Introduction
| Developer: | Irrational Games |
| Publisher: | 2K Games |
| Platforms: | PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 |
| Genre: | First Person Shooter |
| Engine: | Modified Unreal Engine 3 |
Bioshock Infinte is a First Person Shooter set in the early 20th Century America. You play as Booker DeWitt, a private Investigator and former Pinkerton Agent. Offered a chance to clear his debt by bringing in a girl “Elizabeth” you are escorted by a mysterious pair to a lighthouse , This is not a sequel to Bioshock in fact this takes place 5 decades before the events in Rapture, and you are flown to a beautiful floating air-city of Columbia, founded by and under the rule of Zachary Hale “Father” Comstock.
Comstock learns of your arrival and dispatches his troops after you, but you soon meet Elizabeth in a tower where she has been held captive for 20 years. Booker offers Elizabeth an escape to Paris and they team up against Comstock and fight their way through hordes of human and ‘automated’ enemies all the while discovering more about their connection with the city and the prophecy. Bioshock Infinite was announced in 2010, and has been on a pedestal since as Irrational claimed to be working on a different kind of Video Game experience. And now it’s time to confirm whether they were successful or not.
Story and Presentation
It’s 1912 and you are tasked to bring back a girl in an air-city you know nothing about, you are marked as a ‘False Prophet’ as soon as you enter the city and mysterious beings roam free to kill you. Ken Levine has always had a vision for story telling and game design, as seen in System Shock series and the critically acclaimed Bioshock. Like the first installment of Bioshock there are multiple layers to the story of Columbia, it’s formation and the factions living in it, and as you progress in the game you are drawn deeper into the depths of the story, every character is part of a giant web and each of them have their secret reasons for doing what they did.
You find out more about Booker’s role in this alien world, about Elizabeth’s captivity and her powers and control over Tears, mysterious rips in space which are explained few hours into the game.
Father Comstock is hailed as the ‘prophet’ and has pro-American ideals and discriminates against Colored people and immigrants, he is opposed by Daisy Fitzroy who leads Vox Populi , the revolutionary faction in Columbia. Booker and Elizabeth are caught in a civil war with the two factions and their decisions affects the reality of the city, and the characters.
A strange pair often helps you and guide you in the game, and they remain a mystery for the majority of the game. Every major character has their stories recorded in ‘Voxophones’ which are similar to ‘Audio Diary’ from Bioshock. These voxophones provide personal narratives of major characters about their lives, and their role in the creation of Columbia and are sprewed throughout the city often hidden and hence encouraging exploration. The last 20 minutes of the game reveal the truth behind everything, explains questions that Booker and Elizabeth were puzzled on and you spend quite a lot of time thinking about it after the game is over.
Gameplay
Being a First Person Shooter one hopes for this game to have a satisfying, challenging gameplay especially in combat and a multitude choice in weapons. Yet this is one area where Irrational could not keep up with the rest of the game. There aren’t a lot of weapons to choose from and the option to have only TWO weapons at a time restricts what the player could do in fire fights. Adding to the fact that there are only one or two weapons lying around in some corner, you get frustrated when fighting bosses and mini-bosses. One of these boss fights is recursive, feels forced and dampens the overall experience.
Regardless, the game picks up pace quickly after these ‘dragged’ fights and you are again immersed in the events that follow. Similar to ‘Plasmids’ from the earlier games we have ‘Vigors’ in Infinite, mass produced potions that enables you to use 8 different powers, which require salts. These are very effective, fun and can be used in combinations for devastating effects. But most of them don’t work against tougher enemies and bosses and you will most likely use 2 or 3 for the entirety of your playthrough, it’s also strange that only Booker uses them in the entire city when they are found lying almost everywhere.
‘Gears’ are pieces of clothing that grant you special abilites such as boosting stats to your varied attacks, gaining health and salt from melee and you will be changing them often to suit your playstyle. You pick up a Sky-hook early on in the game and can use it to melee enemies and hop onto the Skyline, a network of massive, suspended mechanical rails that connect different parts of the city. Jumping onto a skyline gives you more options of taking out your enemies, and it’s one of the unique and fun gameplay additions in Infinite. Skylines are crucial in some set pieces to travel or combat, especially in the last fight and you just can’t get enough of them.
Elizabeth plays a significant role in combat thowing Ammo, Salts and Health when you are running low and does that every few minutes. She also throws coins at you when there are some lying around or occasionally when you use any vending machines. She can also bring in automated machines from Tears at fixed locations throughout Columbia. But Irrational could have done a lot more with it, as seen in the earlier demos. They changed the gameplay quite a lot since it was announced and demoed back in 2010, to the disappointment of a lot of fans. Elizabeth’s powers had a huge impact on the gameplay and she could do more with Tears and those actions had repercusions on her mind and body. The gameplay would have been a lot more exciting and fun if those mechanics were present in the finished product.
Graphics and Audio
Graphics
The moment you land in Columbia you will realize that the game is beautiful, detailed, colorful and the lighting system is phenomenal. Irrational has used enhanced graphic options to give this game a different look and despite some low textured objects the overall graphics is vibrant and you feel the urge to look at everything before moving on. Starting out as a ‘Heavenly’ peaceful city, Columbia transforms into a bloody battlefield which is dark, gory and astonishing.
This is by far one of the most atmospheric games we have had in years, and it matches perfectly with the story events at those points of the game. In fact, Bioshock Infinite feels like a fairytale, a colorful fairytale that easily turns into a dark nightmare.
Audio
The Voice Actors of the leading pair have done an excellent job. The soundtrack is very early 20th century with Jazz and Blues being played across Columbia. The music changes according to the situation we are in, and picks up pace when a fight is about to break out while it’s creepy in the final few hours of the game. There is a moment where Booker picks up a guitar and Elizabeth starts singing, the full version of it is shown in the ending credits, and it gives a different feel to the atmosphere of the game.
Performance and Final Thoughts
This review was done on a PC, ‘i5 760; GTX 560; 4GB DDR3’, with an average of 30-40 fps at medium settings which isn’t alarming as recent games have been quite tasking for PC. BioShock Infinite uses a DirectX 11-enabled, modified version of Unreal Engine 3, hence we got a good PC Port. However, there are certain areas where the fps drop is very significant, 10-20 even, usually when moving from an indoor location to an outdoor one. Players have complained that the fps tanks from 200 to 50 in certain areas of the game, on Titan SLI, which is quite alarming. There are a multitude of graphics tweaks present in the game and enables you to immmerse yourself in the amazing city of Columbia.
Bioshock Infinite is a breath of fresh air for Story driven games, which gamers have been asking for the past couple of years. What you get from this game is a story which is intense, smart and will make you question everything at the end of it. The story itself offers a chance of re-playability and you can play again in ‘1999’ mode which brings forth tougher enemies, low resources and significantly increases the challenge of the game. On the down side the lack of interesting weapons, annoying boss fights and an above average Combat may take away some of it’s charm but this game is wonderful. With several DLCs on the way, Columbia has more stories to tell and we can only hope for an even better job well done.Irrational had the vision and potential to do more and for reasons behest to them they did not follow through with it, the game will be talked about for months to come for reasons good and bad, but one thing is certain Bioshock Infinite is one of the best told stories of this generation and will challenge new game designers to come up with something better and original.
PROS:
- Amazing Story.
- Breathtaking Enviornments.
- Interesting Characters.
CONS:
- Weapons and their upgrades are half decent.
- Combat is a drag in the middle and often forced.
- Handyman don’t live upto the standards of Big Daddy.
(Story and Presentation 10/10, Gameplay 8/10, Graphics and Audio 9/10)