Thursday, March 28, 2013

Bioshock Infinite - Video Game review.


The original Bioshock game is one of my favorite games.  The story and roleplaying elements mixed well with a first-person shooter game to create an experience that captivating to watch and play.  The third installment of the series, Bioshock Infinity, takes a new turn.  This time they have moved away from the underwater city of Rapture and moved to the floating city of Columbia.

You play as Booker DeWitt, a former Pinkerton agent who is attempting to find a girl in the city of Columbia and return her to New York.  Columbia is a floating city in 1912 so everything is decked in Americana.  There are a lot of perils that Booker must overcome to find the girl. When he does, he will never be the same.

The graphics are vastly improved from the former games.  The people you meet all look authentic and react well to events of the story and the time period.  It almost looks as if the main street of Disneyland is brought to life on a grand scale.  Many of the enemies you fight are normal looking instead of the spliced- up freaks, like in previous games. 

While this is a fun game, there are flaws that make it fairly weak at times.  During the past games there were enemies that would randomly roam a hallway or a room.  You sometimes would see them wandering around talking to themselves.  In this game what happens is: You walk into an area, the area becomes closed to you, you have to fight off all the goons, then you can proceed.  It gets tedious fast. 

I don’t mind that they decided to stray away from the Rapture world and try something new.  I think the story is overly convoluted and borders on Stephen King’s Dark Tower territory.   The final boss battle is frustrating and took forever to successfully complete.  With all the footage I remember seeing online before this came out, it makes me wonder what on earth changed this so much?  They seemed to put out a lot of stuff to entice gamers with this new concept but in the end they were signing checks their butts could not cash.

As a whole, Bioshock Infinite is an okay game. It is pretty and the controls are fairly easy to get used to.   However, if you are looking for the better games I’d look back and start with the first Bioshock.  The idea is interesting and I look forward to the downloadable content add-ons.  It can only get better since they scraped the multiplayer aspect, which they had on Bioshock 2. It does not seem to have a lot of extras although it does come with a copy of the first game. 

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