When "Bioshock Infinite" was first announced, I was instantly disinterested. Being a die-hard fan of the first two games, I was disappointed that the next installment would not be a return to the iconic underwater utopia of Rapture, but instead some city in the sky called "Columbia". For me, the change was as drastic as setting the next Harry Potter installment on the moon! But, after reading several positive reviews, I finally relented and gave the game a chance. My reaction after finishing? "Eh", basically.
The game does have visual appeal, Columbia is very beautiful to look at and does have the charm of an early 20th century American city. Protagonists Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth are also likable characters, although Elizabeth's voice sounds a little valley girl. I was expecting her at any minute to blurt out a "like, totally" or "duh". No, my main problems with the game stem from two areas: the story and the game-play.
Let's start with the story (spoilers in this paragraph): it starts out with Booker DeWitt being sent to Columbia by two mysterious figures to rescue Elizabeth from the city's religiously fanatical leader, Zachary Comstock. Okay, so it's basically a "rescue the girl, kill the bad guy, live happily ever after" story, right? Well, it STARTS down that path, but then halfway through the game, you learn that Elizabeth has a superpower that allows her to open portals to alternate realities (the game calls them Tears) and this is where the story goes crazy. The second half of the game is a muddling plow through alternate universe after alternate universe where some convenient event that didn't happen in your world happened, completely negating any consequence or purpose of doing anything because "oh, well it all worked out in Reality #178 so we'll just hop over there." And this all leads up to a completely confusing ending where (MASSIVE SPOILERS) Booker DeWitt was actually Comstock the whole time and Elizabeth was his daughter, and he had somehow been sent back in time, or forward in time (I dunno, I got confused) to rescue her and right the wrongs in his life, and that the only way to truly stop Comstock was to kill himself before he was able to make the choice to become the monster he eventually did, so he allows Elizabeth to drown him, causing her alternate versions to fade away before the credits roll. Wow, talk about a mess. In my opinion, the simple "go to the city and rescue the damsel in distress" angle would've worked fine without all this confusing inter-dimensional crap.
Okay, now on to problem #2: the game-play. Well...if you love shooting things, you'll love "BioShock Infinite" because that's pretty much all you do from beginning to end is shoot things. Granted, BioShocks 1 and 2 had their fair share of firefights, but at least there was enough variety to keep it interesting. You could do other things like hack machinery to fight for you, you could sneak past certain enemies, you could employ advanced weapon strategy. Here, there's none of that. You literally just plow through with the strongest gun you can find and just blow everyone away. There's no strategy, you can't hack the machines, and with the exception of one level towards the end, there's no element of stealth because as soon as you poke your head around the corner, every enemy in the room is instantly on you. What's worse is that these fights are constant. The first two BioShocks knew when to give you a cutscene or a moment where you're doing something besides fighting to cool you down, but here it's literally: firefight, firefight, brief dialogue, firefight, firefight, plot point, firefight. After a while, this cycle just got old and repetitive.
In summary, I guess this wasn't a terrible game, I did find myself at least enjoying it enough to play through to the end. The problem is that when you include it in a franchise like BioShock, fans expect the world from it and if the game doesn't deliver, it's a letdown. If this was its own separate i.p. just called "Infinite", then it may have more favor in my mind because as a shooter game, it's not bad. As a BioShock game, it's a major disappointment.
The game does have visual appeal, Columbia is very beautiful to look at and does have the charm of an early 20th century American city. Protagonists Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth are also likable characters, although Elizabeth's voice sounds a little valley girl. I was expecting her at any minute to blurt out a "like, totally" or "duh". No, my main problems with the game stem from two areas: the story and the game-play.
Let's start with the story (spoilers in this paragraph): it starts out with Booker DeWitt being sent to Columbia by two mysterious figures to rescue Elizabeth from the city's religiously fanatical leader, Zachary Comstock. Okay, so it's basically a "rescue the girl, kill the bad guy, live happily ever after" story, right? Well, it STARTS down that path, but then halfway through the game, you learn that Elizabeth has a superpower that allows her to open portals to alternate realities (the game calls them Tears) and this is where the story goes crazy. The second half of the game is a muddling plow through alternate universe after alternate universe where some convenient event that didn't happen in your world happened, completely negating any consequence or purpose of doing anything because "oh, well it all worked out in Reality #178 so we'll just hop over there." And this all leads up to a completely confusing ending where (MASSIVE SPOILERS) Booker DeWitt was actually Comstock the whole time and Elizabeth was his daughter, and he had somehow been sent back in time, or forward in time (I dunno, I got confused) to rescue her and right the wrongs in his life, and that the only way to truly stop Comstock was to kill himself before he was able to make the choice to become the monster he eventually did, so he allows Elizabeth to drown him, causing her alternate versions to fade away before the credits roll. Wow, talk about a mess. In my opinion, the simple "go to the city and rescue the damsel in distress" angle would've worked fine without all this confusing inter-dimensional crap.
Okay, now on to problem #2: the game-play. Well...if you love shooting things, you'll love "BioShock Infinite" because that's pretty much all you do from beginning to end is shoot things. Granted, BioShocks 1 and 2 had their fair share of firefights, but at least there was enough variety to keep it interesting. You could do other things like hack machinery to fight for you, you could sneak past certain enemies, you could employ advanced weapon strategy. Here, there's none of that. You literally just plow through with the strongest gun you can find and just blow everyone away. There's no strategy, you can't hack the machines, and with the exception of one level towards the end, there's no element of stealth because as soon as you poke your head around the corner, every enemy in the room is instantly on you. What's worse is that these fights are constant. The first two BioShocks knew when to give you a cutscene or a moment where you're doing something besides fighting to cool you down, but here it's literally: firefight, firefight, brief dialogue, firefight, firefight, plot point, firefight. After a while, this cycle just got old and repetitive.
In summary, I guess this wasn't a terrible game, I did find myself at least enjoying it enough to play through to the end. The problem is that when you include it in a franchise like BioShock, fans expect the world from it and if the game doesn't deliver, it's a letdown. If this was its own separate i.p. just called "Infinite", then it may have more favor in my mind because as a shooter game, it's not bad. As a BioShock game, it's a major disappointment.