Starker on 12/4/2015 at 11:56
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
Infinite follows a more rigid narrative, but the freedom of playstyle and character building trademarks of a Shock are all there.
As long as that playstyle and character building is centered around shooting wave after wave of enemies in linear levels and not, for example, hacking, research or exploration.
Fallen+Keeper on 12/4/2015 at 16:00
Quote Posted by Thor
Could you elaborate a little on what that is? What are those set-piece moments exactly? Do you mean like 'press Q to strangle this guy' and he takes 3 seconds to do that or something I have missed entirely playing those games?
I hope they meant that everything you see plays out in a "spectacular manner" without being scripted. Hmmm..
Jason Moyer on 13/4/2015 at 02:37
Quote Posted by Starker
As long as that playstyle and character building is centered around shooting wave after wave of enemies in linear levels and not, for example, hacking, research or exploration.
Other than the introductory sequences, none of the level design in the BioShock games is traditionally what would be described as linear. In the first game, especially, it's quite obvious that the levels start out fairly narrow and keep opening up more and more as you progress through the game until you reach the narrative apex, and even with that, the Medical level isn't a corridor that needs to be traversed in a specific path.
Starker on 13/4/2015 at 04:47
I wasn't talking about the first game though. Nor the second one. And if you want to argue that Bioshock Infinite wasn't linear, go ahead. I know it's subjective, but on a scale from "completely linear to open world", I'd say Infinite resides somewhere around the letter "c". Infinite is an excessively linear game with only one path to your objective most of the time, and even where the path seems to diverge, it will very soon join back together with no real consequence.
heywood on 13/4/2015 at 23:01
Quote Posted by EvaUnit02
On DX:HR's "Give Me Deus Ex" difficulty you were quite fragile. Despite having all of those powerful augs at your disposal, if you were taking the "action approach" and didn't try to play tactically you'd be mincemeat very quickly.
In the beginning of the game, yes. You start out weak and have to be careful. But in the second half of the game, you should have enough augs, weapons, and other resources that a shooter playstyle isn't challenging unless you restrict yourself to only using passive augs and basic weapons (no heavy). This was true of Deus Ex as well, on difficulty levels below Realistic.
Praxis points are abundant even if you're just exploring a bit and doing side quests. You don't have to play like an XP whore to finish the game with unused praxis even after acquiring all the good augs for combat, stealth, and hacking. That is different from Deus Ex, where the augmentation and skill choices really mattered and you couldn't be good at everything.
Quote:
So you haven't played any of those games? Without experience then your opinion on those games is entirely lacking credibility. Bioshock 2 for instance follows the same mould as Bioshock 1, i.e. streamlined System Shock 2. Infinite follows a more rigid narrative, but the freedom of playstyle and character building trademarks of a Shock are all there. (Thief 4 I can't adequately comment on in the slightest since I haven't played it past the first 10 minutes. Which is what you should be doing!)
Anyway as others have pointed out, you were misreading what was written.
ALL of the Shock games and ALL of Deus Ex games have "set-pieces". Unclench you anus and get over your hang-ups, you're missing out on great games like Bioshock 2. Infinite is worth playing just for the well written characters alone IMO.
I loved SS2 and have played it at least a dozen times. But despite the similar game systems and elements carried over from SS2, Bioshock didn't play anything like it. I enjoyed the unique setting and visuals for the first few levels, but I did not enjoy the arcade shooter gameplay, and aside from a clever plot twist the story was uninteresting. It turned into a chore to finish and left me with no appetite for sequels. Since I don't have a lot of free time for gaming anymore, I would rather play something I'm reasonably confident I will enjoy. At the moment, I'm thinking of STALKER: CoP (which I still haven't played) or Black Mesa. Although the Mankind Divided announcement has me tempted for another Deus Ex round instead.
Volitions Advocate on 14/4/2015 at 04:10
Don't forget though, the narrative surrounding the augmentations was different in DX than it was in HR. J.C. was a clean slate and had to carefully choose what augmentations to install. Adam already has them installed, they're just disabled to avoid overloading his somethingorother as a consequence of his physical trauma prior to being aug'd (or something like that) Jensen got top of the line everything. He's supposed to be tricked out in every way. Maybe in manky divided that will change, if he wants to upgrade to something new or different, he's going to have to have some choices to make.
I'm pretty big on making sure gameplay makes sense within the narrative framework, and not (as I've already mentioned) Gimping JC with the inability to shoot a shizfecking rifle. b/c "gaemplai yo"
having said that. There's nothing wrong with a compromise, just make it make sense. If we're evolved enough as gamers to hate invisible walls, we should hate bullshit like that too.
faetal on 14/4/2015 at 10:32
The biggest turn off for me with Bioshock was the caricature style of it. It had so many elements in place to feel creepy, but instead just felt like a parody of itself.
I started playing the second one and gave up as I just couldn't get into it. I think it's all of the super-hackneyed cod-prohibition era idiom shoe-horned in too, makes it feel like an amateur dramatics troupe wrote the dialogue.
Thirith on 14/4/2015 at 12:23
In theory I'd like Bioshock's aesthetic; I think that more games should go for idiosyncratic looks, and the expressionistic style suited Bioshock. However, since the game was basically a shooter and the grotesques you faced were only ever enemies to shoot and kill, the effect didn't work all that well for me. If the game had been more along the lines of Deus Ex or Bloodlines and there'd been other ways of interacting with the Rapturites than killing them, it might've been different. Ideally the inhabitants of Rapture should have been both fearful and pitiable, and at least for me they were neither.
heywood on 14/4/2015 at 13:40
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
I'm pretty big on making sure gameplay makes sense within the narrative framework, and not (as I've already mentioned) Gimping JC with the inability to shoot a shizfecking rifle. b/c "gaemplai yo"
I totally get what you are saying. I also get what they were trying to avoid, which is having minimum stat requirements to use certain weapons. On one hand, because the player starts the game as a greenhorn, it made sense in that you could pick up and use any weapon but you would need experience to become proficient with it. But the narrative disconnect is that JC starts as a supposedly trained agent. If I were rewriting Deus Ex, I would prefer to resolve that by adjusting the narrative rather than ditching the skills.
Human Revolution disguised the skill improvements as augs, which fits the narrative better than stats. I didn't mind combining augs and skills together into one upgrade system. But the idea that Jensen is fully outfitted with all the augs but can't use them is a bit far fetched as well, especially when you consider that augs can be unlocked by gathering XP bonuses.
The traditional FPS approach is just to make the guns bigger and the enemies badder as the game progresses, which requires less narrative justification, but is less fun to play that a FPS/RPG in my opinion.
Quote Posted by faetal
The biggest turn off for me with Bioshock was the caricature style of it. It had so many elements in place to feel creepy, but instead just felt like a parody of itself.
I started playing the second one and gave up as I just couldn't get into it. I think it's all of the super-hackneyed cod-prohibition era idiom shoe-horned in too, makes it feel like an amateur dramatics troupe wrote the dialogue.
The look of the place, the circus of values, the swami, all the odd set pieces in Fort Frolic, all the gizmos, the mini-games, the mad characters, the over-the-top dialogue and voice acting, and the shooting gallery gameplay. It all fit together as one big comic arcade. But it made a mockery of the attempted morality lesson. One of the things that turned me off of Bioshock Infinite was hearing that Levine was trying to tackle more serious plot themes. I just can't see taking him seriously after enduring the heavy handed dialogue (to put it charitably) of Bioshock and the circus arcade atmosphere.
faetal on 14/4/2015 at 15:01
System Shock 2 managed a very subtle campy creepy thing with the vending machine voices and C3PO suicide droids without going OTT. In those small doses, it actually added to the game's overall sense of dread. With Bioshock it was like complimenting someone's tiramisu with something like "I liked the grated chocolate on the top" and then next time you're invited to theirs for afternoon tea and possibly badminton, they slide over a giant block of chocolate with the word TIRAMISU carved into it.
