BioShock Infinite

This is what the game is all about.
Just kidding.

Continuing the praise that this game has endlessly been receiving, here's my BioShock Infinite... not just a review, but experience. Then again, maybe that would be better applied to the let's play videos I'm trying to make, but nonetheless, overall this was a pretty great game. I don't usually enjoy shooters, but I came close to loving this game as much as I fell in love with the Half-Life series.

While BioShock Infinite exists within the BioShock universe, the game's story has little to nothing to do with the first two games. The gameplay is even somewhat different, as BioShock drew on horror elements while Infinite draws on elements of adventure and perhaps fantasy, to an extent. Both are science fiction, but Infinite has more aspects of a fantasy to it, with a city floating in the sky and rifts, referred to ingame as "tears," to alternate dimensions and stuff. It's explained by science, but none of it feels like the full grounding of science in the original BioShock games. Then again, I haven't played the second and I played the first game years ago when it was released, so I probably have little clue as to what I am talking about.

The city itself is starkly different from Rapture. Of course, you can easily see the difference in how Columbia is a city in the sky while Rapture is a city under the sea. There is also a difference in society, as well as what the game draws attention to.

An evolved form of the Ku Klux Klan?

The city of Columbia is established around the mind of Father Comstock, the founder of this city and the "prophet" everyone seems to turn to for guidance, along with a vision he had:

"The seed of the Prophet shall sit the throne and drown in flame the mountains of man."

As you explore Columbia, you find this society based on "Christian fundamentalism and worship of America itself," thanks to Blue Highwind for being able to put this into words for me where I would spend hours repeating myself and not saying quite what I mean to say. This city takes the American racial hierarchy and blows it so out of proportion, you can't help but feel uncomfortable as you come across an African American, dressed in stripes and speaking nervously, offering you a soda. Or at the very beginning of the game, when you are given the choice of throwing a baseball at either the interracial couple or at the host of the fair celebrating Columbia's history.

The racism isn't limited to African Americans; it applies to basically every race that isn't White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, so the game doesn't fail to acknowledge the racism against the Irish that existed in this country as well. History is blown out of proportion, targeting Native and Chinese Americans at one point and picturing them as evil hordes of monsters, with a robotic George Washington prefacing each exhibit with a rhyming soliloquy.

Even with the terrors of the city's foundation, the environment is still very inviting and lovely with the detail. Straw hats, women with large feathered or flowered hats, men sitting in shoe shining booths, kids smoking cigarettes, red/white/blue colored banners and balloons, and double chaingun toting George Washington killing machines galore in the lively level design of Columbia.

I could go on about the wonderful design and art concept this game boasts, but I want to move on to the gameplay before my readers get bored. Now I know I said the game feels very different from the original BioShock games, but it still retains several elements. Plasmids are now vigors, "magical" abilities that allow you to shoot lightning or summon a literal murder of crows to attack your foes. While each spell has some uniqueness to them, there are several which more or less do the same thing. A lot of these spells stun your foes, leaving them open to a blast from the shotgun. Whenever I found myself in a closed space, I'd throw down a vigor and rush each enemy with a shotgun, blasting them out of my path. I found myself doing this quite often, and I was playing on the Hard difficulty. Of course, this technique didn't carry me through every battle. Every now and then, the game will throw a "hard-hitting" or special enemy at you to switch things up a bit, like a "fireman" clad in iron with a furnace on his back who throws bursts of flame at you, or the featured "handyman," an ape-like half-man half-machine abomination that hits hard and moves fast.

Honestly, the gameplay doesn't go far beyond what it really is: a first person shooter. Shoot and take cover, and you will surpass most of the obstacles in the game. Combine these with vigors and you are well set on taking on nearly every encounter. The challenge is reduced through the game's interesting death system, where you are immediately brought back to life and kept in the same battle. Enemies regain health and you lose some money, but there is no other consequence beyond that than just the annoyance of being in the same fight. There is a gameplay difficulty, "1999 Mode," where if you die with less than a hundred dollars, you are taken to the main menu and you'll have to start from the last checkpoint. However, the difficulty curve skyrockets there, as that game mode isn't meant to provide simple extra challenges.

That said, many gunfights get pretty exciting, especially when the environment utilizes the skyrails. Blue Highwind said that the AI isn't smart enough to use them, and while I cannot say that I experienced many fights on the skyrails myself, there were quite enough for me to believe that the AI can use them properly. Once I got Undertow, a vigor that bends water to either splash enemies back or unleash a tendril that pulls them to you, I encountered an awesome battle against a patriot, two firemen, and many soldiers where I was able to use Elizabeth, the girl that you're with throughout the game, to summon a Tesla Coil from another dimension and use Undertow to bring my enemies to the coil and get fried.

Ah, and this brings me to Elizabeth's powers: she is essentially a human TARDIS. For those unfamiliar with Doctor Who, Elizabeth can basically open tears to other dimensions and other times. This allows her to pull money, ammo, salts (used to fuel your vigors), and health out of thin air, much against what she says at some point in the game. Also, as for the summoning, throughout several battlefields there are tears that reveal objects from alternate dimensions that you can use to your advantage, from machine guns to cover to even a George Washington killing machine. This spices up some firefights and adds a level of fun that would've left me wanting even more out of this game by the end if this feature wasn't included.

Still, as I said, from a gameplay standpoint this is a simple shooter. I said I loved it about as much as I loved the Half-Life series, but the gameplay is nowhere close to being as innovative. So this is where the story comes in and completes the game, giving me the full experience.

I already covered some of the premise here by describing Columbia. The deal is Father Comstock, the "Prophet," is raising his daughter Elizabeth, referred to countless times as "The Lamb," to take his position of power and lead Columbia to destroy the "mountains of man." Without spoiling the game, I'll let you readers get an idea of what that means. Booker, the character you play as, is known as the "False Prophet," who according to Comstock is coming to take Elizabeth and "lead her astray," or keep her from fulfilling the destiny he set for her. Throughout the game, your adventure with Elizabeth reveals to her all the horrors kept hushed in Columbia, which of course reinforces her own desires that conflict with Comstock's. Through this story, Elizabeth develops so wonderfully as a character that it makes me wish to replay the game to see her go from being trapped in a tower without real experience of the world to... um, well to the decisions she makes at the end of the game, which I cannot say without spoiling the whole game.

There's not much to say about Booker. He's come to "find the girl and wash away the debt," to get Elizabeth and deliver her to somebody in New York to whom he owes some "debt." Other characters come in as well, such as the game's mascot, the Songbird, who was created to watch over Elizabeth and ensure she never escapes her tower. You never fight this massive robot bird, but at the end of the game you do share a moment with it during the gameplay that was pretty satisfying if a little anti-climactic. Elizabeth's relationship with the bird isn't too developed in detail, though.

Throughout the game, two snarky British twins, the Letuce Twins, pop up and aid Booker and Elizabeth. The game doesn't give all the details about them, but you can pick up audio logs from them that explain several things about them. They are the ones responsible for the technology that allows Columbia to float in the sky. Honestly, I simply liked them for their quirkiness and such. They finish each other's sentences, they speak in riddles sometimes, and, at one point if you attempt to shoot or hit them, they'll ridicule you for "missing." The bullets actually go right through them, for weird timey-wimey reasons I cannot fully explain without spoiling things.

We also have a Mr. Fink, who created the Songbird and several other machines in the game, most notably many of the enemies that you fight. He's mostly some background comic relief, with his overblown capitalist corporate monopolist persona and such... I cannot get into much detail because he is quite a flat character as well, even with an entire series of levels dedicated to him. But as I said, he's mostly just background comic relief and another antagonist to pose problems for you.

The story is pretty straightforward, you come to find Elizabeth and escape from Columbia and the hands of Comstock. However, an entire section dedicated to a rebellion of sub-ordinate groups draws out the story in the game's middle portion. I didn't really think of this as filler for the story to be longer, though; here we see the rise of an organization that I referred to as the Black Panthers, even though they don't just consist of African Americans. After a few weird trips to alternate dimensions, they become antagonists for seemingly no real reason, so after that point I just became annoyed with them and found myself wondering why I had to deal with them. At the end of the game, the fight comes to Comstock, and once you reach his "house," the story goes off the walls insane: very intense, very confusing, and very memorable. There are discussions all across the Internet trying to decipher what went on in the game's last moments. Just before the climax of the game, the game makes a small return to its roots of horror, and that was a lot of fun, it certainly kept me on the edge of my seat. And somewhere in the game's last moments, where the game goes insane, there's a little something many BioShock fans will appreciate.

At first, I had a hard time making sense of the game's ending, but after some thought and reading several discussions, I came to really appreciate the ending. The story as a whole is great, just some flawed moments every now and then. Elizabeth is the game's centerpiece, drawing much interest to how she develops as a character. Little moments like trying to skip rocks across water to failing at picking up a medicine ball to singing one of the game's recurring songs to a child further brings out the amount of attention the developers gave to her.

So while I was left wanting a little more out of this game at the end of the day, I still enjoyed it throughout and I will probably fondly remember it in the future. Hell, I am already playing the game over again for an achievement/easter egg/screenshot run! Also, on my YouTube channel, I plan to upload a playthrough of this game! So stay tuned for that.

Gameplay: 8

Design: 10 

Story: 9

Sound: 10

Replay: 8

Overall: 9.25

Edit: Added a replay value. Forgot to add that when I initially wrote this.