BioShock: Infinite - Burial at Sea: Episode One Review

Written by: Ice Cold Tabasco

After playing it, the only way I can sum up the entire experience is IMMENSELY disappointing.

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Oh dear god…

Look, I have a deep love for the BioShock franchise, with the first nearly ranking as my favorite game of all time. I even picked up System Shock 2 a few days ago and I’m having a ball with it. So I went into the first episode of Infinite’s Burial at Sea optimistic. I had high hopes that it would invoke the same sense of mystery and intrigue, all wrapped up with Infinite’s solid combat in a two to three hour experience. 

Presentation is everything.

After playing it, the only way I can sum up the entire experience is IMMENSELY disappointing. While it does manage to sustain interest early on, giving you glimpse of what the writers had in mind for the DLC. It is swiftly buried under the frustrating play styles it attempts to blend into a coherent whole, being the more old school BioShock (being a resource management shooter) and Infinite's more modern style (more tactical;ammo aplenty). So you are able to carry more than one weapon, akin to the first BioShock. I quite like this approach, having all your weapons at your disposal is virtually always a good idea, but has the habit of over powering the player.

So to compensate, ammo is scarce, alla BioShock. While this can benefit the challenge of a game, here it is just unfair. Playing on the hardest difficulty, Burial at Sea will bend you over repeatedly, as running dry on a murder frenzy is inevitable and infuriatingly frequent. There is no Dark Souls-esque challenge here, it’s ones futile attempt to try and swim through a sea barbed wire. You might gain some ground, but the accumulative blood loss will stop you every, FUCKING, TIME. 

Having only three bullets to take out the opposition happens more often then you'd think.

There is no strategy, there is no way around it, you will possibly suffer brain hemorrhage from how often you will die. If you’re going to endeavor to pick this game up, putting it on Medium difficulty might lessen the frustration, but I wouldn't place any bets on it.

The story is also a dribbling mess, with a more mature, grown Elizabeth essentially seeking revenge on what is supposedly the final Comstock, the antagonist of the main game. The whole thing is just dull, with the twist at the end only invoking the question, “Why was any of this necessary?”. While, yes, it might as well be required that the first part of something have a cliffhanger,but, it's so poorly done here that the only satisfaction that you receive is from finishing the bloody thing.

So yeah, Episode One a complete mess with little to bring to the table narratively, and delivers broken combat ontop of it. I even found it to be a tad on the short side. Ultimately, just skip it, and spring for the second episode. Which is HOPEFULLY, proper compensation for this wreck 

Verdict

3/10

Just Plain Bad

Max Payne 3 Review

Written By: Ice Cold Tabasco

After playing Alan Wake, it's rather refreshing to find a game that appreciates the platform it was brought into...

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After playing Alan Wake, it's rather refreshing to find a game that appreciates the platform it was brought into, being the PC, which is notorious for subpar console ports. Forcing anti aliasing and having a very limited graphics options menu does not equate to a great port. Reason being why I should gush over how buttery smooth Max Payne 3 ran on my rig, with its rather extensive graphics menu and fantastic optimization. You never really appreciate a good port until you run across a shit one.

Anyway, lets get down to business…

Fuck. You. Alan. Wake.

Theres a lot of good in Max Payne, and quite a bit of bad to compensate. One is something the franchise has never really been able to accomplish, being, having an engaging narrative. Max, finding himself in the crosshairs of a New Jersey mob boss, travels to Brazil with a man named Passos, promising tons of cash and escape from his current predicament. What ensues is, from what I’m able to muster from my playthrough was just a fuck ton of noise and bullshit. It’s standard action movie fair, with little creative flare. You’ll end up forgetting this the entire thing, along with its unique setting.

Forgetting my two sentence limerick, I like Passos. He’s a funny guy and always has your back in the middle of a fire fight. But everyone else are simply cardboard cutouts, completely two dimensional with zero personality. Whenever someone is killed off, you don’t really give a flying fuck. You just want you mate to stop crying so you can move onto the next shootout.

That’s another issue, as Max Payne 3 seems to fall into this cycle of moving from shooting gallery to shooting gallery. While, yes, that pretty much describes every single FPS in existence, they at least offer engaging combat mechanics and enemy variety to compensate. While bullet time remedies the issue slightly, a dude with a gun is virtually the only dude you're going to kill. Still, it retains tension and is engaging with the bullet time (effectively slowmo) mechanic, which is a godsend in hotter fire fights. Longer play sessions will tend to get grindy and feel as if Paul W. S. Anderson was behind development.

It's quite the visual spectacle as well.

Going with the theme of combat, the gun-play is fan-FUCKING-tastic. Whether it be magnum, pistol, shotgun or assault rifle, every round expended has kick and power. When you clear a room of enemies, you can’t help but feel like god. Contributing to this is the expertly balanced difficulty here. Powering through on Hard Mode, I couldn't help but feel a sort of Dark Soul’s type of challenge in which it is completely fair and challenging. If you die, you died because of you, only amplifying the euphoria of victory.

Now, using what I learned from Alan Wake, is that only animating a character models lower jaw and hiring the most inept voice actors does not lead to a satisfactory audial or visual experience. So, I feel I should note Max Payne 3 has some pretty good talent with is animators and voice actors, feeling very close to real thing. And NOT the atrocities that walk Bright Falls, with cold, unfeeling eyes. Expressionless faces and barely moving mouths, you can understand why Alan Wake was a horror (as well as learning) experience for developers.

Moving away from the mechanical aspects, the game looks fantastic. Its has a widely variant color palette, with bright colors and high contrast for sunny Brazil. To the drab brown and greys of a snow blanketed Hoboken, Max Payne 3 is quite the visual treat. You’ll often be left in awe at the detail that was carved into the world. Bullet impacts, soaked fabric, creasing cloth, and trash on city streets all contribute to the immersive side of the overall experience.

Definitely a looker.

Despite its forgettable story, characters, and shooting gallery mentality, Max Payne 3 is still an enjoyable experience. With tight gun-play, bullet time mechanic, and decent voice acting, I’d dare to say that Max Payne 3 is a pretty good game overall. Though, don’t expect much to think about when you set it down.

Verdict

7/10

Good

BioShock Review

Written By: Ice Cold Tabsaco

I can’t really live with myself if I didn't say BioShock can be considered a genre benchmark.

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I hate flying. Even with the facts that indicate a accident is far, FAR from likely, I’m still on the edge of pissing myself. It’s not what could happen during a flight, its the fact that I’m spitting distance from the fucking stratosphere. Thats kinda what I feel about Rapture. Beautiful and nearly flawless in concept, but essentially enabling UNREGULATED, UNSTABLE, ADDICTIVE SUPER SERUM use in a goddamned fish tank, makes the whole thing far from desirable.

BioShock is one of those games used as a shining example of gaming as art, or how an interactive narrative should be done. While the narrative is rather fantastic, I don’t see how adding an art deco style to something makes it artsy. A pretty damned good design, but thats where it stops, as it’s simply design. Going with the theme of what’s “pretty damned good” about BioShock lies mostly with it’s strong story and combat.

Still, BioShock oozes style.

Finding yourself victim to a plane crash over the city of Rapture, you soon delve down into the briny deep to the underwater dystopia for sanctuary. What you find is a dying city, full of genetically spliced psychopaths, are a range of weapons that don’t really deviate from the standard formula of melee weapons, pistols, shotguns, machine guns, explosives, and exotic weapons. What I do enjoy is your not restricted to two weapons, leaving you with an entire arsenal at your disposal. Compensating for your ability to break into Fort Knox, ammunition relatively scarce, resulting in a very balanced and cohesive experience, complemented with satisfying gun recoil and accuracy. All modifiable at one time use upgrade stations, offering sizable bonuses to damage, ammo consumption and capacity.

Still, plasmid use is what BioShock seeks to bare its teeth. Essentially powers that rely on a mana bar for use, plasmids offer an interesting spin on game play, giving you a second option if your ammunition drys up. While there are a quite a few to choose from, you won’t really need to deviate beyond some core combat powers, being fire and lightning attacks. Rendering other options rather muted, being used once for experimentation and never again. All also upgradable for a certain amount of ADAM, which acts essentially as money.

Plasmid's at work

Going with the theme of genetic manipulation, the player is granted a variety of passive buffs in the form of gene tonics. Each can either improve combative abilities, aid in hacking mini-games, lower store prices, or increase the time it takes a camera to spot you and alert security. It’s rather marginal in practice, but Irrational Games needed some place to cram those pesky RPG elements. 

Complementing BioShock’s solid combat mechanics are the surprisingly variant baddies to murder. Be it the hulking Big Daddies, gun toting Lead Heads, or wall crawling Spider Splicers, they all offer a certain depth to combat, giving every weapon and plasmid a purpose. Making larger fights rather tense and exciting. Though, enemy types tend to be grouped together early on, dampening the game a bit. 

Big Daddies WILL fuck your shit up. Stock up prior to combating them.

Storywise however, BioShock shines brightest. It offers legitimate intrigue and speculation early on, helped along with the absolutely stellar voice acting lent. Providing a clear cut objective that ties in with the world that you find yourself in, as you interact with various key political figures of Rapture’s glory days. Providing a twist that was so smartly written, you can’t help but feel it was hurt by it being told through a cut scene. As you are almost always behind the controls, YOU are the one that is carrying the story along, not a cut scene. It’s very reminiscent of Half Life in this respect, keeping you engaged with the plot the whole way through.

Having given this game non-stop praise, the only negatives I can find is with it's later half, which is more level padding and far from necessary. Everything else is spot on and virtually excellent, with it’s tight and engaging story and characters, coupled with it's solid combat system, I can’t really live with myself if I didn't say BioShock can be considered a genre benchmark.

Verdict

10/10

Genre Benchmark