Bioshock Infinite

[Mr. Analog]

I just finished playing the game to completion in 9.5 hours straight, I literally could not stop.

THERE'S NOTHING I CAN SAY WITHOUT RUINING IT

It took my expectations and sailed away beyond them into the shining sun.

[Lazybones]

So the delays and generic dude holding a gun wrong pose on the box didn't spoil it ?

[Thorin]

Looking at the time of that post...  So you started right after work and just kept going through supper?  Maybe the only quibble might be that it took less than 10 hours to play through.  But I'm glad that you obviously thoroughly enjoyed it

[Lazybones]

Now he can play it again on the ultra hard 1999 mode http://irrationalgames.com/insider/announcing-1999-mode/

[Mr. Analog]

So the delays and generic dude holding a gun wrong pose on the box didn't spoil it ?

If what we were going to get was based on early gameplay video from last year then yes, the delays were WELL worth it, the cover art still makes absolutely no sense, the plot is intricately woven together, so marketing to frat boys makes even less sense knowing now what I do about the plot. Augh, I can't say any more or ruin it.

Looking at the time of that post...  So you started right after work and just kept going through supper?  Maybe the only quibble might be that it took less than 10 hours to play through.  But I'm glad that you obviously thoroughly enjoyed it

The thing is I stuck strictly to the main plot line, the world is huge, you could spend hours in each zone soaking everything in, but the story is so complelling you just want to find out more, and the more you learn the more you want to know!

I will likely replay this game many times, I need to, to put some plot elements together and also just to experience it again!

I'll write more about it tonight.

[Mr. Analog]

So, here is my full review I guess.

Story

You play as Booker Dewitt, a man who owes an unknown debt and has been given an opportunity to pay it off by rescuing a girl from the fantastic flying city of Columbia. This I'm sure most of you know. The girl has the ability to open small rifts to alternate dimensions across time and space, this you probably also know. What you don't know is that this relatively simple (?) starting point leads you into a journey through multiple dimensions trying to stop several related catastrophic outcomes, this is like "Back to the Future" meets "12 Monkeys" all set in an anachronism-filled playground.

Again, I do not want to reveal too much but the plot of the game at it's heart has nothing to do with class struggle, racism or even the basic good vs evil (though all are elements that flavour the journey).

Spoiler

The real plot is an exploration of multi-dimensional travel, what life and death might mean when there are parallel realities, the loose relationship between cause and effect if you could change even minor things and, at its heart, the game is about trying to solve the unsolvable, put the genie back in the bottle, resolving paradox.

[close]

Themes of life, death and rebirth are frequently presented to you as you play, renewal and change are both very central themes to the storytelling.

Gameplay

The game uses standard FPS controls. You are given two weapon slots and a melee weapon in the form of a grappling hook (which you can use to ride the skyline rail system). Vigors and equippable gear work similarly to Bioshock's Plasmids and Tonics, in that they give you "magic" abilities and boosts, you can choose what gear you are wearing and you accumulate vigors throughout the game (though the most useful vigors are easily accessible early on). The "mana" system uses "salts" which can be boosted or lost depending on what food items you eat (you can also replenish salts by buying and consuming them).

Weapons and ammo are plentiful, though variety is lacking, weapons range from pistols, shotguns, machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers and so forth. You can upgrade weapons at vending machines, these mods stick with you rather than on a specific weapon of that type, so if you drop and pick up another weapon you don't lose the mods you bought. In previous games you had the option of choosing different ammunition, there is only one ammunition type per weapons this time around.

Vigors all have two modes, an immediate attack and a trap mode, vigors can be switched on the fly and are designed to combo with each other, so you can douse your foes in water and then zap them with electricity. This gives you the ability to crowd control mobs while you concentrate on "heavy hitters".

Fighting is generally done in large open areas, if you are outside you will have access to rails which lets you zip around the battlefield quickly, you will also encounter goon-carrying airships. The average foes you encounter are fairly easy to contain using traps, it's only when you come up against heavily armoured vigor users or "heavy hitters" like automatons or the juggernaut-like handymen that mobility becomes important. Most of the outdoor battlefields can be controlled by placing traps in the right locations and having Elizabeth open tears as you need them. In fact I found that once you get high ground and set traps in a few strategic locations you really don't need to ride the rails.

Riding the rails is a lot of fun but it is very disorienting, the rails can be used to kite enemies or escape from heavy hitters, but most of the time you want to group your foes together rather than spread them out over the rail system, generally I only found the rails useful to either get higher ground or as access to hostile airships.

Speaking of Elizabeth, she is by far the most useful AI companion EVER. She never gets in the way, she finds stuff for you to use on the map in and out of battle. She will seek a safe spot during battle but is always nearby, if you need a weapon reloaded or salts to use vigors she will toss what she can find to you mid-battle. She can also open tears that give you cover, or weapon/health caches or turrets, you can even cycle between these (which is great because she can use her powers to bring things in as the situation dictates). You are always acutely aware of her presence (cleverly done with audio cues), she never got stuck or had pathing issues, in fact she's always by your side, facing what you face, doing what she can.

She does like exploring the world and acts much like the player would, she'll investigate stuff sometimes take the lead into an interesting area, she acts on her own but not in an annoying way. You never feel like you are babysitting an AI and feels like you really are a team. Trust me, when she's not there you really do miss her.

As I have mentioned most enemies are heavily armed men and women, they are a lot smarter than Bioshock's Splicers there is also a much larger variety of them and they are generally themed to the location you are in and the activity that is at hand. They aren't always irrationally after you either, which was nice. For example, I wandered into a dockyard security hut and there was an officer on watch at a desk and a vault open with lots of money visible. The guy looked RIGHT at me and then went back to his writing, so I wander over in gamer mode and grabbed all the money, the guy leap from his desk and blew his whistle and pulled out a pistol. Next thing I knew all the security guards were on me and I ended up having a needlessly bloody battle because of my own damn greed. The AI isn't without its faults though, there have been times where I found myself right next to an enemy and they hadn't aggroed yet while the rest of their friends did, which lead to that moment of disbelief where you aren't sure if the guy is friend or foe (though this is clearly designated with colour health bars over their heads, it catches you off guard).

The "heavy hitters" are somewhat annoying, they all move fast and hit hard, some are easier to kite around or escape than others, but instead of being a thrill it feels more like a chore to fight them. When you come up against gatling gun toting automatons you just lay down a few traps to keep the other goons off you and circle strafe them until they are dead, after the first few encounters they were boring and didn't really spice up combat at all (they just stretch out combat).

Regarding player death, you never really die, you're brought back immediately in the same combat zone (though usually in a safe spot) some of your ammo and salts are replenished and you can keep fighting. This is both positive and negative as it means you can just zerg your way through most battles, which if you are like me didn't really feel all that challenging in the first place anyway so it's just a race to get it over with so you can move the story along. Don't get me wrong, I liked the pacing of the battles but they never feel threatening nor do they get annoying so, you feel zero stress fighting these guys. I may have to try higher difficulty to see if they get smarter but otherwise the battles aren't that interesting (the potential is there though).

Battles near the end are more tense as you are low on ammunition and salts and you are given some options to sneak your way past defences or engage them, that part was pretty cool because it forced you to conserve resources and really think about how you wanted to proceed (rather than, y'know, just running in guns blazing).

Graphics

This is a beautiful looking game, and runs very well on my system (not exactly top of the line spec), I only had a few instances where framerate dropped noticeably but considering what was going on at the time (massive running outdoor battle!) I wasn't that put off by it as the drops were very quick to recover (unlike other games I could mention). Again, as discussed before battles aren't really all that stressful so it's more about managing foes as a group than getting a perfect headshot on every individual.

The texture quality is really nice and the level of detail on everything is pretty amazing, the world is unlike the original Bioshock in that rather than cramped vacant quarters you are in a large open world populated by many, many people. When you first arrive in game they are having a sort of founding day celebration, so there are bands playing, floats sailing by, people everywhere having conversations, children playing in the streets, it's a living breathing space. I honestly don't know how they pulled off some scenes there was that much going on, but I appreciated it, I felt like I was in a real world. I mean, you hear music off in the distance, if you walk in that direction you'll find musicians and people dancing, it all has a logical connection.

Sound

Sound plays an important part, obviously the atmosphere of the setting is reinforced by the sound of wind, birds and the creaking and moving of the buildings as they waft through the atmosphere, dripping water, machines running, chains clanking, people laughing and talking, all these things collect together to round out and make more real what you are seeing.

The music is, in a word, brilliant. One of the side effects of multi-dimensional travel seems to be that music from all across the 20th century is peppered throughout the world, I mean when you have a barbershop quartet sail in on an airship and start singing Beach Boys or hear a gramophone playing an anachronistic version of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" or a pipe organ playing "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", you know you're in something different.

The game soundtrack itself is brilliant, it crescendos during action and other revelations and fades in and out, just as a film score would. It never sticks out and it always seems to be tied to what you are doing. There is an ongoing theme of birth, death and rebirth throughout the musical selections, original compositions and music used throughout various areas were extremely powerful and used frequently but not enough to become cliched (specifically Mozart's Requiem Mass and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" and it's many variations).

The ONLY sad part is that all this great music is currently unavailable for purchase (unless you bought collectors editions of the game). Having not known how good the soundtrack would actually be I just bought the standard game, but knowing now what I do I sincerely hope they get the OST up and available for purchase before other options are considered... *cough*

Other ambient sounds keep the world alive, the guns in particular sound really satisfying. Most of them sound like they pack a punch, oddly the larger guns like the rocket launcher sound kind of hollow, but the pistols, rifles and the shotgun especially sound really good.

As I mentioned before you are always aware of Elizabeth's presence, she will comment on stuff and talk to you, but also her boots have a distinctive sound, so when you are running about in a firefight (or just exploring some dark gloomy corner) you know where she is just by listening.

Conclusion

The main selling point of this game is its amazing story and the incredibly rich worlds it presents to you, it raises a lot of questions, looks at a variety of subjects through a sort of funhouse mirror and delivers some unique insights and genuinely  puzzling problems, the plot is going to make you want to play this game more than once let alone just the minute level of fascinating detail. As I mentioned before, the plot is like "12 Monkeys" or "Back to the Future" where I want to go through it again so I can how watch things unfold and perhaps learn even more (because holy @%&# there are a lot of connections and clues everywhere).

The combat is interesting but as many other reviewers have said before me, nothing to write home about. If you know how to crowd control you've won 90% of the battles, it's mostly strategic battle, there is less focus on one-on-one.

THERE IS some padding in the game which I got somewhat bored with, but thankfully it doesn't run on too long but personally I think it could have been done slightly differently to make it seem less of a chore and more interesting (it should have given you more freedom and at a less critical point where you think time is a larger factor).

The controls are fairly standard, I never really ran into many issues, though it kind of drops you in the thick of things at some point where you haven't fully mastered switching vigors and the like, you adapt fast but still.

The lack of weapon variety was disappointing, not to mention that you can only carry two weapons at a time. So frequently you have to choose between keeping your preferred weapon and swapping it out for a situational weapon (like a sniper rifle or a rocket launcher), while I realize dragging a vast array of death dealing devices with you around the world at all times is "unrealistic" I'm also mind-controlling crows in a flying city listening to a string quartet play rock music so... yeah

The vigors are interesting but I found myself just sticking to combinations that worked, I think there are some vigors I never even bothered using through the game (or used only once). Once I found a groove with certain vigors/guns/tactics I tended to stick with them, I never felt like I was given a chance to experiment with them enough, as battle complexity seemed to continually escalate for a while.

The production quality is top notch, I can honestly say I didn't really have any point where immersion was broken until the ending whereby my brain was reeling from the plot elements being introduced...

Suffice to say, it was very hard to sleep after playing this game, in fact the urge to play it again is very very strong.

So yeah, this is a very compelling game which I found appealing from past experiences but delivered an adventure I wasn't really expecting and a depth that blew me away all presented flawlessly.

In short: PLAY THIS GAME you will not regret it!

[Mr. Analog]

So, I hope I'm not the only one who's played this because, much like a good movie, I wanna talk about it (but can't or else ruin it for everyone else).

If anyone has questions or wants to discuss the ending or whatever reply here or PM me.

(As always use spoiler tags where they apply)

[Melbosa]

I want to but too much other games to go through. Maybe when they are done, we can swap game stories.  But I will listen to your stories and pipe in when I see a good question to ask!  Don't hold back my friend!

[Darren Dirt]

spoiler/lazyness warning:

Bioshock Infinite - Special Movie Version (Complete Story And Cutscenes)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iZZg2qiBos

3 hours long -- but no tedious* gameplay to challenge you!

It's more than just cutscenes, and more than just a Let's Play.







*just the STORY-CENTRIC gameplay!

Here is a special Movie Version of Bioshock Infinite, this has been edited to remove the player from the experience as much as possible and make it play like a Movie, rather than a game being played... I like to think of it as a "POV Movie", and not the dirty kind

With so many walkthroughs and commentary playthroughs out there I thought I'd make something for those only interested in the story, because believe me, it's a good one!

This is not simply a "cut and paste all the cutscenes" job, this game is different to many out there because very little of the story is told through conventional cutscenes, instead, a lot of the story/dialogue is in-game, and happens while you are in control.... I have edited it in such a way that:

- There are no "numbers" on screen
- There are no "on screen prompts", everything seems natural
- No save/autosave/loading screens
- I have integrated some of the audio logs into the Movie to add background story
- I have severely cut down most of the combat (some combat sections that add nothing to the story and feature no dialogue were cut entirely), and only kept in what is necessary to the story, or to break up long periods of walking/talking.

[Mr. Analog]

There are no cut scenes per se, it's all seamless with the gameplay and happen in realtime.

I have to say though, don't watch this stuff if you plan on playing the game. And even  if you don't plan on playing it you won't fully grasp things because as an edited playthrough you are going to see things that another player experienced and drew conclusions from, you aren't experiencing them yourself.

Where this game excels is that while there is an overall story being told it is the subtleties that change the flavour for the individual, much like a good book or film. You will share many experiences with others but draw different ideas about what it means.

That's the true mark of art, I think.

[Darren Dirt]

There are no cut scenes per se, it's all seamless with the gameplay and happen in realtime.

I have to say though, don't watch this stuff if you plan on playing the game.

Yeah no kidding, but I almost certainly will never play it, but since The Story is what so many are raving about -- so I'd consider watching a 3 hour [subjective] experience of it over not seeing it at all. Heck, a while ago I ended up watching about a half hour total of ME3 cutscenes, missed a lot of backstory but that was fine, it was interesting stuff. Ditto for the Main Characters' Big Speeches in DE:HR (as well as the 4 endings, and of course the post-credits scene that rewards fans of the original DE) ... I expect the BSI "movie version" to be far more rewarding/entertaining.

[Mr. Analog]

To me it's kind of like Portal, you can watch it but you won't get the same experience as playing through it not knowing what anything means.

Infinite works on a number of levels because it will tell an interesting story had you not played the original Bioshock but tells an EVEN MORE compelling story if you did because it takes advantage of assumptions that you made playing the original.

There are many parallels and also subversions, done quite cleverly.

[Lazybones]

Better cover art now available.
http://irrationalgames.com/insider/download-your-alternate-covers-today/

[Mr. Analog]

For some reason I find this terribly amusing.

Gotta say though, nice artworks!

[Thorin]

Bioshock Infinite cosplay: http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2013/04/23/amazing-rosalind-lutece-cosplay-bioshock-infinite/

Looks very well done compared to the reference picture.

You're welcome.