Bioshock Infinite · 4:55pm Apr 15th, 2013
So I finally finished my first playthrough of Bioshock Infinite over the weekend. I'll try to speak in general terms to avoid spoilers, but you might want to avoid this post if you're still working on your own or haven't had a chance yet. I'm more interested in composing my own general impressions.
My bottom line, as I expressed to Filly last night, was that I'm looking forward to playing it again (on Easy - I did my first run in 1999 Mode, whew!), but after I've done my completion playthrough to make sure I've seen everything and pick up the little achievements I missed, I don't know that I'll ever feel the need to play it again. On the other hand, I've played the original Bioshock probably five times, and every so often get a hankering to run through it again, though I haven't indulged recently. The video knighty tweeted a while ago does an excellent job of actually analyzing everything about the game that made it feel slightly lackluster.
The twist in Bioshock literally made my jaw drop, and I almost dropped my controller when Andrew Ryan asked me if I would kindly. "Clever" doesn't begin to do that kind of metanarrative justice. I had no idea it was coming and it blew my mind. The twist in Bioshock Infinite... well, apart from knowing from every review that there was some amazing revelation, the game itself built up to it in such a way that even if you didn't know what was coming, you knew something was coming, and that made it a little less satisfying. I actually jokingly predicted part of the twist and was a little disappointed I was right (about that one small part), but they did execute on it in a very creative way. They executed on it in a kind of confusing way, too. After the credits rolled, I immediately went and read the relevant Bioshock wiki articles to clarify what exactly had just happened; I didn't have to do that with the first game.
So in the end it was fun and I'm a sucker for interdimensional temporal manipulation - who isn't, really? - but it rode a little too hard on that concept at the expense of the rest of the game's world. Bioshock all hung together and made sense; Bioshock Infinite's ending sort of felt like an excuse to make up for them not being able to assemble a world as cleanly and coherently.
Can't wait to start my replay, though.
Also Booker shouldn't have been able to activate the you-know-what at the end to get to the surface.
I completely agree with you on that.
I had the game done in the first couple days it was out, 1999 mode as well. But that ending... It was no Bioshock, that's for sure.
I loved saving all the little sisters in the first one, and getting that special scene at the end. So, when i played this one, i tried to be as nice to people as possible. Not steal, or throw stuff at the couple at the beginning, hoping it would change my karma or something... But nope. In the end, it did nothing.
It was just... That.
I could go on for paragraphs, but this is a comment.
It was a great game, but i definitely would have liked something different.
My thoughts are pretty much the same. Except that I have no interest right now in replaying (even for missed achievements). There were things done well... even extremely well done. But it was like a machine that was put together out of a lot of high-end, really great parts that didn't quite work as well together as I'd hoped.
One thing, the "you know what" at the end may not have been the same one we were familiar with.
Also, I don't know if you waited all the way through the credits or not, but there's a few seconds at the end that you may have missed if you didn't.
I don't regret buying it, even though I mainly bought it to play in order to avoid spoilers. Flawed or not, it was a very pretty, and fun, game.