Bioshock Infinite... Oh! I Play This Game!

I have returned once again to take on the task of reviewing video games! This time, I recruited some help. Next week we'll be welcoming some new talent to Limit Break: Zach Phillips. The two of us will be alternating week after week reviewing games. The new schedule will be Tuesday reviews, Thursday At My Limit, and Saturday's Nerd News Update, where I'll be summing up interesting news of the week.

This week I'd like to talk about a game that really "wowed" me: Bioshock Infinite. Released on March 26th 2013, Bioshock Infinite has had a great reception on the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC. It is a first person shooter with many action adventure elements and a very deep story line. Infinite is the third instalment in the Bioshock series, though you don't really need to play the previous games to enjoy it. I really enjoyed playing it and found that the setting was not only beautiful, but also quite interesting.

Not only will you be getting a review of the game, but I'm also going to compare the settings of both Bioshock Infinite, and its predecessor: Bioshock. I will also be including an additional feature this review, a family rating. In the family rating, I'll explain the game content that may not be appropriate for younger audiences, and compare the content to popular movies so that parents can make more accurate judgments when deciding if their child should be able to handle said game.

Story - 10

Take yourself back to 1912. Now put yourself in the clouds, on a floating city. Welcome to Bioshock Infinite. Bioshock Infinite takes you to the city of Columbia, a floating city with some fancy advanced technology. You are Booker Dewitt, a man who has accumulated a large mysterious debt, but hope is not lost. A strange couple approaches you and offers you a solution, "Bring us the girl, and wipe away the debt." They want you to go to Columbia, and bring them a girl named Elizabeth.

Bring Us the Girl and Wipe Away the Debt

When you arrive at Columbia you can immediately tell that something is off. It is a beautiful city, but it seems to be centered around some bizarre religion that worships the American forefathers. Soon enough, the rest of the sights blind you to what is really going on. Skipping ahead a bit so I don't reveal too much of story, you find out that Elizabeth is the daughter of Columbia's leader, Zachary Comstock. This doesn't deter you, though the legions of his soldier really try to. When you finally find Elizabeth, you find that she has an unexpected ability: the power to rip holes in dimensions.You bring her, and attempt to escape Columbia to finally be rid of your debt.

To do so you head after a blimp like airship so you can return to deliver the girl. Seeing that the law isn't able to stop you, Comstock sends his personal army after you to reclaim his daughter. However, you find that the airship is captured by the "Vox Populi", a group of ruthless rebels trying to start a revolution. These guys aren't too friendly though, and soon you are not only being hunted down by the Comstock, but also the Vox Populi. And after finding out that you've got the founder's daughter tagging along, they also want to take Elizabeth alive.

That's all you get folks. I don't want to spoil the plot for you guys. Bioshock Infinite's story is extremely interesting. As the plot develops it brings forward many deep philosophical and psychological ideas. And at the end it wraps this great story with a plot twist and tops it with a bow after the credits roll. My only complaint is that most of the story is told through a narrative using "vox recordings". These recordings are basically just audio journals scattered throughout the game that set up the background information of various characters, and the setting. It didn't bother me too much, but it could have been better executed.

Audio - 9.5

Bioshock Infinite may not feature a stellar voice cast like some games, but decent number of big names. Troy  Baker, who also played Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3, and Robin in Arkham City. It also features another Mass Effect alma mater, Jennifer Hale, who more recently has played Hawkgirl and Killer Frost in Injustice: Gods Among Us. Some new talent is also introduced such as Courtnee Draper, and Kiff Vandenheuvel. Infinite's cast does a great job at conveying great, tone setting emotion, which really helps intensify the experience.

Background music is a very important feature in video games, and Bioshock Infinite's soundtrack nails it. Infinite does a great job at setting an appropriate atmosphere through music. The game also features remakes of modern classics in an early 1900s style. Hits like Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, God Only Knows, Shiney Happy People, and Fortunate Son,  are twisted in a fun and amusing way. The sound effects are also fantastic. The one that really jumps out to me is the sound used for the creature "Songbird". Songbird is a giant steam powered bio-mechanical bird, and when I heard it coming it was intimidating.

Video - 10

Steam-punk is a pretty popular genre, but visually it can be very bland. It usually focuses on brown leathers and metallic colors like brass, copper and silver, but Bioshock Infinite offers us a brilliant variety of colors. The environment is a lush floating city with early american architecture next to strange mechanical contraptions. Beautiful flowers grow in small fields and gardens, rivers and ponds are scattered through out the city. The buildings and clothing is filled with great color and character, and set in front of a beautiful blue sky. It doesn't stop there though, as you progress through the game the city of Columbia becomes a darker place. The chaos caused by yourself and the civil war raging in the streets causes society to deteriorate. Buildings burn, beautiful gardens turned to battlefields, the sky clouded by smoke.

At Least in an Alternate Dimension Lucas Got it Right

Bioshock Infinite has very impressive visual effects. Human's facial expressions and movements are very believable. Not only that, but the special effects are really cool looking. The visuals for the vigors vary from a murder of crows swarming an enemy, to a tentacle shooting from your arm and throwing someone. Elizabeth's ability to open rifts in dimensions also presents some interesting sights. To the left you can see the special effect, with the Eifel Tower in the background. If you look carefully enough you can see that on the theater's sign it says "La Revanche du Jedi". Go ahead and pop that into google translate and enjoy. This game is extremely beautiful to look at, if you really like an emphasis on good visuals, you will definitely enjoy the way this game looks.

Gameplay - 9

One of the things that disappoints me about Bioshock Infinite is that it doesn't really introduce something new to the shooter genre. It also doesn't really expand on the controls of the previous two games. It reduces the number of weapons you can carry to two, but that honestly doesn't really change the gameplay all that much. In fact it adds to the challenge at times.  Infinite has a decent variety of weapons too, all of which are pretty much the usual suspects in first person shooters (machine gun, burst gun, sniper, shotgun, etc.), but they don't take anything away from the game. The game also poses a decent challenge the first time around, even on the normal difficulty.

A Handyman is a Strange and Intimidating Opponent

There are 4 different types of special enemies featured often in the game. The first you encounter is the "Fireman". These enemies Have many fire based attacks, such as an explosive grenade, and self destructing when they are low on health. The second is the "Crow".  The crow is a melee based unit which becomes disappears until it gets into medium range and then reveals himself to attempt a painful melee attack. Next is the Motorized Patriot, the robotic, mini-gun wielding, founding father of doom. The Patriots are very dangerous when you try and engage them in ranged combat, and are also quite durable. Though if you get behind him, you can shoot some exposed gears for extra damage. Finally, the "Handyman" is a devastating enemy. He is a large steam punk cyborg who is extremely lethal in all forms of combat. His only real weakness is the chamber that holds the human heart which powers the suit. These three enemies add a good challenge to the encounters throughout the game.

If you've played the previous Bioshock titles you'd be familiar with the term "plasmids". Well, in Bioshock Infinite they're called "vigors". While plasmids are powered by ADAM, vigors are powered by salts. They do basically the same effect, and could in fact actually be plasmids from subtle hints in vox recorders, but for some reason they seem a bit out of place in this universe. Maybe its the fact that they aren't well explained and seem more like items there to explain new enemies. They're still a lot of fun to use, and are each useful in different situations.

Through a good portion of the game you are escorting Elizabeth through Columbia. Normally this would irritate me to no end, but unlike other escort characters, Elizabeth is extremely useful. Using her abilities she can bring objects into existence from other dimensions. This can help you defeat enemies, and access other areas of the world. Elizabeth also will throw you salts, health packs or ammo while you fight. She'll also randomly find more money while you are exploring.

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Bioshock 1 and Bioshock Infinite are two very similar games, though they are quite different. If you look at the gameplay you can see slight differences, mainly in the weapons available and the number that you can carry. However the atmospheres are quite different. In Bioshock you only experience a decaying society bought to the brink of disaster. Where as in Bionshock Infinite you begin the game in a stable society, and watch it slowly deteriorate into chaos. The atmosphere in the first Bioshock is dark and eerie, while the atmosphere in Bioshock Infinite is bright and slowly darkens, but it always has this feeling of mystery and wonder about it.

Bioshock - Rapture

In Bioshock, Andrew Ryan builds the underwater city of Rapture so that the "elite of society" can live outside of the US government's control. It takes its name from the Biblical idea of the rapture, when Jesus returns to take his followers to heaven. Rapture's utopian society soon deteriorates due to their objectivism. Through their desire for self perfection, they began to toy with DNA, which caused new social classes to develop. To cope with the new demand for enhanced abilities, brutal experiments were conducted and war broke out between Andrew Ryan and a contesting leader. This civil war turned this underwater utopia, into a crumbling dystopia.

Bioshock Infinite - Columbia

In Bioshock Infinite, the US government commissions the plans for a floating city, which is named after the American exceptionalism. The city was designed to be a flying worlds fair, but was eventually revealed to be a massive weapon. This causes an "international incident" and the city is disavowed by the government. A civil war then breaks out on Columbia which splits the upper and lower class. Gregory Comstock then comes into power and an extreme theocratic government is established with Comstock at the head. The civil war eventually plunges Columbia into a dystopian society.
female personification of the United States, Columbia. The city was meant to symbolize the ideas of

As you can see the two games have similar themes that vary enough to make them both equally interesting. Rapture, the art deco underwater capitalistic city for the elite, and Columbia, the air borne steam punk theocratic city drowned in white supremacy. In both cases, society falls apart and civil war breaks out. I truly believe that Bioshock Infinite is the legitimate successor to Bioshock. Though the settings are different, the themes are similar.

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Bioshock Infinite is rated M for Mature, for blood and gore, intense violence, language, mild sexual themes, and use of tobacco and alcohol. Blood and gore is shown pretty much everywhere in the game, but especially when using a melee execution. Blood and chunks fly everywhere, its gruesome. Just as with blood and gore, there's a lot of violence. Half the game is about killing your opponents, and through some of the events in the game, you witness people being shot in the head, or drowned. As for language, there's a bit here and there but for the most part I didn't even notice it. There are some sexual themes, but most of the time its just people talking about "fornication", or referencing various sexually transmitted diseases like the "clap". Through out the game you can find alcohol and tobacco as recovery items, they each restore a small bit of either health or salts.

In the end, Bioshock Infinite is only inappropriate for those under the age of 16. The only thing in this game that wouldn't be seen in a PG-13 movie is the blood and gore, and some of the violence shown in events. The game also has a lot of intricate commentary on society so to fully appreciate them it should be experienced by an older audience. If you have watched a movie like "The Matrix" or "The Patriot" with your son or daughter, they should be able to handle this game.

I sincerely enjoyed Bioshock Infinite. It is my favorite game thus far for the year of 2013. The plot twist at the end really threw me for a loop, and even now I'm still discovering new twists that I missed. Personally, I'd love to give this game a 10, but it was not a perfect game, so its going to have to live with a 9.8. This game is definitely worth picking up, and I definitely expect this game to be nominated for a game of the year award. Next week will be Zach's premier review on Limit Break, I'm really looking forward to seeing his perspective on some of this year's games.