Hoofd

An interesting point that smacks of the 90s but judging by its thin content it would have served better as a short film.

This movie has a distinct corny family programming from the Eighties or Nineties feel to it with low-logic writing and goofy plot devices. One particular example of the many dated tropes in this film is a kid that's a little on the heavy side delivering the comic relief, and doing this by acting inappropriately towards women, what everyone in the movie seems to think is normal. The datedness continues by ignoring the history of Native Americans, you know, the original, historical inhabitants of the area? Which would have been quite fitting and easily achieved. Instead we get some hyper-aggressive cavemen. It's not all bad and it sure has some interesting moments that kind of make you want to keep watching, but that just reminds you that the film should have spent a lot more time in its cave preparing before emerging in 2020.

I can just suffice to tell you this film has a low-budget/student film feel in all of the movie's aspects (writing, editing, flow), so you'll need have patience with everything as you watch.

I guess all positive reviews (e.g. Rotten Tomatoes) seem to keep this in mind but this is not made clear, which has most likely lead to these (in my eyes) problematic recommendations.

If you are expecting a mature or commercial film like I was, move on, as I can tell you I went in with that mindset and was quickly bored here.

This movie is something for people who normally hate sci-fi and enjoy moronic, ham-fisted metaphors and unlikable characters.

This was a pain to watch.

It's a total insult to people dealing with alcohol dependency, by treating complete memory loss and narcolepsy(?) as regular signs of alcohol use and playing them as jokes. "Oh silly, goofy Gloria got super drunk again and wakes up in the middle of the street, tee-hee! she forgets everything, ha-haa" Seriously, this woman has some serious neurological issues if these are actual symptoms. She needs help. More likely, the creators have a middle-school level of understanding of the real world.

The characters find out that it's actually them controlling the monsters laying waste to Seoul. And what do they do? Hang around in a bar and talk a bit. Also, oops, Gloria kills 200 people. Total bummer! Anyway, beer anyone?

The Main Bad Guy does a complete 180 and turns from caring friend to that guy from the Shining, because ... beers?

The relationships are allowed to become incredibly abusive even when no dependency justifies this. A side-character (who Gloria randomly spends the night with. Drunkenly? Hard to tell in this movie, so who knows?) is a total wet blanket and doesn't lend a single hand when Main Bad Guy friggin assaults Gloria but instead just pouts around. The Main Bad Guy bullies everyone into submission. Are these people 10-year-olds without their parents present?

At the conclusion Gloria tells Main Bad Guy this is all happening just because, wait for it, he "hates himself" ... and Gloria murders him in total cold blood in return...! What a lovely moral conclusion, everybody! Smiles all around!

I could go on an on on this "The Room" of Godzilla-movies.

Do you want a drink? YES PLEASE

I don't think this is a bad game, nor did I not enjoy it. I just don't think that deserves the pedestal it's currently standing on. This includes the Burial at Sea DLC. Played on PC.

Part 1: STORYTELLING Firstly, the antagonists are never developed properly. Try to answer yourself: who was Fink exactly? More equally shallow characters follow, making you not care whether they die or not.

Secondly, contrary to what you might think, there are no real choices or forks in the storyline. Perhaps this is supposed to fit the deterministic theme of the game or something, but it feels a bit odd when in-game choices are offered a couple of times when it turns out that they don't actually change very much or nothing at all.

Thirdly, this linearity is made worse by the environments that offer very little interactivity and are populated with NPC robots that will spit out only one or two different lines of dialog. In comparison, Metro: Last Light really beats this game at creating environments that are 'alive'. In Infinite, only the beach scene seems to match this level.

A fourth issue I had is with the superficial representation of racism, and to a lesser extent the Mary Poppins-like poverty. You could say this fits the game's cartoonish theme, but if it wants to be taken seriously, and you'd think it would after daring to use a heavy issue as racism, it should really try harder. These evils are often much more between the lines than this overly simplified and obvious way of showing it. Had only a little subtlety been used, a lot more could have been done with this theme instead of ending up as irrelevant window dressing.

Fifth: the ending. The long time it takes to wrap up the story and the detour via Rapture, does not speak well for the game's own ability to properly convey a well-paced storyline. Worse, the twist ending just made me shrug because of its cheesiness and nonsensicalness. Veteran science fiction fans wont be impressed by the parallel dimension stuff, especially when you see how little is done with this element in the gameplay. More about this later.

Part 2: GAMEPLAY Firstly, no quick-saves! Usually, nowadays a well-made checkpoint system is also acceptable, but the respawn solution in this game removes the challenge from the firefights and only succeeds in drawing them out. You will most likely die a lot, as some enemies break your shield in a single strike. This can become quite frustrating, as respawning and restarting the fight like nothing happened is a common event and breaks any continuity or flow. The firefights are overcrowded chores as you're often dealing with many enemies at the same time. The bulk of the enemies is just guys with guns you pick off from a distance, and so, story-wise, it does not really matter who they are, red or blue. I just wanted to get the fights over and get back to the story. And that final level with the air ships? Ugh! Secondly, the vigors. If they're supposed to be the core of the Bioshock gameplay, why are they then, after their stunning introductions, often so lackluster? There are many questions left unanswered. Where do they come from? Why does (almost) nobody else use them? The vigors just make the game feel like a lazy carbon copy of the first games. But at least this was 'fixed' in the DLC.

Thirdly: Elisabeth. Although her presentation is beautiful, she doesn't add anything new to the gameplay. Plus sides: you don't have to baby-sit her and she supplies you with goodies. That's about it, and even this sounds more innovative than it really is: to make things easy for the programmers, the game actually freezes for a second while she throws you something. She will only offer an item only once, and if you're too late, tough luck! She spots enemies for you, which is pretty useless. The 'locked safe' challenges that are far too easy and disappointing. In the end, you could compare Elizabeth's performance with that of Alyx Vance's in Half-life 2, which was made in 2004. Glad Bioshock caught up with the times. Anyway, the greatest fault is that besides the scripted cut-scenes, she actually ends up doing hardly anything interesting with her space-time-bending abilities! It's hard to believe such a total waste of opportunity in a game environment. You'd think she could come up with some fun ideas here, let's see: open a portal to deep space or deep sea? Introduce a storm? Wild animals? An on-storming train or crashing airplane? Why only the same old boring guns and hooks?? Other annoyances are, for example, the 2-weapon limit, meaning running out of ammo constantly and being unable to use your favorite, (upgraded) weapons. Also, you spend a lot of time looking through containers and bodies for items, quite a boring chore. Could this not have been made a bit more interesting? A final insult is the half-assed clothing item upgrade system that is never even addressed in-game.

The Burial at Sea DLC attempts to fix some of the issues in Infinite, such as explaining the parallels between vigors and plasmids. Part 1's story works well as a prequel. It also reminds you that the Infinite setting just isn't as compelling as Rapture. Sadly, the gameplay is just as bad as Infinite's. Part 2, however, again hits the sweet spot of the first installments of Bioshock. Even so, the storytelling is limited by the 'press button to hear next part of story' technique at the end. Gameplay-wise at least, part 2 is how Infinite should have been.

In the end I sort of liked the story and enjoyed the production quality, but disliked the gameplay. Perhaps if the gameplay displayed in the trailers had made it into the final game, it might have been as innovative as the first game was.