Finite Shock

A Bioshock Infinite review, as will be obvious to anyone who continues to read this post...

Anyway, still figuring out how I'm going to format this thing, but given that it's going to be my opinion and impressions of the game, not a thorough description or recap of the plot.

Anyway, the opening has little in common with the majority of the game, although it does establish the Luteces and their confusing banter, which makes a little more sense towards the end of the game. While it's made very clear that you must succeed or face dire consequences, the most prevalent theme related to the player character (Booker DeWitt) is that of guilt over past actions. You don't find this out right away, rather your first experience is the whole " the South will rise again" attitude of the inhabitants of Columbia - which is a flying city held up by science-magic (quantum physics is the new magic, it seems). I initially thought (and was somewhat correct) that the theme of the game would be an examination of the cult of the USA, as "founding fathers" are worshipped by the locals. There is even a quote from the antagonist (Comstock) that "no animal is born free, except for the white man": subtlety in action. While this theme does carry through most of the game, it wanes in influence towards the later stages to make way for alternate realities and time travel. Like I said, science-magic.

Aside from this, most of the game is plot driven - go here, do this, go there, shoot things, run around, throw magic at people. Most of the game has you "escorting" Elizabeth, the girl you were sent to retrieve. I say "escorting" because you mainly follow her, she even runs faster than you do. And unlike the usual escort mission in games, Elizabeth is entirely immune to damage and enemies don't shoot at her. So in that regard, the game separates itself from the pack by not punishing you for failing to protect your companion. There is also a fair amount of self-awareness in the game, something of a hallmark of the series, that draws attention to the lack of real choices in the narrative. Highlighted in this case by the "infinite" in the title, there being infinite possibilities, but of course not displaying all of them to the player.

Speaking of choices, there were only a few here, unlike the previous titles which had a cumulative effect over the course of the game (which will be discussed in a different article I have planned). Your only choices are who to target at the raffle, which pendant to give to Elizabeth and whether or not you kill Slate after he requests it. Otherwise you really only choose how to engage in combat, whether to mainly use guns or vigours or some combination of the two, or to just swing your sky-hook around and carve people up. Having only played through once, I mainly focused on guns, which is done in a rather old-fashioned run-and-gun style most shooting games avoid these days, mainly because it's rather bland. But at least it's not some cover-based shooter that would be equally bland in gameplay. You're limited to only two guns at a time, and two active vigours, but at least you can always swap vigours around. This makes the weapon upgrade system a little useless, as you'll always need to pick up other weapons which may not have been upgraded. Either that or you can spend your money on ammo every chance you get. I didn't, but that's because I wanted to try the upgraded guns, and that costs a lot.

Well that covers story and gameplay, though not as thoroughly some readers might prefer. So I'll follow up with a simple "what I did/didn't like".

I liked the design, rather futuristic looking for 1912, but that was obviously intentional. Bright and colourful for the most part, getting darker as the game progresses, and eventually the nice looking city becomes cracked and ruined as revolution hits the streets. I liked the self-awareness, considering that most of the game is combat in various shooting galleries, the game introduces you to the combat controls by having you visit carnival shooting galleries. And the explicit reference to the previous Bioshock games was neat.

I didn't dislike much of the game, mainly just some little annoyances. It seems to be more linear than it's predecessors, which is saying something. And the few choices you can make have more obscured outcomes than the prior games as well. Even though I made a separate post about achievements, they have become somewhat integral to the way developers build their games - and here, the collection achievements bugged me because I thought I was quite thorough in my exploration, yet I failed to complete any collections. And I missed quicksaves the entire time I was playing this. Checkpoint saves on a PC game? Really?

Well there, not quite how I imagined the review might turn out, but the game wasn't quite how I imagined either. Perhaps it could have been more detailed, but I can't retain details of gameplay for all that long, so I'm left with impressions, which I have passed on here. Plenty of other places are discussing the game in more detail and laying out more of the plot/story. If you want the game ruined for you, go read them, of you want a recommendation, play the game, it's fun for the most part.