Checkpoint Breached: BioShock Infinite: That's Quite a Large Creative Liberty You've Got There

Oh boy! A new game! I've completely sold out! Fuck off, I like Bioshock and didn't want to wait.

Sequels are tough these days. Not only do you have the original to live up to, you're expected to expand on the idea and make it better. Take out the sucky parts and add more of the good bits and include enough fan-service that people won't complain. Story heavy FPS are probably among the hardest to live up to expectations. You're walking a thin line with creative liberty. Change too little and people say it's just a remake, change too much and you get crucified. Examples of good sequels to story based shooters, Half-Life 2, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Medal Gear Solid 3. Examples of really awful sequels to story driver shooters, every Call of Duty after four, Bioshock 2, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Dead Space 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Metroid: Other M, the list goes on and on and on.

But I think BioShock Infinite strikes a good chord in the realm of sequels. I'm not going to tote it as the FPS Messiah as most reviews seem to be lording it as, because it is definetaly not without it's problems. But first a look into the mechanics.

Bioshock: Infinite has a fair amount of really obvious problems with it's controls. First off, for some unknown reason, they felt the need to add in iron sight aiming. I understand that firing from the hip is not a good idea and makes you more likely to hit yourself than an enemy, but Bioshock's combat is supposed to be a flow of shooting and plasmids, not a shooter with plasmids in it. I would understand this choice if the iron sighting was easy to use or didn't break the combat flow a lot, but it sure as shit does. The original binding for iron sights in middle mouse click. The fuck? How is that even a little intuitive? I get that you can't bind it to right click off the bat because that's for your powers, but clicking the middle mouse button in the middle of a fight is not going to work and it's a toggle system, I assume to allow for the middle mouse button to actually function in some way, but if you rebind the key, you can't turn off the toggle function. In addition melee attack, something very useful, is bound to v. Fucking V? Really? That's the easy access key that seemed to work? And it doesn't end there. Use is bound to F instead of E like every other game ever, weapon swap is E instead of Q, Q is a menu to see all your Vigors, which is not necessary because they're bound to the number keys.

It all just seems like an array of terrible choices. I pity the person that doesn't play with at least a five button mouse because that's kind of what the game demands.

Moving on from the controls, the graphics are kind of strange. I have a pretty good machine. It's not top of the line, I don't have 2 nVidia x90 cards running in SLI or an overclocked CPU, I have a upper-mid range rig. The game runs at 60fps on high, kind of. It has the strangest slow downs. In the beginning, I was walking around Columbia, tons of stuff on the screen, tons of ambient lights and dynamic shadows, lots of textures too smooth out and the game ran fine. But as soon as I stopped to play one of the shooting galleries, a confined field of view with not a whole lot being rendered, the game dropped to exactly 30fps and stayed there like a rock. As soon as the minigame was done, back up to 60. I could not figure out why. I messed with the settings for a while and then just said, "Fuck it, Medium it is." And once I turned on the medium preset, it ran perfectly the whole game. Very strange. But it's still is damn pretty on Medium, so don't fret if you have to turn the graphics down, the combat demands a good framerate to survive.

I also had a bit of a problem with the combat. Bioshock 1 had great combat. It was tense, difficult and relied solely on your skill to get you through it. Bioshock Infinite departed from that in one incredibly huge and nearly unforgivable way, regenerating health. Technically, it's not regenerating "health" but the mechanic is still there. This essentially put training wheels on the game. The very few fights you have to go through before you get this ability are the best ones of the game in my opinion. The "Hard" difficulty was actually hard until this addition, then it was fairly laughible.

I also missed how confined the battles in Rapture were. Everything was tight quarters and it really added a level of difficulty and depth to the combat. You can't just run away, you have to think quickly and use your environment to your advantage. The wide open layout of Columbia along with your ability to quickly move about it removes something special that the original had. It feels a lot like Dishonored but much easier.

Fianlly, the game slightly aggravated me with confining me to two weapons. In Bioshock 1, you had all the weapons at once because the combat demanded it. No one or two weapons would see you through. No use in using the grenades to kill a lone splicer and the Tommy gun was not so good against armored targets unless you had AP rounds. Bioshock 1 had an array of guns, each with unique ammo types that were useful in certain situations. The gun upgrades actually changed the way the gun looked which I thought was amazing. BioShock Infinite carried none of this over. I used essentially two weapons for the VAST majority of the game. Just two. I didn't even want to try out new weapons I found because the two I had, which I managed to fully upgrade as soon as the upgrades became available for purchase, were suitable for every encounter I had. But one of the guns I used had the prettiest gun texture I've ever seen in a game, so there is that.

Fucking hell that's a pretty gun

But I suppose that's enough complaining. None of these issues stopped me from playing all the way through the game in less than 24 hours. So now I'll mention what I liked.

The idea of having an AI companion is something that will almost completely drive me away from a game. There's a small amount of notable exceptions, but I usually end up hating AI companions.

All that said, Elizabeth wins the award for the Best Support AI in gaming history. Hands down.

I don't think I ever heard her repeat a line in the whole game. And the random conversations during the actual gameplay seem real and add greatly to character development. She even comments on things in the environment in an insightful and interesting way. The character is very well written into the experience and enhances it at every turn. On top of that, not only does she stay out of the way during combat, she can't die, never ran in front of my gun sight and even helps you out during combat. Between Spec Ops: The Line and Bioshock Infinite I'm starting to reel back my total hatred of support AI.

Sums it up nicely

I promise I will not ruin a single thing about the story, half-pinky promise. But if you want to experience it all for yourself and completely blacked yourself out from any info on the story before you played the game, like I did, skip this section. I will only touch the very top of the story, but I'm still warning you.

The story is amazing, it really is. The subject matter of the story not as much as the characters involved. Everyone is written in so perfectly. My absolute favorite characters being these two.

Booker Dewitt is the perfect anti-hero too. He's written in with exactly that as his archetype. Most anti-heros eventually stray from this path to become some awful, overly dramatic sap, but Dewitt's character is constructed in a more believable way than most and had the proper feel about him. I mentioned in my Dead Space 2 review that if you want me to feel for a character, don't make them act outside of their believable realm too often, it will ruin characters.

Elizabeth's character was the pleasant of surprises. Female supports, especially ones in the age range of Elizabeth tend to be written in as whiny and helpless, and I really hate that. Aside from kind of a dumb stereotype, it makes me hate the character. Ashley in Resident Evil 4 is pretty much this incarnate. It can really bring me out of the story.

The story itself has a ton of nice twists and turns, a few of which I could spoil with a single screenshot, but you will not guess the ending, I guarantee it. You might be able to call one or two of the twists, but the actual ending will leave you blown away. But I'm not saying a single word more than that.

I'm willing to recommend this game on story and environment alone. The combat is no where near the level of Bioshock 1. The keybinding will need serious overhaul on your part to get them to where you like them, but damn it's a good game, and you still haven't guessed the ending.