I was going to say replaying but I feel like that limits the question to games like Prey or Fallout New Vegas that have endings and games like The Sims 2 or Cities Skylines where you can play indefinitely end up excluded.
I’m not really referring to games like League of Legends where you’re coming back every month. More so games where you stop playing for an extended period of time.
Definitely Bioshock Infinite. It was the first Bioshock game I ever played and the story just wow’ed me, it quickly became one of my favs.
Now I just treat the whole game like a huge movie event, playing the game with my friends as we experience the story. It’s just something that i would introduce anyone to, even if they din’t play that many video games cuz compared to Bioshock 1 the action is a lot faster.
(Btw Bio1 is better in almost everything, love that game as well)
Do you have arguments to make against the people who hate Infinite’s story? I’m undecided, I’ve heard their opinions and I’d like to hear an opposing one
I actually enjoyed the story. Some of the themes and motifs were heavy handed, but that’s par for the course. Honestly, the biggest issue with the story is that players have come to expect a big plot twist. Bioshock 1’s twist hit first-time players hard, so later games have tried to replicate that. But the issue is that it only hit players hard because they never knew it was coming. They only remember it because it was truly shocking the first time you played through it.
So now players have come to expect that from the series, which means the series can’t replicate it; When players are looking for a big plot twist, you can’t really hide it anymore. Because as soon as you start foreshadowing it, players catch on. And if you’re too subtle with your signals, then players who have been looking for it will say that doesn’t make any sense.
Most of the story criticism I’ve heard fall into a handful of categories:
Overall plot seeming convoluted and hard to follow (which is understandable when you throw both time travel and parallel universes into the same story)
Whitewashed portrayal of racism used for story aesthetics
Ending feeling confusing and/or unsatisfying
Certain story moments feeling out of place and/or undermining things that other story moments set up
I haven’t seen much in the way of players expecting/predicting plot twists.
I haven’t read many arguments made by people who hated Infinite’s story but I loved it because it does one thing really well: making shit up as you go. Which is why it works so well when I let my friends play it as movie. There are very few ways to not have fun when beautifully interesting things like, “He doesn’t row”, lighthouse rocket chair, the bird or the cage, Quantum Entanglement, a star wars reference!
No matter what arguments someone may have against the story, it’s hard to deny that it oozes fantastical details, mystery and lore.
There’s a childlike wow-ness to the game because it doesn’t pursue multiverse in the way we are so used to: on the nose. It lets the visuals of infinite lighthouses speak for itself.