more than an 8/10 on a good day. TERRIFIC AND RICH ATMOSPHERE. Boring point and shoot gameplay. Too much useless loot to where i mash E at a stack of suitcases until i can't pick up anything because the last stack of suitcases had 50 billion pieces of different ammo and health.

Some of the battles were fun and diverse because of the creative approach to the idea of "dynamic battlefields." The tears added a unique quality to a boring formula but were quite limited and mostly uninspired sky hooks or automatic turrets. No hailing meteor storms? Missed opportunity haha.

I will admit that the skyhook was fun to use and strike down on enemies, but it was just "cool."

The game was fun but the first bioshock is still head and shoulders above it for many reasons, but Infinite is still better than bioshock 2 and it's a great sequel that's chock full of atmosphere. But in the end it got rather boring to shoot a dude for the 5,000th time. Shoot this dude. Shoot that dude. Oh no shoot that BIG DUDE! IT'S LIKE A BIG DADDY BUT YOU CAN'T TELEGRAPH IT'S ATTACKS AND IT'S NOTHING MORE THAN A STOMACH THAT EXPLODES ONCE IT EATS TOO MANY BULLETS! haha

Didn't like the game much. The scenery was often a large amount of pictures with 3D objects around them to give the illusion that it was 3D. Meshes didn't line up in lots of area's. The game on hard was easier than BioShock 1 on easy. I wasn't able to get into the story much since I've read so many books over the years that had very similar stories and the games story seemed generic to me. Putting that all aside it all added up to a nice game experience but not quit on par with Half-Life, Red Faction 1 or BioShock 1 IMO.

I liked it because of the storey :)

I'll try and not spoil anything with this but I'll prbably bring small things up so procede with caution,  YEAP, SPOILER ALERT

 

Bioshock Infinite was definatially fantastic, a worthy successor to the first in almost every way.  Need to take off those nostalgia/theoldstuffisalwaysbetter glasses though.  The FPS portion of the game was slightly more generic and the gun models didn't change with upgrades (that I saw) but they were beautifully rendered non the less.  The limit of two guns on hand did not bother me so much because I've kind of grown to expect a 2 gun limit over the years.  Though if your playing a Bioshock game for the gun play than you might as well go play COD.  Honestly, I feel this was one of the better looking games I have ever played and the immersion was great,  The Character models were VERY well done (IMO) as well, especially Elizabeth's.  Really I'm a HUGE fan of Bioshock 1 but really Infinite really did a better job with the game spaces with details and everything else even though it ended up being more linear after the first couple of events into the game.

 

The story was excellent with the play on Illusion of Choice and Innevitability was excellent and started very early on in the story whether you know it or not.  I actually found many of the Characters in Infinite FAR more interesting than those in Bioshock 1 with the exception of Ryan and Sander Cohen.  I do wish there was some more real choices that might have made temporary changes (Paris VS New York, those that have played will know what part I'm talking about) to the story and steared things for the better or worse in the sort term but they really stuck to the theme they had....perhaps to a fault. I would have liked to see just one more Songbird scene, I think that was an underutilized character and he didn't really come around enough to make a huge difference.  The final fight scene was also.....generic and out of place for a Bioshock game.  I would have rather been running from Songbird that fighting off the Vox.  That seemed like a total lapse in creativity when your coming up to one of the more important periods of the game.

 

I've heard people complaining about the space/time stuff but that has been hyped since day 1.  You really should go into Infinite expecting that to be a big plot device....and be prepared to pay attention so you understand the story and WTF is going on, becuase if you don't, the game leaves you behind.  I really get into this sort of thing though so keeping up was easy for me and I actually understood absolutly everything in the first run through with a few loose ends, naturally.  Playing a second/third time through to connect more dots and find things I may have missed but all in all a complicated story that some manages to wrangle everything in in the final scenes and still finds room to tip the whole series on it's ear.  I've seen many people complain about the plot being too complicated but I would rather it be complicated and interesting than dumbed down and ruined so paste-eaters could understand if without paying any attention to the story, narrative, or enviroment.

 

I also think that people completely missed the narative on rascism or have just chosen to make a joke out of it but that was done rather well.  If anything an extreme example but it kind of helped drive what morals Columbia adheres to and really what drives the city and it's inhabitants.....probably not as far from reality as people would like to believe either.  I was a little shocked at some of the scenes and I did feel anger about the whole situation....and yes, I did want to cave that announcer's head in with the baseball. 

 

For reference, I went into Infinite with a "meh" attitude expecting it to be another meh/bad addition to the series but I was completely wrong.  In fact it blew most of what I've been playing for the past year or so completely out of the water.  Chances are Infinite is just going ot be one of those games where you love it, or you don't with very little middle ground.  Really though, with all the dumbed down CRAP that devs feed people these days, I'm not surprised.  Personally I would give it a 8 or 9/10, a must play just like Bioshock 1 was back when it released.