entertainment
Bioshock Infinite’s Difficulty Could Hurt So Good
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20 January 2012
If you’re playing Bioshock Infinite‘s brand new “1999″ mode, get ready to die and to die a lot. “There are games saves,” said Ken Levine, Irrational Games Creative Director, “and you’re gonna f-cking need them.”
Irrational Games, the studio beyond the latest Bioshock game, announced 1999 as a throw-back, uber-hard mode meant to appeal to hardcore gamers nostalgic for the punishing difficulty of classics such as Contra orGhouls’n Ghosts.
The mode will test players by shortening the health bar, creating tougher enemies, limited resources and ammunition and creating permanent in-game consequences for player decisions. These tweaks are more than simply amping up the difficulty, with experiences and features players won’t endure in a standard play-through regardless of the difficulty level.
The Bioshock games are strategic first-person shooters with sci-fi elements such as other-worldly powers and special abilities which players need to cultivate and develop. In most Bioshock games you can switch your specialties mid-game (don’t like using pistols? switch your development over to shotguns). In 1999 mode, there’s no going back. Players will have to think about how they want to play the game (offensive? sneaky?) and what skills they’ll need or they could be facing death a lot.
That’s not a good thing, according to Irrational Games. There is an actual “Game Over” screen where the player has to start from scratch, there’s no candy-coating death with extra lives and restarts. Sound cruel? The mode was borne from a survey that Irrational Games posted online asking fans what they wanted to see in the game:
“I’m an old school gamer,” Levine said. “We wanted to make sure we were taking into account the play styles of gamers like me. So we went straight to the horse’s mouth by asking them, on our website, a series of questions about how they play our games. 94.6% of respondents indicated that upgrade choices enhanced their BioShock gameplay experience; however, 56.8% indicated that being required to make permanent decisions about their character would have made the game even better.”
Are you excited to try the incredibly difficult 1999 mode in Bioshock Infinite or does it sound like more pain than pleasure? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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