Bioshock Infinite was a game that had a lot going for it, as well as high expectations. So it came as no surprise that last year when the game was released it reached critical praise. Critics praised the game for its deep story and innovative gameplay, believing it to be the new savior of the games industry, showing that story telling and innovative design are the way of the future, but does it deserve this praise?
Right, so straight off the bat I should say that on my first playthough of Infinite I too thought it was an amazing game, capable of showing the ability to transcend a medium that all art should be able to reach. However, on subsequent playthroughs I began to realize something, Bioshock Infinite is a little bit, well, shit.
Ok, so before we get into all that, its important we get into some history. See, the Bioshock series is actually the spiritual successor to the System Shock series, specifically System Shock 2, a game that by all rights was pretty amazing. As an early FPS RPG, it definitely had its problems; the shooting wasn't so good and it was unforgiving as all hell, causing you to even restart the game in its late stages if you didn't spec your character properly. But the great thing about SS2 is its ability to transcend those barriers. The game's setting and story seemed to exist to compliment the gameplay. For example, because the shooting was a bit, eh, the game set itself in a horror scenario which used this limitation to build a scene of tension in each of the fights in the game. This use of limitations is something we also see quite well in Bioshock, which also crafted it's whole story around this ideas.
Bio and System Shock also weren't afraid to do the whole RPG thing and let you play as you wanted too, and had ways of challenging the player by raising the tension of a scene rather that making it actually difficult. One of my fondest memories of Bioshock was when I was on my way to Point Prometheus after killing Andrew Ryan, only to realize that all I had was a fully loaded flamethrower, some hacking Plasmids and nine Eve hypos. Having to fight my way through a train station with nothing but fire and hacked drones is perhaps one of the best things I've done in a game, and the reason is because in my mind, I feel like the developers had a very different idea in there heads about how this encounter would go down, and my manipulation of the scenario allowed the moment to become mine.
Bioshock Infinite on the other had, doesn't really give this feel; the whole game feels like it's been made to play through a certain way. So I'll admit that the shooting in Infinite was a hell of a lot better that its predecessor, but that was never really the point. Every encounter in Infinite feels like its all been put together rather lazily, with the main variation being new enemy types or just more bad guys. This isn't much of a problem, but when every section in the city of Columbia feels like a shooting gallery rather than a city, it takes away from the immersion and the sense of reality that the previous games had. Rapture felt real, and your conflicts in it seemed real, in Infinite they do not. Every fight seems to break down into 'get to the other side of the room' or 'kill all the dudes'. In Bioshock and System Shock you didnt need to do this, you could get through a section however you wanted,and that helped make the experience more real.
To me, Infinite feels as like meeting a friend, only to realize half way through a conversation that its someone who looks a lot like your friend pretending to be them. They are alright at acting kind of the same, and the aren't such a dick to you, but something about it just feels really off.
For example, the plot of Bioshock Infinite doesn't seem to make a lick of sense. The games main focus is on a combination of both slavery and the multiverse theorem, which are two ideas that don't really mesh. In fact, for most of the game I felt as though these two ideas where with conflict with each other, as well as with the gameplay in general. I'm quite aware that I keep bringing up the previous Shock games, but its important to get a perspective on this. See, in the first game, the story and the violence of an FPS really existed to serve the story. It goes back to the aforementioned realism of the world. You really believed that the enemies you where fighting where insane splicers who where out to kill you. It was kill or be killed. In Infinite however, Booker's story about wounded knee is in complete opposition to the things he does in the game. As a main story element, a character feeling guild for killing hundreds of innocents doesn't work so well in a game where you spend most, if not all of your time, killing innocent civilians who are trying to protect there city against someone who is completely destroying it and trying to destroy there way of life. To me this use of soldiers as enemies is exactly the same as all the killing of Muslims in modern war shoots; they only exists as a challenge to delay the story and not to provide any depth to the world or game.
Speaking of depth, I mentioned the story before, and in case you didn't realise, a game in which you spend most of your time shooting dudes in the head doesn't work so well in a a game trying to make you think about quantum mechanics. See, in Bioshock the twist that occurred actually had merit, because not only did it apply to the character of jack,but it applied to the player, but more importantly, it worked in regards to the system of the game. The 'Would You Kindly' twist served to make you question all of your actions so far in the game, mainly because they where your own. It took advantage of the medium it was based in, I doubt such a twist would work nearly as well in film. The golf club scene and the fact that it is one of the only cutscenes in Bioshock and the loss of power it conveyed did a similar thing. In comparison, Infinite's 'twist' seems to only exist for there to be a twist, and the whole ending and reveil may as well have only been a cutscene, as the level of player involvement is highly lacking. In my opinion, I think that Infinite would have worked just as well if it was a film, and from a Shock game, that concerns me.
When Bioshock was released in 2008, Irrational games didn't expect it to become a colossal hit, and so the game they made was made for a more specific audience. It was not made for the COD fans or the shooter frat boys.The main problem with Infinite is that it trys to have the same core as Bioshock, as well as being as appealing to everyone in the market. Because of this, the shooting elements have taken a forefront, and are still lacking, and the story elements have suffered for it. It seems like they made the game and the story seperatly and tried to mesh them together, and it just doesn't feel at all coherent.
All in all, I think Bioshock Infinite is 'fine'. Its not a horrible game at all, but as a game that people are praising for being the next Bioshock, and showing how games can be more than art it strongly fails. I haven't even mentioned all the problems that Elizabeth brings to the gameplay and the fact that the ending is full of paradoxes, I strongly recommend a video by Matthewmitosis on YouTube for that. These are just my views on a gamethat could have just been so much more, but in the end just seems like its being pretentious,and doesn't seem to understand what made the Shock series so appealing. It's not the story or the gameplay or the classic 'twist', its the fact that they leave you with something to think about after the credits roll, in Bioshocks case being 'How much am I really in control of my actions?'. Infinite leaves me with no such feeling. But hey, it's your choice, after all, 'A man chooses, a Slave obeys'.
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