The original script for this video essay was written in January 2014 and then I spent a mere 18 months thinking about making it. Two years after Bioshock Infinite (Irrational Games, 2013) was released to huge critical acclaim, I finally have a video about it. If you love the game, you’re going to hate me. If you hate the game, you’re going to have a laugh.
Oh the hyperbole. Not just a bad game. The worst game. Maybe he meant the worst out of those games that get called “game of the year”? That would have been okay. But I can’t think he really meant worst compared to all the crappy clones that are foisted on mobile users every month.
Watch this video below or direct on YouTube.
REFERENCES
“On Videogame Reviews” by Tevis Thompson
“Stanley Scores Reviews” by Joel Goodwin
Counterweight podcast where Eric and I trashed Bioshock Infinite.
MUSIC
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Proteus hoy!
That is one of my favourite moments of the whole video. Promise to stop making friendly digs at Proteus from this day forward.
I’m glad you finally got round to making this, Joel. I’m just sorry you had to play Bioshock Infinite for it to happen.
(Disclaimer: I think I had one of my classic ambivalent reactions to Binfinite at the time, but several years on it’s simpler to just poke fun at it.)
I’m not exactly sure why, Shaun, this has taken so much of my time in the last month. It’s literally gulped down hours and hours. Getting the timing and cadence right across the video was quite hard. In the next newsletter, for whoever is interested, I’ll post a link to the video that was “complete” one week earlier.
Ah, right. Onward to Side by Side…
I wrote about Binfinite that one time!
I think it “works” on the level of being a metaphor for itself. It had an ambition that far exceeded its ability to deliver and yet it’s also “about” that by being about a city in the sky. LAYERS
Great video, loved the choices of clips you used.
Thanks, Amanda. Yes I don’t think I was thinking about your writing when putting this together 🙂 Something I realised just yesterday is that Bioshock Infinite seems to take lampshading to the infinite degree. While we all enjoyed the “A man chooses” Andrew Ryan mid-game climax of Bioshock which appropriated the troubling relationship of players and develoeprs, Infinite seems to gorge on this. The whole parallel universes thing is screaming about each different players (or playthroughs?) all having the same, yet different game. It was too much. I wanted them to focus on making a coherent story which wasn’t full of “wha- that doesn’t make sense” and less of the grand statements.
Oh no, I knew you were thinking more about the more general review cycle with Binfinite.
(I just really like typing “Binfinite” sorry)
And yes, I agree. The game is really kind of eating itself at the end, isn’t it?
That was glorious, and also the greatest thing ever in the history of things. You have won the internet again, HM.
The first hour of Binfinite is great (except for the chair part, can’t argue with that), and then it all collapses. To this day I shrivel a little when I consider they had $175 million to make this game and that’s what they came up with.
Wait a minute… didn’t God do it in Proteus?
I kid, I kid. : )
Hey Steerpike, hi! No one can ever accuse you of hyperbole, not with modest, reserved statements like “greatest thing ever in the history of things”. Thanks 🙂
On our podcast I think I said something like “Bioshock Infinite the notgame would be good” and I meant that. To some extent, it’s beautiful and beguiling world is polluted with shooty gameplay.