Virtual Dork: Bioshock Infinite Review

"The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is."
-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time

Reviewing Bioshock Infinite as a game is more than a little difficult for me. The feeling of not merely playing, but experiencing, the first Bioshock is much stronger in this spiritual sequel. There is a well-polished, brilliantly conceived and balanced shooter at the core of the Bioshock Infinite experience. But to simply dwell upon the game's genius mechanics would be a disservice to the beautiful piece of art (that's right, Roger Ebert, art) that Irrational Games has created.

Infinite begins with a very familiar scene for franchise devotees. You're in a boat, rowing toward a lighthouse. All you know is contained in a box of effects: your name: Booker DeWitt, a pistol, a photograph of a girl, a key and a few handwritten notes. On one of them: Bring us the girl, wipe away the debt. Devilish in its simplicity, the note kicks off a journey into the clouds that mimics the bathysphere spectacle that kicked off the original Bioshock.

Look familiar?

From those few opening moments, Infinite becomes an increasingly unnerving exploration of that city — Columbia — and an early 1900s xenophobic patriotism morphed by Christian values that struck me as much more interesting than Andrew Ryan's Ayn Randian utilitarian Rapture. From the opening moments, as you're baptized among cloaked devotees in a brilliantly lit sequence initiating you into the city, to the final revelation of Zachary Comstock's (the zealot and main antagonist — or so it seems — of this installment in the series) perversion of religion to suit his lofty, utopian aims, Booker's journey through Columbia is one with horrifying and unsettling cruelty toward man under the guise of ideology and zealotry that never really lets go.

Your charge, as Booker, is to find Elizabeth, the girl locked in the tower. You do so early in the game, after inadvertently alerting the entire city —which wants to protect Elizabeth — to your presence. This is where the fighting comes in. Not only will you battle citizens of Columbia, who are not intoxicated by powers like they were in Bioshock but rather sane human beings driven by devotion either for or against Comstock, but also giant machine enemies known as Heavies and Elizabeth's protector, a massive mechanical bird controlled by Comstock himself.

The resulting escape mission will take you through many heart-pumping sequences throughout Columbia. Gameplay is cosmetically similar to Bioshock, though the names of the powers and perks have changed. Instead of plasmids, you have vigors, which range from being able to fire a flock of murderous crows from your hands to traditional electric charges and fireballs. I found Bucking Bronco, a new vigor that allows you to throw your enemies into a daze mid-air, extremely effective with conventional weaponry, particularly the shotgun. Once Elizabeth joins your side, you have access to things called "tears," in which she opens up portals to other dimensions to bring offensive and defensive objects into battle.

It's all very familiar territory, despite the changes. The aerial aspects of combat are improved greatly by the presence of a Skyline, a device that allows you to travel around Columbia on steel pathways that crisscross the city. There are also freight hooks throughout that you can attach to with your Sky Hook, granting you access to higher ground for strategic combat situations and secret areas where money, ammo and other secret goodies await. The Sky Hook also enables gruesome melee kills. This is not a game for youngsters.

The difficulty of Bioshock Infinite is also alleviated by Elizabeth's ability to revive you throughout. Once you've beaten the game, the devilishly difficult "1999" mode becomes available, in which respawns are limited and ammo is harder to come by. I haven't had a chance to fire it up yet, but the game ratchets up in difficulty significantly in the second act even on Medium. It will be an interesting challenge that I'm impatiently looking forward to.

All of this discussion of Infinite as a game is extremely difficult for me, though, as I said at the outset of this review. Because, to be perfectly honest, the gameplay isn't what stuck with me. This is a better-than-average shooter with an extremely high amount of polish, don't get me wrong. But the gun and vigor play wasn't what kept me riveted to the screen, it was the relationship between Booker and Elizabeth, and the little clues that something is amiss in the world you're seeing that kept my fingers from powering down the Xbox.

Without giving too much away, the final 20 minutes or so of the "game" will take you back to Rapture and cause you to question your motives throughout. One reviewer noted Infinite has no "Would you kindly?" moment, as the original Bioshock did. But the reason for that is complicated. The existence of multiple realities, and an unreliable narrator who knows just as much as you do, makes that scenario — groundbreaking in videogames just 5 years ago — seem obsolete. By the time the credits roll on Infinite, you'll have realized you were never playing the game you thought you were. And that makes another playthrough seem cheap, despite how fun the game is to play and the promise of missed achievements.

The game, in other words, is secondary to story. Some people will play Infinite simply because it is one of the prettiest and most functional shooters out there. Indeed, the thrill of landing a perfect headshot on a Skyline, then zooming down to light some fools on fire and stick a Sky Hook in their cranium is one that will continuously take your breath away. But the story crafted by Ken Levine and Irrational is something that transcends simply one kind of media, and quite frankly renders the intricate plot of the original Bioshock, which earned universal praise just a few short years ago, obsolete and trite by comparison.

Which is the only real criticism I can come up with for the game — I honestly have no idea how you can top, in terms of storytelling, the final act of Infinite (of course, I thought the same after Andrew Ryan got the golf club to the skull in the first Bioshock). It will make you question why you've become so complacent with video games as a medium. As mature gamers, we should be demanding experiences that challenge us and the traditional roles they play in our lives — escapism, mindless cathartic release and sensory stimulation. Infinite turns all those tropes on their heads, in a brilliant story distilling great works of fiction in all mediums.

Do not miss this experience. And stay for the gameplay.

Rating: 5/5 stars