izigame.me

A large extra helping of Bioshock Infinite's middle of the road combat absent any of the story and in a buggy, poorly balanced mess with a very painful and unintuitive grinding component. I thought this would be a fairly innocent bit of extra playtime as at least the story wouldn't be up for butchering. As a series known for its storytelling Clash in the Clouds would surprise me by weaving a new tale of rising frustration.
Eh, what can I say? Infinite didn't have bad combat but it didn't have the best and pushing that system to its limit damages my fondness of the game as the seams rip. We never needed to see the Siren again, that confusing mess of infinite enemy spam that seems almost entirely unresponsive to anything you do until that HP hits 0, Handymen are great enemies for a different game being too mobile and punishing for how slow and clunky Booker is without a skyline to grab or a stunlock vigor to spam, I much prefer the underwater closed spaces of Rapture to the open skies of Columbia simply due to the drastically reduced odds of sniper abuse in wide open spaces minus cover and so on. Seriously, Infinite's combat benefits a lot from absence making the heart grow fonder. Some of the combat scenarios seem untested as I'm not sure how fighting a Patriot and a Handyman while a second Handyman spams their ranged attack from a centralized location seemed reasonable. The number of times I've spawned into snipers shooting me before my screen brightens and gives me vision is greater than 0. Or spawning adjacent to heavies that kill me before I can move. Instant death if you're knocked out of bounds or into terrain by Handymen. We already have the fall protection warp, can't extend that to a knockback spamming enemy? Not enough time to test for it? This came up in casual play within 2 hours for me. Spawning with movement disabled. Last enemy tags not activating. Spawning in after a death and the wave ends because it forgets to keep the current enemies up, but that saved me a Siren fight so good bug? Is Clash a product of rushed design or deliberate malice for "hardcore" players? I guess it's setting accurate to be paying penance either way as you play through.
There are four arenas, you kill stuff, kill stuff and don't die, kill stuff in specific ways for cheevo hunting if you hate yourself, beat them all and post a high score and be Big Man On Scoreboard. Where it falters is that we're building this DLC on a shaky foundation. Infinite doesn't have the best visual or sound cues so you're constantly being attacked from behind or by enemies you can't see from above or behind or super far away(emphasis on combat cues, a lot of sound work is otherwise phenomenal), it has wide open spaces with hitscan enemies(so you're constantly being shot with perfect accuracy at all times unless you hump cover and even then), it has loads of interesting map verticality but unless you're hopping on and off a skyline ad nauseam you can't make much use of it and it compounds your more mobile enemies constantly flanking you, it has regenerating shields and a need to hide behind cover but if anything hyper mobile is up you can't stand still and if you neglect a single angle your foes never miss. The DLC isn't above starting you off surrounded or under fire. It's an extra fights DLC in a game where you're not built for satisfying arena combat.
Absent the meticulous level and encounter design of the original campaign the encounters grow to be irritating, a sentiment I shared near the end of clearing Hard in the original. Infinite depended a lot on great setpiece design so that combat flow didn't typically throw you into a meat grinder or make it hard to tell what was going on. I'd even say Clash has deliberately worse level design. Craft a vertical arena and then add skyline railings around it. Easy, right? Alright, put enemies on the raised parts with really dangerous ranged weapons and *remove* the skyline for that one wave so you can't reach them. Player didn't bring the right guns? Too bad. A few waves have more enemies than you can carry ammo for(thanks 2 Guns) and they tend to be conspicuously absent rift tears to pull in more weapons. The setups of the extra punishing arenas, the open air design of the stages and all enemy values seemingly set to high difficulty with hit scanners or even explosive projectile enemies that rarely miss suggests Clash was barely playtested before being shoved out the door.
And even that would be fine if it was a set of hard buckin' challenges for a bronco to overcome but Clash in the Clouds is obnoxious to the extreme. 4 arenas, 15 waves, 1 challenge per wave. If you die during a wave then tough luck, challenge failed. No problem you say, I will restart the wave. No you won't, Dimwit. Aspiring Dukes must restart and claw their way back to the exact wave they want for a chance to retry. Prophet help you if it is a tricky challenge with a limited window of opportunity. This is just a really obvious UI blunder to not allow individual wave selection, there's almost no resources at play that need to be preserved between waves other than a few of the rift tear pick ups. Your ammo and health are replenished between every wave!
What soured me against Clash the most was the bugs. Wave 15 of Duke & Dimwit ends with interacting with an airship engine after defeating the last enemy. There's no prompt for this so I thought it bugged out and I was stuck. Restart Checkpoint should restart the wave or put me in the armory between 14 and 15, right? Nope, all money earned lost and back to the Archaeologist hub. Fine, that one is on me. I finished D&D properly and went to Raven Dome. Die on Wave 15, spawn unable to move. Can't damage myself with my own explosive weapons. Can't use the skyline. Can't aggro the enemies with rifts, firing in their direction, etc, even when the combat music started. Only solution? Restart Checkpoint. The Airship engine was a small guidance failure as 29 times prior you'd just killed everything and waited to warp back. This was pure incompetence in design. Even if a bug is rare and unlikely to happen my inability to play wave by wave or reset a wave guaranteed my only option was to waste time and get screwed, not just for cheevo hunting but for regular intended play.
The only price I paid for Clash was $10-12 for the full season pass but as Burial at Sea left a bad taste in my mouth I guess that was a price too great. Look, I'm certain that if you absolutely adore the gun fighting in Bioshock Infinite that Clash can give you a ridiculous amount of extra playtime as you seek perfection. For me this was the third lump the Infinite DLC had given me in three days and a painfully buggy one. Pass on Clash in the Clouds unless you have an overwhelming urge to really tear into extra Infinite combat.