Bioshock: Infinite. Do you believe the hype?

Bioshock: Infinite

I guess I should say, straight off the bat, that I am a new-comer to the Bioshock franchise; having never even heard that much about it before, let alone having come close to playing the games. So, I came into this gaming experience completely expectation-free, with no hangover of preconceptions from its predecessors.

There is no grand and sweeping statement I can use to summarily define the gaming experience I had when playing through Bioshock, without using the worn and clichéd term “perfect”. I don’t believe I have ever played a game with such a well-rounded and fleshed out skill set; from concept to graphics, gameplay to storyline.

The golden glow you are met with, upon first setting foot in Columbia,
sets the perfect tone for what is to come.

The first thing that struck me, almost immediately, was the quality of the graphics. I still maintain that the Playstation 3 is the powerhouse of modern generation gaming graphics, but it is starting to lag behind the ambition of the game design industry, which becomes ever more evident with each new release. However this was a moot point when it came to B:I which – from the very off – caressed your retinas with a rich palette of colours, and beautifully designed surroundings (and characters, but I will come to them later!). Without spoiling too much, you’re initial introduction to the City in the Sky is truly glorious, bathing you in a golden glow. Honestly, it is something truly breath-taking, and something I have never experienced from a game.

Columbia is the perfect blend of history and fantasy.

The surroundings are mostly – if not, arguably, exclusively – the city of Columbia, a turn-of-the-century City, lavished with historically accurate detail. You are instantly instilled with the faith that the game designers and artists have done a fair amount of research behind their concepts, and then artfully blended it with a really steampunky style, creating something vaguely believable for the proposed time period. My first half hour or so in Columbia was spent wandering the streets, not really paying much heed to the storyline or the directions the game was tugging you to follow. I was just enthralled by the buildings, their architecture, and the faithful recreation of a period city, so vibrant and bursting with detail. You could most definitely play this game purely for the treat on your eyes, but trust me when I say that there a plenty more reasons to give it all of your time.

Kicking the habit of the usual "steampunk" pitfall.

This leads me nicely on to the conceptual design, which was out of this world. I remember seeing the artwork pre-release, and I wasn’t overly enamoured. Not necessarily as a reflection of its quality, but more as a sigh of disappointment and unoriginality… How many times have we seen a pseudo-futuristic/historical hybrid? Oh no, not more steampunk!? But how wrong was I? Irrational Games and 2K have done a beautiful job of adding life to an overdone “genre”, and have done it so much better than anyone has managed before. I fell in love with the clothing, behaviour and general aesthetic of the people, in a way that no game has ever swooned me to do before… The vehicles and weaponry are of the ilk you’d find in more recent hits (I am looking at you Borderlands!), but have been rendered in a way that they are aesthetically and logically congruous with the setting.

I expected to be fully conversant with the gameplay and controls, having a long and healthy pedigree in the genre of First Person Shooters, and a little bored if I was totally honest. That said, whilst never truly out of my depth, I did find the controls ever so slightly alien to what I am used to, and a breath of fresh air. The guys at Irrational have added new (at least by comparison to most FPS games) concepts and fundamental twists to a genre grown stale by its inherent nature. The setting is probably the most subtle way of “spicing up” your usual shoot-and-sprint, with a city perched amongst the clouds adding a lot of tactical variety to your shoot-outs. With a battleground being over several levels, with height and distance being variable, connected by walkways, stairwells and a novelty in the form of the Skylines, a gunfight is never just a gunfight. Flying through the air at an alarming speed, only to kamikaze into an enemy, smashing his face asunder with your grappling hook, is something I really found to never tire of. Trust me.

The full range of Vigors available to us.

The most glaringly obvious change to the uniform gun-slinging, is the addition of Vigors; a carry-over from the Bioshock annals, with a little reinvention. In the form of 8 (seemingly) supernatural powers, Vigors play as big a part of the combat system as the guns themselves. A FPS at heart, the game has a variety of weapons at your disposal – from pistols and sniper rifles, through to handcannons and carbine rifles – but you will struggle immensely to play through the game, without using the Vigors to compliment your shooting. Whether you favour sending a murderous swarm of Crows after people, flinging fireballs everywhere, or projecting a bulletproof shield, you are given a little something to suit all tastes.

Tears form one of the main premises of the game, I promise.

The last tool at your disposal, whilst fighting for your life in Columbia, is the use of tears – literally tears in the very fabric of time and space; doorways into alternative realities of the universe you are currently gaming through. This starts out as a little jarring, seeming as though it isn’t overly grounded in relevancy to the main story, and is tacked on for laughs. Once the story begins to enrich itself however, you start to understand the logic and reasoning behind it all. In pure gaming terms, they are really quite great. Sometimes they manifest themselves in the form of allied turrets and sentries which lend you some – albeit frail – much needed firepower, whilst other times you can find yourself being gifted with a stack of health and gun stocks, or a conveniently placed wall to find cover behind.

The game controls are fairly standardised, and pretty easy to get a handle on. You have your load, action and shoot buttons, as well as melee attack, usual movement functions, jumping and crouching. The only real difference is the use of the spare buttons, in this case used for the utilisation of the Vigors system. Pretty simple stuff, and keeps the gameplay slick and dynamic.

The last aspect of the gameplay I really thought worth a mention was the “loot” pick up system. I don’t really have the history to comment on whether this is new, better or worse than in previous Bioshock titles, but I have played past “shoot and loot” titles (looking at you again Borderlands!) and found the loot system on this game immensely fun, and very useful. The world is chock full of items to be found, and almost every cadaver you come across – whether you inflicted their current state of unliving upon them or not – there’s a good chance they’ll be holding something valuable, whether it is a healthy dose of Salts (the stuff that powers up your Vigors), much needed ammo (Oh, how quickly you deplete your stocks) or some health boost. I wouldn’t say the frequency of item encounters goes any way to making the game a cake walk, far from it (the number of times I found Salts when needing Health, and vice versa…), but they just make the game a little more interesting.

Z.H. Comstock. You'll learn to hate him, trust me.

The character design is really quite something in this game. Sometimes, especially with games that lavish their settings in such glossy detail, designers forget or wilfully neglect their NPC’s, and those that do try oft leave a lot to be desired. But not Irrational. Oh no! Whether you are listening to the wittering banter of the Lutece’s, the zealous propaganda of Z.H Comstock, or the inane rambling of Jeremiah Fink, the characters have been captured with such realism and vivacity. You can connect to them on a strange level, in that they are so historically removed, yet there is something so familiar about their motivations and drive. The character animation is second to none, and there were times when I found my jaw dropping at the sheer technical brilliance of the facial expressions, and physical interaction between characters.

Elizabeth. We love her.

I think that the real Coup de Grâce in Irrational’s character conceptualisation however, is Elizabeth. The whole game seems to revolve around her, from the storyline and gameplay all the way through to the marketing. Nowhere is this better shown and repaid than in her design and programming. I am not alone in my admiration of her – yes, she has taken the top spot for my favourite female character of all time, sorry Moxxi! – and it isn’t hard to see why. From the first moment we meet her, I was captivated by her beauty. Yes, I understand that she is only young, but she is just something to behold. Not just aesthetically enrapturing, but her personality – and the way it develops through the course of the game – is really hard to not become emotionally invested in. The game designers have clearly put a lot of effort into making the majority of the audience feel exactly the same about her… From her lithe figure and Disney princess beauty, through to her gritty determination and raw emotions. They are invested in making us understand that she is supposed to be empathetic and sympathetic. That we are supposed to love her in exactly the same conflicted way as Booker. They have even gone to the effort of painstakingly recreating the felt effect on her jacket for God sake! Don’t believe me? Check it for yourself.

As far as storyline goes, it really wouldn’t be dramatic to say that it has a narrative better than most movies, let alone taking into account that is actually a computer game. Very few – in fact, none come to mind – games I have played have ever come near to the quality and strength of story told by Bioshock: Infinite. I don’t really want to mention much, for fear of being one of those dreadful souls who drop spoilers like they are nothing, but it really is a spectacularly woven tale of intrigue, twists and good old fashioned action. You want realistic themes of religion and racism? It’s got it in bundles. You want real world liberation and the fight for freedom? Sure, have a bucket load. I really should have seen the ending coming, but it really knocked me for six. I finished it three days ago, and I am still reeling a little from the shock of it all. You know a story is good, when it has that sort of impact on you.

Probably the weakest part of the game – although not actually a reflection of the music’s quality, but something has to be weakest, even in a game of such quality – the soundtrack isn’t the greatest I have heard. It really is quite good, and captures the mood perfectly almost every time, but it just isn’t “Prince of Persia” quality. The late 1800’s/early 1900’s fairground music (as I like to refer to it), is great and goes a long way in making us feel at home in the history of it all, but there are moments when it just feels a little tinny and hollow. The creepier moments, where the music is eerie and a little more forlorn don’t do much for keeping your nerve, which is exactly what you want from a game; I hear this is a common theme across the Bioshock franchise.

Lastly, the games mechanics – in terms of frame rate, load screens and so forth – are really quite impressive. I played the game solidly for two days, and noticed two or three blips in total, all of which were the game lagging at moments of intense action. That said, my PS3 is getting rather venerable these days, and there is as much a chance that my system decided to have an off moment, than the game itself. The load screens were relatively short, and made recent releases look silly with their rather lengthy wait times, when changing an in-game location, which is something I have grown to loathe over the years.

All in all, I must say that I was both shocked and amazed by Bioshock: Infinite. As a total newbie to the franchise, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I was not disappointed. It not only made for an enjoyable way to pass the best part of two days, but I would go as far as to say it is in the top two or three games I have ever played. From its glorious, retina-caressing graphics to its mind-blowing storyline, this game genuinely has it all. I am struggling to find adjectives to make it sound less emphatically good, or at least to sound more objective, but it really is impossible. Everyone should feel bad, if they haven’t played this game before they die.

Final Score: 10/10