This review contains spoilers
It’s hard to put down into words why I hate this game so much, because there’s just SO much wrong with BioShock Infinite I could go on for hour upon hour about every little thing this game fails to do- but after revisiting the game recently I have hellfire in my heart and might as well vomit out words onto this page that only people looking for half star or five star reviews of this game will see.
So lets get the good out of the way, because that’ll only take a second. The game looks alright- the locations and skyline are pretty, the highkey color palette is fine and there are lots of nice shots and moments of lighting the game- Doesn’t hold up the original BioShock’s setting but it’s not awful. This does not extend to the character models- where, unless you’re bobble head Elizabeth, every looks ugly- like horrible ugly, all the children have adult heads and the adults all… look… bad. I don’t know how else to say it, the style the people are done it doesn’t look good and most of the people you meet have this dead lifeless look in their eyes.
AND that’s it. That’s all the nice things I can say about this game- so lets just get right into it, because there is a LOT wrong here.
First of lets start easy- The gameplay? Its bad. I know this is a rooty toody point and shooty but its also Not Good. Its clear that when making Infinite they wanted to take the franchise in a mainstream direction, so it would appeal to more Gamers™️ but they streamlined the game in such a generic way that when the gameplay isn’t a slog its completely forgettable. Say what you want about BioShock 1 and 2’s gameplay it at least had some charm to it and enough mechanics to make you feel like you were playing the game and engaging with the world VS. Infinite which is just… nothing.
They stripped the game of almost every other feature from the previous games BUT shooing. You can’t carry more than 2 guns, so when you’re stuck in a long fight you’ll run out of ammo and have no options to fight any more (Hello Siren fight this is about you🙂), they took away ALL the internal systems in the series- now instead of getting to bait like Splicers into fighting Big Daddies, or turning the security system on enemies as soon as the factions in Infinite see you they’ll all start shooting at you. There’s no more customization in Infinite. In the pervious games you could choose from TONS of abilities, with multiple passive and active abilities and gun ammo types to give you different ways to handle combat. You could find your own play style or do tricks with certain guns for fun. In infinite you have clothing, with random abilities on it. You have no control over your loadout and just have to hope for something good. The fact that people recommend finding a checkpoint near gear drops and reloading your file do you get one you like is a sign of bad game design.
But hey, when people talk about BioShock Infinite its never about how great the gameplay is- its about the story! The Characters! How deep and thought provoking the game is!
Well I stubbed my toe in this kiddie pool trying to find something deep in this game so lets get right to it.
The story? Is bogus. It constantly changes up its rules and plot points, if it doesn’t drop them entirely completely after introducing them, all for the sake of shock value. Its not even that hard of a story to follow- once you spend 5 minutes sorting out who’s from what timeline that’s it. There’s nothing more to it. Everything is right on the surface, You play as Booker and you need to rescue a girl locked up in a tower, Elizabeth, and skip town together to get out of a debt. And that doesn’t really change or get explored over the course of the game until you get to the end and they’re like “wowzie YOU’RE her dad booker, and you sold her!” which just… falls flat and changes the character’s dynamics of “oh you were saving Elizabeth because it was the right thing to do” to “you were saving Elizabeth because of a biological inclination to save your own kin” which is just :/
Constantly plot points are just tossed out the window or brought up unprompted, the pacing is absolutely atrocious. Elizabeth is the heir to Columbia, but she doesn’t know who Comstock, her father, is (like someone who made his own cult would let ANYONE not know who he is), songbird is on so much promotional art but has maybe 5 minutes of screen time and is never explored in the story, Comstock, the main antagonist, is absent for a majority of the game so he hardly feels like a threat, and so on and so forth.
The story doesn’t even challenge the characters or the way they think and either pats them on the back for their selfish choices or sweeps problems under the rug so the characters don’t have to deal with them. Like the “getting guns for Daisy” plot point- you go through all this trouble to find the gunmaker in prison, just to find out he’s been killed. So instead of going back to Daisy and coming up with a plan B they just… jump to a dimension where the gunmaker is alive…. And that’s such a cheap solution. It doesn’t ask them to use their skills or solve the problems the narrative has them face, they just dodge it. If that had been a theme or moral the game wanted to tackle that would be one thing, but it’s not. And the game doesn’t address this dimension hopping afterwards and drops it acting like you’ve never changed dimensions.
And the same goes for the characters- They just don’t make sense in the context of the world and story. Booker, who is like 1/8 indigenous, participates in the Wounded Knee massacre, and felt bad about the violence he did there, and they TELL us he feels bad about it- but then he goes on to be a pinkerton, and SUCH a violent pinkerton he was too much for them and fired him, followed up by him going to Columbia and killing everyone that gets in his way without a hint of remorse as he tells Elizabeth “feelings will get her killed”. So there’s this incredible disconnect in what the narrative pretends his character is and who he actually is- because he clearly doesn’t feel that bad about what he did, he didn’t change at all after it.
This is especially true for Elizabeth, I already mentioned how she doesn’t know who her dad is supposed to be but think about it. She’s supposed to be the heir for a racist white supremacist society (like that culture would accept a female leader) yet she isn’t racist herself at all- She’s supposed to lead Columbia against the surface in attack but how can she when she doesn’t share any of her father’s ideals? Instead she gets to study music for 19 years, reading books and painting instead of being groomed to be a leader. Why is she locked in a tower? The initial reason was because Lady Comstock didn’t want to live with, what she perceived, to be an illegitimate child. But why would Comstock honor that? He kills her like two minutes later, and keeping her so isolate would hinder parts of her education and leading skills.
Elizabeth wants to escape her tower so bad, but never uses her dimension hopping tear abilities to just skip town (and we SEE her open one to Paris right at the start of the game)- instead she has to wait for a man to come and save her. All her knowledge comes from books under the guise of “I read a lot of books in my tower” which is ??? Reading doesn’t equal actual practice- Like yeah she can learn ciphers and stuff through reading- but you expect me to think she’s great at lock picking because she read books yet has never successfully picked a lock until the events of the game- or that she has medical knowledge from reading when you need actual experience for that?? Yeah right.
A lot of this story rides on Elizabeth, and with how much people froth over her you’d think that was successful but its not. Her character is honestly grating- Especially as she talks out of so much privilege across the game. I don’t REALLY want to get into the depths of the racist part of the game, I feel like that’s very well documented (game really said black people can be racist too. GOTY) but having Elizabeth who’s lived in a literal ivory tower her whole life turn around and condemn the revolution for violence is so ??????? Like she has NO room to speak, she lived VERY comfortably for 19 years, always had clothing, knew where all her meals where coming from, got to read for fun, paint, sing, dance, further her education, had good health etc vs the people in Shantytown??? Who are starving and dying??? Yet SHE thinks they’re bad for fighting against a white supremacist city that was lynching them. Elizabeth is mad at Booker for killing people, but as SOON as he explains it’s the only way for her to get her freedom she accepts it and helps out in combat more. Yet when the Vox use violence to fight for the right of the oppressed she condemns them for their means because it doesn’t benefit herself, so it must be meaningless violence. Her and Booker kill the exact same people as the Vox but when the white people do it its okay, when the black people do its “they’ve gone to far- the violence is unnecessary”
Sounds familiar doesn’t it.
The world building of this game doesn’t even make any sense- Why does Columbia have vigors? Why would a heavily religious society have these ~magic~ abilities and condone the devil imagery on some of them- they would’ve been branded as witchcraft and banned- or at least reserved for the police force and not handed out for free. Handymen could’ve been a really interesting piece of lore for the world- especially if they hadn’t been cowards and cut off of more of Elizabeth’s limbs than just her pinky. They could’ve tied it all together in handymen being part of a research to make Elizabeth more abled bodied for this ablest society- but instead they’re just to be a different enemy type for the player to encounter instead of meaningful to the world or story. And the same goes for all the other different enemies- Fireman? Those crow cult guys? They don’t mean anything in the grand scheme, they’re just there so the player has a different colored enemy to fight, they’re never expanded upon, they don’t feel real in Columbia’s society.
This game is just… so much nothing- I don’t know why people suck up to it so much. Its proven by the ending that makes the most simple grandfather paradox and calls it a day. It takes the idea of “infinite realities” and throws it all away with constants and variables. It doesn’t explore the ideas it teases, it forces them around to bend and break in ways to justify the choices the story takes. You want me to be happy at the idea of Booker getting to keep baby Anna??? He’s an alcoholic in massive debt, there’s no way he’s going to be able to support a baby and take care of her.
And the sad thing is despite this mess of a rambling I’ve gone on, its only like half of it. There’s nothing to like in this game, nothing to get from it, its characters, its story, or its gameplay. I’ll never be able to say EVERYTHING that bothers me about this game, so I’ll just settle for this.
It was a waste of my time the first time, and the second time reaffirmed this. I actively encourage people to skip out on this game, there are far better ones you could spend your time on.
So lets get the good out of the way, because that’ll only take a second. The game looks alright- the locations and skyline are pretty, the highkey color palette is fine and there are lots of nice shots and moments of lighting the game- Doesn’t hold up the original BioShock’s setting but it’s not awful. This does not extend to the character models- where, unless you’re bobble head Elizabeth, every looks ugly- like horrible ugly, all the children have adult heads and the adults all… look… bad. I don’t know how else to say it, the style the people are done it doesn’t look good and most of the people you meet have this dead lifeless look in their eyes.
AND that’s it. That’s all the nice things I can say about this game- so lets just get right into it, because there is a LOT wrong here.
First of lets start easy- The gameplay? Its bad. I know this is a rooty toody point and shooty but its also Not Good. Its clear that when making Infinite they wanted to take the franchise in a mainstream direction, so it would appeal to more Gamers™️ but they streamlined the game in such a generic way that when the gameplay isn’t a slog its completely forgettable. Say what you want about BioShock 1 and 2’s gameplay it at least had some charm to it and enough mechanics to make you feel like you were playing the game and engaging with the world VS. Infinite which is just… nothing.
They stripped the game of almost every other feature from the previous games BUT shooing. You can’t carry more than 2 guns, so when you’re stuck in a long fight you’ll run out of ammo and have no options to fight any more (Hello Siren fight this is about you🙂), they took away ALL the internal systems in the series- now instead of getting to bait like Splicers into fighting Big Daddies, or turning the security system on enemies as soon as the factions in Infinite see you they’ll all start shooting at you. There’s no more customization in Infinite. In the pervious games you could choose from TONS of abilities, with multiple passive and active abilities and gun ammo types to give you different ways to handle combat. You could find your own play style or do tricks with certain guns for fun. In infinite you have clothing, with random abilities on it. You have no control over your loadout and just have to hope for something good. The fact that people recommend finding a checkpoint near gear drops and reloading your file do you get one you like is a sign of bad game design.
But hey, when people talk about BioShock Infinite its never about how great the gameplay is- its about the story! The Characters! How deep and thought provoking the game is!
Well I stubbed my toe in this kiddie pool trying to find something deep in this game so lets get right to it.
The story? Is bogus. It constantly changes up its rules and plot points, if it doesn’t drop them entirely completely after introducing them, all for the sake of shock value. Its not even that hard of a story to follow- once you spend 5 minutes sorting out who’s from what timeline that’s it. There’s nothing more to it. Everything is right on the surface, You play as Booker and you need to rescue a girl locked up in a tower, Elizabeth, and skip town together to get out of a debt. And that doesn’t really change or get explored over the course of the game until you get to the end and they’re like “wowzie YOU’RE her dad booker, and you sold her!” which just… falls flat and changes the character’s dynamics of “oh you were saving Elizabeth because it was the right thing to do” to “you were saving Elizabeth because of a biological inclination to save your own kin” which is just :/
Constantly plot points are just tossed out the window or brought up unprompted, the pacing is absolutely atrocious. Elizabeth is the heir to Columbia, but she doesn’t know who Comstock, her father, is (like someone who made his own cult would let ANYONE not know who he is), songbird is on so much promotional art but has maybe 5 minutes of screen time and is never explored in the story, Comstock, the main antagonist, is absent for a majority of the game so he hardly feels like a threat, and so on and so forth.
The story doesn’t even challenge the characters or the way they think and either pats them on the back for their selfish choices or sweeps problems under the rug so the characters don’t have to deal with them. Like the “getting guns for Daisy” plot point- you go through all this trouble to find the gunmaker in prison, just to find out he’s been killed. So instead of going back to Daisy and coming up with a plan B they just… jump to a dimension where the gunmaker is alive…. And that’s such a cheap solution. It doesn’t ask them to use their skills or solve the problems the narrative has them face, they just dodge it. If that had been a theme or moral the game wanted to tackle that would be one thing, but it’s not. And the game doesn’t address this dimension hopping afterwards and drops it acting like you’ve never changed dimensions.
And the same goes for the characters- They just don’t make sense in the context of the world and story. Booker, who is like 1/8 indigenous, participates in the Wounded Knee massacre, and felt bad about the violence he did there, and they TELL us he feels bad about it- but then he goes on to be a pinkerton, and SUCH a violent pinkerton he was too much for them and fired him, followed up by him going to Columbia and killing everyone that gets in his way without a hint of remorse as he tells Elizabeth “feelings will get her killed”. So there’s this incredible disconnect in what the narrative pretends his character is and who he actually is- because he clearly doesn’t feel that bad about what he did, he didn’t change at all after it.
This is especially true for Elizabeth, I already mentioned how she doesn’t know who her dad is supposed to be but think about it. She’s supposed to be the heir for a racist white supremacist society (like that culture would accept a female leader) yet she isn’t racist herself at all- She’s supposed to lead Columbia against the surface in attack but how can she when she doesn’t share any of her father’s ideals? Instead she gets to study music for 19 years, reading books and painting instead of being groomed to be a leader. Why is she locked in a tower? The initial reason was because Lady Comstock didn’t want to live with, what she perceived, to be an illegitimate child. But why would Comstock honor that? He kills her like two minutes later, and keeping her so isolate would hinder parts of her education and leading skills.
Elizabeth wants to escape her tower so bad, but never uses her dimension hopping tear abilities to just skip town (and we SEE her open one to Paris right at the start of the game)- instead she has to wait for a man to come and save her. All her knowledge comes from books under the guise of “I read a lot of books in my tower” which is ??? Reading doesn’t equal actual practice- Like yeah she can learn ciphers and stuff through reading- but you expect me to think she’s great at lock picking because she read books yet has never successfully picked a lock until the events of the game- or that she has medical knowledge from reading when you need actual experience for that?? Yeah right.
A lot of this story rides on Elizabeth, and with how much people froth over her you’d think that was successful but its not. Her character is honestly grating- Especially as she talks out of so much privilege across the game. I don’t REALLY want to get into the depths of the racist part of the game, I feel like that’s very well documented (game really said black people can be racist too. GOTY) but having Elizabeth who’s lived in a literal ivory tower her whole life turn around and condemn the revolution for violence is so ??????? Like she has NO room to speak, she lived VERY comfortably for 19 years, always had clothing, knew where all her meals where coming from, got to read for fun, paint, sing, dance, further her education, had good health etc vs the people in Shantytown??? Who are starving and dying??? Yet SHE thinks they’re bad for fighting against a white supremacist city that was lynching them. Elizabeth is mad at Booker for killing people, but as SOON as he explains it’s the only way for her to get her freedom she accepts it and helps out in combat more. Yet when the Vox use violence to fight for the right of the oppressed she condemns them for their means because it doesn’t benefit herself, so it must be meaningless violence. Her and Booker kill the exact same people as the Vox but when the white people do it its okay, when the black people do its “they’ve gone to far- the violence is unnecessary”
Sounds familiar doesn’t it.
The world building of this game doesn’t even make any sense- Why does Columbia have vigors? Why would a heavily religious society have these ~magic~ abilities and condone the devil imagery on some of them- they would’ve been branded as witchcraft and banned- or at least reserved for the police force and not handed out for free. Handymen could’ve been a really interesting piece of lore for the world- especially if they hadn’t been cowards and cut off of more of Elizabeth’s limbs than just her pinky. They could’ve tied it all together in handymen being part of a research to make Elizabeth more abled bodied for this ablest society- but instead they’re just to be a different enemy type for the player to encounter instead of meaningful to the world or story. And the same goes for all the other different enemies- Fireman? Those crow cult guys? They don’t mean anything in the grand scheme, they’re just there so the player has a different colored enemy to fight, they’re never expanded upon, they don’t feel real in Columbia’s society.
This game is just… so much nothing- I don’t know why people suck up to it so much. Its proven by the ending that makes the most simple grandfather paradox and calls it a day. It takes the idea of “infinite realities” and throws it all away with constants and variables. It doesn’t explore the ideas it teases, it forces them around to bend and break in ways to justify the choices the story takes. You want me to be happy at the idea of Booker getting to keep baby Anna??? He’s an alcoholic in massive debt, there’s no way he’s going to be able to support a baby and take care of her.
And the sad thing is despite this mess of a rambling I’ve gone on, its only like half of it. There’s nothing to like in this game, nothing to get from it, its characters, its story, or its gameplay. I’ll never be able to say EVERYTHING that bothers me about this game, so I’ll just settle for this.
It was a waste of my time the first time, and the second time reaffirmed this. I actively encourage people to skip out on this game, there are far better ones you could spend your time on.