By Michael Quartly-Kelly
There are a lot of parallels between 2007’s BioShock and today’s BioShock Infinite.
In both you find yourself exploring the rapidly crumbling remains of a city, intended to be a modern utopia, built on the vision of one charismatic leader with flawed sociological ideals.
In both, setting is king – the lion’s share of the narrative being exposed through exploration and local historic accounts explaining the current situation and the long tail of events that led up to crisis.
Not surprisingly, BioShock Infinite represents a giant leap skyward in the franchise - trading the original's claustro-/hydro-phobic underwater metropolis of Rapture for the infinite vistas of a flying secessionist city state called Columbia. It’s this sense of verticality, where one is constantly checking the skies above, below and all around for incoming enemies and points of interest that makes the game stand apart from and very much above its predecessors.
The year is 1912 and you take control of the hard boiled hero Booker DeWitt, an ex-Pinkerton and military man with a shady past. Part of that unrevealed backstory involves an unspecific debt that can be wiped clean if he can find and escort a young woman from Columbia to New York. Easier said than done since Columbia, once the crown jewel of American achievement, is a sky-spanning collection of flying suburbs and a rogue-state that seceded from the US.
Early breakthroughs in quantum mechanics and suspended particle engineering allows an entire city to take to the skies under the totalitarian aegis of a self styled Prophet, war hero and extreme nationalist named Zachary Hale Comstock. Tremendous social disparities between rich and poor have provided a powder keg within which two factions, The Founders and The Vox, have come into violent conflagration. Through this minefield DeWitt must locate a mysterious young woman named Elizabeth and abscond with her as war rages in the skies.
Fans of the original will feel right at home behind the familiar floating hands of the modified Unreal engine - moving and turning with the analogue sticks, while firing off weapons with the right trigger and activating special powers with the left. It’s a more refined dual wielding mechanic for ordinance and mutation than before, which makes combo-slinging a much more satisfying option.
Special tonics are the gene-altering catalyst for your special abilities, which range from sending a murder of crows to damage and distract enemies, to throwing up a magnetic field that absorbs incoming attacks and sends them flying back at their source.
The guns are equally varied, if fairly standardized in modern gaming. You are limited to carrying only two weapons at a time, which incentivizes you to change up your loadout as situation and access to ammo allows – which seems nicely balanced so that you are not relying on that one favoured gun plus your sniper rifle for range shots, too common in first person shooters.
There’s plenty to shoot and zap too, with enemies ranging from stock standard soldiers and thugs to mechanized versions of the founding fathers to over-sized steam-punk styled cyborgs. The founding fathers, Washington and Lincoln, are particularly humorous as they spout jingoist propaganda while trying to nail you with huge crank-handled machine guns.
Once you have mastered a special device called the sky-hook, you can also take the battle skywards and jump up to a crane hook to get the jump on enemies or traverse a gondola rail to rollercoaster-like effect. The variance in weaponry and powers let you approach combat in a variety of ways, but the best parts are when Elizabeth uses her special ability to tear open holes in reality that let you change the environment during combat.
This can have the effect of bringing new allies into the fray or obstacles to take cover behind. She can even bring new weapon caches and healing consumables into play.
Elizabeth also knows how to take cover and never gets in your way, but will also scrounge up and throw you much needed ammo and power regenerating salts in the heat of battle.
The story flow and chapter layout is great, with each section revolving around a certain aspect of Columbia’s life and history, revealing more and more of the rich tapestry that is the heart of this game. You will work to bring down a jaded and indignant military captain, who shares special insight into your own past and join revolutionaries against an industrial tyrant who uses economic oppression to fund his mechanized dynasty.
There’s inter-dimensional travel and a pair of inscrutable sibling Scientists who act as both guides and comic relief along the way. You’ll develop a complex attachment to your young ward as she reveals her naive kind heartedness and bravery, vulnerability and simmering temper.
You’ll come to understand her situation and feel a very real need to protect her both from physical harm and emotional damage as particular story-based events arise. And if all that science fiction and social engineering and relationship malarkey seems to get a bit heavy, then you can always just launch on to the rails with your trusty sky-hook and find someone or something to shoot at.
Loads of fun and another awesome chapter in this amazing franchise from Irrational Games and 2K!
Four stars.
3 News
BioShock Infinite
:: Publisher: 2K Games
:: Developer: Irrational Games
:: Format: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Mac OS X
:: Rating: R16
source: newshub archive
