Really GR8 Gaming. In my opinion it is probably one of the best game ever made in the history of the gaming world!!!!!!!
Bioshock Infinite takes a generally normal idea for a game, a city floating in the sky, and makes it into a masterpiece.
BioShock Infinite is a stupendous game, portraying a beautiful and broken city that will absorb your every waking thought.
What drives a man of God to wash away the sins of his past, only to blacken his heart with a multitude more? How far can a freedom fighter be pushed before virtue and righteousness are replaced by a lust for vengeance? What does a privileged society do when the foundation of its prosperity is shaken? BioShock Infinite dares to explore these heady themes and many more, giving you glimpses at just how the seemingly smallest of decisions can forever alter our realities, and our hearts. As an agent provocateur in the fantastical floating city of Columbia, your actions bring turmoil and strife to an ostensibly idyllic landscape. It's immensely fun to stir up trouble, and even more engaging to see how boldly BioShock Infinite portrays a society torn asunder. You'll be haunted by this thematically devastating adventure, and indeed, its phenomenal final minutes, which are bound to be discussed and dissected for some time to come.
It starts with a lighthouse. As former private investigator Booker DeWitt, you enter this lighthouse knowing that you have been hired to retrieve "the girl"--but who this girl is, and who hired Booker, remain a mystery, if not to Booker, than at least to you. At the top of that lighthouse is a chair, and once strapped into it, Booker is fired into the stratosphere, toward the city in the sky called Columbia. And what a fitting name for this hyper-American domain of 1912, which incorporates the classical architecture of the 1893 Columbian Exposition. The red, white, and blue Columbian flag flies from spires across the city, and statuaries and bas-relief panels immediately evoke the sense of old America.
The buildings of that 1893 exposition were part of an area known as The White City, and here, too, Columbia lives up to the name of its inspiration--not just in the whiteness of its buildings, but in the whiteness of its racial structure. At a key early moment, you confront the festering illness corrupting this porcelain-white culture, where anyone whose skin is not the ideal color is ostracized and enslaved. You also confront one of BioShock Infinite's many core mysteries: What is the nature of the brand on Booker's hand? In Columbia, the brand is a mark of the false shepherd, this culture's version of the Christian Antichrist and the 666 that marks him. Identified as a prophesied fiend, Booker has no choice but to run.
Columbia is a tremendous place to be, the all-American dream-turned-nightmare crossed with steampunk sensibilities. Nationalist propaganda is mixed with airships and mechanical combatants, and the moving picture machines you occasionally use elaborate on the history of Columbia, which seceded from an America that just wasn't American enough. The leader of this city is Father Comstock, a self-proclaimed prophet and religious zealot whose likeness and influence pervade the game. What Andrew Ryan was to Rapture, Comstock is to Columbia; he is a frightfully well-meaning man who believes so strongly in his own damaged philosophies that you can only fear him. His worshipers are just as fearsome in their blind willingness to follow their leader, even when the costs are high. In BioShock Infinite, religious and political fervor intertwine, much as they do in real life, and these similarities could fill you with dread and unease.
You eventually find "the girl." She is the supernaturally talented Elizabeth, locked in a floating tower and protected by a monstrous clockwork creature called Songbird. Your first confrontation with Songbird is one of many eye-opening scenes, and Elizabeth's relationship with her protector is a complicated one. So is her relationship with Booker, for that matter, though he is key to Elizabeth's escape from her solitary life, and to the city of her dreams: Paris.
And so the two go on the run, alternately exploring Columbia's private nooks and allying with a resistance force called the Vox Populi, not out of politics, but out of necessity. Columbia isn't as hushed and mysterious as Rapture, but exploring it is no less tense. You are a witness to (and a participant in) an imploding social order, and as the story darkens, so too do the places you investigate. Sunny blue skies and perfect manmade beaches give way to burning streets and ghostly memorials. When the narrative has you questioning the nature of reality, the surreality of the environments reflects your confusion. So, too, does the soundscape metamorphose. The concordant harmonies of a hymn of praise take a sour and ominous turn as the more disturbing qualities of Columbia's unerring faith emerge.
Your confusion is appeased by audio recordings you discover called voxophones, which serve as personal diaries to past events. There are clues here to the nature of Elizabeth's gift: her ability to open tears in spacetime and peer into…the future? The past? Other dimensions? Voxophones also elaborate on Columbia's most important citizens, such as Comstock's troubled, martyred wife, whose story illuminates the desperate lengths to which her husband stooped to ensure that his message might be heard in perpetuum. They even provide a few touches of humor, as do other atmospheric audio audio details; alternate versions of well-known tunes could have you grinning once you pick your jaw up off the floor.
BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter, but you aren't armed just with machine guns, pistols, shotguns, and the like; you also have vigors. Vigors, like the original BioShock's plasmids, are seemingly magical powers that you can fling at your enemies. Thus, you can weaken your enemies by zapping them with a bolt of electricity or by charging into them at impossible speed. Try distracting them with a murder of crows before gunning them down with your carbine, or flinging them over the edge of a walkway with a shock wave and watching them plummet to their deaths. You may even combine these powers, perhaps setting a foe on fire and then charging into him for an explosive finish.
Kevin VanOrd is a lifelong RPG lover and violin player. When he isn't busy building PCs and composing symphonies, he watches American Dad reruns with his fat cat, Ollie.
@carnivalshow This game is not meant to be a sole shooter. It's meant to be a story. The gameplay aspects don't take away from the fact that the game is essentially story driven. Borderlands, while a unique shooter and role playing game, is mainly a shooter game. Two different genres.
I'm sorry but the comments referring to the negativity of this game are just stupid. The ending could have been explained a bit more and not had so much thrown at me in the last couple minutes. However, once I was able to fully grasp everything in the story (it was 6 in the morning so I was barely alive at that point) the ending was so creative and unique, it allowed me to gain a sense of what really happened in the Infinite universe, making it well worth trekking through the halls of Columbia a hundred times over. This is a game that requires you to understand and think about its ending, much like Inception did for movies. It had its faults, but overall, this is the type of game that I wish i could see on the market more often. Grand storytelling, beautiful soundtracks, great stories, colourful environments. The "creativity" that average and unintelligent gamers want nowadays is the unimaginative FPS shooters where everything is handed to you on a silver platter and you simply are told what to think and what to believe. The stupid CoD series is nothing amazing and yet it gets so much praise heaped upon it every year it comes out. The multiplayer aspects get more repetitive and aim for younger audiences who can't do well in the shooter genre. So they bring out crap *cough* Target Finder *cough* to make it easier for them to do things. It's about time that we had a smart, inventive, and imaginative game come out. You all can hate on this as much as you want. I've loved the Bioshock series since I first stepped out of the Bathysphere into the gloomy halls of Rapture. I'd rather see this beloved series continue on to new heights of imagination and glory instead of watching the money sucking thieves at Infinity Ward and Treyarch dominate the market with their disastrous shams of games.
I love how all the haters try to cling to 'intellectual superiority'. I know people that are definitely smarter than anyone posting here. I'd bet all the money in my life on it.
They like the game and its ending too. You can not like something. But trying to say its because you are smarter than everyone else shows what you really are, a very average and mediocre person who thinks too highly of themselves. Its sad that people can't just disagree for difference of opinion anymore.
You like it or you don't. Just because you're a minority in disliking it doesn't mean anything other than you don't like games that most people like. Which isn't a crime by any means.
1 Like Ken Levine did an awesome fucking job. Game of the year in my opinion, no room for GTA nor Watch Dogs or even Metro Last Light
"In the garden we are growing... make changes they'll be flowing... if ya wanna be amazing... see the flowers we are raising." No sequel will ever compare to the original Bioshock!
3 Like I don't understand all the praise for this game. Poorly designed first-person-shooter with useless spells called vigors that are made redundant by overpowered guns you are constantly being fed ammo for. Not only that but there are automated sentries littered throughout the game you can activate to play the game for you. The plot is just a build-up to an epic twist and it is essentially a 10 hour escort mission with a typical damsel running in front of your gun and whining.
2 Like @Viperr234 It's designed for the simplton. The average intelligence. They call it average because it is shared by the most people. The majority are very average, and a game as average as this screams out to them.
2 Like Honestly, I can't understand why so many are rating this game so negatively and being so spiteful about some aspects of the game.
The gameplay itself was admittedly a bit un-challenging (action wise) after getting the hang of it (which you will do quickly of you're a more than the average gamer), and the plot will require a stretch in the imagination, but that's exactly what you should have expected when you bought the game. Bioshock I and II pretty much shared, with Infinite, the easiness gameplay-wise. This is from a person who enjoyed System Shock II's complexity (and trust me, in terms of gameplay, not many games rival SS2). After SS2, RPG FPSs can never be as challenging. But that's not what this game is about. This game did what so many games, especially FPSs, failed to do, and that's have such an engaging/detailed/emotional plot to it.
And my freakin' god what a gorgeous story I played through, and what an incredible experience it was. If you are not the type to really get into the plot, or enjoy a well thought-out narrative, then you probably are part of the negative-rating crew, because that beats the whole point of this game. The plot wasn't as messily planned as some people here suggest, those people probably didn't understand it fully. The way in which the writers try and justify, through fiction, the plausibility of the multiverse theory, and give an idea as to how the space time continuum can be used, was a joy to behold. That's what made me feel like the ending was not a mess, but had a structure behind it, in which physics as we understand it, was mended beautifully to make the plot have some sense in it. An absolute joy to behold.
Finally, the growing emotional connection I felt toward Elizabeth as the game went on was another aspect of the game that left me in absolute awe. Honestly, I understand how this gamespot review was written, because the plot really is what makes this game, and it makes it one of the best experiences I've ever been through in gaming. For a new game, in an era where plot is regularly discarded for better graphics and fighting mechanisms, this really has an eternal place in my heart for the absolute mindfuck it gave me at the end.
I just hope some people went through what I did, because it was rewarding and beautiful.
@nooruddin4 calling a person incapable of understanding a well-thought-out plot is the best argument in a conversation. Way to go dude!
I dunno, mb for someone really freaked out about multiverse idea this "narrative" is indeed carrying some value. But still I am sure as hell they presented it in an imbecilic way, mb cuz they wanted to create black hype about it's confusing ending or cuz they are just lazy talentless idiots. In any case, if a crappy story has an interesting concept it does not make it interesting. At the same time a simple and well-known story when told in a proper way can be AMAZING, watch Slumdog Millionaire.
Final thing about "emotional connection with Liz". It did grew in me too dude, and I was frickin pleased to see the ending where I happen to be her frickin father. Now how much weed does one need to smoke to create a story that builds some feeling over like 30 hours to frickin' toss it in a tray like this in the end?
@cubrman @nooruddin4 I never meant to attack anyone on the understanding part, honestly. I was just saying, if you don't really understand the plot, calling it horrible or miswritten is a bit off the mark because you're not reviewing it with full knowledge. That's basically all I tried to get across, and I apologize if it seemed like an attack. I was just intrigued that a plot in a video game could be this thought provoking you know? Personally, it was awe inspiring. And I found the plot, even as a story, very entertaining and emotionally driven, aside from the things that can be learned morally. I understand your point, but I don't think I agree that the story was even done poorly.
And lastly, SPOILER the end right after the credits kinda gives the idea that Anna is back in his care after the universe kind of fixed itself with the whole Lutes tinkering, leaving Booker to never really realize what hell he went through to just reunite with his daughter.
3 Like "Stupendous"? Are you sure you didn't mean stupid? This game has outdated graphics, boring gameplay, a skyline that is frustrating to use, powers that nobody cares about, terrible fighting, a dismal atmosphere, vending machines that sell the same items throughout the game, nothing really new to find, a rediculous storyline and this game takes only a few hours to play through. What am I missing here? I keep hearing about "how they got it right". Got what right? I see a very plain and simple graphic environment with very little atmosphere except for the corny old-time music in the background. I've played games that have atmospheres that either creep you out or make you want to explore the world. This is definitely NOT one of those. I purchase almost every new game that comes out and this was just plain awful! I like that a game gives you it's money's worth. How can I justify spending $59 for just a few hours of gameplay? I really think that these people are paid to do these reviews. There is NO WAY that an outdated game like this can get a 9.0. This is a 4.0 at best.
1 Like @lguitrguy Glad to know there are some sane gamers still out there. That see through the bs hype of this game.
2 Like Got my post wiped out just now. Ok mb I was a little too rough. Let's try it with smoothed edges :).
Whew, thank God there are still sane gamers out there. I might not be so enraged as NascB about this game, but I definitely would be about critics reviewing this mediocrity and giving it high mars. One very well done character cannot save a flawed Quake clone. NOTHING new in mechanics, RETARDED AI, DEAD levels (wake up people! Battlefield 2 BC with Destruction 1.0 was released like ages ago, didn't you notice it?) and skylanes can't save them.
I finished the game, because the character of Elizabeth is really well done. It is by far the best AI companion I have ever seen in a game. But still I was playing to see a worthy ending. Had they made the ending at least decent, they could deserve 8.5, maybe even 9 if they were genius. But whom was I fooling? Good story in AAA game? Now? No way! It is impossible! Look at Crysis 2 at is amazing beginning and how shabby an ending it had! In Crysis 3 they didn't even bother to think the story! Look at Far Cry 3 with it's story deteriorating over time! Look at what happened to a soap opera "Assassin's Creed"!
But the ending in Bioshock 3 outperformed them all. Inconsistent, overconfused and absolutely inaccessible for a sane human being's mind. I know good stories, I understood this one as I read the explanations and researched the topic as I love stories and stories in videogames especially. And my opinion is that it was clearly the lack of thought and lack of any desire to make anything worthy that led them to this miserable novelette. This is especially painfull, because the game was made by Bioshock 1 creators, where they managed to make quite a nice, clean and consistent story, proving that they can think straight at times. But those times are gone and I urge u people please NEVER BUY BIOSHOCK 4! This game was their last chance to return the fame of B1, after disastrous B2, and they failed. We MUST tell them that they are a failure we MUST show it, otherwise we will be swarmed with mediocre AAA-graphics games with mediocre-at-best stories and pacman-era mechanics!
All the recent AAA games are disappointment and disgrace to the history of gaming. And in the Bioshock's case it is a disaster with a jewel hidden among rugs. But as I said, one character cannot save a shabby game, without any new mechanics and overconfused story. So my score is 6.5 only for the character of Elizabeth. It would have been 5 otherwise.
GAME IS DONE BY ABSOLUTE ILITERACY OF ANY LOGIC OR DESIRE, IT IS NOT BY DIFFERENCE FROM WHAT WE KNOW, BUT BY HATING FOR NOT KNOWING ENOUGH SUCH DISASTER EVOLVED. VALVE OUTDID THEMSELVES WITH THIS LATEST OF FIASCOS, AN ABSOLUT INSULT TO INTELLIGENCE, AND BEING SINCERE I AM I ADD, ONLY FEW COLORS AND A BIG EYES WILL BE REMEMBERED... SO MUCH DEVELOPMENT SO LITTLE VALUE. AND ADVICE, NOONE NEED ANOTHER ALTERNATE REALITY FULL OF POO...OOP BUT EVERYONE NEED TANGIBLE IDEAS OF IMPROVING THE ONE WE HAVE IDIOTS
1 Like perhaps some *spoilers*...ok finished, and damn be me, but I did not like the ending at all, mass effect 3 ending was way better (good there are no dislike on GS), did not like bioshock 1, bioshock 2 was ok due to better combat, Infinity was awesome up until you teleported to a certain city, that moment was horrible and everything afterwards as well
1 Like @thorn3000 You, Sir are the voice of truth. Didn't expect any of it from a "publisher approved" review site and its sheepish community.
5 Like This is a great game. The art, music and story is really superb. Gameplay is similar as previous bioshock titles, with an two major improvements, namely Elizabeth and Skylines. Ending was great, Awesome game
2 Like Two words for this game: BORING and OVERRATED. This is one of the most boring games I've ever played! VideoGamer's review is much better and accurate than Gamespot's (http://www.videogamer.com/reviews/bioshock_infinite_review.html).
1 Like @PowerDingALing than go and play that shitty CoD series over and over, and don't insult this sublime game..
3 Like @PowerDingALing The accurate review you presented gave one of the most boring game you've ever played an 8. What does that tell you?
1 Like @Jolly_Loki @PowerDingALing You appear oblivious to the fact that an 8 is a bad number. Popular games never get any lower than 7 if they are crap. 8 goes to popular games that are decent but not special in any way. Review scores are always false for popular games, but you wouldn't know that, being new to games and all.
@Bellum_Sacrum @Jolly_Loki @PowerDingALing Seeing as how scoring a game lower than 8.5 can hurt it's sales, I wonder why they just don't be honest with all games. 6 or or 3 stars should be the rating for an average game, not 8 or 4 stars.
@Aleksander99 I don't see how the baptism is so horrible or stupid in a theocratic society. All the other "ideas" that is being criticized are petty and trivial at best and certainly don't make this review very credible or unbiased for that matter.
This would topple Final Fantasy 7 as my favorite game (since 1998) if it were 10 to 15 hours longer.
2 Like The ending was grand nontheless, but what was missing for me is that the last battle was mediocre at best and your protagonist didn't make a difference at all.
1 Like Not in the same league as the previous Bioshock games, not by far, nor the gameplay, nor the story. Far less interesting and solid as the story goes.
1 Like I urge anybody interested in this game to skip playing it and just watch a youtube video of the ending. This is the only reason to play through, so you can see the twist. P.S. The ending isn't that great.
1 Like I agree.
SPOILER BELOW
<SPOILER>
It's just another "guess who" ending, just like the first Bioshock game.
</SPOILER>
SPOILER ABOVE
Hardly a noteworthy ending, considering how many games before it have thrown similar twists, including the first Bioshock game. I can't believe so few people have been critical of the ending in this regard. The game itself is a lot of fun to play, with fast action and variety of weapons and strategies, but the ending is as big and cheap a letdown as LOST's ending was. People are far too quick to toss around words like 'visionary', etc...
@clockworkengine @USAPATRIOT21 yeah the game was awesome but I think thats why DLC are coming, it will continue after the ending, I hope...
1 Like I loved almost everything about the game. I think that my favourite little feature was hearing music when you killed an enemy and hearing it blend well with the soundtrack.
That being said, sometimes the shootouts felt too long. My favourite parts of the game were learning about the backstory, finding voice logs, any scene where you wander around and explore, and having constant shootouts got on my nerves. The first hour of the game was absolutely amazing, and then the other amazing tidbits were separated by shootouts that I got bored of quickly. Once the game started building up some speed, though, the shootouts were much more satisfying and helped the story flow a lot better.
I thought the ending was awful, though. It felt cheap and tacked on, and ruined a lot of the suspense and excitement that I felt building up to that moment. There were a lot of clues that something was going on throughout the game (slight spoiler), like at the start when the brother and sister ask you to flip a coin and the results are always the same, and I liked the idea that something was going on that Booker was completely unaware of. The ending tries to be a "mindfuck" ending and does it poorly. I played through the game again and there weren't enough clues to support the ending that they tried to pull out of their asses. A good "mindfuck" can only be good if you can watch the movie/play the game again and see things that lead up to the mindfuck. This game failed to do that.
Anyway, aside from that ending, I thought it was great. The world really pulled me in the second I stepped out onto the streets.
1 Like @nechiken I thought the ending was way more thought provoking and deep than the previous ones by a long shot. Both of the previous games had more happier and touching endings, which was great in their own right but certainly more predictable and tacked on than this one.
@Kingplayer1080 Maybe because I was already familiar with these themes is why I wasn't impressed. I read Stephen Hawkings last book...and as mentioned, it's similar subject matter to what was in the last few seasons of Fringe.
@nechiken Agree with the third paragraph, but that was one of the things that made me think the game was more sloppily written than even I first thought. The story was cobbled together trying to be grand like Japanese Anime, but doesn't pull it off as well as something like Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
7 Like I find it funny the "eye candy" brigade is out on force with this title, the game is beautiful and the engine is designed well to work for most people, but the kids of today are more interested in looks than content. And they are the reason why games are short but nice to look at. Kids need to realize what it takes for a game to be hugely successful and what is involved in doing so, pushing your GPU till it is smoking is not the ideal path.
And lets not forget the "It is not Rapture, so this game is rubbish" gang, Bioshock Infinite was never meant to be about Rapture it is an entirely different era for a start and obviously different characters.
To be honest kids/people today moan for the sake of moaning and its clear from some reviews they haven't even played the game let along buy it.
@DABhand I agree fully. I was shocked to see people complain about the graphics, I mean really? Columbia is beautifully designed, and the atmosphere is so engaging that it all seemed perfect to me. I'm just glad I played a game, and enjoyed the plot so much it moved me incredibly. It's been so long since a PC game did that to me, and I salute Levine. The gameplay was pretty damn fun as well, so on the whole, I just can't understand how people could get angry at this game.
@PinchySkree I'd say 10-12 hours, and that's assuming you don't really scrounge or explore the whole environment.
6 Like this game is absolutely AWESOME !!!!!.. that game worth to be buy !! srry for my english ROMANIA
1 Like It reveals the story's secrets; read it if you have finished it.
http://gamesfiends.com/2013/04/06/bioshock-infinite-an-analysis-of-the-story-and-ending/
@commuter1991 Much appreciated man (even if you're a woman). I read it, and commented. Beautifully summed up.
@Sardinar Rent it if you have a console and see for yourself. Gamespot tends to overrate and underrate games extremely for whatever reason. I got it free with a new video card.
