It seems like all anytime anyone mentions the combat in Infinite they say how much they disliked it because they thought it was repetitive, simple, and getting in the way of them getting to the next story beat. Although it wasn't my favourite part of the game, my favourite parts being the story beats, I had a really good time with the combat. Am I the only one?

I very much enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed the combat as well, which is high praise coming from me because I generally have trouble enjoying first person shooters.

No, I liked it, but not enough to want a DLC of just that.

and fuck your thread title, ugh

The combat was solid, but the game would be just as good if it wasn't there at all. At a point, I was hoping for no more action sequences and just wanted pure storytelling (and running away from songbird).

I enjoyed the combat more than the story.

I thought it was pretty damn good.

I liked it, but I found there was too much of it and I actually preferred the weight of the combat in bioshock more.

No, you're not the only one. I enjoyed it but next to the looting it was the least enjoyable aspects of the game.

I liked it, but I still recognize it was weakest part of the game.

No I liked it.

I enjoyed it. It wasn't mindblowing, but it was definitely a step up from the blandness of most FPS'.

It was alright, but I found it to be a pretty big step down from BioShock 2. Much less variety of enemies and combat options at your disposal.

I found that I was already bored with the combat before the game was over, whereas I enjoyed both prior BioShock games to complete them multiple times.

I preferred the more tactical approach the original Bioshock offered, but Infinite's combat wasn't bad by any means.

The reason I didn't like it is because there was no "consequence" to the combat.

No matter how much or little ammo I wasted, no matter whether I used vigors or not, no matter how much health I lost, I could easily refill all my items to max with loot from the ground and that would be that. Death would cost me a little money, but that's pretty minor...

Obviously this is just a preference; I'm sure plenty of people do not like having to worry about ammo or health, so this setup would be ideal for them. And there's plenty of games that go to the other extreme, like Rogue Legacy and MOBAs where every hit counts.

Nope ... I enjoyed it a lot :D

Am I the only one who doesn't ask Am I the only one questions?

But to answer your question. Just because something is plain and simple and could do with some serious work doesn't mean some people won't enjoy it even if they are absolutely aware it could be much better. I enjoyed Castlevania: Lords of Shadow's combat after forcing myself through it to prepare myself for the sequel but that doesn't mean I didn't notice the absurd lack of different kinds of enemies and the fact that almost every enemy felt the damn same to fight against, same auto attack and all the bosses had the same aoe you had to jump over and the dodge roll made you invulnerable for half a second even if you got hit while rolling you didn't take damage. That said I still had fun spamming rolls and smashing buttons which is why I am hoping LoS 2 fixes these problems... doesn't mean the combat was anywhere near close to "good" and leaves it as a very subjective Bad and most people will not enjoy because of such, even if a minority may have fun with it.

@juzie: Maybe you should create a thread with that question

I very much disagree that the game would have been better without combat. You might as well say the same thing about other story driven fps'. Just because the plot/characters/everything are really great, doesn't mean you can throw away the combat. If you actually imagine what infinite would have been without combat, it would have not been very enjoyable. A lot of the character emotion presented by the story is heavily anchored in fighting people. It would completely change the narrative

Half Life 2 has an amazing story/setting, should the gameplay be cut from that as well?

I loved the combat in Infinite but the Horde mode DLC is not what I'm looking for. I've never really cared for Horde mode in any game.

No. No matter what the question, YOU ARE NEVER THE ONLY ONE.

Unless it is "Am I the only one that is me?". Then, yes, you are the only one.

Speaking as someone who literally just finished it for the second time because of all the talk surrounding its gameplay... yes, I enjoyed it.

I do have legitimate criticisms, though.

For starters, the difficulty isn't all that great. Bumping this game up to Hard just means that you're spending more time behind cover waiting for your shield to refill, so fights just end up being a whole lot longer and the Handymen end up being a whole lot more frustrating. The system they have in place for dying is just one big crutch for badly balanced difficulty.

I can only hold two guns. This remains baffling to me. How is it fun to drop the weapon you want to keep in order to pick up the one you need, use it, and then track down the one you had? It's not. It's annoying. If you're going to do this, though, at least let me hold a reasonable amount of ammo, especially if you're going to throw bullet-sponge Handymen at me.

Did I mention that I really hate fighting Handymen? Here's why: They take tons of ammo to kill and they never get out of your face, two things that when combined make for terrible mini-bosses in first person shooters.

The enemy AI is terrible, especially when paired up against something like Rage. They don't use cover, they don't do anything intelligent at all. Often, they just stand there. They don't really have many animations either, also unlike Rage where shooting someone in the knee makes them nearly fall over and limp along. The shooting isn't particularly satisfying at all.

Salts, Vigors, whatever, aren't useless, but I rarely find myself using them often and I only used Bucking Bronco and Possession. I barely touched the other ones. I use possession more as a way to stop something from shooting at me while I shoot at it, instead of using it as a way to turn things against my enemies.

All in all, the combat holds up to modern standards and is pretty fun, but it doesn't do anything terribly interesting except for the skyrails. Vigors? Sure, whatever, Bioshock 1 had those. Strip away the story and all you have is a mostly run-of-the-mill FPS with a few skyrail sections to separate it from the pack. I'm not asking for it to be revolutionary, but I would like it if critics wouldn't praise it as if there's nothing wrong with the gameplay.

No I thought it was solid. You just got to mix things up while playing it and not just use, say, one weapon and one plasmid the whole game. If you do that it's great.

There are those games and there are games like infinite. Its not very fair to compare different types of games, especially when attempting to prove an argument

As for infinite having no "consequence" did you beat the game? If so, the whole point of infinite is that choice and consequence didn't matter (to that story at least). It was trying to subvert the expectation that a game like that needs choice (levine very much regretted how he handled endings/choice in the original game). When you add those types of things, the story usually suffers greatly for it.

Off the top of my head - 90% of the enemies are uninteresting copy and paste gunners aside from that you have overtuned Handymen and Uncle Sams that you rarely even see. The gun mechanics are pretty much point and click. Over half the vigors are just reskins. Bosses...what bosses? Half the game is run and gun the same enemies until your shield is low then go take cover and regen it, rinse and repeat. There is a hell of a lot of issues but that doesn't mean it's impossible to enjoy (see my earlier post in the thread).

I thought it was kind of bad. The shooting never felt impactful, and most of the weapons didn't feel right to me. Basically, everything felt like a peashooter and that's no fun. Plus the upgrades never changed the look of the weapons which was one of the coolest things about Bioshock's weapons.

when you use a mouse and keyboard, the action in infinite is amazing.

It was great, but i played on hard first so maybe that's why. It should have been the default settings.

I also played with a controller on the PC so maybe people don't like the mouse controls, i don't know it's kinda baffled me since it came out. Only thing i didn't like was the patriots

I thought it was good. Getting head shots from the hip at long distances was really satisfying.

I really enjoyed it but after revisiting Bioshock 2, I noticed that two had way better combat than Infinite. It was still very servicible up until that point though, especially with all of the vigors.

@murderslingshot: No, theres probably like 5 other people that did also. The same people that enjoyed the combat in The Last of Us.

Plenty of people liked it..it's not great, but on the harder difficulty I was forced to switch up tactics, which kept things interesting. What I did not like was a couple of very frustrating difficulty spikes, like the first fight against the siren.

I really enjoyed the combat also, I don't really understand the hate it gets.

Oh God, yeah. That part was pretty damn annoying, even on the Normal difficulty.

I've said this for a long time now, but boss battles that involve a constant swarm of respawning (or... reviving in this case) enemies can fuck right off.

I really enjoyed the combat but what I didn't like was the game showed a few brief moments of zipping all over the place on skylines having Elizabeth make turrets and cover, hopping from roof top to roof top. However there were only 2, maybe 3 instances of that kind of level design. It seemed to me that most of the game should have been like that. So I guess it isn't the combat that I had a problem with so much as just not letting you do the combat the way that felt best.

I liked it for the most part. It was at its best when skylines were involved, flying around on those things, opening tears and whatnot was a blast. When things got close quarters it wasn't as fun and yeah the spoilered block above sucked hard. That bit was not fun. Overall though I liked it.

I like the combat a lot. I thought it was a big improvement over the combat in 1 and even 2. The weapons felt way better, and the tears added some interesting variety. My favorite parts were probably the big outdoor areas with the skylines.

I didn't hate it, but it wasn't the greatest thing I have ever played. I was doing it on hard because I found normal too simple, and ended up just reverting to head shots all day.

It has flaws, but I liked it overall. It's great when developers try to differentiate the combat in FPS games with mechanics that - in a reductive perspective - are something other than point at the guy, pull trigger, and do damage. That being said, there are so many ways they could improve the current set of vigors in the game.

@colourful_hippie: Sorry man. Bear with me, I don't post a lot on forums so I don't know the etiquette for good thread titles.

Am I the only one is a giantbomb maymay

@yummylee said:

I think I enjoyed it more than you, but you do make a good point, Bioshock 2 had quite a bit more variety, and maybe a little more depth for customization too.

It's freeform in a way that was really impressive.

No, but after playing around a third of the game on 1999 mode I had enough.

yea the combat was pretty good. its tighter than bioshock 1, but wasnt quite as tight as you'd really want it to be.

I thought the combat was pretty fun when I played it on Hard. It is amazing on the 1999 mode. I am terrified during Handymen battles and you really have to use the sky rails all the time and never stop moving. I haven't beaten it but it's difficult and challenging and there's always just enough supplies to scrape by.

It's really well balanced.

It was fine, there was just TOO much of it.

I cheesed that graveyard fight by hiding in a mausoleum in the corner where I could see the siren coming, then getting off a couple of shotgun blasts into her when she approached. Rinse and repeat until she died. The respawn enemies wouldn't go back there either, but the fight still took ages. The worst part of the game for me.

The Handyman enemies were a pain in the ass, too. Fast for their size and an area of effect attack that's tough to avoid, as they can jump right on top of you. They are also bullet sponges, which is always a joy!

There were a couple of annoying boss fights. Outside of that though, I also really enjoyed it.

It was a nice change in this era where shooters are frequently dominated by the military shooter. The skylines allowed some awesome mobility and the openness of the areas and combat fit the game setting perfectly in the same way that the tight corridors and very cautious combat encounters in the first Bioshock fit the Rapture setting.

There were also tons of weapons and vigor options that allowed you to play the game how you wanted. I never used the shotgun until I got the water vigor then when I could yank up to 3 enemies to me I was a walking death machine with the shotgun. After hearing everyone talk about the game it seemed like everyone had their own equipment set, and the diversity was amazing. That to me shows a well designed system.

One caveat though is that I played with a mouse and keyboard which I feel went better with the frantic pace of combat. Trying to play with a controller was not nearly as much fun.

I felt like there was too much random corridor shooting and not enough setpiece arenas with skylines and multiple levels. And I don't recall ever fighting on the very top of a zeppelin, which seems like a real obvious missed opportunity.