What Was The Last Game You Played?

[BallochSonsFan]

I can imagine connecting a main station in Novograd with a litte branch line to White Orchard. Main export being Ghouls blood or Kikimore eggs.

[Stellaboz]

I'll take the express line right into Yennifer's chuff.

[Miguel Sanchez]

BioShock Infinite Remastered (PS4, 2016 - originally PS3, 2013)

BioShock Infinite is the last game I actively followed the development and release of. For what must have been at least a year and a half I watched every video, read every interview, replied to every Ken Levine tweet. I held the original in such esteem there was pretty much no way I'd be able to hold back for the follow-up from the same people. The videos and the information that came out backed me up. It looked astonishing. Even leaving aside the difference between pre-release videos and actual games I didn't care about tempering my expectations. For once prior to a write-up I've done some research about the development of the game and it's quite refreshing to read, given the state of AAA game development nowadays. There was a lot of work, there were problems, there was a delay, but there were no reports of sexual abuse or forced overtime. Big points for the Irrational lads there.

BioShock Infinite is a first person shooter set in 1912 in which you play as Booker DeWitt, former Pinkerton detective and man who's obviously dragging around a caravan full of demons. He's delivered to a lighthouse off the coast of Maine, with one bit of information: "Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt." The lighthouse eventually leads to the floating city of Columbia, founded a decade earlier as a mobile World's Fair style example of American exceptionalism. While in the city Booker discovers the girl, what the debt is, and how the city has changed since its founding. In addition to the racial and Christianity-based superiority there's eventually a civil war breaking out, as the poor and racially diverse population of Columbia rises up as a group called the Vox Populi to try and gain control of the city.

Gameplay-wise it's what you'd expect from a BioShock game, but more. The assortment of upgradeable weapons are back, only this time you can only carry two at a time. While this fulfils its intended purpose of forcing the player to adapt their approach to different situations depending on what weapons they're carrying it feels like a contrived method of doing so, especially given how the amount of modern military shooters that entered the market between this and the original BioShock used that same mechanic. It's especially annoying when you play on harder difficulties because you end up running out of ammo for the weapons you like and have upgraded.

Plasmids are back only they're now called Vigors and come in nicely stylised bottles rather than needles. Conversely these end up beneficial on harder difficulties as they can be juggled and combined to great effect, much more effectively in fact than in BioShocks previous. The upgraded versions also feel genuinely powerful and a lot of the times more lethal than weapons. There's an aspect related to the narrative that I'll come to later but from a purely mechanical perspective, I'm a big fan of the Vigors.

Some locations also feature the Sky-hook and Skylines. Initially created as a means of transporting goods around Columbia you, and enemies, can jump on and attach to these big rails that take you around sections of the city you're fighting in, adding an extra dimension (literally) to battles. The biggest criticism I can give of Infinite's combat is the sheer amount of it, since you end up juggling all of the above plus several different types of enemies, including the 'Heavy Hitters' which are more powerful and can dominate the battlefield when they show up.

When I first played BioShock Infinite I didn't actually play it the day I bought it. It was released on a Tuesday and I had classes that day. I wanted to make sure I could take the whole thing in at once so I waited for the Wednesday. Much like the original BioShock, the introduction to the game is something that will never leave me. I last played Infinite in 2015, and playing the remastered version more than five years later I still remember it perfectly. This and BioShock are two games that are never short on spectacle. Through a combination of the sounds, lighting and overall aesthetic the whole game is just inherently unforgettable. Inescapable, even. I guarantee I could not play this game for twenty years and still be able to remember sights, sounds and emotions from it perfectly.

Whether it's a symptom of being accustomed to PS4 performance for the past few years or not I'm not sure, but although Infinite Remastered looks and sounds the same as Infinite but a bit more polished, it's not as striking as it was back then. I went back to Infinite on the PS3 to compare. The loading times are the first thing you notice. Genuinely hilarious. There's a bit of a frame-rate worry every now and then but the first twenty minutes or so still looked great, if largely similar to the PS4 version. The lighting remains a consistent triumph, and it's got the sort of consistent art design which is memorable in its own right. I'm quite happy to play the game again and there weren't any technical issues (aside from one guy stuck running in mid-air during one of the DLC episodes), if anything I'm just even more impressed now at how good the original version was (and still is).

Side-note: the in-game menus in Infinite Remastered are tiny. I'm playing on a 32 inch TV and the menus take up about the middle 20% of the screen and you can barely read what's on them. When I put Infinite on I checked and there was an option for changing the size of the menus. Why wasn't this carried over? It's not just menus either, the health bars and the weapon indicators are tiny too. Even as I'm typing this seems like a completely ridiculous thing to care about but it's just weird that this feature wouldn't have carried over, and that nobody noticed when it hadn't.

This is usually the part where I talk about the story and how the game made me feel. I genuinely don't know where to start. The most logical place probably segues nicely from the gameplay, that being the relationship between Booker and the girl he goes to find, Elizabeth. Elizabeth has been unknowingly held captive in Columbia all her life in what appears to be a massive warped science experiment at the behest of Zachary Comstock, Columbia's founder and ruler, and her father. Once Elizabeth and Booker go on the run you get to learn more about her and why she's in Columbia.

Rather than an escort mission though, Elizabeth plays an active role in combat situations. She can control 'tears,' effectively windows into other realities that she can open and interact with. When in battle this can allow you to bring in new weapons or turrets, and she can throw you ammo and health during fights if you need it too. I was fully on board with the concept from the moment I saw the first trailer for the game featuring her bringing an injured horse back to life and trying to set it free, only for her to open a window to a street in Paris outside a cinema where Return of the Jedi was showing, where Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Tears for Fears was playing, and where a fire engine was hurtling down the road towards them. Whether you saw that trailer before playing or not, it quickly becomes apparent that Elizabeth's powers are why she was in Columbia, why Booker is there to get her, and that things are only going to get weirder.

I had a chuckle while reading up on the development of the game. The idea was for Elizabeth to not be a burden to the player and to be an emotionally involving character. The problem was that the team that were working on her was different from the team that was creating the levels and the enemy AI, so when the two interacted she usually ended up hiding in a corner the whole time, which defeated the purpose. There are times when "she can keep herself out of trouble" feels more like "she can do whatever she likes and the enemy will never see her," but usually you're so busy trying to kill lots of people that it doesn't matter.

Although the Booker/Elizabeth relationship is central to the game and its story there are plenty of other characters we meet along the way who inform the story and Booker's own past. Like BioShock these range from localised boss fights who expand on a particular aspect of either Columbia or Booker specifically to much more prominent and important roles. Across the board there's probably the same depth and quality of characters as BioShock in terms of how they're portrayed and the effect they have on the story, but I do have a problem with Comstock's overall presence. He created Columbia and he sends people after Booker to get Elizabeth - he's obviously the bad guy, and we don't like him. The problem is he's too removed from the action for me to dislike him. Andrew Ryan is a high water mark for villains in general, not just in games. With how absent Comstock is from the action it often feels like a similar attempt at characterisation was made here, but while the ethos and the personality are so similar, there's just something detached about his role in events that I never feel any genuine animosity or resentment towards him. I barely think about him at all. The best villains are ones whose motivations you understand while you resent their actions. Comstock often just feels like he's there because there needs to be a central figure involved.

The characters who come up elsewhere can feel strangely fleeting. Episodic probably isn't the right word but there's a sense of being in an area, being there to interact with a central villain and some enemies, then moving on to the next one. Part of it is exploring Columbia and its formation but even then there's times where it feels like a sightseeing tour rather than something properly engaging. I love the setting and the themes explored in the city are as brutal and engaging as the original BioShock, but there's definitely a sense of spectacle over substance in places. I think part of this comes from my expectations of the game based on following the development. I knew the tears would play a part in world-building, where people would see the future in them and be inspired by it. That's why there's people singing songs by the Beach Boys and Creedence Clearwater Revival. It's just that these feel more superficial than significant. Even still, I remember playing it at release and wondering how much it really needed to be an FPS. You could re-write the game to remove combat, make it a walking simulator, and have no effect on the story.

I'm now going to talk about my issues with the plot holes that are inevitable in fiction which deals with time travel and/or alternate realities. As mentioned, Elizabeth can open tears into other worlds. Fine. Part of the way through the game Booker makes a deal with Daisy Fitzroy, leader of the Vox Populi, to get an airship so he can leave Columbia. They have to find a gunsmith and get her some guns for the revolution. They find the gunsmith, except he's dead. Elizabeth then sees a tear into a new world where the dead body of that gunsmith isn't, so they jump in there to go and find him. Let's leave aside the fact that there not being a body in the same place in an alternate dimension doesn't mean that he's still dead anyway - Booker and Elizabeth are no longer in their world. They're in another one. One which already contains a Booker and Elizabeth. One that contains a different Daisy Fitzroy. How does that work? How do they think it will work? How does it work when they go and find the gunsmith's tools only to find them locked up in a prison, and then do the exact same thing again? Elizabeth opens up a tear that doesn't have any tools in that spot, so through they go.

If you're struggling to keep up, Booker and Elizabeth have now travelled to a third reality. Here, not only is the Vox Populi uprising well underway, suggesting they got the guns they needed after all, but the Booker in this reality is dead. When Fitzroy finds out she gets her people to start shooting at you, which offers up two problems. Rather than being part of a civil war - which was a selling point of the game compared to BioShock, since there you're in they city after a war - you just happen to be there while it's going on with no influence over anything, and with no distinction between the people shooting at you. Vox and Columbians have the same enemy types so there's little difference in gameplay. This ends up making what should be a fascinating conflict of various interests, the class struggle, racial tensions, everything else, just something that's going on while you're trying to uncover the story. And it still doesn't make sense, since neither of the central characters seem to notice a problem with shifting through dimensions.

BioShock's central conceit was a subversion of the method of narrative delivery in video games. It questioned the role of the player in relation to the player character, asking how much control the player had and how much free will the character had. It did this in a way few other games have ever done, and it did it successfully. Upon release Infinite existed in a strange place where as a BioShock game made by the same people it would have to live up to that legacy while offering something different. Given how seminal BioShock was and given my own feelings about the game, this wasn't exactly an easy task. When you throw in the notion of time travel and alternate timelines based on choices that an individual makes, you also run the risk of not just jumping the shark, but jumping the shark so forcefully your head becomes lodged in your own backside.

Infinite heads this risk off in two ways. The first is the inclusion of the Lutece twins Rosalind and Robert. Rosalind created the, ahem, Quantum Particles, that allow Columbia to float. The two of them pop up occasionally to finish each others' sentences and ask a series of increasingly vague and smug questions with references to time and interpretations of existence thrown in. A thing doesn't happen, it will happen. A thing won't happen, it has happened. Playing through (and knowing what their role is beforehand) I'm reminded of that one side-quest in Red Dead Redemption where you meet a mysterious man in a top hat who is probably God, where he's just aloof enough and just knowing enough to suggest he knows what's happening to the player character and, crucially, what's going to happen in the future. The Luteces offer enough comic relief when they show up to calm the player's fears about what's going on, and their importance to the story, somehow, makes sense by the end. This is what I'd call Good Writing, just knowing enough to drip-feed you the right amount of information without giving everything away.

The second is more arguable in terms of how effective it is, and actually in how accurate it is, but for all of the inconsistences I've mentioned and many more I haven't, everything gets tied up. You might question how it can end at all, you might question the apparent inescapable need to link the game to the original, you might even question the origin of Booker himself, but it all fits. I'm not sure why I'm reluctant to discuss spoilers for a game that's almost eight years old, but on the off-chance you're still yet to play it you should get to experience it properly. You'll probably still have to play it twice anyway to properly appreciate it. For however convoluted it is, it's also a better ending than the original BioShock. The ending of the story, I should say. Gameplay-wise it's a giant boss fight without a boss that comes before about an hour of cutscenes.

I don't know how well this game has aged. The gameplay is fine and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, despite the criticisms I offered earlier. I remember before its original release someone tweeted Ken Levine asking something along the lines of "How do you feel having created two games that bookend and define a console generation?" to which he replied saying it was like something his mother would say. I do still think Infinite stands as the best game from the end of that generation (The Last of Us is terrible and GTA 5 has turned out to be Satan, after all) but on its own, right now, I'm not sure. I don't think it's familiarity, since I remembered BioShock much more readily and I can still at least point to that as a first, a proper landmark moment. It's not because things have eclipsed it since. Even though I'm still comparatively new to the 7th generation catalogue I know there's nothing as important as Infinite.

I don't really want to find out how many words it's taken me to reach this point but after stepping away from this write-up and coming back to it, I realised something. I remember how exciting Infinite was when it came out, just as I remembered the same when playing BioShock for the first time. I remember the awe at the world-building and the complexity of the narrative when it came out, just like playing BioShock for the first time. I remember finishing it once then finishing it again and actually understanding it, then appreciating it all over again. When I played BioShock Remastered I remembered all of those feelings but still enjoyed it on its own merits. It was showing its age technically, but everything else was still immaculate fourteen years later.

I can't say the same for Infinite Remastered. If anything it's the inverse - still impressive technically, but just sort of... there everywhere else. Near the end on my first playthrough I remembered what the twist was. Or I worked it out, I wasn't sure. I didn't have any reaction. There was the mild sense of surprised delight when you remember something you've been trying to think of for ages. That's all. I've been thinking about the game for a while since I finished it because I knew I was going to try and write it up, but I haven't. All I've done is say what happens in it. I haven't said anything about how it makes me feel. Aside from the intro and some instances of the gameplay, I haven't even really said I was impressed. I don't think it's aged badly, I don't think it's bad by any measure, but tomorrow is going to come after I've posted this and I'm not going to think about it again.

It looks good. It plays well. It has a willing complexity in the characters and the narrative which very few people have ever attempted in other games never mind achieved. If you let your guard down you will fall in love with Elizabeth. It's a worthy and comprehensive follow-up and conclusion to the story in my favourite game ever, and I won't forget the effect it had on me on its original release. Right now, though? I don't have anything else to say.

[BallochSonsFan]

20 hours ago, Stellaboz said:

I'll take the express line right into Yennifer's chuff.

Triss for me.

[BFTD]

I absolutely missed the point of the original Witcher game on first play, opted for a life of domesticity with Shani, and remained faithful throughout.

For anyone unfamiliar with the series, you play a Middle-Earth James Bond, who is completely irresistible to chamber maids, queens, and blisteringly hot sorceresses, and has a literal immunity to STDs. Whoosh.

Edited January 28, 2021 by BFTD
Can't type

[MSU]

Been playing Dyson Sphere Program so much today that I'm sure I'm going to end up dreaming about it. If you enjoyed Factorio or Satisfactory, you'll love DSP.

[BallochSonsFan]

On 28/01/2021 at 17:33, BFTD said:

I absolutely missed the point of the original Witcher game on first play, opted for a life of domesticity with Shani, and remained faithful throughout.

For anyone unfamiliar with the series, you play a Middle-Earth James Bond, who is completely irresistible to chamber maids, queens, and blisteringly hot sorceresses, and has a literal immunity to STDs. Whoosh.

I'm hoping that they allow a threesome in the enhanced edition of Witcher 3. Neither Yen nor Triss complain when you ride Shani or visit every hooker in Novograd, but they don't like it if you try to ride both of them.  Why?

[Stellaboz]

I completed FF8 on Thursday for the first time in around 15 years. Focused on pushing Zell's strength stats and getting his limit break up and running against the big later bosses.

[54_and_counting]

2 hours ago, Stellaboz said:

I completed FF8 on Thursday for the first time in around 15 years. Focused on pushing Zell's strength stats and getting his limit break up and running against the big later bosses.

Is it the remastered version? 

[Stellaboz]

2 minutes ago, 54_and_counting said:

Is it the remastered version? 

Yep, played it on my PS4. Been SO long since I've seen the ending scenes before that it was like watching them for the first time. Emotional and worth it. 

Spoiler

And Zell choking on all the hotdogs was class! 

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

BioShock Infinite Remastered DLC - Clash in the Clouds, Burial at Sea Episode One & Two (PS4, 2016 - originally PS3 2013/14)

The first DLC for BioShock Infinite is called Clash in the Clouds. There are four locations with fifteen waves each of increasingly difficult enemies. You can use new weapons, Vigors and Gear with the money you earn from killing enemies and completing waves, and for each wave there's a Blue Ribbon challenge for completing it in a certain way. There's also an interactive space where you can unlock concept art, videos and character models. This is quite nice to look at, although "interactive" is probably stretching it. The DLC is fun enough, although if you try and complete those Blue Ribbon challenges properly you're insane.

The really interesting stuff comes with the Burial at Sea DLC. Released as two episodes, the complete story of BioShock finally sees a conclusion. Mostly. Episode one sees Booker DeWitt, private investigator in the city of Rapture, sitting at his desk when a dark haired, blue eyed woman named Elizabeth walks in saying she has information about the little girl Booker lost. He's reluctant, but he follows her out the door. The first thing to say here is how weird it is to see these two characters and voices in a different location. There's obviously something bigger at play but the introduction almost feels like a spoof after spending so much time with Infinite proper.

When you step out of Booker's office you see the dream - Rapture before the fall. Rapture on December the 31st 1958, so Rapture right before the fall. It's a dream. It's perfect. It's everything you want it to be and you can tell the team that put it together were as delighted to create all of it as I was to play it. When I played Mafia III last year I criticised the city for feeling sterile and unengaging. Burial at Sea episode one does largely the same to start, but I don't care. I don't care that I'm on Rapture's high street where people are dotted around, waiting for you to come up to them so they can say lines of dialogue that were originally written for audio diaries in BioShock but got discarded for being too obvious. Looking out the windows and seeing the rest of the city where all the objects were created especially and it's not just a skybox*, it's beautiful. Infinite's existence is worth it for this section alone.

Story-wise there's a weird attempt to connect Sander Cohen to a child smuggling ring responsible for the Little Sisters and you're promptly thrown out of Rapture into a place where Andrew Ryan put all of Frank Fontaine's followers he could round up. You have a look around and shoot some splicers, then you fight a Big Daddy, then it ends. The episode is short, even if you spend ages gawking at Rapture like I did. The episode serves basically no purpose other than to set up the second part. The story seems to be BioShock in microcosm - a man, a city, a (by now) obvious sense that someone's not telling you something, a twist and a finish. The episode is short and even at that the only engaging part of it is the first hour or so which is glorified sight-seeing.

Episode two is where things get interesting. Following on from what I've just described you play as Elizabeth as she tries to figure how who, where and why she is. Along the way you finally find out how Rapture and Columbia are connected, how Big Daddies exist, how Songbird exists, even how the story of Infinite was able to play out at all. Perhaps more crucially than anything, the story definitely, definitely ends.

The biggest difference in this episode is the gameplay. Elizabeth isn't a genetically-engineered weapon or a Pinkerton agent, so she can't use big guns or melee attacks. This means the gameplay takes on stealth elements including silent weapons, and environmental hazards which can alert enemies. You don't have the usual mixture of damage-dealing plasmids either, the focus is completely on evasion and suppression where possible. Things are taken a bit too far since there's a plasmid that turns you invisible and resources are still more than plentiful enough for you to get through with no issues. It's a bit jarring for me given I'd played all the BioShock games one after the other (mostly) in the run up to this, but it's definitely an interesting change which offers something different yet still relevant to the formula.

The actions you have to carry out as Elizabeth aren't much different. You have some fetch quests to reach a new area with all plot forwarding done by her conveniently remembering what it is when she needs to. The biggest question is how relevant the DLC is not only to the original BioShock story, but the collective game universe as a whole. Similar to my opinion of Infinite's story, it all fits. Despite how tenuous it could have been, it isn't.

You know, I'm at the same place I was with Infinite's story. I enjoyed Burial at Sea for the fully-realised Rapture, as well as some additions which feel more relevant to the city's mythology than anything BioShock 2 offered. Along with everything there's a bit more insight into Rapture's civil war which I'm obviously a fan of, and I'm happy to get some details on that fleshed out. The tremendous sense of atmosphere which started with the first BioShock hasn't dropped at any point, and all of Infinite's additions make sense and have a place in the overall timeline of the story. I just don't have any strong feelings on it now. I play it and recognise how clever it is, how well-done it is, and that's pretty much it.

I feel as if part of me should be disappointed that I've returned to these Remastered versions of some of my favourite games and had what I'd consider a cold response to them. I know they're good. I knew they were good before I played them, I thought they were good as I was playing them and I've spent a lot of time typing out words saying why they're good. I still think they're miles ahead of most games narratively, and I wish more video game writing and stories could attempt something with the intelligence and complexity Infinite does. I don't want to end on something that sounds like a criticism, so that will do.

[19QOS19]

Days Gone

I don't know whether to feel sorry for this game or give it praise for not giving a f**k. By that I mean, the zombie/human enemy has been done better by TLOU and the open world hunting for scraps has been done better by RDR2. It's like those two kind of combined and you get Days Gone but nowhere near as good.

I found it enjoyable and basically binged it over the last week. The gameplay was fine, I did enjoy the story, until I was really comfortable with the controls it did have a sense of danger about it. Even when I was comfortable I still treaded carefully going through tunnels. Having to constantly keep on top of fuel should have been a chore but I never at any stage felt it was. It added to the tension. I loved how you could take out entire camps only using a silencer. A lot of games give you 3 or 4 kills before the AI spots you regardless. As a stealth player this was right up my street.

There were a few niggles along the way as well. One of the petty but consistent ones was the radar. The amount of times I followed the line only for it to move was infuriating. Having to stand and get the button pressed perfectly when opening doors or getting your bike was a bugbear as well. When you have a swarm after you the last thing you need is something like getting on your bike being a difficulty. It had a lot of samey OW missions/things to do as well. I wish OW games would mix this up a bit or just have far fewer similar tasks.

I did enjoy this muchly overall though and the soundtrack was excellent. I'll be listening to that on Spotify at some point. Added to the atmosphere really well.

[weirdcal]

I'm hoping that they allow a threesome in the enhanced edition of Witcher 3. Neither Yen nor Triss complain when you ride Shani or visit every hooker in Novograd, but they don't like it if you try to ride both of them.  Why?

I think it's to do with life expectancy for them.
Witcher and sorceresses have long lives.
Prossies and shani don't.
I'm currently playing assassins of Kings again.

[Mordecai]

BioShock Infinite Remastered DLC - Clash in the Clouds, Burial at Sea Episode One & Two (PS4, 2016 - originally PS3 2013/14)
The first DLC for BioShock Infinite is called Clash in the Clouds. There are four locations with fifteen waves each of increasingly difficult enemies. You can use new weapons, Vigors and Gear with the money you earn from killing enemies and completing waves, and for each wave there's a Blue Ribbon challenge for completing it in a certain way. There's also an interactive space where you can unlock concept art, videos and character models. This is quite nice to look at, although "interactive" is probably stretching it. The DLC is fun enough, although if you try and complete those Blue Ribbon challenges properly you're insane.
The really interesting stuff comes with the Burial at Sea DLC. Released as two episodes, the complete story of BioShock finally sees a conclusion. Mostly. Episode one sees Booker DeWitt, private investigator in the city of Rapture, sitting at his desk when a dark haired, blue eyed woman named Elizabeth walks in saying she has information about the little girl Booker lost. He's reluctant, but he follows her out the door. The first thing to say here is how weird it is to see these two characters and voices in a different location. There's obviously something bigger at play but the introduction almost feels like a spoof after spending so much time with Infinite proper.
When you step out of Booker's office you see the dream - Rapture before the fall. Rapture on December the 31st 1958, so Rapture right before the fall. It's a dream. It's perfect. It's everything you want it to be and you can tell the team that put it together were as delighted to create all of it as I was to play it. When I played Mafia III last year I criticised the city for feeling sterile and unengaging. Burial at Sea episode one does largely the same to start, but I don't care. I don't care that I'm on Rapture's high street where people are dotted around, waiting for you to come up to them so they can say lines of dialogue that were originally written for audio diaries in BioShock but got discarded for being too obvious. Looking out the windows and seeing the rest of the city where all the objects were created especially and it's not just a skybox*, it's beautiful. Infinite's existence is worth it for this section alone.
Story-wise there's a weird attempt to connect Sander Cohen to a child smuggling ring responsible for the Little Sisters and you're promptly thrown out of Rapture into a place where Andrew Ryan put all of Frank Fontaine's followers he could round up. You have a look around and shoot some splicers, then you fight a Big Daddy, then it ends. The episode is short, even if you spend ages gawking at Rapture like I did. The episode serves basically no purpose other than to set up the second part. The story seems to be BioShock in microcosm - a man, a city, a (by now) obvious sense that someone's not telling you something, a twist and a finish. The episode is short and even at that the only engaging part of it is the first hour or so which is glorified sight-seeing.
Episode two is where things get interesting. Following on from what I've just described you play as Elizabeth as she tries to figure how who, where and why she is. Along the way you finally find out how Rapture and Columbia are connected, how Big Daddies exist, how Songbird exists, even how the story of Infinite was able to play out at all. Perhaps more crucially than anything, the story definitely, definitely ends.
The biggest difference in this episode is the gameplay. Elizabeth isn't a genetically-engineered weapon or a Pinkerton agent, so she can't use big guns or melee attacks. This means the gameplay takes on stealth elements including silent weapons, and environmental hazards which can alert enemies. You don't have the usual mixture of damage-dealing plasmids either, the focus is completely on evasion and suppression where possible. Things are taken a bit too far since there's a plasmid that turns you invisible and resources are still more than plentiful enough for you to get through with no issues. It's a bit jarring for me given I'd played all the BioShock games one after the other (mostly) in the run up to this, but it's definitely an interesting change which offers something different yet still relevant to the formula.
The actions you have to carry out as Elizabeth aren't much different. You have some fetch quests to reach a new area with all plot forwarding done by her conveniently remembering what it is when she needs to. The biggest question is how relevant the DLC is not only to the original BioShock story, but the collective game universe as a whole. Similar to my opinion of Infinite's story, it all fits. Despite how tenuous it could have been, it isn't.
You know, I'm at the same place I was with Infinite's story. I enjoyed Burial at Sea for the fully-realised Rapture, as well as some additions which feel more relevant to the city's mythology than anything BioShock 2 offered. Along with everything there's a bit more insight into Rapture's civil war which I'm obviously a fan of, and I'm happy to get some details on that fleshed out. The tremendous sense of atmosphere which started with the first BioShock hasn't dropped at any point, and all of Infinite's additions make sense and have a place in the overall timeline of the story. I just don't have any strong feelings on it now. I play it and recognise how clever it is, how well-done it is, and that's pretty much it.
I feel as if part of me should be disappointed that I've returned to these Remastered versions of some of my favourite games and had what I'd consider a cold response to them. I know they're good. I knew they were good before I played them, I thought they were good as I was playing them and I've spent a lot of time typing out words saying why they're good. I still think they're miles ahead of most games narratively, and I wish more video game writing and stories could attempt something with the intelligence and complexity Infinite does. I don't want to end on something that sounds like a criticism, so that will do.

I've never played any of the Bioshock games or even really heard much about them, but I'm going to go and buy the collection after reading your reviews. I enjoy games with an engaging narrative and this seems right up my street.

[Miguel Sanchez]

2 minutes ago, Mordecai said:

On 30/01/2021 at 22:58, Miguel Sanchez said:

BioShock Infinite Remastered DLC - Clash in the Clouds, Burial at Sea Episode One & Two (PS4, 2016 - originally PS3 2013/14)
The first DLC for BioShock Infinite is called Clash in the Clouds. There are four locations with fifteen waves each of increasingly difficult enemies. You can use new weapons, Vigors and Gear with the money you earn from killing enemies and completing waves, and for each wave there's a Blue Ribbon challenge for completing it in a certain way. There's also an interactive space where you can unlock concept art, videos and character models. This is quite nice to look at, although "interactive" is probably stretching it. The DLC is fun enough, although if you try and complete those Blue Ribbon challenges properly you're insane.
The really interesting stuff comes with the Burial at Sea DLC. Released as two episodes, the complete story of BioShock finally sees a conclusion. Mostly. Episode one sees Booker DeWitt, private investigator in the city of Rapture, sitting at his desk when a dark haired, blue eyed woman named Elizabeth walks in saying she has information about the little girl Booker lost. He's reluctant, but he follows her out the door. The first thing to say here is how weird it is to see these two characters and voices in a different location. There's obviously something bigger at play but the introduction almost feels like a spoof after spending so much time with Infinite proper.
When you step out of Booker's office you see the dream - Rapture before the fall. Rapture on December the 31st 1958, so Rapture right before the fall. It's a dream. It's perfect. It's everything you want it to be and you can tell the team that put it together were as delighted to create all of it as I was to play it. When I played Mafia III last year I criticised the city for feeling sterile and unengaging. Burial at Sea episode one does largely the same to start, but I don't care. I don't care that I'm on Rapture's high street where people are dotted around, waiting for you to come up to them so they can say lines of dialogue that were originally written for audio diaries in BioShock but got discarded for being too obvious. Looking out the windows and seeing the rest of the city where all the objects were created especially and it's not just a skybox*, it's beautiful. Infinite's existence is worth it for this section alone.
Story-wise there's a weird attempt to connect Sander Cohen to a child smuggling ring responsible for the Little Sisters and you're promptly thrown out of Rapture into a place where Andrew Ryan put all of Frank Fontaine's followers he could round up. You have a look around and shoot some splicers, then you fight a Big Daddy, then it ends. The episode is short, even if you spend ages gawking at Rapture like I did. The episode serves basically no purpose other than to set up the second part. The story seems to be BioShock in microcosm - a man, a city, a (by now) obvious sense that someone's not telling you something, a twist and a finish. The episode is short and even at that the only engaging part of it is the first hour or so which is glorified sight-seeing.
Episode two is where things get interesting. Following on from what I've just described you play as Elizabeth as she tries to figure how who, where and why she is. Along the way you finally find out how Rapture and Columbia are connected, how Big Daddies exist, how Songbird exists, even how the story of Infinite was able to play out at all. Perhaps more crucially than anything, the story definitely, definitely ends.
The biggest difference in this episode is the gameplay. Elizabeth isn't a genetically-engineered weapon or a Pinkerton agent, so she can't use big guns or melee attacks. This means the gameplay takes on stealth elements including silent weapons, and environmental hazards which can alert enemies. You don't have the usual mixture of damage-dealing plasmids either, the focus is completely on evasion and suppression where possible. Things are taken a bit too far since there's a plasmid that turns you invisible and resources are still more than plentiful enough for you to get through with no issues. It's a bit jarring for me given I'd played all the BioShock games one after the other (mostly) in the run up to this, but it's definitely an interesting change which offers something different yet still relevant to the formula.
The actions you have to carry out as Elizabeth aren't much different. You have some fetch quests to reach a new area with all plot forwarding done by her conveniently remembering what it is when she needs to. The biggest question is how relevant the DLC is not only to the original BioShock story, but the collective game universe as a whole. Similar to my opinion of Infinite's story, it all fits. Despite how tenuous it could have been, it isn't.
You know, I'm at the same place I was with Infinite's story. I enjoyed Burial at Sea for the fully-realised Rapture, as well as some additions which feel more relevant to the city's mythology than anything BioShock 2 offered. Along with everything there's a bit more insight into Rapture's civil war which I'm obviously a fan of, and I'm happy to get some details on that fleshed out. The tremendous sense of atmosphere which started with the first BioShock hasn't dropped at any point, and all of Infinite's additions make sense and have a place in the overall timeline of the story. I just don't have any strong feelings on it now. I play it and recognise how clever it is, how well-done it is, and that's pretty much it.
I feel as if part of me should be disappointed that I've returned to these Remastered versions of some of my favourite games and had what I'd consider a cold response to them. I know they're good. I knew they were good before I played them, I thought they were good as I was playing them and I've spent a lot of time typing out words saying why they're good. I still think they're miles ahead of most games narratively, and I wish more video game writing and stories could attempt something with the intelligence and complexity Infinite does. I don't want to end on something that sounds like a criticism, so that will do.

I've never played any of the Bioshock games or even really heard much about them, but I'm going to go and buy the collection after reading your reviews. I enjoy games with an engaging narrative and this seems right up my street.

I hope you didn't read them too closely, I'd hate to think I spoiled those experiences for someone.

[Miguel Sanchez]

PixelJunk Monsters 2 (PS4, 2018)

PixelJunk Monsters 2 is, unsurprisingly, the sequel to PixelJunk Monsters. A standard tower defence game, you play as Tikiman who has to build towers to attack waves of monsters that try to reach his house and all of the baby Tikimen, which are called Chibis. As you complete levels you unlock new ones, as well as new towers to use. 

I like tower defence games. Always have. There's something deliberate and exacting about them which appeals to me. Figuring out how the towers work, finding the best place to put them on the map to cover as much area as possible and upgrading them as the level goes on, it's all here. You move Tikiman around the map, building towers on the locations where trees are. There are three different types of tower - ground, air, and all-round. Waves of enemies vary, but the counter at the top of the screen shows you which type is coming up next. 

The overall aesthetic of the game is similar to the first, though from what I remember that was 2D. You can switch between the overhead view and a ground-level view of Tikiman and any monsters near him, but there's not much point in this. The camera controls in fact feel like there's too much choice. After I got to the top-down view I left it at that, but moving around felt quite counter-intuitive to start. Once you get used to it though the bright, varied colours and irritatingly pleasant music make the game quite relaxing to sit and play. This is ironic given how frustrating it can be when you think you've got a perfect set-up, only for a single monster from wave 15 to make it through your defences.

In terms of gameplay, it's quite straightforward. Although there are lots of powerful, specialised towers you can unlock to buy, I'm pretty sure you can make it through the whole game using the basic Cannon/Arrow/Anti-Air towers, even on the hardest difficulty of the three available. A couple of the more powerful options can be useful, but given the price of the starting options it's barely worth it. You get coins to buy them and gems to upgrade them from killing monsters, and you can also upgrade them by having Tikiman stand next to them doing a dance. By the time you reach the end of stages you should have earned enough coins to completely line the paths, making the game a procession. 

You can also buy fruits with your gems, or find them in the levels by running over trees. Fruits are another way to attack monsters, with effects such as slowing them down or setting off a large explosion when they touch the fruit. This second one is only really useful as a last resort. I can't for the life of me figure out the point in the Hasty Fruit, which makes enemies speed up. The fruit system feels a bit tacked on and underdeveloped, and I largely ignored them when I played. 

The most irritating aspect of this game is the paths the monsters take. At the start of a stage you get shown a bunch of blue arrows on the ground, showing you the path they're going to take to reach Tikiman's house. Then two waves in a speech bubble pops up saying "Wait, it looks like they're taking another path..." and you get monsters coming in from all angles. Often a different type of monster for the variety of towers you've built, you end up scrabbling around trying to build something to catch them. This leaves a lot of stages feeling like trial and error is the only way to beat them, and that lessens the sense of achievement for me when I finally beat them. 

It's also worth noting that rather than a menu there's an overworld you can move around in to select which level you want to play. This is unnecessarily complicated to move around in. The final area in particular is in a sort of volcano in the middle of the map, and the three stages in the area aren't all accessible from the same part. You have to finish 1, then go on a trip through several other areas to reach 2 and 3. Why? Why include this area at all, and why make it this awkward to navigate?

All in all, a pleasant way to spend what the internet tells me is close to fifty hours. That can't be right. There's not that much content here, even with the DLC and the random missions you can play and the weekly trials and the possibility of co-op. Oh well. I had fun and I still play it occasionally even though I finished it weeks ago, that's about as high as praise can get.

[Gaz]

I'm currently going for the platinum on FF8. Missed a couple of GFs but luckily I can draw them at Ultimecia's castle. Still got to get 1000 kills, beat Ultima Weapon (to get Eden), beat Omega Weapon and then finish the game. Surprised there isn't trophies for fully upgrading the characters' weapons and suchlike, but there we go. Then I'm going to do the same for FF9.

Really wish they'd release a remastered Chrono Trigger. The DS version was perfect, but I'd love it on a big screen.

[Gaz]

That Bioshock Infinite review is excellent, by the way. Eight years old and it's still one of the most beautiful games I've ever played.

[54_and_counting]

44 minutes ago, Gaz said:

I'm currently going for the platinum on FF8. Missed a couple of GFs but luckily I can draw them at Ultimecia's castle. Still got to get 1000 kills, beat Ultima Weapon (to get Eden), beat Omega Weapon and then finish the game. Surprised there isn't trophies for fully upgrading the characters' weapons and suchlike, but there we go. Then I'm going to do the same for FF9.

Really wish they'd release a remastered Chrono Trigger. The DS version was perfect, but I'd love it on a big screen.

Did you get all the timber maniacs magazines? I missed the one on the white seed ship so need to do a full playthrough again

[Gaz]

1 hour ago, 54_and_counting said:

Did you get all the timber maniacs magazines? I missed the one on the white seed ship so need to do a full playthrough again

Yeah I knew that was a missable one from my last time playing.

Dunno how long it would have taken otherwise. If you get Diablos at the earliest opportunity you could grind until Enc-None and as long as you had a few 100 mid-range magics you could plough through without too much trouble until you get the Ragnarok? At x3 speed maybe doable in under 10 hours.