Review: Bioshock Infinite
In August 2007 Ken Levine, via his studio Irrational games (then under the guise of 2K Boston) and the publisher 2K released Bioshock. Arguably one of the best games of the now ending current generation of consoles, Bioshock was a game with a distinct story to tell and enough deep and meaningful mechanics to tell that story in a new way. How many games have used the idea of logs and messages to tell a story not of your character but of the world he inhabits?
The beauty of Bioshock was not just in the tight shooter mechanics or the destructive glee of throwing a literal hornet’s nest at your enemies. It was also the way in which those additional logs and other tiny details made Rapture feel as realistic and believable as any graphical improvements could have.
A few years later Irrational were totally absent as 2K Marin took the helm for Bioshock 2, which was unfortunately more of the same and nothing else. It felt flat as a sequel to Bioshock and had this awful tacked on multiplayer that just didn’t work, Bioshock seems to be a single player experience through and through.
Now, six years after the original Ken Levine and Irrational are back at the helm and they’ve once again made a beautiful and extremely well executed game that will leave you scratching your head for quite some time.
You are cast in the role of Booker DeWitt, a private investigator who is dropped off at a Lighthouse to make his entrance to the city of Columbia. Columbia being this games version of Rapture, only rather than an underwater city, Columbia is high in the clouds. With a seemingly simple task ‘Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt.’ The girl in question we quickly learn is Elizabeth, a Rapunzel of sorts kept locked away in a statue of herself and guarded fiercely by a creation known only as Songbird. Sounds simple right? Oh, there is one other thing, Elizabeth’s father is Zachary Comstock and Columbia is his city, and when I say it’s his city I mean that quite literally.
What follows then over the next eight to twelve hours is a game that tears through the city of Columbia, and at the same time tears through your mind like it’s a sheet of paper in a shredder. The cluster headaches this game can give you trying to figure out the intricacies of the main plot are enough to turn your brain inside out if you’re not careful and I have seen more than one 2 or 3 hour long podcast devoted solely to understanding what was actually going on and what it all meant. Bioshock Infinite is clearly then a game with a story to tell.
Elizabeth wielding a book, clearly a woman to be feared. Credit: Irrational Games
In terms of game play nothing here is particularly ground breaking, those videos from E3 a few years ago showing off what Elizabeth can do have been toned down dramatically and although you spend the majority of the game with her at your side, she never feels like a burden. As you fight she continues to explore, safe in the knowledge that her father’s goons will not hurt her. She is able to throw you coins and ammo which can prove vital in some of the more chaotic parts of the game. It keeps the game moving nicely and often comes at a point where you are ducking behind cover and are down to just a few bullets. This presents an unusual and unexpected downside however, one of the best moments of any game is the point where you are low on ammo and surrounded and have to use your skill to find the solution, those are the moments in gaming everyone remembers. The first time they defeated Bowser in a Mario game, defeating the Nihilanth at the end of Half Life; those moments where you stared death in the face and won. Bioshock Infinite is missing that moment in order to drive the story forward and for me it really suffers as a result, there wasn’t that single moment of game play that made me think ‘holy crap I’ll remember this.’
The weapons feel good to shoot and the powers are always fun to use, which, since this is a first person shooter underneath the dense plot, makes it above average if nothing else. I’d rate it as better to play than the original game, but not by a huge amount.
The difficulty is finely tuned although the game seems determined to test your limits at some points, I know of several people who’ve turned the difficulty down at a couple of key points but aside from those difficulty spikes there’s a nice curve there with the action usually ramping up at just the right moment. It is worth noting however that there is a hidden difficulty called ‘1993 mode’ which is allegedly as difficult as they were able to make it, it’s something I’ve yet to experience but even on the lower difficulties some enemies are maybe too tough for their own good. They’re mostly used as mini-bosses (except when there are four of them) but it doesn’t change the fact that the Handyman in particular is not usually much fun to fight simply because he’ll eat all of your ammo and neutralize your ability to do the most fun thing in the game, ride the rails.
Your melee weapon is the Sky-Hook, as this is a city in the clouds and in some cases individual buildings are on platforms all their own there is a system of railings in the sky that the Sky-Hook allows you to ride on, when it is in play the action is frenetic, fun and utterly brilliant. Every time you see a railing you know you’re in for a fight that requires you to think ahead and plan for the enemies whilst also going from one side of the area to the other in a matter of seconds. The Sky-Hook segments are the best bit of the game and if I’m being perfectly honest, if you took away the story and gave me a gallery shooter with the Sky-Hook as the major mechanic I would buy it in a heart beat.
Bioshock Infinite is an all in one deal, an amazing story, good gameplay, and stand out mechanics that would sell a game all on their own merits. If you’re worried about it being a throwaway shooter then don’t there is enough story there and if you search for it you will surely be rewarded (early in the game there was a moment that I just loved, but that also makes no sense given the time period of the story – towards the end even that was explained) the surface story is confusing but a lot of the depth comes from the Audio Logs that are scattered throughout. At the same time if you’re concerned about the dense story a huge amount of it is skippable and you’re left with a perfectly functional shooter that is more than enough fun to justify a purchase.
Bioshock Infinite may be the game of the year, but it is definitely not perfect. I think it’s the way that the story seems framed deliberately to confuse you, or the way that the shooting mechanics are not quite the best in the genre, maybe it’s an intangible sense that something’s missing. Whatever it is, it’s just enough for me to say it’s a possible game of the year but at the same time give me that feeling that something better is coming. Maybe we’ll know more in a few weeks once E3 is over. Until then, get this game and play it. Trust me, it’s absolutely worth it.
8/10
