The best time to play this is the first time. After that, and especially in the ensuing 10 years, the seams (tears?) are much more noticeable.
As with the previous two games, this game is best realized as a roller coaster ride. The decent shooting and mechanics are buoyed by incredible artistic and environmental design. A decade later, this game still has moments of awe in the way it looks and the scenes it constructs and paints, even down to small, seemingly insignificant details in the world. It's clear that the visual artists working on this game really cared about making the world feel real and their effort did not go to waste.
Wish one could say the same for practically everything else. As said before, the gameplay rarely rises above decent, and I found it often monotonous. In trying to be a roller coaster ride, an experience for seemingly everyone, the game splits the difference with several one-note or superfluous mechanics (ie. morality, elements of choice, stealth, the numbers flying off an enemy when you shoot them) that don't add much. There's also re-imaginings of elements or mechanics that worked fine-to-well in the previous games and that are overhauled to worse effect, such as the 2-gun limit instead of the 2-plasmid limit or the worsening of Vigors (Devil's Trap sucks ass compared to Incinerate). I found it funny that the game had to constantly remind me to use Vigors, because a lot of them aren't all that fun or useful.
This version (the one you can get in modern storefronts) has glaring technical issues that I can't believe weren't fixed from the original version. The subtitle size is pathetically small and cannot be altered and audio logs don't have subtitles at all, a feature that the previous two games already had! What's more, the in-game character dialogue, enemy voice lines, sound effects, and non-diegetic dialogue like the audio logs constantly run into each other, which can create moments of cacophonous, confusing noise. More ways that modern games have improved over the presentation and accessibility of ones that aren't even that old.
The story...oof. A product of its time (derogatory), in that it puts forth a story where both sides in a conflict that involves racism and slavery are Both A Little Bit Wrong, which was not good but "excusable" then and is just laughable now. Add to that the paternalistic streak of games of this part of the decade, as well as a sci-fi turn that doesn't particularly care to explain itself, and you have a through-line that is as uncompelling as its gameplay. Even the in-game elements lack in charm and, before long, the game's appeal was as little more than a collect-a-thon for me.
Upon its release, BioShock Infinite was showered with praise, and was famously the game that Roger Ebert supposedly would have held up as art on par with his precious films. I certainly don't begrudge anyone for being blown away by this back in the day; certainly, I was one of them. Coming back to it, though, the industry has since lapped it considerably and it feels somehow more of a relic of its time than the previous two entries in the series. I found it a bit dull to play through all the way again, which contrasts the pretty good time I had with its two predecessors, and I don't think I'd care to play it again. There are many better games that have come out since its release that have done everything it does but better (ie. Prey 2017, Dishonored) that I'd much rather play those again and leave this in the past.
As with the previous two games, this game is best realized as a roller coaster ride. The decent shooting and mechanics are buoyed by incredible artistic and environmental design. A decade later, this game still has moments of awe in the way it looks and the scenes it constructs and paints, even down to small, seemingly insignificant details in the world. It's clear that the visual artists working on this game really cared about making the world feel real and their effort did not go to waste.
Wish one could say the same for practically everything else. As said before, the gameplay rarely rises above decent, and I found it often monotonous. In trying to be a roller coaster ride, an experience for seemingly everyone, the game splits the difference with several one-note or superfluous mechanics (ie. morality, elements of choice, stealth, the numbers flying off an enemy when you shoot them) that don't add much. There's also re-imaginings of elements or mechanics that worked fine-to-well in the previous games and that are overhauled to worse effect, such as the 2-gun limit instead of the 2-plasmid limit or the worsening of Vigors (Devil's Trap sucks ass compared to Incinerate). I found it funny that the game had to constantly remind me to use Vigors, because a lot of them aren't all that fun or useful.
This version (the one you can get in modern storefronts) has glaring technical issues that I can't believe weren't fixed from the original version. The subtitle size is pathetically small and cannot be altered and audio logs don't have subtitles at all, a feature that the previous two games already had! What's more, the in-game character dialogue, enemy voice lines, sound effects, and non-diegetic dialogue like the audio logs constantly run into each other, which can create moments of cacophonous, confusing noise. More ways that modern games have improved over the presentation and accessibility of ones that aren't even that old.
The story...oof. A product of its time (derogatory), in that it puts forth a story where both sides in a conflict that involves racism and slavery are Both A Little Bit Wrong, which was not good but "excusable" then and is just laughable now. Add to that the paternalistic streak of games of this part of the decade, as well as a sci-fi turn that doesn't particularly care to explain itself, and you have a through-line that is as uncompelling as its gameplay. Even the in-game elements lack in charm and, before long, the game's appeal was as little more than a collect-a-thon for me.
Upon its release, BioShock Infinite was showered with praise, and was famously the game that Roger Ebert supposedly would have held up as art on par with his precious films. I certainly don't begrudge anyone for being blown away by this back in the day; certainly, I was one of them. Coming back to it, though, the industry has since lapped it considerably and it feels somehow more of a relic of its time than the previous two entries in the series. I found it a bit dull to play through all the way again, which contrasts the pretty good time I had with its two predecessors, and I don't think I'd care to play it again. There are many better games that have come out since its release that have done everything it does but better (ie. Prey 2017, Dishonored) that I'd much rather play those again and leave this in the past.