BioShock Infinite

I've got complaints about BioShock Infinite, so if you don't want to hear them, you'd better stop reading now.

BioShock, for all its successes, cheated in a couple of important ways: Rapture was already decrepit when you got there; and the general gameplay was fairly eclectic. The first meant that there was no reason for live dialog (except in very special circumstances), and that there was no need to show the environment's transition from splendor to squalor. The second meant that the fairly basic gun set didn't matter all that much; ammo varieties, plasmids, hacking, and environmental hazards kept things plenty interesting.

BioShock Infinite tackles both of those cheats head-on, and I'm not convinced that these were wise decisions.

In the first case, Infinite begins by showing you Columbia at its finest: gorgeous vistas coated in liquid sunlight, lush gardens and well-dressed citizens, children playing in the streets and at sidewalk carnival games. Naturally, this peace doesn't last long, and you have to start shooting up dudes before too much time passes. But past this, other ne'er-do-wells rapidly appear, and not just out of the underground -- in firefights, and in common public areas. If an area isn't already in conflict by the time I get there, I can count on it to erupt soon. I think the message that the game is trying to convey, is that the city leadership is lying to its elite citizenry about public order. But the message I keep getting instead, is that the game is lying to me about the feasibility of this city, and that level design isn't any fun unless the architecture is already ravaged by conflict.

Infinite also goes to an intense amount of effort building a relationship between you and the captive girl Elizabeth. Which is all well and good in theory, but in execution, this dynamic just hasn't been given enough care and polish. I'm not that far into the game, and there have already been two instances where spontaneous dialog spoiled a scripted reveal (that is, a character ends up explaining something twice, and gets a reaction the second time). Also, for having such a weighty script, Elizabeth sure says "Oh." a lot. Maybe once a minute when I'm not in a firefight. In any other game, these would be non-problems, but I expect a better attention to detail from something that is so deliberately story-focused.

I have some other misgivings about the story's believability, but I'm willing to give those the benefit of the doubt for now.

As for BioShock's second cheat, its varied mechanics compensating for a simplistic arsenal? Well, this time around, someone's decided that Booker needs to be more like Marcus Fenix and Master Chief. You can only carry two weapons at a time, so you'll have to drop a gun to pick a new one up. Maybe you'd expect those weapons to be pretty kick-ass, to make this a meaningful choice, but they're just your standard set of shooter armaments: pistol, machine gun, shotgun, rifle, sniper rifle, and so on. So your gun choice is more likely to be based on ammo than on personal preference.

Vigors (this game's plasmids) aren't very numerous, and mostly follow a common template of "click to shoot, hold to lay trap." There are no hacking games at all -- you can pick locks, but, disappointingly, by collecting picks and then telling Elizabeth to use them. Weapon upgrades don't change ammo types or properties, they just fulfill standard roles like more damage and bigger clips.

I haven't done very much with Elizabeth's "tears" (as in rips, not weeping) yet, so they may go on to surprise me. But I haven't been super-impressed so far. I'm hoping that some scenarios really get into exploiting the fact that, although you can only have one tear open at a time, you can switch them whenever you want. The most promising aspect of the gunplay, is the skyhook rails; but I haven't had much chance to use these in combat situations, yet.

BioShock Infinite isn't a bad game, at all. When judged against other modern first- and third-person shooters, it comes out looking pretty good. But that isn't really what I wanted, or expected, from a BioShock follow-up; and I don't think it's naive of me to believe that I wasn't alone in this expectation. What I expected was an engrossing story of political sci-fi and human ambition, told through eccentric characters and an even more eccentric world. And those elements are here. But the uncanny valleys of Columbia's stability and Elizabeth's personality, and the shooting game's transparent attempts to make itself more like other shooters, keep distracting me from it.

I've still got plenty of game ahead of me, and it's possible for that sentiment to change. I really hope it does.

Progress: Met the Vox