I was expecting a lot from Bioshock Infinite. I played through Bioshock and really enjoyed the whole experience. It did a lot to impress me both with it’s fun and intuitive gameplay as well as it’s brilliant story. So this time around I had similar expectations and I was glad to have them surpassed (mostly). The key elements of gameplay are all still around from Bioshock and are just re-imagined to help fit into this world more but I wonder exactly to what extent it’s just kind of thrown in.

You see the story is based around Dewitt rescuing Elizabeth from a floating world that has seceded from the United States. It was nice to see though that Elizabeth, the lead female protagonist, didn’t just stick to the role of “person in need of rescue”. She wants to escape and is really helpful to you throughout the game both in story and in combat. Unlike Bioshock you aren’t alone as you try to meet your goals but rather you have a partner that can help you out of a jam. Also unlike Bioshock the lead male protagonist at least has some idea about what he’s getting into before he starts his journey into the clouds. This was a good change of pace as well as the change in time and place. Rather than showing up not the floating world after everyone’s gone mad you arrive while everything is still going well. People are going about their day like normal and in fact there’s a huge celebration going on so the mood seems generally pleasant. Further inspection into the world reveals that all is not as it appears but it’s certainly different than Rapture was on arrival. It’s as if you arrived during the calm before the storm since everyone seems used to Vigors and Salts (basically Plasmids and Eve) so much so that some people are just giving them away.

Which is fine by me sine it meant that I got used to the new powers early on. The gameplay though feels like how you’d expect with some minor differences. The first thing that I thought was great was your melee weapon. The Sky-Hook is actually a transportation device used to let people ride on transport lines that connect the floating islands together. Being able to traverse the world in this way is really fun and adds to some of the combat elements to the games (like surprising your enemies form the sky). The next change I noticed was clothing. You can wear clothes that you find around Columbia that add effects to your combat. Being able to pick the right kind of clothes for how you play can be extremely helpful and is a good way to add in some more rpg like elements while still keeping a focus on the fps gameplay. The addition of tears is also neat but sadly it kind of takes way from the pure fps gameplay a bit which isn’t terrible but can sometimes feel annoying.

That isn’t the only complaint I have either. Generally it seems as though there are only two kinds of enemies. The first are the numerous amounts of weak enemies and the second is the handful or singular tough enemy. This wouldn’t be too bad if the extremes weren’t so great between the two. You can easily run through most enemies and then you’ll just hit one that seems to just be able to tank everything you throw at it. It’d be nicer if there were more battles that had more of a middle ground kind of enemy in the works (or multiple). One that was a bit better than the usual easy to kill ones but not quite invulnerable to everything you have at the time. I also feel as though they could tie the Vigors into the story a bit more but I’m reluctant to judge too much on that. Mainly because it feels as though they’re just kind of thrown in and no one seems to care that people can gain these superhuman abilities by drinking something but seeing as how you’ve arrived before the Columbia is a total mess it’s likely that Vigor’s might have played a bigger role if you had arrived later.

However, that’s just my own speculation. The story does cover enough to explain where things come from in it’s own way and it’s really great so I can’t really complain much. The little I can say about it is just nitpicking in the end. It’s really fun and is everything you’d expect from a new Bioshock game and more. Even if you haven’t played any of the previous games you can jump right into this one no problem. The game doesn’t rely on you knowing anything about previous games to be able to understand the story or play the game. If you’re in the mood for a fun fps give this game a try.

5/5