Overly-Extensive BioShock Infinite Review · 1:04am Mar 31st, 2013
I've never done a legitimate game review before, but Infinite was worth getting torn apart so I decided to give it a shot. That, and I'm procrastinating doing actual work, so... it's a win-win, really. Just keep in mind that this is all purely my opinion as someone who generally dislikes the first-person shooter genre, yet absolutely loves BioShock. It's a positive review, certainly, but the game is not without its flaws and faults, and I'd like to give those mention as well.
I'm not going to spoil anything, don't worry. I do appear to be something of a rarity because most people were confused by the ending, whereas I was able to follow it perfectly... so if anyone wants me to put up an explanation of what the hell just happened, I'm certainly willing. This, however, will make mention of the ending without revealing any details, so don't worry. I hate people who blow the endings off games as much as you do. Probably even more.
For those who don't like my wordy explanations of everything: in my most humble of opinions, Infinite has an arguably better atmosphere and setting than past games - I say arguably because all games play their respective settings to their advantage; the themes of Infinite are wholly incompatible with Rapture, and BioShock's themes would never work in Columbia. Plus, both are so imaginative and creative that it's hard to even pick a favorite. What's not difficult, however, is to say that Infinite's story and characters are drastically more engaging (with the possible exception of Andrew Ryan), while its combat and general gameplay, apart for a few cool party pieces, is drastically worse.
So, to kick things off, there's a really clever homage to the original BioShock - guy arrives at lighthouse, finds some snippets of philosophy (religious this time, talking about "rebirth" - one of the game's eventual major themes), board an implausible and anachronistic mode of transportation (this time a single-man rocket ship to replace the old bathysphere), and are whisked away to view some grand sweeping vista of the fantastical and equally implausible city we'll spend the rest of the game in. If you've not already seen it, then get a load of this.
The whole idea of Columbia being created as "the closest thing to Heaven we can manage," or a sort of "do-over" for a world which had succumbed to wickedness and sin, is really showcased well here. It's far more than "just" a flying city - just like Ryan built Rapture at the bottom of the ocean so that it could remain hidden away from the US, USSR, and anyone else who would judge it, this game's central antagonist Father Comstock has set up a flying utopia for spiritual and personal reasons far beyond "wouldn't it be neat if we made a city...but flying?" In both cases, they didn't start out wanting to rule a city of their own, and add the water/sky as a party piece; the location was deliberately chosen because of a symbol it represented, and those symbolic themes are introduced and reintroduced countless times over the course of the game so that the city truly takes on a character of its own. Even the song they've chosen to sort of "represent" this game, Will the Circle be Unbroken, is as symbolic as it is beautiful. Especially the choral version heard upon your arrival in to the city.
Give it a listen. It's bloody brilliant:
Our first glimpse of Columbia is very different from when we first saw Rapture; we're given a view of the city at its absolute peak, followed by a tranquil stroll through Comstock's bastardization of Christian religious themes and his own cult of personality, instead of being ambushed by splicers five seconds after arriving in the decrepit shambles of a utopia which has already fallen to shit. It's a device I think works exceptionally well, as does seeing Columbia in its prime and watching it fall as a direct response to the player's actions. I certainly applaud the creators for not going all the way into reskinned-BioShock territory by having Columbia already in the toilet as we arrive.
The beginning of the game gives a solid look into Columbia's culture; Comstock has taken Christianity, or at least some nugget of it, and combined it with god-like reverence of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin. Then he's named himself Prophet, with grand visions of how the future will play out (some of which comes true). This has led to him basically being worshiped as a living god by the people. We see everyone going around in the beginning of the game, living idyllic Midwestern American lives in their city on the clouds. The game hits so many different clever and unique concepts all at once - the buildings are each independent units capable of flight, and they regularly dock with the flying streets and hub sections to do business. We actually watch this happen a couple times, and the city's shown to be highly modular and broken up. Even some of the streets aren't always connected to each other, and the city's various "districts" appear to all fly clustered together while remaining distinct.
I really like the decision to move to this setting; it's bright, colorful, idealistic, and yet no less sinister than Rapture once things kick off. This works in the same sense that evil demonic clowns do - you take a very nice image, and then make it try to kill you, and it becomes three times as scary as an acid-spitting monster with huge teeth because it violates all our expectations. The developers play with weather and use that to create moods; the lighthouse is in rain, but Columbia flies above those storm clouds and is experiencing a bright and sunny summer afternoon - yet another symbol for how it is a tranquil "heaven" to contrast the "Sodom below." But as things shift into progressively darker themes, the city flies through clouds itself, and the atmosphere changes to reflect what happens in the story. One notable moment near the game's middle has you crossing a narrow bridge to his huge imposing structure with giant Mount Rushmore busts of the Founders' faces beneath it - while in the middle of a thunderstorm firing lightning everywhere. I don't mean to put Rapture down for any of this, because it truly was a very exciting and interesting place to explore, and the fact that it was perpetually locked in the oppressive darkness of the seafloor was also a fitting symbol for the game's tone. But when deciding to tell a story in which a bright and sunny metropolis is slowly dragged down to ruin, I struggle to think of a better setting than Columbia. Besides, we'd already spent two big games looking at Rapture; it was time for a scene change, regardless of what themes and messages they wanted to stick in this game.
Now for my first complaint: Columbia changes for the worse as you play, where Rapture merely got stale.
In the beginning, we're treated to highly modular worlds, with buildings and houses and shops that fly away on a whim. It feels like every part of the city is distinct and independent, capable of going wherever it wants to at any time. Then, as you play, these worlds are slowly but steadily replaced for flying blocks of shops, and eventually flying districts. Pick up an entire city, strap some balloons under it and propellers on the sides, and you've got later-game Columbia. Early-game Columbia is an entirely better creature because it's dynamic and fluid and does things we'd never get from Rapture. A lot of the reason I fell so incurably in love with the game on first looks was because of those early gameplay videos showing independent structures and areas. Rapture was literally a late-1940s art deco metropolis copy-pasted into the bottom of the Atlantic - and that was what made it cool, because it had absolutely no business looking like what the leftist environmentalists keep telling us will happen to New York. Any respectable, realistic game would have made its underwater city look plausible by styling it after...I dunno, retrofuturist moonbases or something. But that's not Andrew Ryan's style! He's going to build New York underwater because he wants to, and it's going to work, damn it, because he represents everything human beings are capable of (and that's why he's awesome). By definition, that means the buildings are static; they're just anchored in the seabed instead of Manhattan Island.
Columbia, on the other hand, is aware that it has no foundation. It says "look, if the buildings are flying, why make them static in their flight?" and the result is tailor shops which have "arrival/departure" times instead of "business hours." That is cool. Later-game Columbia's "copy-paste 1893 Chicago onto a cloud" approach left a lot to be desired. I still find it fantastic and beautiful, and a couple scenes (visiting Shantytown and looking up at the factories, for example) are truly awe-inspiring. Hell, the whole game's beautiful, and a copy-pasted Sky Chicago isn't bad any more than a copy-pasted Sea New York is. It's just a disappointment when the modular architecture of the opening scenes was so much better. What if the bad guys try to stop DeWitt by smashing an apartment building into him, and he has to run away from it? What if they're on the ground floor of a tower block which starts falling out of the sky, and they have to scurry up to the roof before it dips below the street? There's so much potential in having every building independent of its neighbors, and they rarely take advantage of it except for visual showcasing in the opening act.
The problems get worse when you look at the actual combat being done in these less-incredible-than-they-could-have-been settings. I do approve of forcing Booker to carry only two weapons at a time, but the problem that arises is in how cheap these weapons feel most of the time. When you were blasting away at a speedy splicer with a tommy gun in Rapture, that scene felt intense and epic and powerful, despite it just being a one-on-one or perhaps two-on-one fight. Infinite hurls twice or three times the number of enemies at you, who are all of either the "not even a challenge" variety or the "hideously annoying and not even fun anymore" variety. Splicers found a happy medium, with Big Daddies an interesting break-the-mold challenge. Plus, you could just follow them around and watch them do stuff without the Daddies attacking on sight, and that was cool. This game introduces two sorta-kinda replacements for the Daddies - mechanized patriots and Handymen. Both are impossibly annoying.
Patriots are basically mechanized George Washington automatons who charge you with Gatling guns while shouting Comstock's religious/political propaganda. The game always reminds you to "SHOOT THE GEARS ON THEIR BACK!!!" because apparently that's not the most contrived video game enemy weakness literally of all time, but I've found that the revolver you get... maybe 1/3 of the way into the game can take them down with three or four headshots. It's actually harder to deploy a stun Vigor (plasmids - I'll get to those in a second) and run around behind them to fire at the gears than it is to peek out from cover and drain some shots into the head for the same amount of damage. Pointless and annoying enemy with a weakness that's neither fun nor even practical to exploit. Pass.
Handymen are the closest thing to the Daddies - big mechanized things that look like people, and have a big glowing heart on their chest you're supposed to shoot. Now, the fun part of the Daddies was how they were kind of slow and hulking, until they charged you and raped you up the bumhole with their gigantic drill. Handymen are powerful enough to take you out with a couple hits, shameless bullet sponges that soak up entire magazines of rifle fire directly to the heart without wincing, and are also fast enough to outrun all your attempts to flee. You can't even zip away on a skyline (more on them, later, too) because they're capable of electrifying them. I'd honestly rather the game spawned some enemy who came up to me, stole 70% of my ammo, and sent me on my way. They're not fun, they're not exciting, Vigors don't do shit to them, and I'd hate the entire concept of them even if they weren't the shitty replacement for vastly-better Daddies.
So... the enemies all suck. Literally every type of enemy in this game, I dislike, except for the really creepy guys with metal heads (you'll know when you see them) that appear in one single area late in the game. Even the boss fights (there's this one bit where a spectral witch sort of thing summons dead bodies and screeches at you in possibly the single most annoying sound effect I have ever heard in all my years of video gaming) seem to be designed to frustrate rather than excite. The only regular enemies I liked were in this one section where there's a street full of snipers trying to take your head off - I like sniper rifles a little too much, and if I hadn't just traded in my out-of-ammo sniper rifle for a shotgun a few minutes before (and subsequently had to counter-snipe with a pistol), that section would have been fantastic.
Vigors also suck. They try to be "bigger" than plasmids, doing more exotic things. Apart from the one that simply electrocutes people, they're all pointlessly elaborate. BioShock gave us a plasmid that had you snap your fingers and light whatever you were looking at on fire. Its clone in this game has you hurl a flaming grenade type thing, which almost always goes sailing right past the people you're trying to hit and blows up absolutely nothing. And without the ability to "store" power-up things (eve hypos in BioShock, bottles of "salts" in this world) and instead have to rely on what you find in the world... you can't afford misses like that. It's elaborate, exciting, and cool to watch... but the snap-bang BioShock plasmid version was infinitely (pun) more useful in combat. About the only Vigors I ever used were the electricity one, the fire one (rarely), and one that let you summon a horde of crows to swarm and devour your enemies. That was about all I ever found much use for, whereas I used BioShock's plasmids extensively... all of them except for one or two were critical components of my combat strategy. Furthermore, there are exactly two times outside of combat when vigors are useful to you, and while that's not necessarily a crucial thing, it does make the world feel less engaging. If we can't see why the vigors exist (who has use of a thing that summons deadly crows?) then it feels weird to me. Dead Space (odd comparison, I know) made a point out of having all its fantastic weapons be repurposed engineering tools, and that was cool because it fit the world. So what the hell are vigors? Plasmids had some use in BioShock... an exaggerated and combat-intensive use, like saying dynamite was developed as a device to pick locks, but a use nonetheless. Vigors seem utterly out of place in the world of Columbia, unless you're using them for slaughtering people. Which begs the question "why are they handing out a genetic mind-control device as free samples at the city fair?"
You also can't customize weapons beyond the cheapest (conceptually, not economically - these things are damned expensive), most basic of upgrades (damage +25%! Recoil -10%! WOO!). And none of those upgrades changes the visual look of the weapon. There's one that ups your machine gun clips from 35 to 70 rounds - and the clip looks identical to its former self. BioShock made the weapons change their look as you upgraded them, since you couldn't drop and replace weapons over time and thus that same pistol you get in the very beginning is the same pistol you'll use at the end. Not only were they more satisfying to shoot (and ammo was significantly scarcer, making wasted shots actually hurt), but they were more satisfying to upgrade. So points off for that, too. The only guns I really liked were the hand cannon (fitting that my favorite gun in both BioShock and Infinite is a revolver, but that tends to be the case with every FPS I play), the sniper rifle, and the shotgun. What's really funny is how towards the end they introduce all these crazy weapons and try to be Insomniac or something as far as outlandish weapons goes... and they fail. Badly. Sure, you could collect rare and expensive rapid-fire grenade launcher ammo that spews explosives everywhere and somehow manages to do very little damage per shot... or you could whack the guy with your shock vigor and use the half-second window while he's stunned to line up an easy headshot with your revolver. Cheaper, takes less ammo, and is faster. Why do the crazy weapons need to exist if the mid-game revolver packs three times the power of a charging rhino with 50 pounds of C-4 and a dozen Claymore mines strapped to its face?
Now for the good things about the combat.
Skylines are awesome. Unless you're fighting a Handyman, skylines are friggin awesome. One of my biggest hatreds of the FPS genre is that it rarely allows you to do anything "cool" with your character. Crouch, peek from cover, fire. Duck, reload. Or, charge into the fray because you're an insta-healing bullet sponge and waste everyone with a shotgun from close range. Call of Duty would bore the absolute shit out of me if not for the decent campaign writing and high production value with its cinematic action moments, and I was scared Infinite would fall into the same trap. BioShock kept things fresh by giving us plasmids and taking away our TARDIS ammo pockets, but even then its combat had a habit of slightly getting stale now and then because you still were fighting as a run-around character like in every other FPS ever; you just had snap-bang fire fingers this time. Skylines are integrated beautifully into the game and very easy to use, just point your crosshair at one of them, hit the jump key, and you're whooshing away on a one-man suspended roller coaster. Point anywhere on the ground to dismount, or highlight an enemy and kill him from above. With Skylines, they embrace their open-world, not-underwater setting and take advantage of all that beautiful blue sky they've given us. Cannot praise skylines enough.
Elizabeth is also quite interesting, not only because of her character but because she's one of if not the best AI companions I've seen in a game. Oh no, my health is low and since this game doesn't allow you to hold health kits or salts bottles, I'm gonna die! "Booker, I found health!" [Press X to catch health] and a medkit comes flying in to heal you. She's really helpful, and a good way of balancing out the lack of carryable health and salts. She doesn't always have something for you, and it's certainly possible to die, but she's good for just happening to find some ammo for the gun you're using just as you start to run low, or allowing you to keep up your chain of Vigor blasting by hurling a bottle at you when you need it. She requires no babysitting or protecting, is an absolutely critical part of the story, and is all around really fun to have with you. And if you're not in combat, she'll periodically pick up money for you.
What really sets her apart from other AI companions is how she acts outside of combat, though. She'll sort of run along ahead of you if you start going in the right direction, giving you someone to follow instead of constantly checking your map. If you go a different direction or stop to search for supplies, you'll often find her leaning against a wall/furniture or looking at papers on a desk or generally interacting with the world in some way while she waits for you. She's genuinely the first AI companion with ambient programming (anyone can code a cutscene where your brainless combat mook companion ruffles through some paperwork to "help") that actually makes her feel alive. And there are times where she's separated from you... and god damn do you notice that right away. Not just because of the big dramatic cutscenes highlighting her separation from you, but because the next time you get yourself in deep... there's no flying health kit coming at you. You're on your own again.
I'm sure most people also know about her ability to open "tears" and bring in objects into the world from parallel dimensions. You see various items scattered around the world space that don't actually exist; they occupy the same location in a parallel universe, and Elizabeth can open one tear (in the fabric separating worlds, apparently) at a time to make those objects manifest in your world to aid in combat. My opinions on that are kinda mixed. It's a neat idea, and gives her power more significance in the game beyond when it's used to advance the plot, but the choices are almost always fairly obvious and it feels like a pointless formality. Let's see... I could choose between a pile of med-kids I don't need, a wall of cover I'm not going to use, a cargo hook I can latch onto so I'm dangling there with my ass hanging out instead of running around on the ground, a sniper rifle totally unsuited to close-quarters combat like we're in right now, or a giant walking George Washington robot that rains hot lead chain-gun death rape murder on all who oppose me (because they're too shitcocking stupid to pick up a revolver and aim for the head). What's it gonna be, I wonder? Which of these is of greatest use?
Also, I was once backed into a corner and low on health, and Elizabeth shouts "here, catch!" and is about to throw me a med-kit, but since reload, search container, pick up weapon, open tear, and catch thing from Elizabeth (and perhaps more) are all mapped to the same button because that makes a lot of sense, I sat there frantically hammering the thing without realizing that I was currently pointing my crosshair at a tear across the map. So she never threw the health pack, and half a second later the enemies swarmed around the piece of cover I was using and killed me. That's some bullshit, when the game shoves two interesting ideas into the game in such a way that they overlap and conflict, and you're actually liable to hurt yourself by trying to take advantage of one of them. It only happened once the entire game (although I failed to loot bodies for ammo mid-combat because I was pointing at a tear multiple times, and once I swapped weapon instead of opening a tear I needed), but when that frustration's one you've got to deal with on top of the bullshit Handymen and Patriots and turrets which rape you up the bum with a cactus... it's just one more thing that made me dread getting into heavy combat.
Gear, the various clothing you wear which comes with inexplicable effects (there's a pair of shoes that heal you whenever you get a melee kill with your skyhook), is something every reviewer looking at this game rips on and says is bad. And I don't really understand why. The same basic series of passive effects were given to us in BioShock in the form of gene tonics, and literally the only difference here is that they've been attributed to clothing. Yes, it's absolutely stupid and nonsensical. Yes, even having your hands turn into an octopus and shoot water at people (you can, in fact, do this) sounds more plausible than a hat that makes you reload faster. But... what, we're gonna damn an entire game mechanic because they call it "gear" instead of "tonics"? I just don't see the point in bitching about it. It's not some big immersion-breaking silly pink hat you have to see yourself wearing; Infinite is a first-person game and the clothing has no cosmetic application whatsoever since you can't ever see it.
Beyond the combat, however, the game earns a massive amount of points back by having one of the greatest stories I've ever seen in a video game. This thing blows away most movies I've seen. It's intricate, technical, complex, convoluted, and confusing as hell while still somehow making sense. Towards the end, anyway. The beginning's pretty simplistic and even starts to drag. Which is unfortunate, because some of the parts I was about to snore during come around to be vitally important to the story. That detour into the Hall of Heroes to get the electricity Vigor? Pay attention to that shit, because it's crucial. But even when the game's dragging and going through "who cares" moments, it still manages to be a wonderful piece of eye-candy, and the enigmatic couple that keeps showing up in all the strangest places (one of which is voiced by Jennifer Hale!) is good for some laughs. Coincidentally, they are also vitally important to the storyline in their own way, though I can't say much more without spoiling the ending.
It attacks historical revisionist cult leaders, as Comstock is explained to be. It does indeed star a religious figure as its antagonist, but that doesn't mean it's attacking religion. It could certainly be interpreted that way, perhaps including a message of "question your beliefs and don't blindly follow it 'because [insert prophet here] said so.'" - Comstock is given such blind, unwavering, unquestioning support by the people of Columbia that I suppose you could make the argument that the game is criticizing religious faith without even a single pause to consider the validity of alternatives. But it does a solid job of presenting a religion which is just vaguely similar enough to Protestantism to justify its existence in an all-American flying city, without being so similar as to be something that religious folk would certainly take offense to. Hell, the Assassins Creed series has already directly attacked established religions in pretty much every game, and raised a bunch of valid points - and those games still sell well even to my religious friends.
There's intense racism, but handled in a different way than I've seen before - the easy way out is to just show the inferior race living in shacks and working in a factory (which we do see), and do a lot more telling than showing because that would be offensive. Bonus points if they're not even discriminating against a human race but an alien species instead. But in this one... they shove it in your face. Black people locked up in cages with cartoon monkey faces on them, standing along the midway at the town's annual fair for people to ridicule. An interracial couple hauled up on stage so the assembled crowd can pelt them with baseballs. Really heavy stuff. They've even got an organization which reveres John Wilkes Booth as a religious icon for assassinating Lincoln - because they believe that only a truly evil person would ever free the slaves and elevate the blacks to their station. It's the same message we've seen a billion times, but this goes an extra hundred miles in managing to make it really get under your skin and want to fire a shotgun up these people's asses for being so cruel. It's also kept as a minor theme, not something the game really argues so much as just another part of the world - which is a good thing. If you come away from Infinite going "that was about equal human rights and the wrongness of racism," you completely missed the boat. Because it's not about that at all. That's one of a series of reasons for a rebel organization (which was cooler-looking in the gameplay videos released prior to the game...none of which ever happened, of course) to attempt to take down the government in a sort of we-are-the-99% left-wing-bullshit revolution. But they've got other reasons to rise up, and the revolution itself is even given not very much importance. So racism isn't even a big deal, despite being shown in such a brilliant fashion.
The story tends to lag near the middle, as I said; once you've got Elizabeth, it's your standard "get out of here" story for awhile, with a couple complications and twists along the way, until the last 30 minutes. That's when things all go insane and trippy, and some of the greatest revelations in gaming ("Would you kindly?" from the first game looks flat and boring by comparison) all happen in a rapid-fire sequence of awesome. And like I said, I was able to follow its logic although a lot of people apparently can't, so... I'll put up an ending explanation if asked.
Final remarks:
BioShock Infinite is a fantastic game. It's set in a beautifully designed world, both artistically and technically, and if the entire game was just walking around Columbia and looking at shit I'd probably buy it. But it's not just that, it's also got one of video game history's greatest stories, with fantastically well-developed characters and decent action. Not as good in the combat as BioShock, but still able to hold my interest; you'll likely want to keep playing simply to get further in the narrative, even when it starts to drag a little. I've heard complaints from people who don't like Columbia as much as Rapture, or Comstock as much as Ryan, or any other number of X as much as Y comparisons between the games. Or, that they don't like the odd pair that follows you around doing seemingly random things like having you flip a coin or choose what necklace Elizabeth gets to wear (when they're not arguing over how to play a piano immediately after an airship crash, or bantering about the confusion of tenses that occurs during time travel - "it had to have had been"), and basically acts like some combination of the bookish smarts of Twilight, the high-class snobbishness of Rarity, and the playful whimsy of Discord all rolled into one (personally, they're my favorite characters in the whole game; not only are they hilarious, but every single thing they say on-screen will eventually be important to you, if you want any hope of understanding the game's ending). I suppose these points are fair, and if such issues and a less impressive combat system is reason enough to not play the game... then you're better off finding something else.
But Infinite succeeds in my eyes because they had the sheer audacity to take a franchise as spectacularly incredible as BioShock, completely gut it until nothing of the original work remained, and then build it back up again from scratch - and most of it hit on the money. I for one am certainly willing to overlook the annoying new combat system when in return I'm given a narrative and characters this compelling, in a world this beautiful, which all combine together to create one of the most fantastic games I've ever experienced.
Final score: 9.5/10.
Also, Songbird is one of the most badass motherfuckers ever created in a video game. Anyone who disagrees is wrong.
The rest of this review is just my opinion, but Songbird's off-the-charts level of badass are an objective fact.
Thanks for your time, and I hope someone perhaps gets some use out of this review.
i lve bioshock, but not that much, i am not going to read this
Are you freaking high?
everything past mw2 (except for Black Ops 2 which I heard was decent) was garbage as far as story was concerned.
Okay, that aside, which of the series do you prefer? I have never played Bioshock myself.
959691 By "story" I mean "for an action movie." It wasn't cerebral in the slightest, and its characters were useless, but for what it tried to be... MW3 was decent in my book. Same with the first Black Ops. Black Ops 2 was simultaneously my favorite and least favorite shooter of all time, for various reasons I could go off on for centuries (and have). But that's a discussion for another time.
As for BioShock... it's a tough call. Right now I'm inclined to say Infinite is the best because I just got done playing it and haven't touched the first game in ages. But once the hype wears off, I'll probably rank them about equal to each other. If you're considering getting one, buy the first game. It's cheaper but just as good. Better combat, too. See if you like the game, go from there.
959697 Thanks for the clarification. And I will consider it.
So you're really Rarity? Marry me.
Don't you insult my waifu like that!
Love you. 
All ridiculous banter aside, you have provided a very good review, and I will rent this game, just to see if I'll enjoy it. The "Would you kindly?" from Bioshock 2 was my favorite mindfuck of all times. I am intrigued and interested. Bravo.
959783 My quip about Rarity wasn't intended to be taken as an insult. It's one of the things I like best about both Rarity and the Lutece twins.
Thanks for the compliment, though. Not sure why I felt compelled to do this, but I did. I'm happy someone likes it.
959691
Getting Shepard in the eye with the knife was icing on the cake for me. Take that you traitorous bastard!!
959801
I was kidding.
But if you really are Rarity, consider my suggestion...
I've got to say about this... I think they did this entirely by accident because of the sheer obscurity but in making this argument, they cite the sentiments of great figures like Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln that it would be pointless and cruel to just knock the chains off of slaves, pat them on the head, and expect them to instantly transform into white men with a different skin color. Like I said, I doubt the reference was deliberate because of its obscurity, but it's an interesting treat for the historically-obsessed. :)
960389 There's an audio log from Comstock at some point... I don't remember where I picked it up, but it says basically that. He colors it with some more racist cracks about whiteys being fully awesome, but he does sorta allude to what you're saying. Then there's the one in the temple to Booth itself where he says "what did the 'Great Emancipator' emancipate them from?"
Nuggets of Comstock's philosophy dance within inches of being brilliant, and that's one of the reasons I like him as a villain. It's not like Ryan where I outright agreed with a lot of what he said, but it's almost an even more compelling villain design where you disagree with the villain but... he's.... so... damned... close to being spot-on awesome, if he wasn't busy being a whackjob religious nut who demands everybody bow to the glory of his beard.
960514
That's what I was referring to. The sentiment there was drawn mainly from a stump speech by Henry Clay which became slightly famous for "Go home, Mr. Mendohlsson, and attend to your business and I shall endeavor to attend to mine" in response to an abolitionist demanding that he sign a petition calling for immediate and total emancipation prior to the Civil War.
This actually raises extremely valid points regarding the game's combat... Vigors did actually seem useless. The only ones I used were Bucking Bronco, Murder of Crows and Shock Jockey... Undertow I used a little towards the end, just so's I wouldn't waste ammo since you could just push people off the edges...
I gotta say, the machine-gun was so underpowered that it made me just melee for like... the first 2 hours of gameplay... made way easier with the season pass gear (seriously, that shit was cash... electrified hyper-punch and ghost-trap guns)
Still, the ending was only a little confusing for me. I had to really think about it afterwards, though when I reflected on some of the things said, it did actually make sense.
Also, 1999 mode... I hate thee... I finished the game on hard, then it throws this at me... I can't even finish the second area in 1999 mode and I had no difficulties in hard.
Really, the only gripes that I had with this game were the uselessness of vigors, the shittiness of the majority of weapons (shotgun, hand-cannon, heater and rifles not included) and the fact that you never seemed to have enough money for upgrades or lockpicks to GET said money.
Edit: actually, come to think of it, sections of the story made little to no sense to me... I might just play it again... Apparently specific things in the world change if you're playing a second run... also, "God only knows" was the best thing ever
960699 Haha, machine gun. Yeah. I remember first encountering the repeater, and going... the hell's this? *fires it* OH! IT'S A MACHINE GUN BUT WITHOUT THE SUCK! And instead they've further stripped me of my TARDIS pockets and gone back to BioShock levels of ammo - in a world with Infinite amounts of enemies (
that phrase... I wasn't even trying to be clever with that one). So essentially the rebels manage to cobble together a weapon out of spare parts which owns face compared to the purpose-built military machine gun... but enact a "carrying enough ammo to survive" ban or something.
I think I will write up another blog post in a couple days explaining the ending and other parts of the plot. How they tie in, why it happened that way, that sort of thing. There are a couple things I'm not 100% on, but those minor holes could be from me not picking up the audio log explaining it, or possibly they're just plot holes in the game. It's to be expected when you have something this convoluted and nonsensical on the surface; they get most of it across, and even a decent attack of "well then how does that explain why..." questions can't get the thing to collapse. I'm willing to overlook a few technical details here and there.
*POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD*
Your review is mostly spot-on, apart from one thing I don't agree with. I don't feel that, overall, Infinite's characters were more interesting than the first Bioshock's. Yes, I ADORE the Lutece twins and Elizabeth, I just feel that other then that, the counterpart to the characters in the first Bioshock are better. I like Andrew Ryan as a villain better (just barely, but it is clear to me), and the villains in Bioshock were so much more interesting. Fitzroy was barely given any character as far as I can see, and Fink was hardly in the game at all. In the first Bioshock we had Dr. Steinman and Sander Cohen, these crazy, awesome, crazy awesome crazy people who defined their sections of the game and made me shudder with how crazy and awesome they were. The ambient characterization, I suppose, is what I felt was worse in this one.
Even the companion, if you can call Atlas that, I think I liked better, if not just about the same. Yes the way Elizabeth acted on her own and interacted with the world did build her character, and in the overall scheme of things, she was probably more important, I just... I REALLY like Atlas. He's a godsend from the very beginning, leading you on your first baby steps through Rapture and building up your hatred of Ryan, and then the submarine happens. In Infinite, I never really felt sorry for Elizabeth when the stuff about her mother came up. She finds out that Comstock's her father, then isn't her father, then is her father again (sort of), and I just found it harder to sympathize with her than I did with Atlas. Elizabeth wanted her freedom; Atlas just wanted to see his family again.
Then, BOOM< all that sentiment is taken away in a heartbeat. I like both stories in different ways; I love the visceral, real, man vs. man nature of the first Bioshock, how, even though there are some supernatural elements, it all comes down to humanity. In Infinite, I love the whole supernatural thing, the theories of alternate realities, and the fact that they set up any future Bioshock by making all they need be a man and a lighthouse.
All in all, I think I like the first Bioshock just a teensy weeny bit better, even though Infinite still took my breath away. Infinite's a 9.75, and Bioshock's a 10.
976325 That's certainly fair, and I'm more than happy to agree to disagree. To be perfectly honest, I haven't touched BioShock in years, so I don't remember much about it. But then again, that's sort of what I'm on about - I don't remember much of the game. I remember Cohen, but I don't remember much about him. I remember Atlas, and did like him as a sneaky villain alongside Ryan, but my experience with BioShock went "wow this is amazing" in the medical pavilion to "this is boring as fuck" in the port section (if I remember right, it's mostly caves and shit, not Rapture proper), then "this is the highlight of the game" in Cohen's part... and after that it just dragged. By the time I got to the ending, I was genuinely glad the game was over because I'd seen so much of the same stuff over and over - I meant to elaborate on this a bit when I said "Columbia changes for the worse, but Rapture got stale." There's a bit where you're dealing with the trees or something? I could not get past that part fast enough.
I do understand where you're coming from, believe me, but the only thing out of that entire game that firmly sticks in my mind was The Twist. I have vague screenshots kicking around my memory of the very beginning visual showcasing, Cohen's area, and the final boss fight. Compare that to Infinite, where (and I realize it's not a perfectly fair comparison, since I did play it so recently) I'm pretty sure I'll be able to rattle off every ounce of the story to anyone who wants to ask, even five years down the road. Something about it just seemed more "complete," more "full," whereas BioShock just felt like a guy running around all alone in the ruins of Rapture. I can't put a finger on it, and maybe my opinions would change if I played through BioShock again, but I definitely liked playing Booker against Comstock and all the crazy that went down in all the alternate universes across the cosmos. The characters just drew my interest and empathy more so than did BioShock.
But hey, thanks for taking the time to argue your position. You do present a valid case.
976434 Yeah, I love structured debate, especially about things I like. I see your points, and it probably doesn't help that I beat the first Bioshock literally twelve times and Infinite only once (so far), so my views may be a little skewed. I just always find something to love about that game each time I go back and play it. I find myself role-playing to make it more interesting, doing what I would do in that situation as best I can, using the guns (even though the wrench is your best friend), and altogether drinking in the atmosphere like I would if I were actually in Rapture. Having done that with the first Bioshock, I did it instinctively with Infinite, and it made it so much more rewarding. They were both amazing games, and both deserve preposterous amounts of praise for what they accomplished, but in my mind, the first one just gets a little edge. Maybe it's the same reason the first Assassin's Creed is my favorite: it was a new and novel experience at the time. I went into Infinite expecting political messages and idealism and whatnot, whereas in Bioshock, I went in knowing basically nothing about the game. I'm sure I'm biased, but if loving Bioshock more than myself is wrong, then I don't wanna be right.
Well, at least until the next city, the next man, and the next lighthouse.
Getting off of the debate topic a little, do you have any ideas for the next city? They did the sea, and they did the sky. Some of my friends say space, but I disagree. I think it would be beyond awesome if they did a city that was part of a temporal experiment, and it jumps around in time while you're there, sometimes picking up pieces, people, and politics from different areas and forcing them together in a giant stew of clashing ideals. I think that would be the pits (in the good way).
976530 I have no idea where the series might be headed from here. Infinite's a tough act to follow, especially if they want to come up with another whole format for how the game works. I really do praise them for having the guts to totally chuck everything about the game's mechanics out the window and start over again, even if a lot of the gameplay changes were for the worse. The attitude of throwing your successful franchise out the window and gambling on the idea that you'll be able to create another awesomely memorable system is worthy of respect, in my eyes, so long as they don't completely ruin everything about the game. And despite my bitching in the review, the combat was still tolerable and even highly enjoyable in parts.
I think a space colony (perhaps actually on the moon itself) would be an interesting place to go eventually, especially if they set it during the late 1950s and made it all hilariously cheesy sci fi Fallout stuff. Maybe not the very next game, though. I really have no idea where they're going to go with it.
Actually, what might be cool is a return to Rapture where we watch it fall, not come in several years after it is dead. Like a story actually set in 1956 or something. That'd be cool.