Judith on 26/3/2013 at 18:57
Oh, he won't. And after next 30 minutes you'll be sick of light shafts, they use them everywhere, it's absurd.
And they still haven't figured out what to do with the combat. It's less clunky than in Bio1, but the character's physical abilities and the environment don't offer much. It's just basic strafing and shooting. It's rigid, lacks more elegant, fluent solution, like movement and combat in Dishonored for example. I use X360 controller in both games and Bio:I isn't nowhere near Dishonored in that regard.
retractingblinds on 26/3/2013 at 19:05
It kind-of irks me that they spend a good amount of time introducing Colombia, and what was a nice twist from the usual *shock affair is that everyone's alive. What's jarring and rather immersion breaking is Dewitt loves to talk, but you can't talk with anyone. And all anyone ever does is stand around admiring Comstock. It's quick to hop into the uncanny valley, and doesn't even seem interested in making the climb out.
I've never seen a city with this many living citizens in a video game be so dead.
I'm taking a break at the fair. Partly because I've lost my way and kinda forgot what I was doing, and mostly because I'm just rather tired and want to head to sleep.
june gloom on 26/3/2013 at 19:47
Quote Posted by retractingblinds
I've never seen a city with this many living citizens in a video game be so dead.
Mafia.
Renault on 26/3/2013 at 20:03
I feel my resistance to buying this game during release week diminishing...fast...
Bakerman on 26/3/2013 at 20:58
It is 7:45am and I am about to go to bed. Finished playing through the entire game at 4am with my former housemate, took us about 12-14 hours all up. It was a bit nuts. But I enjoyed it. We were playing on Normal, but that was difficult enough by the end of it. To give you some idea: we recorded our second death two-thirds of the way in, but by the final level we'd lost count of how many times we'd died.
The combat feels pretty much like Bioshock - it's frenetic, the sound is intense, though being able to carry only two weapons at once did make it a little less interesting. A little more manageable, though, IMO - I've never been great at managing weapon choices mid-firefight. Aside from that, yes, vigors == plasmids, hats == tonics (though the powers seemed more significant, like having a chance of setting people on fire when you melee them...) and hacking has been replaced by a vigor that makes vending machines spit money out but has no other discernible effect on them.
Story stuff: I was pretty disappointed at the way the game sort of dropped all the issues it establishes in the setting about halfway through, choosing instead to tell Elizabeth's sci-fi time-travel mind-bendy story. The racism, class struggle, and religious themes are pretty much all forgotten by the end, and the Vox are a caricature of themselves. That said, I really enjoyed how batty they got to be with the universe-warping stuff. Like, receiving audio logs from yourself. My buddy reckoned the end-end was very unsatisfying, but I quite enjoyed it. It was loopy and it made no sense, but I kind of enjoyed the Girl-Who-Leaped-Through-Time-but-slightly-creepier mood it was going for.
Also, the Luteces are the best people ever.
EDIT: Whoops. The game is freaking beautiful, I reckon. Any time they do smoke or banners streaming in the wind I'm very impressed. I was also pretty happy about the way they were able to translate the surreal cityscapes you glimpsed all through the two Rapture games, preserving the mood but putting the city into the air. I'd love to see that same art design talent applied to space cities - an O'Neill cylinder or an asteroid colony could be pretty sweet.
Pre-release trailers versus final product: It was fascinating to try to match bits of the trailers to where they ended up in the game. For example, the massive zeppelin-bombing attack that ends in you Skyhooking onto it, disabling the engines, and leaping off again. The action is similar, but the environment is different. Same with the cutscene where the Songbird grabs Elizabeth - exact same action, very different feel to the environment. I wasn't an avid watcher of the trailers, so I'm sure there are more of these moments that I didn't pick up on.
froghawk on 26/3/2013 at 23:36
With regard to the first sentence of your story spoilers: I can't say I'm surprised, Bioshock did the exact same thing with the story becoming a completely uninteresting waste of time after the golf club scene that didn't deal anywhere near as much with the issues as it could have.
Actually, even Human Revolution did the same thing, despite its singlemindedness. It seems that every time a game tries to deal with real issues these days it doesn't have the courage to actually follow through on them.
june gloom on 27/3/2013 at 00:00
Spec Ops: The Line.
SDF121 on 27/3/2013 at 00:30
Quote Posted by Angel Dust
Absolutely agree with you there regarding a lean function; most of the early fights are crying out for it.
Indeed. I know the common excuse these days is that there are not enough buttons on a controller but the left and right buttons on the directional pad are not even assigned to anything in this game. You would think that they would have implemented a lean function where pressing the left directional button on the dpad would make you lean left while the right directional button would make you lean right.
Yakoob on 27/3/2013 at 00:56
Just got through some shooty shooty bits in 1999 mode and damn, this game is hectic and hard. Really makes you think what you're doing. And maybe it's cause I'm early, but dying and respawning seems to also cost a non-trivial amount, so I'm finding myself questioning if I really want to do it or just reload.
On the bad side, the combat can actually become too hectic at times, with enemies literally flooding the area, and so what would be a strategic encounter can sometimes turn into "run back shooting panickly!" The AI can be really thick sometimes, either madly rushing you without thinking, or literally just standing in the middle of the street getting hit repeatedly as I snipe them down from far off. Also, echoing what others said - this game SCREAMS for leaning function!
Oh and all my attempts to "sneak" or "stealth" around enemies have failed miserably with the enemy getting alerted even when im trying to be quiet. Hopefully just "early game" setpieces, though.
