I’ve been stuck a good many times at certain games, and not even at the final boss levels. To the point I was so frustrated I almost gave up, or did give up with a couple games.
I think you, and others in this thread or the Game Room in general, helped prep me for that final battle. And yeah, I was kind of in the mood to just kick some digital ass.
And it’s all about the prep work, too. When I’m playing, I often remember the wisdom that @ParallelLines once imparted: ‘lick the walls’. Words to live by! Leave no digital stone unturned.
I just finished replaying on Hard difficulty and I think I understand it a bit better. The “Patriot” robots do most of the damage so they’re the #1 priority to destroy. The gun barges are actually relatively easy to destroy with an RPG (for example), so it’s probably not worth wasting Songbird’s attack on them.
It definitely helped that I had the shirt that gives 3 seconds of invulnerability after jumping off a Skyline. You can be basically permanently invulnerable by just jumping on and off repeatedly!
I made a top priority of taking out the Patriot bots too. My go-to strategy for dealing with Patriot bots early on in the game was to hit them with the Possession vigor, making them work for me taking out enemies, and it also lets you get behind them so you can shoot the vulnerable gears in their back. I consider the Possession vigor, like the Hypnotize Plasmid in Bioshock 1 and 2, to be probably the most useful of the Vigors / Plasmids. Instead of just temporarily disabling the thing trying to kill you like Shock does, it makes them useful and stops them from shooting at you for longer than Shock, even after you upgrade Shock.
And the giant flying murder bot known as Songbird does a lot of heavy lifting in the final battle. @Mahaloth , did you make generous use of Songbird when you played? I just sicced songbird on anything in the air the second Elizabeth said it was ready again, especially zeppelins.
Possession (for mechanical enemies), Devil’s Kiss (for crowds of weak mooks) and Bucking Bronco (for incapacitating tougher mooks) are my go-to Vigors.
Yeah, I did use Devil’s Kiss a lot too, and upgraded it twice. After upgrading it, it seemed to be pretty effective against tough enemies as well.
I didn’t really use Bucking Bronco much, except to try it out when I first got it. Maybe I’ll give it more of a try in a future playthrough. At some point I’d like to try a speed-run on the hard level, ignoring the voxophone recordings and the silly story elements as much as possible and concentrate just on the battles.
I found it useful against enemies with RPGs, flak guns, the crow guys, etc. who need multiple shots to kill. The upgraded version works on multiple targets and lasts for a long time (and it’s very cheap to use). You can also lift a target and use gunfire to push them off of Columbia which means they’re basically doomed.
So, I’m going to make one more post about Bioshock Infinite…
Despite my not really liking (to downright hating) the ending, I wasn’t quite ready to give up on the Bioshock Infinite world, and I hadn’t decided on a new game to move onto yet. So I noticed there is DLC content, and I’m giving that a try now. I’ll do a quick review of each piece of DLC content:
Clash in the Clouds
Basically an arcade-style shooter in the style of the main game. I tried this for awhile, but without having any story or real quest objectives at all, it got boring fast and I gave up on it. It would be a good training ground for someone who wants to start playing the main game-- it’d bring them up to speed on the weapons and general game mechanics, especially the skyhook stuff.
Burial at Sea, Episode #1
This was kind of fun-- it reprises the Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth characters from Infinite, but reimagined with Booker as a P.I. and Elizabeth as his femme fatale client, taking place in the underwater city of Rapture (setting for Bioshock 1 & 2) before everything goes to hell. So it’s cool seeing Rapture in all its ritzy late 50s Capitalist glory. Lots of amusing vignettes throughout, highlighting city founder Ryan’s particular brand of ‘Ayn Rand’-ish world view. Pretty quick gameplay, on the level of a longish quest, and fairly easy. A fun new weapon is introduced, but not until ep#1 is almost over. Combines the aesthetics of Rapture and the game mechanics of Infinite in interesting ways. The ending to this chapter ties it back to the plot of Infinite, and with an ending that I found as frustrating, confusing and futile as Infinite’s, if not more so.
Burial at Sea, Episode #2
More of the same as Ep#1, except this time you’re playing as Elizabeth, not Booker. And a version of Elizabeth without her unique powers, and ammo and resources are very scarce, so this ep rewards sneakiness and stealth over shooting and openly attacking. I’m only part ways through this one, so I have no idea how it ends, but I’m guessing it’ll disappoint me as much as the main game and ep#1 did. Oh well…this game has rewarded the journey, much more than the destination, for me at least.
This is one of the best games I’ve ever played, but I got stuck about 75% of the way through and never finished. Glad I missed a terrible ending.
Spouse Weasel and I recently bought a home with a finished basement. The dream was for us to both have home office spaces where we could game together, as it was impractical in the old place.
My friends, that dream has been realized. We are playing Grim Dawn just a few feet away from each other. It’s a great game so far, kind of the best of Diablos 2 and 3 mashed together. There’s also a cool devotion system where you can complete constellations to add to your skillset.
I know we’re ten years late to the party, but anyways. I’d take this over Diablo 4 any day. I’m a soldier. I tried dual wielding as a dial class for a while, but turns out you get killed less often when you use a shield. There are some cool shield skills to unlock so I don’t mind. I just wish they’d stop dropping amazing two handed weapons to tempt me to abandon the shield.
What I thought was brilliant about it is how the tone gradually gets darker and darker as you play. I had never played the other games so it was my introduction to BioShock altogether. I was so engrossed I barely noticed the feel of it change. “Wait. Am I playing a horror game?”
That was also my first FPS and I sucked it up pretty badly. It was that stupid battle where you’re on a ship and things are bombing you where I got stuck. I think they were blimps? It’s been a long time.
Same. It’s probably my favorite Diablo clone ever. I built a character around summons, so I was pretty much a walking army, and it was so fun. I still have it installed, I should launch it again soon.
I literally knew nothing about Gullah Geechee before playing that game, and the culture and traditions were interesting enough for me to take a deep dive into it. So amazing, and so sad that a rich culture is underrepresented so badly in entertainment.
I’m probably 80% through this. You spend your time doing the following:
going into dungeons that are like mini Zelda dungeons. Fights, puzzles, etc.
building up your relationships with people in town like you do in Persona 3, 4, or 5.
It’s a fun game. I’m getting a little bit end-game fatigue at this point, but I am definitely finishing it. It’s going to be about a 20 hours game. I thought, for some reason, it would be more like a 10-12 hours game.
I just finished a short game called Farewell North about a woman and her dog exploring the Orkney islands off the coast of Scotland. A lot of magical things happen to help solve puzzles and to explore her past. It was very sweet.
