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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 23:23 
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One thing I'd criticise: the use of easily missed voice recorders for important exposition. I somehow missed two vital ones, despite carefully looking in (I thought) every corner...

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
Comstock aging more rapidly and Elizabeth's power coming from her missing finger.


so those bits had me scratching my head until I read up on it.

I found the ending satisfying. I don't think it has the glaring plot holes some people are accusing it of. I think there's things left unsaid, which you can reasonably infer:

super spoils
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
the Lutece's machine was limited compared to Elizabeth's power. It could only see small, indirect tears, glimpses or samples of technology (Fink), music (other Fink) and the future (which Comstock chose to believe was prophecy from God).

It also scrambled the Luteces somehow and held them between realities after Comstock tried to kill them. Dead, not dead. Probably comes from both of them being present in one reality.

Something that excites me: there's always a girl, a protector, a city, a lighthouse. (And am I kicking myself for not noticing how much Songbird looks like a Big Daddy; I put it down to just art style...) but nowhere does it say that Ryan's Rapture is a reflection of Comstock's Columbia. Some people I've read are assuming that's the case, that the ending of BI somehow invalidates B1/2. I think those alternates are equal peers; and there are certainly other lighthouses to be found...

Rapture reveal was ace. I turned to my wife as Songbird was drowning and said, at first jokingly, "hey, they've gone to Rapture... HOLY FUCK THEY REALLY ARE IN RAPTURE!"

Heh. I initially thought the start was stilly, too. Too self-consciously similar to Bioshock. Levine sure showed me!


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 0:01 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
I wish it had a proper quicksave/quickload feature, instead of checkpoints.

Personally I like to save ALL THE FUCKING TIME, not to cheat, but just to try and try again and retry the same sections. Different tactics, different approaches, different weapons, all out nuke, bit of stealth, and so on. (In the case of Bioshock games, really fuck around with my plasmids, or vigors as they are now, and kind of use the game as a sandbox to play around with stuff, safe in the knowledge I can go back to a save.)

Plus the concept of having to reach the next mandated checkpoint irritates me, because it means I can't stop when I want to, I have to get to the next swirly circle that says my progress is saved - which can mean leaving the game on pause for 30 minutes or more, or just quitting out and starting again from the previous checkpoint if I can't resume that session.

This is my single biggest complaint with the game, which is otherwise truly magnificent, but I can't see any valid reason for them taking proper save functionality out of there.


Couldn't agree more - the lack of a manual save bugs me too. I can live with it, but the reliance on checkpoints to autosave aren't ideal. Presumably there are technical and/or gameplay reasons why it's like this .......... ?


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 0:20 
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Spoilery stuffs:


ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
The Songbird is a Big Daddy. The game all but says it outright.

Andrew Ryan is the male version of Anna Dewitt? The bathyscapes are restricted to Ryan's DNA.

The Bird and The Cage: All the Elizabeths at the end are wearing the pendant you chose. This is not a constant. It is a choice. What happened to the Elizabeths with the opposite pendant?

Anyone else notice the coins Liz tosses to you all come up the same side?


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 8:57 
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Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
One thing I'd criticise: the use of easily missed voice recorders for important exposition. I somehow missed two vital ones, despite carefully looking in (I thought) every corner...

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
Comstock aging more rapidly and Elizabeth's power coming from her missing finger.


More spoilers

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
I've started replaying it already. You actually get the Elizabeth's power one just before you free her from Monument Tower, then in the next scene I noticed her missing finger is pretty much thrown into your view.

Regarding the ending, surely for it to work there has to be have been one Comstock (most likely the timeline you end in the game), otherwise Anna/Elizabeth wouldn't be able to get her powers to stop all possibilities of her father becoming Comstock. I noticed that one of the Elizabeth don't disappear in the last scene so I'm guessing that adds weight to that theory.




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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 9:18 
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In regards to the music, more spoiler.

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
I quite like how they all seem to reference the storyline.

Girls just want to have fun - Elizabeth being locked in the tower and dreaming of Paris.

Everybody wants to rule the world - Comstock and Colombia

And of course 'God only knows what I'd be without you'. Which fittingly is the first song and also the one that resonates with the ending.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 10:04 
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I think we need a "Bioshock spoilers" thread.
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
Pundabaya wrote:
Spoilery stuffs:
The Songbird is a Big Daddy. The game all but says it outright.
Absolutely agree. I just missed it, is all. There's always a city, and a lighthouse, and a man, and a girl, and a protector.

Quote:
Andrew Ryan is the male version of Anna Dewitt? The bathyscapes are restricted to Ryan's DNA.
Nah, Ryan is Comstock's analogue.

Quote:
The Bird and The Cage: All the Elizabeths at the end are wearing the pendant you chose. This is not a constant. It is a choice. What happened to the Elizabeths with the opposite pendant?
Hmm. Interesting. I didn't notice that. Perhaps it implies it really is a constant, like the coin-toss the Lutece's show you.


Runcle wrote:
Regarding the ending, surely for it to work there has to be have been one Comstock (most likely the timeline you end in the game), otherwise Anna/Elizabeth wouldn't be able to get her powers to stop all possibilities of her father becoming Comstock. I noticed that one of the Elizabeth don't disappear in the last scene so I'm guessing that adds weight to that theory.
No. The game plays a rising tone as each Elizabeth disappears, and it plays the final tone as the screen cuts to black -- the last Elizabeth disappearing as the entire Booker/Comstock timeline unravels out of existence.

You have some large number of timelines where Booker stops Comstock and Elizabeth can use her power. A number of those Elizabeths come together at the fulcrum point in history: where Booker decides whether or not to be baptised. And Booker accepts his death at that point to cut that entire timeline out by the root. Afterwards, Comstock (and by extension Elizabeth) never was -- but there's still an infinite number of Bookers who didn't ever get as far as the baptism. Hence the post-credits scene where Booker wakes up in his office and looks for Anna, who may or may not be there.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 11:29 
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Pundabaya wrote:
Spoilery stuffs:
ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!
The Bird and The Cage: All the Elizabeths at the end are wearing the pendant you chose. This is not a constant. It is a choice. What happened to the Elizabeths with the opposite pendant?


Nope, apparently not. (Link contains spoiler image too large to embed.)


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 11:36 
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Four_Candles wrote:
Couldn't agree more - the lack of a manual save bugs me too. I can live with it, but the reliance on checkpoints to autosave aren't ideal. Presumably there are technical and/or gameplay reasons why it's like this .......... ?


It's really starting to get on my tits, as far as I can tell there's absolutely no technical reason not to allow saving at will, the best reference I can find is that they 'want actions to have consequences', which is all very well and good but I'm quite happy with my actions having consequences in the real world, without a game dropping that shit on me too.

It bugs me on several levels:

1) If I'm playing late(ish) at night I don't know how long I'll have to play to (a) get to a checkpoint and (b) If AE Jnr will wake up and therefore end my session for the evening. The checkpoints aren't exactly generous, and if you're a real 'explore everything' sort of player like I am, it's possible to be a good 15-20 minutes of play away from a checkpoint at any given time. To mitigate this I therefore find myself stopping play before I otherwise would, in case it gets to the point where I need to go to bed or have to see to AE Jnr, because I have no ability to save at my own 'stop point'.

2) It fucks up the game, part of the joy of the original Bioshock (and a lot of games IMO) is trying to do the same section in different ways. Bioshock Infinite gives you all these toys to play around with, but then basically says 'Yeah but I'm only going to give you one chance to use them per event'.

3) Linked to (2), it removes the ability to practice and really get a feel for the mechanics of the game.

4) Accidents can fuck you over. I accidentally killed a friendly NPC (I was still getting my mouse button mappings sorted out), so not only did I miss out on some story that he could convey to me, I'd made a 'bad decision' that could never be undone.

5) Little quicktime events where you have to make a choice in a few seconds and the choice is permanent seems like an unnecessarily harsh game mechanic at the best of times, but you know what, hey, my mobile just fucking rung as I triggered one, so I didn't even get to the make the choice because I was distracted.

I sometimes wonder if the people who decide on game mechanics like this actually think about how people out in the real world might react to some of their decisions?

Anyone who doesn't want to save and experience the game in a 'pure' fashion could simply decide for themselves not to use the fucking save functionality, or just build it in as EXTRA mode like X-Com did with Ironman.

Taking save functionality out of a game seems both mean-spirited and a very poor design choice to me, and it's actively lessening my enjoyment of the game.

Hopefully someone will mod proper save functionality in. (There's already a bit of a clunky workaround for it.)


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 12:35 
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AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Hopefully someone will mod proper save functionality in. (There's already a bit of a clunky workaround for it.)


What's the clunky workaround?


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 12:36 
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Rude Belittler

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I didn't have one single problem with save functionality. It was fine.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 12:47 
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Pundabaya wrote:
I didn't have one single problem with save functionality. It was fine.


It works fine as in 'like any other checkpoint system', but it's a downgrade of the save functionality in Bioshock 1 and Bioshock 2, and falls short of what a gamer could reasonably expect.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 12:48 
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Four_Candles wrote:
AtrocityExhibition wrote:
Hopefully someone will mod proper save functionality in. (There's already a bit of a clunky workaround for it.)


What's the clunky workaround?


It's on the PC Wiki page for it I think, I did scan over it and it basically involved ALT+TABBING out of the game, and manual copying of files or something like that, it didn't look good enough to tempt me to try it, put it that way :)


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 14:13 
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Okay, ta.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 14:24 
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Pundabaya wrote:
I didn't have one single problem with save functionality. It was fine.

It was a wee bit gappy between checkpoints for my tastes.

AtrocityExhibition wrote:
It works fine as in 'like any other checkpoint system', but it's a downgrade of the save functionality in Bioshock 1 and Bioshock 2, and falls short of what a gamer could reasonably expect.

Removing manual saves ups tension in combat, as it means you can't easily back out every tiny mistake but instead have to roll with it and try and recover. It's different, it's not worse. See also: saving too often in Dishonored is a bit of a game-mangler, and XCOM has an entire mode dedicated to this to stop the player save-scumming.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 17:44 
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Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Removing manual saves ups tension in combat, as it means you can't easily back out every tiny mistake but instead have to roll with it and try and recover. It's different, it's not worse. See also: saving too often in Dishonored is a bit of a game-mangler, and XCOM has an entire mode dedicated to this to stop the player save-scumming.


I take your point Doc, but why not leave the player to make that decision for himself? If he wants to 'spoil' the game then isn't that his prerogative since he bought the thing in the first place? It's like cheat codes back in the old days, no one made anyone use them, and they were often deliberately programmed in. (Not that I think quicksave/quickload is a cheat anyway, it's just an alternative gameplay choice IMO.)

I mentioned X-Com's Ironman mode a couple of posts back and to me that is the perfect solution, give the player the choice!

You say yourself that you found BI's checkpointing a bit 'gappy', and for me that scales up to 'serious annoyance' for the reasons I outlined before.

Also, because I'm playing the game at insane-o-res and the UI doesn't scale properly, it's actually quite easy to miss the little swirly arrow thing to indicate you've reached a checkpoint.

It just seems like a deliberately mean decision to me to take player initiated saves out, and makes no sense either. It doesn't fix anything for anyone, but does potentially break things for others.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 17:56 
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Stop whining, geesh.

A campaign is an experience to be absorbed, not tinkered with because you didn't like how you messed something up. Sometimes you mess up in life; you have to accept your choices and live with them. That's all part of forging your own path.

Dark Souls.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 18:08 
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Saturnalian wrote:
Stop whining, geesh.

A campaign is an experience to be absorbed, not tinkered with because you didn't like how you messed something up. Sometimes you mess up in life; you have to accept your choices and live with them. That's all part of forging your own path.


Did you miss the bit where I explained how I'm twenty minutes into a 'section' and then I have to attend to AE Jnr 'cause she's woken up for something (Mrs AE being in bed), and that takes me to stupid-o-clock, and then I need to go to bed because I've got work in the morning? I mean, literally, carrying on to the next checkpoint simply isn't an option.

So I come downstairs to my PC and I just have to quit out of the game, and it tells me YOU WILL LOSE PROGRESS IF YOU QUIT NOW, and I'm just like YES I FUCKING KNOW BUT I'VE BEEN UPSTAIRS FOR THE LAST HOUR AND NOW I NEED TO GO TO FUCKING BED, WHY WON'T YOU JUST LET ME SAVE WHERE I'M UP TO YOU HATEFUL FUCKING THING?

One of the reasons I quit WoW was because I simply couldn't commit the time to it any more, and specifically I couldn't commit the 'chunks' of time that running instances or raids demands of the player - so I'm a bit bastard narked to find a single player campaign based game needlessly removing the ability from me to save my game.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 18:20 
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Yes, yes, and your phone goes at a QTE, and a spider scares you and you can't reenter the room until its gone and you forgot to pause and someone sets fire to your garden shed and etc etc.

Be assured that this series of unfortunate events conspiring to stop you playing has probably come to an end and you'll have uninterrupted gaming from hereon in.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 18:31 
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Take the piss if it cheers you up, but for me it's a problem, and it's not only lessening my enjoyment of the game, it's reducing my window of opportunity as to when I can even play it in the first place.

Deliberately and knowingly taking functionality out of a well established and understood system is a poor design choice.

Crazy old Mr Levine needs to remember he's not king of the universe sometimes.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 18:38 
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I agree with AE. Checkpoint gaming is fine, but let the player save if they need to, because sometimes you don't have 20 minutes to reach the next checkpoint. The XCOM example doesn't stack up either - if you're a save-often type player, you just won't play the mode that doesn't let you. And if you're not, what's the point of disabling it?

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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 19:11 
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I'm going to remove Saturnalian's edit button.

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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 19:27 
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Cras wrote:
if you're a save-often type player, you just won't play the mode that doesn't let you. And if you're not, what's the point of disabling it?


Because if you provide a method to get through the game easily, people will use it.
It doesn't really matter how interesting you make the game mechanics if you put a button to bypass the need, most people will take it and 'ruin' the game for themselves.

In general design, it leads to obstacles appearing that are immune to said trick, but that's not something you can do readily do with something as fundamental as the save system.

And if a game isn't sufficiently fun in pure mechanical terms that you begrudge the need to repeat a section, I do wonder why you'd want to play it.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 19:45 
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Grim... wrote:
I'm going to remove Saturnalian's edit button.


Why's that now?


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 19:52 
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Mr Dave wrote:
Because if you provide a method to get through the game easily, people will use it.
It doesn't really matter how interesting you make the game mechanics if you put a button to bypass the need, most people will take it and 'ruin' the game for themselves.

In general design, it leads to obstacles appearing that are immune to said trick, but that's not something you can do readily do with something as fundamental as the save system.

And if a game isn't sufficiently fun in pure mechanical terms that you begrudge the need to repeat a section, I do wonder why you'd want to play it.


1) Who cares how people get through a game? They've bought the thing with their own money, let them play it how they want to! I'm reminded of the Dara 'O Brien piece about this subject. (He's talking about being bad at games but I think the same principle is at work.)

2) Since when did saving and loading a game become a 'trick'? Especially in a single player narrative driven game like Bioshock Infinite where it's almost like you're reading a book or watching a film.

3) Frankly, yes, there are far better games out there in 'mechanical terms', but that's not what the original Bioshock was about and I don't think it's what Bioshock Infinite is about either. I've bought Bioshock Infinite because I want to be immersed in a fabulous game world and compelling story, not because I think the combat will give BF3 or BL2 a run for its money.

Please remember, I'm not asking for the moon on a stick here, I just want a fucking save button.



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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 21:52 
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Isn't there an easy mode on this?

I've got it but its still in the wrapper.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 22:01 
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I've always had the vague feeling that the ability to save your game at will is a bit 'cheaty'. I get AE's point about having to structure play time around scheduled save points though. Many's the time I've thought I should really go to bed now but couldn't without getting to the next save point else lose ten minute's progress. The answer is to have setting where you can select how you want game saving to be managed.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 22:05 
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Saturnalian wrote:
Isn't there an easy mode on this?

I've got it but its still in the wrapper.


Yup - Easy, Medium and Hard.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 22:24 
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Hugh wrote:
I've always had the vague feeling that the ability to save your game at will is a bit 'cheaty'. I get AE's point about having to structure play time around scheduled save points though.
The answer is checkpoints every five or so minites, which many games manage just fine, as does Bioshock Infinite for the most part. But in places, especially if you're wandering around gawking at everything and eating all the cakes you find behind Mr T's bins, it can sometimes be fifteen minutes between saves. That's a bit long for my tastes, although it didn't inconvenience me on my play through.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 0:08 
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Saturnalian wrote:
Grim... wrote:
I'm going to remove Saturnalian's edit button.

Why's that now?

Saturnalian wrote:
Sometimes you mess up in life; you have to accept your choices and live with them. That's all part of forging your own path.

;)

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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 6:48 

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Doctor Glyndwr wrote:
Hugh wrote:
I've always had the vague feeling that the ability to save your game at will is a bit 'cheaty'. I get AE's point about having to structure play time around scheduled save points though.
The answer is checkpoints every five or so minites, which many games manage just fine, as does Bioshock Infinite for the most part. But in places, especially if you're wandering around gawking at everything and eating all the cakes you find behind Mr T's bins, it can sometimes be fifteen minutes between saves. That's a bit long for my tastes, although it didn't inconvenience me on my play through.


Surely a better answer is to include a function that quick saves on quit? So if you need to stop playing for some unexpected reason, you can quit out and resume later, but the need to completely quit out and restart introduces too much faff to use it in an overly cheaty way?


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 8:47 
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Which in stself is much more complicated than a checkpoint system.

The avenues for bugs and performance issues in a full save system massively outweighs the for a checkpoint system. Implementing the full system in such a limited way probably wouldn't be seen as worthwhile in practice, even if a good idea.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:20 
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Grim... wrote:
Saturnalian wrote:
Grim... wrote:
I'm going to remove Saturnalian's edit button.

Why's that now?

Saturnalian wrote:
Sometimes you mess up in life; you have to accept your choices and live with them. That's all part of forging your own path.

;)


I can't honestly remember what I was writing.

I do like to philosophise about checkpoints though. For some apparent reason. :S


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:24 
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Mr Dave wrote:
Which in stself is much more complicated than a checkpoint system.

The avenues for bugs and performance issues in a full save system massively outweighs the for a checkpoint system. Implementing the full system in such a limited way probably wouldn't be seen as worthwhile in practice, even if a good idea.


A save session state is relatively easy to implement, and will have no bearing on the game.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:26 
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I like Zio's idea. It addresses both sets of concerns pretty well I think. "It's too hard because of technical stuff you wouldn't understand" is the sort of thing I would say at work, I expect better from my games developers.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:43 
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I also like Zio's idea.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 10:04 
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Trooper wrote:
Mr Dave wrote:
Which in stself is much more complicated than a checkpoint system.

The avenues for bugs and performance issues in a full save system massively outweighs the for a checkpoint system. Implementing the full system in such a limited way probably wouldn't be seen as worthwhile in practice, even if a good idea.


A save session state is relatively easy to implement, and will have no bearing on the game.

hehehe. That would explain all the save game bugs that have been seen over the years.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 10:46 
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Mr Dave wrote:
Trooper wrote:
Mr Dave wrote:
Which in stself is much more complicated than a checkpoint system.

The avenues for bugs and performance issues in a full save system massively outweighs the for a checkpoint system. Implementing the full system in such a limited way probably wouldn't be seen as worthwhile in practice, even if a good idea.


A save session state is relatively easy to implement, and will have no bearing on the game.

hehehe. That would explain all the save game bugs that have been seen over the years.


Sure, but writing crap code doesn't mean it is a difficult problem to solve, it just means you have crap people solving it ;)

Look at all the games out there that do save a session state without any issue.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 12:44 
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Paws for thought

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Trooper wrote:
Mr Dave wrote:
Trooper wrote:
Mr Dave wrote:
Which in stself is much more complicated than a checkpoint system.

The avenues for bugs and performance issues in a full save system massively outweighs the for a checkpoint system. Implementing the full system in such a limited way probably wouldn't be seen as worthwhile in practice, even if a good idea.


A save session state is relatively easy to implement, and will have no bearing on the game.

hehehe. That would explain all the save game bugs that have been seen over the years.


Sure, but writing crap code doesn't mean it is a difficult problem to solve, it just means you have crap people solving it ;)

Look at all the games out there that do save a session state without any issue.

Mmm, but also look at the cost of implementing it, it's often not as trivial as you seem to think, and if you already have a much simpler checkpoint based system, the extra cost just isn't going to be paid.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 13:05 
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Bad Girl

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If I'd saved my life, I'd go back to yesterday and erase my first message.

Damn this endless checkpointing system with no way of reverting to an earlier save except for a hard reset by jumping under a train.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Mon Apr 08, 2013 17:01 
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Mr Dave wrote:
Mmm, but also look at the cost of implementing it, it's often not as trivial as you seem to think, and if you already have a much simpler checkpoint based system, the extra cost just isn't going to be paid.


But Bioshock Infinite does have a proper save system, it's simply limited to one autosave slot and you can't manually invoke the save process when you want.

If you look at the workaround for multiple saves here, it's clear that it's a traditional game save in every sense, as you can have as many of the things on the go as you want.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/BioShock_I ... save_games

Even without that it's obviously a 'proper save' and not just a simple checkpoint, because it contains all information about weapons, ammo, money, achievements, and so on.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Tue Apr 09, 2013 23:42 
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Rude Belittler

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I'm in the midst of playing through again, and I'm enjoying it just as much!


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 18:21 
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I'm not finding it to be ball-bouncingly good, if I'm honest.

Elizabeth isn't all she's cracked up to be (seems like a bit of a generic female sidekick really), the combat isn't wonderful, the dialogue is a bit rubbish, it's all very po-faced, the game world doesn't match Rapture by a long chalk, and I think the game overall is a bit too up itself in terms of entire sections that amount to not much more than telling the player to look around and be amazed, when what you're being presented with isn't actually that amazing.

Bioshock grabbed me and didn't let go until I'd finished it, Bioshock Infinite I'm just sort of plodding through a couple of checkpoints at a time.

I've not finished the game yet of course, so I'll reserve final judgement until such time as I have.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 23:00 
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Bad Girl

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Started!

I really, really enjoyed the opening section in the light house. You just know that you're going to get a story from everything around you and not just some half arsed excuse for shooting shit up.

The walk around town was great. The smoking kids. The black person. Everything.

Now I'm shooting shit up, shooting fire out my knackers and it's gone off the boil a tad.

I don't know why they've insisted on keeping such outdated mechanics from Bioshock though. I mean, is there really any need to put coins in bins and have you search random shit for, um, random shit. Does anyone read what's in the search boxes or do you just hammer X to 'Take All' all the time like me? It's completely unnecessary and unfathomable why it's still in there.

And I don't like melee on the Y button either. But I like to melee. Now I'm using 'the claw' which is hurting my wrist. Tch.

And something about save games *grumble grumble* etc.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 6:59 
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Switch to the 'marksman' controls. Aim-down-sights on left trigger, vigor on LB, vigor menu on RB, fire on RT, swap weapons on Y, melée on R3. I found that preferable.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 9:05 
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Bad Girl

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Great stuff - I'll try that before I get too committed to the default setting.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 18:44 
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Had a bit of an uninspiring session on this last night (the combat just isn't very good really, is it?), so decided to spoiler the entire thing for myself and read the game's Wiki article.

Funnily enough, knowing exactly what happens has actually made me want to play the game through more, not less.

I'll definitely see it out to conclusion, if nothing else 'cause the story itself seems pretty cool, but to me it feels like two different games very clumsily mangled together - there's an adventure game in there, which is great, and an FPS/RPG game, which is pretty poor.

For my money Deus Ex HR and Borderlands 2 did a much better job of combining the genres, as did the original Bioshock for that matter.

Maybe it's because there are too many enemies in Infinite so it ends up looking like a CoD style FPS in the Bioshock universe, unlike the original Bioshock where there were smaller numbers of far more dangerous enemies.

According to Wiki I've got a long way to go with the story yet though, so there's time enough for me to revise my opinion.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 19:01 
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I echo your sentiments - it's a messy combination of story and shooter, an the shooter part is poorly implemented and repetitive.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 20:27 
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I'm pressing on with this but the game world and the story are by far and away the most compelling things about it, the actual gameplay and more specifically the gunplay I'm thoroughly underwhelmed by.

Every fight is basically constrained into a little arena, with painfully obvious and telegraphed places to use the tears, or pick up a specific weapon to perform a specific task (since you can only carry two weapons the game makes sure you're never without what you need in the current arena), or zoom around on a skyline to get a new place, and so on.

I don't particularly mind re-treading old ground to get to the next objective, although the magically spawning enemies are annoying. On top of that, searching and scavenging through everything for precious resources is somewhat undermined by Elizabeth tending to chuck whatever you need at any given time in your direction.

Most crucially for me, the game simply doesn't have that 'BIG DADDY MOMENT', whereby early on in the game the player was first given terrifying sight of, and then pitched against, the Big Daddy.

This is a game that's chasing the tail of the original's greatness, and so far at least (I'm about half way through it according to the Wiki synopsis), it hasn't really come close.

I'm half-tempted to just watch a video walkthrough of the game from where I'm currently up to, so I don't have to play it.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 20:51 
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[quote="AtrocityExhibition"
I'm half-tempted to just watch a video walkthrough of the game from where I'm currently up to, so I don't have to play it.[/quote]

That's a good idea, I'd recommend this one by HarshlyCritical:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGwyY88KrLg

That's part 1 of course, I'm sure you can find the one that's about where you're up to.


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 Post subject: Re: Bioshock Infinite announced
PostPosted: Sat Apr 13, 2013 9:24 
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One other thing I've noticed is that the checkpointing is massively inconsistent.

There was one 'chunk' where it was fully 30 minutes from one checkpoint to the next, now admittedly I took rather longer sussing out an optional quest than I should have done, and I explored absolutely everything in the area, but nonetheless, 30 minutes of play to get to a checkpoint.

Last session it was checkpointing every few minutes, I noticed the little swirly arrow thing going time and time again, despite the fact that what I was doing in the game wasn't really any different from what I'd been doing when it refused to checkpoint for 30 minutes.

I'm genuinely at the stage with it where if I hadn't completely spoliered it for myself, I wouldn't finish it. As it is, 'cause the story is pretty damn cool, I will play it out to a conclusion.

Can't say I'm looking forward to the DLC though, unlike for example BL2, the DLC for which I have consumed ravenously, even to the extent of buying myself an extra character class.


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