That's Bioshock Infinite down, on to Blue Dragon

Courtesy of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, I got through most of Bioshock Infinite, and polished off what I'm willing to play of it last night.  I made it to the "final fight" in the game, which, to me, was marred by a pair of game design sins... I mean, I understand, given the story, why they did what they did, but fundamentally shifting the structure of a game in the closing minutes of the final act just doesn't sit well with me.  For any of you worried about spoilers for a nearly 8-year-old game, kindly skip the next paragraph.

The story is fun enough, involving both time travel and traversing different alternate histories, but the expected "climax" of facing down the prophet Comstock is rendered inert when you basically bash his brains in on a baptismal font (yeah, this game has a lot of interaction with Christian imagery, as is appropriate for the time period it inhabits).  The game could have continued from there basically straight into the post-final-fight story (which I watched courtesy of YouTube... it's quite nice, shows the appropriateness of the game's title, gives the original Bioshock a cameo moment, and reveals that the player and Comstock were the same person, just down different probability paths, making several apparent falsehoods on Comstock's part actually ring true, from a certain point of view).  However, that would have lacked "punch", so they decided to throw in an extended raid from the Vox Populi trying to take down the airship you're currently on, where they're targeting a generator of some sort that you have to defend.  Sounds standard enough... except that, throughout the game up to that point, they made a point of telling you that you don't have to worry about defending anything but yourself.  Heck, I didn't even see the "health bar" for the generator until nearly the end of my first attempt at the raid, as it sat in a corner of the screen that didn't see any similar use up to that point.  And of course, when you fail, there's no handy mid-fight checkpoint, it's back to the beginning.  They also introduced a new mechanic in the fight, tied to an already-overloaded button on the controller that handles weapon reloads, receiving healing items/ammo from your companion, and asking your companion to effect changes to the battlefield.  Two tries was plenty, and I dropped the controller and resorted to YouTube after that to see the ending.

So, all in all, I'm glad I took the time to mostly play through the game.  Now it's on to Blue Dragon, a peculiar little JRPG I picked up some years back.  As a rule, I'm not a fan of non-tactical turn-based combat, but this title has some peculiarities that interest me.  Will it hold my attention, or will I move on?  I like my odds, but time will tell.