BioShock Infinite Review
Phrases like “most anticipated game of the year” are often tossed around with little to no meaning. Especially as we near the end of the current console cycle, the endless number of iterations are all hyped as being the most amazing version ever. BioShock Infinite was different from the start.
The original BioShock, released in 2007, was Irrational Games’ most ambitious project ever and they nailed it out of the park. Its Metacritic score remains one of the highest ever. Sadly, the franchise was whored out to 2K’s B-team for a lackluster sequel. Meanwhile, Ken Levine and the rest of the Irrational crew were hard at work on what would become BioShock Infinite.
At first, the title seemed like an interesting choice and was the cause of some skepticism. It was branded as a new game – distinct from the previous BioShock games but it was still labelled as a BioShock game. The inevitable question was if the game is new and different, why don’t you give it a new name? A very plausible reason could be that they wanted to ride on the previous success of BioShock. Thankfully, that answer couldn’t be further from the truth.
On its face, you can immediately see why BioShock Infinite might retain the BioShock name. In-game menus are very similar, many sound effects are still the same, combat still involves managing guns as well as pseudo-magical abilities, and you can still run around collecting voxophones. All of these elements make sense to keep from the previous titles. They all worked well and there was no reason to try and reinvent the wheel.
Shortly after the game begins, you find yourself transported to the Columbia and you couldn’t’ ask for a better introduction. As soon as you arrive in the city you must walk through a welcome building where you are surrounded by powerful imagery and music which welcomes any newcomer. Then, you walk out of this building to feast your eyes upon the floating city of Columbia.
One of the very insightful improvements found in this game is that you enter Columbia in its heyday. In the original Bioshock, you show up to a Rapture which has already decayed significantly from what it once was. With BioShock Infinite, when you enter Columbia it is full of bright colors, happy people, and it exudes a sort of carnival-utopia vibe. Witnessing the city in its prime allows you to more fully appreciate the significance of its decline.
Plasmids have sort of returned but have been renamed as vigors. They have all been replaced by different abilities that very in their level of fun and usefulness. While a lot of the original plasmids seemed to provide abilities that are pretty vanilla (like shooting lightning or fire), the vigors in Bioshock Infinite try to be more unique in how they behave. Unfortuneately, very often they only seem to be useful when you move to harder difficulties. On the standard difficulties, any gun you use will have a much bigger and quicker impact on taking down enemies.
Thankfully, the terrible enemy spawning from the original BioShock has been relegated as a thing of the past. They days of clearing a sealed room, turning around, and guys spawning behind you are over. That has always been a terrible mechanic and only serves as a smack in the face reminder that you are playing something that is very man-made. BioShock Infinite doesn’t have any of these types of spawns and enemy AI has gotten a significant facelift as well.
There have been other improvements to combat as well such as the addition of the skyline rail system. These rails really turn combat into a 3-dimensional affair as you soar up and down through the sky at high speeds. While the running around shooting aspect of combat feels very familiar, new gameplay elements help add diversity to the firefights. Combat still doesn’t feel flawless, but it is a lot of fun.
And then there’s Elizabeth, whose significance as a side character in both the narrative and actual gameplay has few rivals in the history of gaming. She plays an incredibly important role in the game and serves as proof of the benefit of non-rushed development schedules. Early on in development there were much smaller ambitions for Elizabeth’s role in the game. The longer time frame that Irrational had to work with allowed them to adapt to both fan interests as well as their own ideas.
Optional objectives provided a constant inner struggle. They pretty much always entailed some degree of backtracking far enough that enemies would respawn. I would be so excited to keep the game going and find out what happens next and the thought of putting in all of the time necessary to be a completionist daunting. On the other hand, deciding to press forward instead of backtracking for the extra bits gives me this gnawing feeling that I will regret my decision. I look forward to the day when developers figure out how to incorporate completionist-type objectives that don’t make you feel like you have to go backwards to get them.
What makes everything come together so well is the quality of the writing. There is so much going on that is so interconnected but it is perfectly metered out to the player bit by bit. Ken Levine is a master at his craft and I will eagerly anticipate anything he works on in the future.
The narrative is so good, I kind of wish we got more of it. BioShock Infinite is definitely a FPS game with interspersed dialogue. Without knowing exact line counts, the amount of dialogue in the game must surely be dwarfed by more narrative-heavy games like Mass Effect. I don’t wish that BioShock Infinite was like Mass Effect because both games are fantastic at what they do, I just wonder how much more could have been done if BioShock Infinite’s narrative had much more space to fill.
The game isn’t perfect, but it comes closer to the goal than anything in quite some time. Playing the game is just such a great experience – the characters, the setting, the battles, everything. Regardless of your platform of choice, games can easily be categorized by which console generation they were part of. Years from now, BioShock Infinite will be on every list of the best games of this generation.
After completing BioShock Infinite, you’ll realize exactly why this is still a BioShock game. If one could wish where the future would take us, this game would serve as a beacon. In the earliest days of electronic gaming, the question that was always asked was “what can be done?” This mantra has continued to beat in the hearts the vast majority of developers today as the focus of most games remains almost exclusively on technical details: graphical fidelity, level design, mechanics, etc. With BioShock Infinite, Irrational Games has evolved to ask “what should be done” and gaming will never be the same because of it.