The Case

It's five hours since I've started the game. I quit, reluctantly, to go get a drink, and shower. Immediately my rig chugs and lags, and I wonder what's wrong, before I spy the little counter in the Steam screenshots uploader. 620. In five hours, having finished only approximately 1/3 of the game, I've taken 620 screenshots, enough to slow my rig as it attempts to process picture after picture of beautiful, fictional Columbia. That's how good the art design in BioShock Infinite is.

I daresay BioShock is one of my all-time favourite games. I've had more fun playing other games, I've had better times screwing around with friends in multiplayer ventures, but I've never had as good a story, as close as an artistic experience when gaming as I had with BioShock. The mood, the atmosphere and the plot were astounding, revolutionary and it reverberated through the industry with a frightening force, as millions were stupefied by the intense experience (and the mind-breakingly amazing plot twist). It received an incredible amount of accolades, and was loved by both gamers and critics alike - garnering awards such as the 2007 BAFTA Game of the Year with ease.

Thus, it is easily apparent that BioShock Infinite, the spiritual sequel of the BioShock series (ignoring the only-decent experience that was BioShock 2), has much to live up to. Does it? Well, here's an argument that's gonna be around for a long, long time.

The Trial

Let us first talk about the centerpiece of the game, the floating city - Columbia. As with the original BioShock, what marks the game most is its setting, and what Rapture was to BioShock, so is Columbia to BioShock: Infinite. The first impression you get is that of immensity, as the doors open and you find yourself standing upon a floating, steampunk city, it is easy to be overwhelmed. That's not to say that it's open-world, of course, far from it. In most cases, there is only one direction in which to head, with occasional choices giving you two or three paths, and some minor areas to explore. But ultimately, it grants you areas by areas, small, localized set-pieces that form a whole. However, the art design combined with the atmosphere generated gives players this sense of immensity that about them is an actual living, breathing city. In some ways it is both like and unlike the effect Rapture gave to players, like in the sense that the city is truly there, that it is an organism which has existed and has an actual history behind it, unlike in the sense that the city is still alive. Everything, the movement of the people, their stances and their little groupings, the placement of the buildings, the sounds and sights - it all seems incredibly natural, and that is what truly brings the city to life.

And yes, the art design. I have seen graphically superior games. I have seen crazier and more outlandish settings. But I have never seen a setting as beautifully crafted, with as much attention to detailed displayed, as that shown in BioShock Infinite. One can almost feel the passion that was put behind the making of this game, from the deliberate placements of everything, from signs to books, clipboards hung just at the right angles of tables to hats askew perfectly on racks, every screenshot I took looked almost as if they were paintings. The art design and realistic animations lend themselves to the atmosphere at every stage of the game, whether it is a dark and grimy atmosphere, or a bright and cheerful one. As such, the mood of the player is strung around, played to the tune of the piper that is the setting. Upon reaching a section where the theme was oppression, not only is this reflected overtly in plot and environment, but in a thousand tiny ways such as the way people move and stand, or the shading and strategic lighting.

It almost makes up for the gameplay. Almost. However, sad to say, it seems that all the genius, all the innovative techniques went into the other parts of the story, leaving much too little for the game itself. It's not that the gameplay is bad, it is very much polished, something that works without a squeak. However, what it is though, is uninspired. I expected much more from Irrational, and yet, the gameplay seems, at the end of the day, to be not so dissimilar from that of BioShock, perhaps even worse. The addition of the sky-lines and the tears (dimensional rifts which Elizabeth can open to reveal mundane things like ammo and such) are gimmicks at best, and the vigors, though varied, are all variations on powers we've seen before in such FPS games. There's the generic fire one, the generic lightning one, the generic stun trap, the generic grab, the generic charge... the list goes on. Even the alternate firing modes of these powers simply make them traps that enemies can walk into.

The gameplay is frenetic, heart-pounding, but it gets old fast, and unfortunately, stays old, despite a deep upgrade and gearing system - all these factors simply cannot make up for the fact that the gameplay gets stale. By the thousandth or so henchman I've dispatched I was thoroughly sick of the whole business, dreading the moments where I'd have to keep playing the actual game, instead of exploring and looking at the pretty sights. Worse, as the game goes on, it makes the cardinal sin of ramping up the difficulty by giving foes more hit-points, making combat at times a frustrating experience. The tears themselves are the game designers shouting at you, thrusting choices in your face (do you want to conjure up the turret here? Or do you want to conjure up an RPG there?) - ultimately, not contributing much to the gameplay while proving annoying when it is needed. With trans-dimensional rifts, you'd think the possibilities would be endless... infinite, so to speak, and yet the best they could come up with was to conjure up, from an alternate reality, health bags and ammo.

Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is by no means bad, and had it come out six, seven years ago, it would have been hailed as revolutionary, amazing work. But in 2013, it simply does not cut it.

And now we reach the meat of this review. The characters and the plot of the game, its story and its ending. Starting with characters, we realise that the writing and the voice acting for them is brilliant, the dialogue superbly well done. The relationship between Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth is incredibly well-thought out, far from the shallow companion-player relationships, or love interests we commonly see in video games. As the story goes on, you truly do feel for her - in one stage where she was taken from Booker, I literally ran past every single loot point in the game so I could rescue her, something no other game has ever made me do.

Other characters too are masterfully done - eliciting just the right reaction from players towards them. For example, I didn't really feel anything for Comstock until I realized the game wanted me to feel that way, that it had meant for Comstock to be an aloof, crazy figure that one only felt apathy for - that's Booker's viewpoint. Booker himself manages to come across as a likeable anti-hero, giving him a character that very much fits his past. You get the impression that the way he acts and reacts to the world about him is the result of previous character development and growth, that he has a history that he lived, rather than one thought up for him in a meeting somewhere.

The story of the game...well, there has been so far, in the few days since its release, an extremely mixed reaction to it, and I do not expect that to change, only to intensify as more people play the game. People will either love it, or hate it. Love it for being amazing and incredibly deep, something that actually requires thinking, but hate it for what a game like that entails - in a sense, it is an incredibly intellectual story, but also one that requires a powerful suspension of disbelief. The story deals with pseudo-scientific concepts and hard physics, as well as philosophical concepts of predestination and agency of choice, while requiring a mind to not follow down certain avenues of inquiry in order to accept the story.

As such, to me, is very representative of the Steampunk genre, where hard science and occasionally philosophy is called into play, but then one must also attempt to ignore the floating steam trains and rayguns. Should one choose to do so, it is easy to find plot-holes, and yet, personally, I have read many a book, watched many a movie, which require a substantial amount of forced ignorance in order to accept the story and still enjoy it - and many of these works of art I regard with great reverence. I believe, that this situation is not the fault of the game itself, but just the way things are. The themes that BioShock Infinite goes into are not "safe" themes that one could enter without endangering the solidity of the plot - it was a brave decision to do so, and I applaud them.

As for the ending, I fully expect hundreds to finish this and sit back, stupefied by its immensity of thought and immaculately crafted ideals, as well as the mind-bending revelations. Yet, I expect quite a few to also sit back in disgust, stating that was a "bullshit ending". To them, I can only ask that you think long and hard about it, and read up online on the theories behind the ending, as many of them truly are able to explain it for what it is. To those who put in the effort, and a certain degree of suspending their disbeliefs, the ending can be seen foreshadowed through the entire play-through.

The Verdict

The ending and its effect on the gaming community cements its role in the gaming industry. Something that is indecipherable, that can only be interpreted and argued upon, that transforms once it falls out of the creators hands? It is a work of art, no question. It is almost as if Ken Levine brought his development team together and created this in response to the ongoing debate over whether games can be considered art.

It is, in my opinion, more-so a work of art than a game - as an aspiring artist I love it. I love the absolute passion that was put into creating it, I love the dedication and care that created the setting and so on. As a gamer, I have my gripes, for ultimately the gameplay is disappointing, and the game eventually turns into a carriage/vehicle for the story and the setting and the atmosphere. Giving a score to this game feels like sacrilege. And I believe, or at least I hope, that's how Ken Levine and the team behind it wants me to feel.

Case Review

Judges panel

MrJenssen Score 4.5/5

4.5

StuntmanLT Score 4/5

4