Had, Have, and Will Review: Bioshock Infinite

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In recent history, games have moved away from their roots of character interaction and story, focusing more on better graphics, lots of explosions, a dearth of rather mindless first person shooters, and gameplay that is copy and pasted from a dozen other games like it.

Bioshock Infinite is not one of those games.



Yeah, it has action, and violence, and guns and explosions and sweet powers for us to use on our enemies.  We can fry them with lightning, send a murder of crows to pluck their eyes out, hurl napalm from our fingertips to incinerate them, and even force them to kill their own allies before making them take their own life.

But it has so much more to offer.

We leave behind a world of death, destruction, hate and bile, a world on the brink of war, to the veritable utopia of Columbia, a city in the sky, where people are happy and healthy and at peace.  But soon we see the city lose its venire, the polish fades, and we see that even in the apparent Paradise in the sky, some things cannot be left behind, and some sins cannot be washed away.

And at its core, the game is doing one thing and one thing only: telling us the story of Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth.

Very quickly, we see the premise of the story, and the motivations of Booker: take Elizabeth from the city of Columbia, and all of his debts will be wiped away.  And as we delve deeper into the game, we see exactly how Booker wound up in this situation, the lengths he will go to complete the job, and how Elizabeth throws a wrench in those well laid plans of men and mice.

Many gamers despise AI companions; heck, the phrase 'escort mission' has been known to send any calm, collected gamer into an immediate rage, complete with foaming mouth and guttural, primal screams.  But I have to give the teams at 2K Marin, Irrational Games, and Ken Levine credit; Elizabeth is far and away the best companion I've had in a game.  You interact with her outside of combat, learning more about her, Booker, and the city of Columbia.  You find yourself growing attached to her as the story goes on, and that is to be expected.  She helps search for items as you go through the game, picking up change for Booker to buy things at shops, picks locks you may come across, finding and reloading guns you may come across to save for when you are in the middle of a heated battle, even throwing you health and Salts (the game's version of mana/MP for its spells) when you are running low.

Most importantly, she stays out of sight and safe when you get into a battle, meaning you never have to worry about keeping her safe.  Admittedly, part of this is due to plot armor, as in several occasions through my playthrough of the game (mainly when battles got particularly heated and involved lots of running around) she would dash across the screen from one hiding spot to another, with my bullets and spells (along with the bullets from the enemies) seeming to pass through her without a problem.  But she generally stays pretty safe, running to cover when needed, but staying close so if you start to run low on bullets or health, she's right there to get you back up and into the fight.

The combat itself is pretty standard for FPS games and the Bioshock namesake in particular.  You get to use various guns and abilities (called Vigors this time around) to kill your foes as fast as you can.  You have your basic selection as well, from pistol to shotgun to sniper rifle to RPG, and anything in between.  As you progress through the story, you can upgrade the guns and Vigors, and sidegrade weapons also show up as well (for example, one type of machine gun has relatively low DPS, but lots of bullets per clip and not a ton of weapon spray, while the other has a smaller clip, but more DPS and a larger weapon spray).  Unlike in other Bioshock games though, where you could carry all the guns but only have 1 or 2 Vigors equipped, you have all 8 Vigors available to you at all times, but can only equip 2 guns at most.

This restriction is alleviated a bit by Gears, which give you various bonuses for having them equipped (like more melee damage inflicted, or regaining health whenever you kill a foe with a melee attack).  They are tied to a specific area, and you can have a total of 4 Gears equipped at one time (a hat, a shirt, pants, and shoes).  The soundtrack is also interesting, due in part to the setting of the game (1912) and the songs we hear.  It's a little unusual to hear songs being sung by a barbershop quartet, or without the musical instruments we are used to hearing with those songs.  It just goes to reinforce the theme of this being a world that is both similar, yet different, to one that we are used to.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMh4R98w0M0]

Note: this is the VA of both Booker (Troy Baker on guitar) and Elizabeth (Courtnee Draper for vocals) doing this, not someone else

I honestly wish I could go into the story, but I refuse to do so for fear of spoiling anything.  All I can say is it is very good, one that focuses on character interaction, character growth, and ends with you thinking about what is was that you just played.  There aren't many games that I feel deserve the full $60 price tag, but Bioshock Infinite is one of those games.  There's some replayability available, mainly in higher difficult levels, but you can play through it on Easy or Normal and get everything out of it.  One last thing: if you do get it and beat it, stick around through the credits for one final bit of gameplay.