It’s basically a missile command style game. You control a large satellite that is protecting a planet. There are a number of meteorites that are crashing towards the planet and you must protect it by launching energy balls at the falling meteorites to destroy them before hitting the planet. You are control the satellite firing mechanism by pulling down on the Right thumb stick to load the ball, rotate the stick to aim and then press a button to fire it at your target.  You can get some bonus weapons like missiles as well.  And….that’s about it. Have a look at the gameplay video below and you can pretty much see for yourself what the game is about. Pretty simple. U

Planetary Sheild can be downloaded and purchased on Xbox Live for 80 MS points.

Pros

• Only 80 MS pts

Cons

• Boring and simplistic gameplay
• Confusing menu. I actually selected the wrong language first and couldn’t figure out how to get it back to the language option screen. Had to exit and restart the game
• Controls can be frustrating

Gameplay Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnb1qIHBXHk

The Old Guy in Me Says

There’s not much to say about Planetary Shield. It does as advertised and it’s just 80 MS points. If your itching for a missile command style game, this might be fore you but I can’t recommend it. Sure it’s an indie game but I found the game a bit too boring for me. This game is very casual and better suited on a mobile device (iOs or Android), in fact I think it’s a direct port of one. The pulling down to launch the energy balls is akin to dragging / sliding on your mobile device which makes perfect sense. Using the Xbox controller, not so much.

I better get my ass in gear and do some more articles.  Here’s my Fuse demo review.  Sorry folks, but this generation has been waning so long I can’t wait for next gen.  Most games in the past few years make me fall asleep.  And here’s another game that will knock you unconscious courtesy of Insomniac Games… the studio that churned out endless Resistance Fall of Man games.

One part Gears, One part Syndicate, 6 parts Generic, 6 parts Boring

My quick review just covers single player campaign (three cpu teammates join you).  Over the next day or two, the other GamerVets may cover co-op or MP.

Graphics

• Looks like zero anti-aliasing.  Jaggies everywhere
• Typical EA shooter fare when it comes to frame rate.  Somewhere in the 20-30 fps range depending how hectic the action is
• Lots of colour.  Not the usual brown and grey infested settings of many shooters.  Even for dirt and metal there seems to be a tinge of colour so it’s not so drab
• Melee attacks have some animations not typically seen in shooters.  My female character did some back flip kicks to kill him
• Decent looking menu screens
  
• Overall, nothing special
  

Sound

• Title page music sounds like it should come from a horror movie than a sci-fi shooter
• Forgettable dialogue between you and your squad
• The female character I used has an English accent (I think it’s English).  Score a point for being different
• Overall, average sound
  

Gameplay

• A combo of skippable and unskippable scenes
  
• The first gameplay you’ll do is a chore.  It involves scaling some rock ledges and climbing pipes which seems you can’t fall off from.  Pointless filler.  Your character traverses these dangerous ledges with the speed and agility of Spiderman
• The button layouts are mostly your usual Call of Duty or Gears format, but a few key differences…Y is melee and B is cover
• Like Gears, you flip into and out of cover and can roll from cover to cover, or just out in the open to get away from enemies
• Teammates can revive you when you go down.  I got downed a lot, but always got revived
• Game tries to toss in some non-shooting elements like climbing pipes, press Y to activate things, breach a cracked wall by planting a bomb with Y etc…
• Game is harder than most other shooters I’ve played as snipers can pick you off from a distance and drop you with a few hits.  You can’t absorb as much damage as in Gears
• Seems like the game will have linear levels as you go from point A to B with your group
• Your group is mostly useless except for reviving you.  You are always the guy who has to make the first step into a battle area or activate something with Y.  But amazingly, if it involves no battles your teammates will just blaze past you to the next checkpoint as you find the right path to follow them
• You can level up your character by gaining XP through kills, completing objectives and picking up XP boxes lying around
• The game has a lot of mixed weapondry and perks.  Aside from the usual primary, secondary and grenade, the game offers alien weapons called Xenotech
• Perks can be for your character or your team.  Character perks can be:  increasing firearms damage, more health, more effective grenades etc…  Team perks:  can be increased XP, better ammo pickups, reduced damage from fire/explosions etc…
• The sketchy frame rate can kill the gunplay.  It can literally bog down to the teens or 20s.  Not fun when you are in close quarters combat
• I’m too lazy to retest it again, but there may be a chance this game has the Call of Duty endless respawn algorithm.  The first time I played the game (my video), you’ll see the first opening battle area has tons of enemies coming back for more.  I replayed the demo knowing how to better handle the enemies and dispatched them faster.  I forged ahead hopping over pipes and cover and low and behold the number of enemies was less.  So keep this in mind
• A personal preference, I get bored quickly shooting robots, mechs and anything with an exo-skeleton.  So if you like this style, you will likely enjoy the game more

 The Old Guy in Me Says

Played it a few times and that’s enough.  Now I know why this game has been barely promoted.  It’s your typical mediocre shooter.  Released in 2013 right before next gen consoles come out (Wii U doesn’t count).  So you’d think it’s a great game milking Xbox 360′s last drop of power.  Nope.  This game would be a decent during the 2006-2007 era when Gears and CoD 4 came out.  But not now.

The best thing about the Fuse demo is the challenge.  Even on Normal Difficulty, it seems you can get downed by gunfire pretty easily if you stand in the open too long.

Worth bargain binning for $19.99 three months from now?  Not for me, but maybe for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcP8tFN57X8

My advice is to use QUEN sign as much as possible and use your heavy blows for at one strike then roll away. Repeat. Unless you have a very powerful silver sword you might be able to get away with using your fast strikes more. It took me a while to get the patterns down but as always, patience is key. Watch the videos to find out how to defeat the dragon.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aAVCpxvbrs

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqx3laj4M-w

Want more Witcher 2?

• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Chest Guardian
• The Witcher 2: How to Break the Code to Unlock the Chest with the Dagger
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Kaedweni Army General
• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Place of Power that Cecil Burdon Mentioned
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat Lethos
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Kayran
• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Trap Fragment (Indecent Proposal quest phase)
• The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings First Impressions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sAFv1ji-8g

Want more Witcher 2?

• The Witcher 2: How to Break the Code to Unlock the Chest with the Dagger
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Kaedweni Army General
• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Place of Power that Cecil Burdon Mentioned
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat Lethos
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Kayran
• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Trap Fragment (Indecent Proposal quest phase)
• The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings First Impressions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xamexRsQ-Bc

Want more Witcher 2?

• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Kaedweni Army General
• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Place of Power that Cecil Burdon Mentioned
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat Lethos
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Kayran
• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Trap Fragment (Indecent Proposal quest phase)
• The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings First Impressions

Back in 2008 Midway Games gave us our first taste of how DC characters would square off in the a fighting game. Unfortunately what came about was a weird combo pitting DC Universe against Mortal Kombat characters and instead of fatalities they hero’s had some lackluster heroic brutalities.

Since then Midway went bankrupt, teamed up with WB Games Chicago and renamed themselves NetherRealm Studios which has had great success with a revamped Mortal Kombat game that retells the story of the first 3 games in the series.

After the success of Mortal Kombat it seems they want to take another stab at the DC Universe on it’s own. Can NetherRealm keep the hits coming?

Story

If you go to “Single Player” and go to “Battles” you can play a small story mode in a classic arcade style of climbing a ladder of enemies with a boss at the end and a small ending. Doing so will unlock icons, alternate costumes

I’ve had it up to HERE with YOU.

and so forth. Choosing the actual “Story” mode will give you the true story of the game. If you picked up the collector’s edition of the game you’ll also get the first issue of the comic series of Injustice. The series focuses on what happens prior to the game’s story. The Story mode in the game is similar to what they did in Mortal Kombat where you play as almost every character. Separated by chapters you will play whoever the focus is on in that chapter which is a nice way to force you to try many of the characters in the game. Sure there may be some character’s you just can’t use but the game has an adaptive difficulty setting. So if you lose with that character you’re not good with then your opponent becomes easier when you retry the match. The story itself is quite wonderful. They really did an amazing job with it. It feels like you’re watching DC Universe Animated Origional Movie.

The Joker’s plan succeeds. Lois and her unborn son are killed. Metropolis is destroyed. Superman has had enough and starts a new order in which criminals wont be given a second chance. Not all agree and war between Superman’s Regime and the Insurgence is imminent.

Gameplay

The gameplay is a lot like Mortal Kombat. I’m speaking of course about the feel of how the characters move and also the combination of buttons for special attacks. It’s all that and much more. Instead of going the grotesque route with fatalities and bone breaking super moves they went with making it as wild as possible with their super moves. It’s really fun to see the Flash run completely around the Earth to deliver mighty punch or to see Aquaman call upon the ocean to fill the stage and feed his opponent to a great white shark. Each stage has many objects the fighters can interact with along with areas where fighters can be thrown into the background. In addition to that each stage has two areas in which a character can be knocked into the second area taking on some huge damage from environmental hazards. There are no rounds. It’s 1 round with 2 life bars.

There’s one thing that has always bothered with Mortal Kombat games and it seems to have made its way into Injustice as well. When a character’s life bar is depleted and they’re knocked out and defeated then WHY…WHY DO THEY GET BACK UP JUST GO BACK DOWN TO A DEFEATED POSITION. It’s really annoying to finish off an opponent with a super move just to see them get back up and fall down again. You can’t tell me they can’t code it so that they just stay down. Batman even says it in the game. “Stay down.” I’m pretty sure other fighting games were able to keep their characters down so why can’t NetherRealm program that in? Is it so hard? *Sigh*

A great little thing I noticed in the training area is that you can tag moves and combos so that that they show on screen as you practice. A great idea so you don’t have to keep pausing to check what the move or combo was. Really helpful for beginners. It’ll be a long while before you tire of this game as there are a ton of game modes and the STAR Labs is full of challenges and mini games for you. Unfortunately the you can’t just pick and choose which character’s challenge you want to do. You have to go in order. The only thing you can do is if you got the pre-order code for the Red Son pack and you can play the Red Son story right away in the STAR Labs. The Red Son story is a what if story if Superman had landed in the Soviet Union instead of America.

Graphics/Presentation/Sound

The graphics are exceptional and the interactive stages look great as you tear the place apart. Some interesting costume choices that may not please all and some characters look quite odd. I guess Wonder Woman is suppose

That’s so Raven

to be a strong amazon but she feels really buchty as well as Raven looks really weird to me. Maybe because I’ve only seen her in the Teen Titans cartoon. Also the flash has a lot of unnecessary armor I think. Wouldn’t that slow him down.

The music and sounds are fantastic and are accompanied by some well known people providing the voices in the game. Kevin Conroy reprises his role as Batman and even Steven Amell from the TV show Arrow does the voice for Green Arrow. With it’s star cast of voice actors it really makes playing the story feel official.

Pros

• Really immersive story
• Star cast of voice actors
• Lots of modes
• Good training tools
• Stages full of stuff to ineterac with
• Wild super moves

Cons

• STAY DOWN
• Odd costume choices
• No choice in STAR Labs challenges

The Old Guy in Me Says

Well done NetherRealm Studios. When I started playing the story mode I just couldn’t stop and had to finish it in one go. I played through it again with some friends taking turns. You just get so immersed in the story and next thing you know a couple of hours have gone by. I’ve always enjoyed a good fighting and the wild and crazy super moves along with the interactibles and stage changes keep things fresh. If that isn’t all there’s a ton of extra modes to play around in. If you’re a DC fan or a Mortal Kombat fan then I’d definitely say to pick this gem up.

IOS Game

I decided to review the IOS version of Injustice as it directly ties in with the console games. Released a week before the console game this Freemium IOS game has been keeping me busy tapping and swiping away because the

I’m Batman

tie in is that you can unlock alternate costumes for the console version from the IOS game.

Here’s how it works. You sign up for a WBID account on the IOS game and then when you play the console version just link it to your account by signing in with the account you made on the IOS game. From your account you can see all the tasks you can see the tasks you need to complete in the IOS game in order to unlock them in the console and vice versa you can unlock stuff in the IOS game by completing tasks on the console.

This app seems to be exclusive to IOS for now but we’ll update you with further news if it will be released for Android. Another thing is that if you unlocked costumes but picked up Injustice for the Wii U, unfortunately it will not work with it. Your only compatible choices are either 360 or PS3.

Gameplay

Choose a battle to compete in and then choose 3 characters to fight with. You complete the battle by moving up a ladder of machetes against another group of 3. The second last battle is a boss battle where you fight 3 against 1. After that you can proceed to the next area or go back and take on the bonus battle that will have all sorts of conditions such as random enemies, slowing meter build or radiation which slowly chips away at your health bar.

The gameplay of Injustice is quite simple. Tap or swipe to attack. You can combo by tapping rappidly and finish with a prompt swipe or just swipe 3 times for a heavy combo.Your first power meter is free but you have purchase your second and third level power moves with in-game currency. When you build up 3 to the third meter you’ll unleash an unblockable super move. This super move will be the same super move the character performs in the console version.

Each character will have different attributes to their card. There are 3 tiers of character cards. Bronze, silver and gold. It will get pretty hard to proceed in the game without getting some next level tier characters. Here’s where the Freemium part comes in. Each character has about a dozen energy bars. In the beginning matches will cost 1 energy bar and when you run out you’ll have to swap out your characters with one that has enough energy. Later on it will cost up to 3 energy bars per match. When you run out you’ll have to way around 2 hours to fill up your bars to the max again before you can play again. Or you could purchase energy with real money to refill any character’s energy meter. Some may complain that they’re just trying to get more money off you but if you stick with it you don’t have to pay. Wouldn’t it make you feel like you accomplished something when you finally unlock that Batman Beyond skin rather then just buying your way through.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics for Injustice on IOS is almost on par with the console graphics. It’s quite impressive that they were able to get each character’s supermove into the game. Of course all the models are a slightly lower resolution but it still looks great. Although coming from the iPad’s small speaker the music and sound is all there from console and I couldn’t be happier.

Pros

• Free
• Cross-game unlockables
• Simple and fun
• Great graphics and sound

Cons

• Having to wait to play again

The Old Guy in Me Says

Nothing is meant to be easy. If it was then it would take all the fun out of it. This is a great game for IOS if you have a few minutes to spare then why not spending battling it out with your favorite super heroes.

There’s a pretty funny (dare I say great?!?)  movement going on for the yearly player selection to be on the cover of NHL 14. This time around EA is allowing the public to cast their votes online.  Now we all know what happens when you allow the online public to vote for things like this. It might turn out to be a public relations nightmare. Remember what happened with the Mountain Dew promo “Dub the Dew”  or on the brighter side, the send Pitbull to Alaska Walmart promo?

Well, the EA hate flows well because there’s a quest to put a “nobody” player as the cover athlete.  In this case, it’s none other than Brandon Yip.

It also tests how legitimate and honest EA will be. Something tells me it’ll still be a superstar no matter how the voting goes. Let’s see how it’ll all pan out and don’t forget to CAST your own VOTE!

• Screen cap of the “Movement”
• Reddit Discussion
• Cast your Vote

]]> http://gamervets.com/2013/04/vote-for-brandon-yip-as-cover-athlete-on-nhl-14/feed/ 0 http://gamervets.com/2013/04/bioshock-infinite-second-opinion/ http://gamervets.com/2013/04/bioshock-infinite-second-opinion/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:03:01 +0000 M1GO http://gamervets.com/?p=9277 Does the new BioShock game soar to great heights, or sink to the depths of Rapture?

*NOTE* - I’m focusing more on the narrative of the game than I normally would. To read a more comprehensive review of all facets of the game, click here to view Rock5teady’s initial review.

Story

While BioShock has always been a linear experience, the issue of choice has always been a central theme in its narrative. Gamers who have played the first game in the series know this very well, and without spoiling anything, there was more at play in that game than just choosing to save or kill creepy little girls in BioShock.

After one stellar and one good game set in the underwater city of Rapture, Ken Levine and the folks at Irrational Games decided to set loftier goals with their third adventure. Set in the cloud city of Columbia in the early 1900′s, BioShock: Infinite has a decidedly fresh, open feel to it. The game actually begins not unlike the first adventure in the series – in the midst of a stormy, rain-swept sea. While there is no connection between the first two BioShock games and Infinite, it’s a nice, narrative touch that links the two games. Soon after, you’re ushered along into a new BioShock adventure, and your first foray into the clouds is spectacular and eye-opening.

Gone are the dark, claustrophobic passageways and tunnels populated by hideously disfigured and mutated denizens who make their home in the secret underwater city of Rapture.

In contrast, the city of Columbia is an industrial age marvel – part haven for good-natured, God-fearing Americans, and part amusement park attraction to capture and captivate the imagination.  As you delve deeper and peel back the layers of this marvelous flying cloud city however, you begin to see another side of this turn-of-the-century utopia. Something’s not right in this brave new world, led by the charismatic “prophet” Zachary Comstock – and you soon witness the widespread bigotry, racism and religious fanaticism that underlie the rotten core of this shiny floating beacon of modern ingenuity. As the cracks and tears in its facade begin to show, you can’t help but become engrossed in the game’s narrative. This all takes place within the first hour of the game, and the rest of your ten-to-twelve-hour adventure is about discovering how to get off this floating rock, while finding out just how things got so bad along the way.

In the first BioShock, you played as Jack – a relative blank slate of a character. Infinite on the other hand thrusts you into the role of Booker DeWitt, ex-soldier and ex-Pinkerton Detective on a mission to abduct a mysterious girl in order to wipe your debts clean. “Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt” forms the impetus for the first third of the game. However, through your time in Columbia and in your interactions with the various denizens, you begin to unravel Booker’s past and realize that there’s more to Mr. DeWitt than you originally think.

Booker is only half of the BioShock equation however, and it would be a disservice not to mention Elizabeth – the girl you’re sent to abduct.

What begins as a pretty traditional fetch and escort mission is soon transformed once you’ve freed Elizabeth from confinement. You see, Elizabeth is not your typical damsel in distress. Years of being locked in a tower with little in the way of companionship and a small window to the outside world has made her inquisitive, and it shows in the little interactions and observations she makes with the world at large.

Don’t confuse her innocence and naivety with stupidity though. She comes across as very intelligent, strong-willed and self sufficient – not whiny, cloying and annoying like the many damsels that came before her.

Throughout your play-through, you won’t even have to save Elizabeth from enemies unless it’s called for in the story. The game makes that clear early on, and it helps the player become more immersed in the story. In fact, you quickly stop thinking of her as an object or objective you need to protect, and more as a companion on your journey. She’ll deliver insights and offer explanations or express wonderment in discoveries, be right there with you to experience some of the wonders and atrocities that Columbia has to offer, and even help you from time to time, tossing you health, salt (the fuel for your many powers) and ammunition.

Elizabeth also has the unique ability to open “tears” in the fabric of space, and literally pull in objects from other dimensions into yours. While this factors in greatly in the game’s story, it also has an impact on the battles, as she can pull in cover, ammunition, health, and even friendly gun emplacements and drones to help aid you during firefights.

Gameplay

When I heard about this game, I made the incorrect assumption that it would have a different feel from the first two BioShock games. For those who have played BioShock (and to a lesser extent, the similar first-person shooter Singularity), you’ll find that Infinite’s controls, art style, sound effects and pace of action are pretty much in line with what you’ve seen before. You’ve got your traditional weapons mapped to your right trigger, and “vigors” (aka plasmids aka powers) mapped to your left trigger.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s not the only one with a skyhook…

They’ve streamlined the melee from the first game so that you don’t have to equip your melee weapon before using it anymore. Instead, you use a device called a Sky Hook to bludgeon and brutally execute enemies. This Sky Hook is also used to traverse along sky lines and hooks that are available around the city, often giving you unique vantage points to take out your enemies from.

The controls are tight and forgiving, as is the game in general – never once did I think that I couldn’t pass a certain section or area because the difficulty had spiked. In fact, I played on normal mode and I thought that it was a tad bit too easy at times, especially once you had some of the more powerful weapons and had upgraded your vigors.

Presentation

I won’t lie – I was a tad bit disappointed at first because I came in with unrealistic expectations. At its core, this IS a BioShock game, and not a new beast entirely. Those who weren’t big fans of the action in previous BioShock games, or those who would rather play a “realistic” shooter will also be disappointed.

In fact, before I had even stepped foot in Columbia, I was almost willing to relegate this to my backlog. It took me a while to get through the original BioShock game as it made its way into and out of my current library of games for the better part of two years.

Two things kept me playing this game though: the fully realized world of Columbia, and later on, the growing dynamic between Booker and Elizabeth. If you’re one of those people who have an inclination to shelve this because it seems like a BioShock mod, I suggest you stick around a bit, explore the world, and get lost in its lore before making that decision.

If there is one change that players will notice, it’s in the overall tone of the game. This is no longer a first person shooter-horror like the original. The denizens of Columbia aren’t horribly disfigured and mutated, and they’re not all out to kill you. It’s a good change, and the choice to elevate the series beyond its action-horror roots was both refreshing and necessary.

Pros

• Beautiful art direction
• Great story
• Likeable characters and good voice acting
• Solid shooting mechanics and controls

Cons

• No manual saves, but autosave spots can be a bit far from each other
• Last 1/3 of the game has too many unnecessary fights. Yup, too much shooting in a shooter, I know…
• Over-reliance on telling the story through collectible voxphone recordings means that you can easily miss a lot of the backstory. I missed 4 voxphones during my playthrough

The Old Guy in me Says

I can wax on and on about BioShock: Infinite because it really has been one of the few experiences I’ve had in recent years where you become so immersed in the adventure. In fact, I haven’t felt this way since Red Dead Redemption, which already puts it in good company.

Going back to the theme of choice in the BioShock universe, if you even remotely enjoyed the first couple games, or like single player shooters in general – the choice is clear…

Now would you kindly go out and play this game already?

I realized later that my strategy was terrible.  The following way works so fast, it avoids many of the General’s stronger attacks which come a little later in the fight  (arrow spam, fireball spam and magic whirlwind thing he does). I went back to an older saved game to demonstrate this method.

Here’s the steps to easily defeat the Kaedweni General:

• Equip YRDEN sign
• Roll away and use the Yrden Sign before he has a chance to charge you
• Position yourself between the Yrden trap and the General so he rushes at you and goes over the trap you set.
• When the Kaedweni General is trapped, attack using the heavy blows (X button). You should be able to get in 3 or 4 swings before he frees himself and you have to roll away from his attack. This does tons of damage.
• Rinse and Repeat!  You should only need to do this method 3 or 4 times max before you kill him.

Check out the video to see this method in action!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9apI8W-pEs

Want more Witcher 2?

• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Place of Power that Cecil Burdon Mentioned
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat Lethos
• The Witcher 2: How to Defeat the Kayran
• The Witcher 2: How to Find the Trap Fragment (Indecent Proposal quest phase)
• The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings First Impressions

Story

In the original Bioshock you emerge from a wreckage to find yourself near a lighthouse in where you then submerge underwater into Rapture. Bioshock Infinite starts off similarly. It’s 1912 and your character’s name is Booker Dewitt. You’re on a boat headed towards a light house with one mission. Retrieve a girl and wipe away your debt. Instead of submerging into the depths of the ocean you are shot up and introduced to the beautiful city in the sky, Columbia. The city has physically separated themselves from the rest of the world to create their own utopia where they’ve idolized former presidents as gods and created a religion around them. If you haven’t figured out by then you’ll quickly discover not all is right with this racist city as a rebellion is underfoot. Not only that but you are already marked for death. All hell breaks lose and you have to make your way to Elizabeth and break her out of the tower which is guarded by the Songbird. A menacing creature much like the Big Daddies is there to protect Elizabeth and keep her locked up.

As the story progresses you’ll discover more about Elizabeth’s power and how it can help you. Without going further into detail to not spoil it for you. You need to play this game to the very end. It’s an extremely rewarding experience and told very well. In previous Bioshock game’s you were given moral choices that affected the game and would result in multiple endings. In Infinite there isn’t much in the way moral choices affect the story this time which is a little bit of a let down but I’m not disappointing that there aren’t multiple endings. For me this is the only way you could have ended it – and what a way to end it indeed!

Gameplay

The game flows smoothly from area to area, sometimes giving you different ways to get to your goal which isn’t marked on a map or with a big glowing light, which isn’t a bad thing. You hit up on the d-pad and like dead space a nice little arrow shows you a general direction to go. A model which I’m growing much more fond of. You’re life doesn’t regenerate so once you get your shield that does regenerate you might want to start upgrading that first.

I started out playing on hard and found it manageable until I came across some of the more powerful characters that really gave me a run for my money. One hit and my entire shield was gone and 3 quarters of my life as well. I tried lowering the difficulty and saw a world of difference between hard and normal. But now I felt the game became more fun and could experiment more in battles with powers in the game. What used to be called Plasmids in previous Bioshocks are now called Vigors and are replenished with salts. I’ve talked with a few friends about how they’ve been using their Vigors and they’ve been using them in completely different ways which got me exited to try new stuff with more I found. You can combine 2 Vigors such as throwing out Murder of Crows and then setting them ablaze with Devil’s Kiss or use Bucking Bronco to lift your enemies into the air and use Charge on them to send them flying off an air ship. You could also lay traps with powers too as enemies chase you, you could drop a Shock Jockey on the floor and electrocute them as they approach.

The areas you fight in could be big vast areas that have many different levels and bringing the sky rails into the mix definitely adds a new level. But don’t think that you would escape so easily as enemies will follow you on the sky rails as well. Probably the best supporting AI I’ve ever had is Elizabeth. She’s isn’t a burden as most partner AI are. I guess it makes sense that they’d have to bring her back alive so the enemies will only be focusing on firing at you. She doesn’t fight but she can help you in many other ways. If you are low on health, salts or ammo she yell out to you if she has any and with the press of a button you’ll turn immediately to her as she throws you a gun or health and you’re back in the fight. Elizabeth also brings another tactic to your arsenal as you can ask her to open tears in the area to help you in combat. Some tears can help you get to higher ground or provide cover. There are also some tears for weapons, health and salts as well.

The only thing that felt kind of weird was that I thought I saw in the E3 demo having your rifle out would startle people and having it holstered wouldn’t bring you any attention. It’s a small gripe but it really pulls me out of the game when I’m running around a town with my gun out and no one really cares. Just a personal pet peeve. As for the weapons there’s about a dozen to choose from but you can’t carry them all. You can only hold 2 weapons at a time so most of the time you’ll be scavenging dropped weapons from enemies downed. You only have one melee weapon but trust me it’s the only weapon you’ll need. The grappling hook. Best use to distract enemies with Vigors and get in close and personal or grapple up to a sky rail and fly down onto an enemy and knock him off an airship. Make sure you use the proper gear to match with your playstyle as gear you wear can provide melee bonuses such as a chance to set enemies on fire with a melee strike or decrease your weapon’s reload time.

Graphics/Presentation/Sound

The graphics are not ultra realistic but are done with great style. You’ll see the beauty of Columbia as you are thrust above the clouds in the opening section of the game. The presentation of everything is just magnificent and like Elizabeth who has never been out before is great to watch as she marvels at everything with you. Those who played the original Bioshock games may see and hear familiar sights and sounds, but they have a nice charm to it, and help tie this game to others in the series. To walk by and hear all the chatter and see a quartet singing on a near by airship really brings the town alive.

Pros

• Elizabeth
• Fun with powers
• Great characters
• Fantastic story and ending

Cons

• Lack of moral choices 
• Can’t holster weapon

The Old Guy in Me Says

This is a single player done right. They made the right choice in scrapping the muli-player and focus on making a solid game with a great story. If you’re looking to dig into a  game with great design for a dozen hours then there’s no better place to spend it than in Columbia.