And it delivers.
Infinite
succeeds by simultaneously sticking to and deviating from the formula
that made the first game such a critically acclaimed hit. Many key
elements of the game are similar to the predecessor: from audio logs
filling in more of the story to the inclusion of powers to the opening
light tower to the extremely well-crafted environment you find yourself
exploring. Yet the game also puts you in a place that's the complete
opposite of its predecessor. Instead of the dark, grimy, and
claustrophobic Rapture which causes heart-stopping moments of sudden
action, they bring you to the brighter, more vibrant open city in
the clouds of Columbia, where they throw more enemies at you at once,
creating more of a "battle" feel.
Though
fundamentally different environments and styles of action, the basic
game play is still pretty similar. A shooter in the first person
perspective, you run around picking up weapons and shooting enemies. You
also find Vigors - elixirs that give you powers (basically Plasmids
from the first game). Overall, the controls are tightened up a bit
from the original. Switching from weapon to power is smoother and
makes it a little bit easier to handle all the enemies thrown at you.
One down side though is the limitations enforced. Unlike the first game
in which you can carry a bunch of weapons and just swap to them when you
want, Infinite restricts that to just two. Of course, they give you a steady supply of enemies and an increased variety of weapons to be
dropped that it doesn't ultimately impact the game play that much; it is a bit of a
downside.
The other negative
change is the quick-change of powers. This is most likely just a case of
personal preferences, or getting used to it, but I found combat to go a
bit more smoothly in the first game where you have a certain number of
power slots and hitting a particular button quickly shuffles through
your powers, instead of always having to bring up your power wheel.
Infinite allows for only two quick-change slots, so whatever the last
two powers you've used are, those are the powers you can quickly shuffle
through with on the click of a button. If you want to use another power
though, you must bring up the power wheel.
With bigger and more open spaces for combat - mixed with a greater number of enemies attacking at once - Infinite has you running and gunning a lot more than previous games, which often had you more creeping and scheming. The action is grander and more chaotic, giving it more of a traditional shooter feel with powers to mix it up. This fact is highlighted by the inclusion of the Skyline. A form of quick traveling through areas of the city, you fly around battles at break-neck speeds. That's not the only way they add flavor to the format though. Eventually you learn that Elizabeth has the power to open tears in space-time (read: alternative universes). During battles, she will summon objects through these tears that can help. It's pretty restricted to turrets, cover, gun depots, medic boxes, and freight hooks, with the occasional gunship. It's an interesting dynamic that definitely adds to the gameplay. At times, however, it feels a bit limited given the nature of the tears.
Additionally, Elizabeth will run around and scrounge up loose ammo, money, and other things that are helpful during battle. It's one of the areas - like the the tears - where the execution still adds something, but feels like it suffers from being overly ambitious. Consider that tears are an infinite number of alternate realities, yet the only thing Elizabeth can pull through them are freight hooks, sniper rifles, and rocket turrets. It's hard to imagine a game in which each tear brings out something entirely different, but that's what it seems like they perhaps wanted.
It's been argued by many that Vigors feel a little out of place, and there is definitely merit to that argument. The Vigors are fun and playing around with different combinations are key to success in battle, but it's true that thematically, they feel out of place and as if they were only included to remind you it is BioShock. In the first game, the entire plot and environment was built around Plasmids. Andrew Ryan and his society was all about improving humanity. The Plasmids were key to becoming something more. The people became addicted and they had their side effects. The world of Rapture fell into ruins as a result. You don't get the narrative of BioShock without the inclusion of Plasmids.
In Columbia, the Vigors don't really add anything to the plot or the narrative. They're mostly just shoehorned in there simply for the sake of giving you powers like the first game. Zachary Comstock's Columbia isn't about improving, but rather about how superior the white race of Americans already are. There would be no reason for people to buy Vigors when they already feel superior to everyone else. If anything, they're all about preserving their purity - as evident by the copious amounts of institutionalized racism in this world. While the Vigors are certainly fun, they don't quite fit in thematically the way that Plasmids did.
The real strength of BioShock Infinite is in its narrative. Like many other elements of the game, it at times feels overly ambitious, but it's still great. You play as Booker DeWitt, a mysterious man showing up to a mysterious sci-fi city. He's tasked with rescuing a young woman named Elizabeth. We don't know who recruited him, and we don't know why, but it seems irrelevant. Of course, as you spend more time with her trying to escape the city, the mystery continues to grow, culminating in one of the more mind-blowing endings. It's easy to pass off the basic plot as being one heavily reliant on twists, and it's true that the other thematic plot elements are less substantial than the ones of the first BioShock, but it does do quite a bit with some of those elements. The dangers of a segregated society and of national superiority complexes are all clear and present, as well as a critique of that neoconservative brand of American exceptionalism. Still, the primary purpose of the narrative is simultaneously grander and smaller in scope than the original game.
The big twist ultimately involves who both Booker and Elizabeth really are, and what their true relationship is. In the end, it's all about what lengths one will go to in order to make up for their mistakes, and what kinds of mistakes they'll make in the process. Several times, you jump to alternate realities of Columbia where things are drastically different based on your actions of the previous reality. This, of course, is their take on the multiverse theory: the idea that every time you make a choice, another universe splits off in which you made the other choice, et cetera - an infinite number of universes with an infinite possibilities.
At the conclusion of the game, things get very meta. Elizabeth explains the idea behind an infinite number of universes filled with infinite possibilities, but there are constants and variables in each one. She explains that for Booker DeWitt, there are a few constants. In every universe built around him, there is always a lighthouse, there is always a man, and there is always a city. Like in BioShock before it, Infinite is getting all meta about the nature of video games. Andrew Ryan's whole gist about a man chooses while a slave obeys forced players to examine whether - even in a game with "choices" and "morality" as mechanics - do we actually have any real choice? Similarly, here they drive home the idea that there are some things that never change, and some things that always change - not unlike the way we experience video games.
This is displayed in amusing and subtle way when the Luteces flip a coin and ask you to pick heads or tails. As a player, you get to pick, but the coin always comes up heads. One of the Luteces wears a chalk board on his front and back. The other puts a dash in the heads column and when they walk away, you see that the only marks are in the heads column. The Luteces have experienced this coin flip countless times, yet it has come down heads every single time. This is really a more direct way to explain the idea of constants and variables. In all the multiple universes, the coin comes down heads (a constant), yet what you can change whether you pick heads or tails (a variable). In the end, what you pick doesn't matter. The scripted scene continues.
"There is always a lighthouse. There is always a man. There is always a city," Elizabeth tells us. Of course this refers to the previous BioShock as well, in which you start off as Jack, a man sent to Rapture for mysterious reasons. And, of course, you get to Rapture via a lighthouse. Those are the constants of the BioShock universe. Everything else is just a variable.
In defense of yourself, Booker responds that he is his own man. He doesn't listen to anyone and doesn't do anything or go anywhere someone tells him to. Elizabeth's response is poignant: "You already have." And it's true. At this point, we've reached the end of the game. Each of us might have played the game differently, but here we are, at the same point at the end of the game, watching the same scripted sequence play out.
All in all, BioShock Infinite is far from a perfect game, and there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the game. Certainly, at times it feels a bit over ambitious. It's a bit of a shame that so early on in the game, the citizens you encounter merely vanish. Instead of this lively, functional city we saw at the beginning, we wind up getting a fairly similar thing to what we saw in Rapture. And even Booker DeWitt's arc feels a little under cooked.
Still, it's an incredible game. All of the BioShock games have really done a great job at challenging the gamer, not necessarily in terms of the fights (although you do die a lot), but in terms of really making you think and examine what the game is trying to say, both through the narrative and the game mechanics.
 |
| Game play is pretty similar to the original game, but it is both smoother to transition while a bit clunkier to swap powers. |
With bigger and more open spaces for combat - mixed with a greater number of enemies attacking at once - Infinite has you running and gunning a lot more than previous games, which often had you more creeping and scheming. The action is grander and more chaotic, giving it more of a traditional shooter feel with powers to mix it up. This fact is highlighted by the inclusion of the Skyline. A form of quick traveling through areas of the city, you fly around battles at break-neck speeds. That's not the only way they add flavor to the format though. Eventually you learn that Elizabeth has the power to open tears in space-time (read: alternative universes). During battles, she will summon objects through these tears that can help. It's pretty restricted to turrets, cover, gun depots, medic boxes, and freight hooks, with the occasional gunship. It's an interesting dynamic that definitely adds to the gameplay. At times, however, it feels a bit limited given the nature of the tears.
Additionally, Elizabeth will run around and scrounge up loose ammo, money, and other things that are helpful during battle. It's one of the areas - like the the tears - where the execution still adds something, but feels like it suffers from being overly ambitious. Consider that tears are an infinite number of alternate realities, yet the only thing Elizabeth can pull through them are freight hooks, sniper rifles, and rocket turrets. It's hard to imagine a game in which each tear brings out something entirely different, but that's what it seems like they perhaps wanted.
It's been argued by many that Vigors feel a little out of place, and there is definitely merit to that argument. The Vigors are fun and playing around with different combinations are key to success in battle, but it's true that thematically, they feel out of place and as if they were only included to remind you it is BioShock. In the first game, the entire plot and environment was built around Plasmids. Andrew Ryan and his society was all about improving humanity. The Plasmids were key to becoming something more. The people became addicted and they had their side effects. The world of Rapture fell into ruins as a result. You don't get the narrative of BioShock without the inclusion of Plasmids.
In Columbia, the Vigors don't really add anything to the plot or the narrative. They're mostly just shoehorned in there simply for the sake of giving you powers like the first game. Zachary Comstock's Columbia isn't about improving, but rather about how superior the white race of Americans already are. There would be no reason for people to buy Vigors when they already feel superior to everyone else. If anything, they're all about preserving their purity - as evident by the copious amounts of institutionalized racism in this world. While the Vigors are certainly fun, they don't quite fit in thematically the way that Plasmids did.
 |
| Rapture was a city practically inspired by Ayn Rand. Here though, Columbia is built off of American exceptionalism wherein the founding fathers are treated like deities. Indeed, you do wind up fighting robotic Abraham Lincolns and George Washingtons armed with gatling guns. |
The real strength of BioShock Infinite is in its narrative. Like many other elements of the game, it at times feels overly ambitious, but it's still great. You play as Booker DeWitt, a mysterious man showing up to a mysterious sci-fi city. He's tasked with rescuing a young woman named Elizabeth. We don't know who recruited him, and we don't know why, but it seems irrelevant. Of course, as you spend more time with her trying to escape the city, the mystery continues to grow, culminating in one of the more mind-blowing endings. It's easy to pass off the basic plot as being one heavily reliant on twists, and it's true that the other thematic plot elements are less substantial than the ones of the first BioShock, but it does do quite a bit with some of those elements. The dangers of a segregated society and of national superiority complexes are all clear and present, as well as a critique of that neoconservative brand of American exceptionalism. Still, the primary purpose of the narrative is simultaneously grander and smaller in scope than the original game.
The big twist ultimately involves who both Booker and Elizabeth really are, and what their true relationship is. In the end, it's all about what lengths one will go to in order to make up for their mistakes, and what kinds of mistakes they'll make in the process. Several times, you jump to alternate realities of Columbia where things are drastically different based on your actions of the previous reality. This, of course, is their take on the multiverse theory: the idea that every time you make a choice, another universe splits off in which you made the other choice, et cetera - an infinite number of universes with an infinite possibilities.
At the conclusion of the game, things get very meta. Elizabeth explains the idea behind an infinite number of universes filled with infinite possibilities, but there are constants and variables in each one. She explains that for Booker DeWitt, there are a few constants. In every universe built around him, there is always a lighthouse, there is always a man, and there is always a city. Like in BioShock before it, Infinite is getting all meta about the nature of video games. Andrew Ryan's whole gist about a man chooses while a slave obeys forced players to examine whether - even in a game with "choices" and "morality" as mechanics - do we actually have any real choice? Similarly, here they drive home the idea that there are some things that never change, and some things that always change - not unlike the way we experience video games.
This is displayed in amusing and subtle way when the Luteces flip a coin and ask you to pick heads or tails. As a player, you get to pick, but the coin always comes up heads. One of the Luteces wears a chalk board on his front and back. The other puts a dash in the heads column and when they walk away, you see that the only marks are in the heads column. The Luteces have experienced this coin flip countless times, yet it has come down heads every single time. This is really a more direct way to explain the idea of constants and variables. In all the multiple universes, the coin comes down heads (a constant), yet what you can change whether you pick heads or tails (a variable). In the end, what you pick doesn't matter. The scripted scene continues.
"There is always a lighthouse. There is always a man. There is always a city," Elizabeth tells us. Of course this refers to the previous BioShock as well, in which you start off as Jack, a man sent to Rapture for mysterious reasons. And, of course, you get to Rapture via a lighthouse. Those are the constants of the BioShock universe. Everything else is just a variable.
In defense of yourself, Booker responds that he is his own man. He doesn't listen to anyone and doesn't do anything or go anywhere someone tells him to. Elizabeth's response is poignant: "You already have." And it's true. At this point, we've reached the end of the game. Each of us might have played the game differently, but here we are, at the same point at the end of the game, watching the same scripted sequence play out.
All in all, BioShock Infinite is far from a perfect game, and there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the game. Certainly, at times it feels a bit over ambitious. It's a bit of a shame that so early on in the game, the citizens you encounter merely vanish. Instead of this lively, functional city we saw at the beginning, we wind up getting a fairly similar thing to what we saw in Rapture. And even Booker DeWitt's arc feels a little under cooked.
Still, it's an incredible game. All of the BioShock games have really done a great job at challenging the gamer, not necessarily in terms of the fights (although you do die a lot), but in terms of really making you think and examine what the game is trying to say, both through the narrative and the game mechanics.
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