A few months ago, Bioshock Infinite was all over the place on websites, in stores, or in magazines and gained excellent praise in its reviews. Yet, since the game has come out, Infinite has essentially fallen off the planet in comparison to the overall hype it had leading up to its release; it seems to have lost a fair amount of steam and attention that the original Bioshock was able to maintain for years. Does that indicate that Infinite is lacking in quality? Having just finished the game after the hype has gone down, it's safe to say, it may not be quite as influential or surprising as the first one, it may not be the next game to deserve the perfect scores, but it still manages to succeed in other areas where most other games, including the original Bioshock, are lacking.
Story
Infinite’s story is perhaps the part of the game that deserves the most attention, but should be the least disclosed. A great deal of what makes this game worth playing is its story and, for those who haven’t had it spoiled for them yet, it’s in your best interest to stay in the dark about a lot of it until playing for yourself. This isn’t just for the sake of inevitable twists, but for the sake of wanting to learn more about the world and making the experience more interesting. If you are already well-informed on what Infinite is about, you may be less-inclined to seek out the recordings and clues along the way that would improve your overall experience. The sense of discovery is so important in telling a story in video games and it often gets overlooked, and while this may not be on the level of Dark Souls when it comes to discovering details about the world, it certainly helps keep the world itself interesting. So anything in this review regarding story will remain relatively vague for those reasons.First of all, the story of Infinite comes across as a richer and deeper story than was achieved in the original game, albeit at the expense of atmosphere. The original Bioshock’s strengths were in the mystery of discovering what happened to the underwater city of Rapture and who was involved. The rest of the story was dedicated to building atmosphere and describing how the city and its inhabitants functioned at the bottom of the ocean, while occasionally introducing some interesting characters to shake up the experience. So much of the first Bioshock was dedicated to building this wild and outlandish city that you could easily get lost in it and want to find out more about the city as it worked. For this reason floating city of Colombia never quite reached the intriguing level of ominous mystery that Rapture had.
Tastes for the environment aside, Infinite still feels like it comes out as the stronger title. Infinite deals with ideas and themes much larger than the ones realized in the original. Theories and ideas about different dimensions, the impact of particular choices people make, racial inequality, misguided religious zeal, the butterfly effect, etc. all make their way into the plot. For the most part, the game succeeds in telling an interesting story with these themes. The reasons the story succeeds is due to the pacing and, most importantly, the characters.
If there is one thing about Bioshock Infinite that it does with its characters right away, it's let you know what their goals and motivations are. The villain’s, the hero’s, and the foil’s are all laid out within a few minutes of being introduced, and as the story goes on, the player gets to learn the impact of those desires and why those needs are not so simply fulfilled or may cause trouble for everyone down the road. Of course, some of these details are saved for later to help add to some mystery or depth to the character, as well.
The main character Booker already appears as a troubled soul with several of the typical character traits writers use to make their characters have some level of depth: alcohol, debts to repay, the fact that he’s the only person on a suicide mission, and shame he has for what he did while in the military. Some of the questions about Booker are never quite answered, that seem like either careless omissions or intentionally left out for the purposes of possible DLC in the future. Unanswered questions can add some extra mystery to a character, which can help keep people interested in what makes up the man or help give people to keep thinking about the story to make sense of it. However, some of these questions are tied so closely to the plot and the whole reason he’s doing everything, it seems like an answer most people would like to know.
The primary villain, meanwhile, is pretty straight-forward from beginning to end. His goals and desires come across very clear at the beginning and all that ends up changing by the end is what he is willing to do to achieve his goals. He comes across as the typical religious zealot villain who has grand ideas that are about as misguided as his methods; there are plenty of things that he says or are illustrated about him in how he treats minorities and the rest of the world to make him despicable. There are the occasional details that make him out to seem like a Hitler of that era: willing to do horrible ruthless things for the sake of accomplishing his goals that he believes to be pure and good. He is a true sociopath who has been maddened by the wrong guidance and will stop at nothing to achieve his dreams of “purification”. Yet, there is some mystery about him that leads to the discovery of what brought him to that way of thinking, which is perhaps the main detail that helps make him such an interesting character.
There are other villains that serve as little more than checkpoints to the main story. They have their own stories to tell and are used to tackle some of the heavy themes of the game. They illustrate how power can so easily corrupt, or how quickly revolution turns to discrimination within the minds of those who have been oppressed, but they come across as side-quests and roadblocks to the main issue at hand. Once their parts of the story are over, they are quickly forgotten in favor of the main villain. This would be less of an issue if the game was longer and more time was paid to give those characters an impact after their plots were over. They aren’t necessarily poorly done, they just aren’t as interesting as the rest of the game’s characters.
Finally there is the foil, Elisabeth. She is the one with whom the player is meant to sympathize the most. Her character-type is: the young princess who has never seen outside her castle and is unprepared for the horrors of the real world that await her. She is the innocent “lamb” who is forced to grow up quickly in the face of this adversity. It is her innocence that clashes directly with the guilt Booker holds and serves to change him in the long run. She may be an archetype, but this doesn’t make the story less enjoyable or Elisabeth’s problems less moving—she ends up being a lot more likeable and endearing than countless other characters like her in movies and games. Part of the reason she ends up so likeable is the change that she goes through as a character. She has to endure a great deal of pain and her innocence is somewhat lost as a result. Yet, perhaps what makes her the most endearing and likeable of all the characters, is how determined she is to succeed.
It makes it easier to relate and sympathize with characters when they fail or discover something new about themselves. By giving them a goal early on, it helps make the player more invested in the goals of the characters. The determination of the characters makes it easier to go along with the story’s intended pace, which is can be exhausting at times. The action sequences with the shoot outs help propel the pacing and gets the momentum of the story flowing. Occasionally this is broken up by the gloomy sections heavy with dialogue and tension to give players a breather and build atmosphere. Sometimes it succeeds in establishing some real tension during these moments, but that is mainly due to clever methods of changing the gameplay around. The moments where it fails are where it shows something horrific or tries to change the atmosphere drastically without involving the player. For instance, a moment that requires a player to sneak around an area in order to avoid a combat scenario that is a difficult uphill battle will make the dark and haunting hallway far more tense than simply dropping into an empty area with a few jump-scare enemies. There is nothing to build up anymore and the attempt at tension is wasted by having big action sequences just moments before.
All of this may sound like a lecture in game design and story-telling, but it simply a few observations on how the game's story felt by the end. It is commendable that so much focus was paid to the story, how it was told, and the use of intelligent characterization, considering stories in video games are rarely given such a treatment. It's a difficult medium for which to write stories on that level and has only gotten more difficult to do so as expectations and hardware has changed. There are many different mechanisms working at the same time when making a video game, so having just a good story isn't enough to make it succeed. It still has to be fun, and, for the most part, Bioshock Infinite manages to do so.
Gameplay
Infinite is a first-person shooter, and a rather basic one at that. It's not the twitch/precision-aiming shooter commonly associated with games like Call of Duty or Battlefield. Infinite, in terms of its shooting, has more in common with Halo. You can aim down the sights of your guns for more precise shots, and getting headshots is certainly a factor when it comes to the combat, but you are able to make it through much of the game via shooting from the hip and spraying the room with bullets. The gunplay is rather forgiving, and with the addition of "vigors," you are well equipped to deal with a majority of the combat scenarios the game gives you.If you played the previous Bioshock games, you'll feel right at home jumping into the combat of this one. In addition to the various guns you can find, you also gain access to Infinite's version of the Bioshock staple: plasmids. "Vigors," as they are called here, are your magic skills that allow you to do various creative feats while in combat. You can fire them off in tandem to your guns and unleash a fury of destruction in front of you. At least, that is the theory. Each one uses up its own amount of your magic points ("salt" as it's called) when cast, and some are far more useful than others. It seemed like the first Bioshock had far more original skills that were better spread out in terms of their uses and creativity. While no vigor is useless in this game, the cost and reward of some are simply imbalanced. By the end, only 2 of the vigors ended up being primarily used; both, essentially, did the same thing in terms of incapacitating, but since they were so cheap, there were the most suitable for the job.
There are ways for you to upgrade this skills as well as your guns, similar to the first game. The upgrades are specific to each vigor and weapon and you will never have enough money to pay for every upgrade, so it caters directly to your playstyle. A small touch in the presentation was lost in the upgrade system as the original Bioshock showed a sort of cosmetic change to your weapons when upgraded, but that's the nature of being able to pick up any gun you find on the battlefield as opposed to carrying a weapons cache in your pocket.
Finally, there is the sky-hook system you use to traverse the city in a fashion that resembles riding a roller-coaster. It's an exciting system and once you get the hang of it there are creative ways you can use it to explore the city and gain the advantage in a fight. There are several other systems in place that you can use to your advantage in combat like gears and tears, but should be left to the game to explain as they are not quite as necessary to explain here. What is important is how the game feels. For the most part, the combat is fun and the exploring of Columbia using the sky-hook system is entertaining.
The places where it fails is when there is a mad rush of seemingly endless opponents along with a particular type of enemy, called the Handyman, that seems out of place. He is essentially, the "big daddy" of the game in that he is much stronger than the rest of the enemies and has many unique abilities at his disposal to defeat you. This wouldn't be a problem if he felt more balanced to suit your skills. He is simply, too good and whenever he showed up, pandemonium ensued. The big daddies of the previous games worked as the much stronger enemies because much of the time they weren't immediately hostile, allowing you to plan your attack. Plus, they were often at odds with the other enemies in the area or could be used as such so the chaos of battle would remained controlled so long as you could focus on either the mob or this creature. For Infinite, the Handyman is able to gain ground against you very quickly, throw you all over the place, and cause massive amounts of damage, all while the other enemies are rushing toward you. If there was a way to distract them allowing you to use them to your advantage or give you a window long enough to deal with the mobs and plan your next attack against them, it would make for a much more satisfying experience. Instead, their presence is one dreaded so much, it makes the thought of a second playthrough seem much less appealing.
As mentioned in the previous section, there are moments where the gamplay evolves a bit and introduces new mechanics, bringing a respectable change of pace and playing off the plot in a creative way. The stealth segment was strong and the moments that required using the skyhooks to escape the mobs to reach the higher ground were truly exhilarating Some of them come so late in the game, it almost seems like a bullet point of an ability/set-piece, but they still bring a welcome change that keeps the gameplay fresh to the end.
Presentation
There is a particular art style to Infinite that is aesthetically intriguing. The developers made the right choice in choosing to make the place and it's people resemble a cartoonish type of realism. It's difficult to describe, but it manages to stay away from the uncanny valley by choosing to showcase its own style, rather than trying to dive headlong into a "realistic" view of a floating city and its inhabitants. There are some textures here and there that do the presentation no favors, but there is clearly an attention to detail in how the city and its people look that only furthers the quality of the game's story.The city and the changes it undergoes are beautiful to behold. Witnessing the propaganda that appears as both background details and informative news reels adds a nice touch to the immersion. The movements of the buildings as they interlock with one another to connect road and districts is intriguing at the very least. The presentation can quickly pull you into its story and even feel a bit of sadness as the immense and awesome city of Colombia is torn apart.
The sound production is top notch as well with fantastic voice acting, sound effects, and music. The characters and all their complexities on paper wouldn't mean much if their dialogue wasn't delivered properly and, thankfully, the acting here is terrific. The use of old terms and phrases of the era add to the immersion too. There are few moments where the voices don't feel like they properly match the characters speaking or the script comes on a little thick, but that is more of an issue of the script itself and not the ones reading it in this instance.
A great deal of thought went into the soundtrack as well. Familiar songs like Amazing Grace are remixed and repurposed to help tell the story and set the tone. Sometimes it even gives an ominous meaning to a song that is meant to be so uplifting. Even the procedural programming helps give the score a much more in depth touch to the game. By the end of the game, the short sharp swell in the music that occurs each time an enemy is eliminated gave a Pavlovian response of satisfaction and craving for the next battle.
The points where the presentation falters are in those subtle moments where you can feel like the game is calling back to the developers' previous games: Bioshock and System Shock. These aren't terrible faux pas in the experience, just occasionally noticeable. Early on, there is a moment that felt like a flashback to survival horror, but the atmosphere was not nearly as dense or ominous and as a result, came off a little cheap. It wasn't until much later when the game introduced stealth segments that the game felt like it was able to achieve the scary and intense atmosphere it was looking for.
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