Bioshock Infinite Review

Bioshock Infinite
Developer: Irrational Games
Price: $60
Platform: PC/PS3/Xbox 360

It’s been six years since Ken Levine brought us the phenomenal game Bioshock and this time he takes us up to the skies for Bioshock Infinite.

Without treading into spoiler territory, you’ll fill in the shoes of Booker DeWitt, an ex-Pinkerton agent who travels to the floating city of Columbia in search of Elizabeth in hopes of ridding himself of a serious gambling debt. Things don’t go quite as planned and the story takes you for a few twists and turns as you try to figure out what’s going on in Columbia. It’s kind of hard to pull a twist on players who are expecting one but Infinite manages to do it easily and ties things in pretty well at the end. Unlike Bioshock, Infinite is a lot less subtle in its symbolism/metaphors which leaves me feeling slightly conflicted. On one hand the game is basically throwing its themes in your face to make sure you get it but on the other hand it does show how extreme the citizens of this city are in their beliefs.

Bioshock Infinite abandons the horror vibe from the first two games in favor of a more traditional shooter experience. You’ll still scavenge for food to refill your health, ammo, and money but it’s not as much of a necessity as it was before. You can easily keep a steady supply of ammo if you only use whatever gun the enemies are using when you play on anything lower than Hard mode. Infinite retains the RPG elements with weapons and vigor upgrades and equipment you can attach to four parts of your body that give you various buffs. The game really encourages players to explore if they want to get all the pieces of gear which are worth finding because they give you very helpful buffs like a 50% boost to your speed whenever you jump off a skyline or stunning all enemies in the vicinity whenever you do more damage than is necessary to kill an enemy.

Like I said before, Infinite definitely feels more like a traditional shooter than Bioshock or Bioshock 2 ever did and it works fine; everything just feels really tight and polished. Infinite is also a bit more linear but there’s a decent bit of exploration if you want to find the hidden voxophones or kinetoscopes that shed a bit more light on Columbia’s history. There’s a nifty arrow you can bring up by tapping on the d-pad that will point you in the direction you need to go which helps you know where you can explore so that you don’t accidentally lock yourself from the previous area by walking through a door that progresses the story.

Unfortunately none of the weapons are particularly interesting or original and if you’ve played a generic shooter before then just imagine all the guns from any of those games but with an early 1900’s look. Many people aren’t going to like how the game goes backwards to a two weapon limit when you could carry whatever you wanted in previous games and I still don’t like it in Infinite. There are only a few actual viable weapons late into the game and I’d prefer having the half a dozen interesting weapons from the previous games than a dozen guns that are mostly doubles. I do enjoy how you can pick up ammo for guns you don’t have though, so that way when you run into a new gun you’ll likely be full on ammo instead of finding a gun with just 10 bullets in it.

Plasmids return in the form of vigors. These drinks give you superhuman abilities that allow you to toss fireballs, summon a flock of crows, or absorb the bullets your enemies fire at you and send them back. There are eight vigors in all and they all feel useful which is incredibly important since a few of the plasmids from Bioshock 1 & 2 were pretty useless. I had such a hard time deciding which two I wanted to jump into a battle with but it wouldn’t matter since you can pull up the vigor menu instantly to swap them around. Switching between your two equipped vigors is smooth and responsive as well. Bioshock 2 introduced plasmid traps but they felt slightly underwhelming and I didn’t really use them much. This time around they’re much more useful and I found myself doing things like lifting up a pack of enemies with bucking bronco, laying down a devil’s kiss trap underneath them, and then heading off knowing they’d be toast in a moment. Mixing up the vigors really feels a lot more natural and there are some neat combinations you can do like setting fire to your crows with devil’s kiss or electrocuting a possessed enemy and watching as he runs around electrocuting his buddies.

Elizabeth is probably the best weapon you’ll have in your arsenal. She’ll stick by your side through a majority of the game and I can’t imagine playing Bioshock Infinite without having her around. She’ll scour around for ammo during fights and toss you salts or health when you’re low on either. She’ll also pick locks so you can access secret areas or give you any money she happens to find. It does break some of the immersion with how enemies don’t react to Elizabeth and won’t fire at her, but I’ll take an invincible NPC I don’t have to worry about dying any day of the week over the alternative. Besides picking locks for you, Elizabeth will also open up tears into other worlds to bring things into the environment. Each area is littered with a solid variety of tears to open from one of the various turret types, a hook to jump up to, items such as ammo or health, and even an Iron Patriot. You can only have one tear open at a time but you’ll quickly learn to use all the tears in the area during a fight.

The skyhook is easily the coolest thing about the combat and I really wished there were a bit more open areas that had them. Besides being one of the coolest melee weapons this year with its gruesome execution attacks, it delivers fresh change of pace to the combat. Fluid is how I would describe riding the skylines with you being in full control of how fast or slow you want to go, whether or not you want to turn around, shooting from the skyline, and getting off as well. At first it can be a bit disorienting since it’s the equivalent of riding a roller coaster but you’ll quickly get the hang of things. There are some big open areas where you can use the skyline to traverse multiple levels of the environment and the strategy comes from knowing where the skyline can’t take you, what tears are available where, and making sure you’re close enough to one in case you need to make a quick escape. The game spices things up with enemies who will ride the skylines up to your position and even follow you while you’re riding while trying to shoot you down. Handymen are also there to give the skyline an electrical shock in case you start hiding up there for too long, forcing you to fight.

It’s impossible to talk about Bioshock Infinite without mentioning its stunning art design. Every corner of the game houses something that breathes new life into the world you’re exploring and you can really tell the artists worked their asses off to get the look right. Unfortunately the graphics themselves are pretty hit or miss with some screen tearing issues plaguing the game and textures that get really muddy when you view them up close; all the details in the world also disappoint when you go for a closer look with fruit markets filled with boxes of images of apples and only a single actually modeled apple. You’ll see this in many places such as the rose bushes that are all completely flat images strategically placed to give the impression of a bush and the ground have a weird grass texture with a few pieces of grass sticking out in random spots. I know that many games do this sort of thing but they usually do it in places that are out of your way, Infinite has these sort of things in your face all the time and it’s a bit distracting sometimes. The voice-acting on the other hand is some of the best I’ve heard in a while that really help make the large cast of characters seem believable. There’s no other way to describe the soundtrack other than calling it brilliant and engaging. It really helps pull you into the setting just as much as the visuals do. There are even some neat hidden covers of contemporary bands such as Tears for Fears’ ‘Everybody Wants to Rule The World’ or Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ done in an early 1900’s style.

The Final Word
Bioshock Infinite is a phenomenal game and already my first nominee for Game of the Year. The art design is insane, the story is great, and the combat is tight and fluid. This game isn’t a treat to play, it’s the whole goddamn desert table and you’re missing out if you haven’t already played it.

– MonsterVine Rating: 5 out of 5 – Excellent