Infinitely Entertaining Bioshock

"After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world" (Phillip Pullman)

   I’m not going to get into any spoilers here (or at least attempt not to, I know the concept of spoilers is pretty flexible, so if you don’t want exposure to ANY part of the game, even what might have been in a review, turn back now!)

Unfortunately the game does not play on infinitely

   Bioshock Infinite is one of those games where you feel like a developer has explored every niche possible and still manages to produce great stories. After riding the wild trip through Rapture, the underwater city (twice), 2K games asks players to step into the past (well, further into the past) to 1912 America, where the enigmatic Booker Dewitt is sent to the flying city of Columbia to rescue Elizabeth, a girl held captive by the mysterious ‘Prophet’.

   So after spending the last two games investing yourself into the 40’s and 50’s motifs of the underwater city of Rapture, with it’s crazy gang of splicers, water hazards and megalomaniacs, you as a player are rocketed (quite literally) into the sky to deal with a new band of miscreants. 

   I am a huge fan of the Bioshock series, let’s just get that out of the way here. I never played System Shock, which is the spiritual precursor to the Bioshock games, but I assume it is great too. Bioshock manages to fuse incredible, detailed story telling with the frantic pace of a great first person shooter. They even manage to squeeze in some exploration elements into the game, often rewarding players with special or extra powerups for those who explore off the beaten path. The original series of Bioshock, taking place in the underwater city of Rapture is chock full of memorable characters and experiences that are sometimes hard to find in the video game medium, and Bioshock Infinite lives up to these expectations and more. 

   For those of you who might be on the fence about the whole Bioshock franchise, perhaps playing the first game and part of the second one and finding it samey, I encourage you to give Bioshock Infinite a try. Set in a considerably less dreary and dark flying city in the sky, the first portion of the game plays out relatively similarly to the Bioshock model, which is go get someone/something, and getting sidetracked along the way by various obstacles that need to be overcome. I can tell you it is different however, because about halfway through the game the story puts you on a one way ticket straight to crazytown and everything starts going nuts. The first half of the game still features an engaging, detailed and interesting storyline, but the second half is really when they pull all the new stuff together in a way that is still leaving me scratching my head. 

When the worship George Washington as a Messiah, that should be your first indication that you're going to get sold a ticket to crazytown

   One new feature I enjoyed was the character of the girl. She’s a self-starting woman who could have very well been her own heroine if not for the situation she’s found herself in. I find this is a really great step for the video game industry as a whole, which has a tendency to cast women in games in less than favourable roles. Most of the time it’s the damsel in distress in need of rescue but unwilling to get herself out until her hero comes along, less often the female character is a sexed up pin up model with doe eyes and usually a very oversized weapon, other times they’re cast as submissive, or bimbos or clueless, none of which do women any favours.

   Not this girl though, Elizabeth (I think I’m safe to name her right?) is a self made woman. Although she was trapped in a tower, she totally would have escaped herself if it wasn’t for a warden who was physically capable of foiling her every attempt, and that still didn’t stop her from mastering lockpicking. Rather than while away her time waiting for rescue, she teaches herself the history of the world, geography and all sorts of other topics while she grows up. She does end up going with Booker, and she starts off a bit naïve to the ways of the world, but as the going gets tough she increasingly comes into her own. She goes with Booker because he promises to take her away from Columbia, but as things are revealed, she goes through her own struggle of what to do, and it’s always clear that she’s making her own decisions, rather than being towed along by Booker. By the end of it she’s totally ready to take any matters into her own hands, with or without Bookers help. 

   You spend the bulk of the game adventuring with Elizabeth and when many games would saddle you with a useless escort character (as in escort them and keep them from harm, rather than any sexual context) Elizabeth scrounges the map for ammo, health and salts (Infinites equivalent to EVE) and always attempts to keep you stocked. When in combat, she keeps herself out of the way (technically, she is immune to all damage, which is still nice to not have to worry about).In any case,  I think this a very positive step for gender role assumptions in the video game industry, combined with the revamped Laura Croft from tomb raider we may be entering an era of strong female leads in video gaming.

   One thing that stayed the same that I enjoyed was the ability to find recorded messages throughout the game. This was used to great effect in the original Bioshock and I appreciated the way the game justified having portable voice recorders around in 1912. These messages serve both as ways to advance the plot without having to wide through minutes of cutscenes (you can go about your business with your message playing in the background) and also as a way to reward exploring players. Often you’ll find the recordings in plain sight, but a few are tucked away in hidden places. On top of advancing the plot the recordings often shed light onto side characters that otherwise might not get much attention, or helping explain the motivations of the primary characters. If you manage to collect all the recordings (I found 70/80) it gives a much clearer picture of what is going on in the game, rather than what has just been thrown at you though fixed story points in the campaign. 

   I didn’t really like was the way they changed the upgrade system. In the original Bioshock you had money, plasmids and weapons. Plasmids were improved by purchasing or finding upgrades, but the weapons were upgraded through illicit ‘power to the people’ stations that were free to use but limited to one upgrade. While it wouldn’t have made as much sense in Bioshock Infinite I didn’t enjoy how everything was moved to a money based upgrade system, since improving your weapons and powers boiled down to how much money you could hoard, steal or scrounge from the environment. This does allow the game to have a wider variety of weapons, which I suppose has its merits. 

You eventually learn to hate Dollar Bill as his mockery of your lack of dollars.

   In summary, if you own an Xbox 360, PS3 or Computer box and enjoy video games, you really should give Bioshock Infinite a whirl (really all the Bioshocks). It combines excellent gameplay, master story telling with a twist that will keep you guessing (as the Bioshock franchise is relatively famous for).