Bioshock Infinite Review – Beauty & The Booker DeWitt

I almost wish I could have played Bioshock Infinite without having experienced its predecessors. Bioshock Infinite is a stellar game with a spectacular story to tell, but as I explored the sky-soaring city of Columbia, I kept flashing back to the depths of Rapture. Columbia was amazing, but Rapture was captivating. Where Columbia had you caught in the crossfire of enforcers and rebels, Rapture had you stuck in the slummed wake staving off denizens of splicers, gone mad with their thirst for power. Infinite does not give you a choice in how the story pans out, but BioShock as all about choice. Or was it?

Bioshock Infinite expectations – Rekindling the mystique

image credit: 2kgames.com/bioshock

Bioshock is one of the defining titles of this gaming generation. Sure it was a successful amalgamation of first person shooter and role player, yes it was a ton of fun mixing various plasmids by which to confront the hordes of Rapture’s splicers and nobody can forget the intensity of fighting a Big Daddy. But Bioshock’s greatest success was its use of mystery. Giant plot twist aside, the game strings you along casually having you explore the collapsed underwater metropolis of Rapture by providing you just enough incentive to keep pushing forward, unearthing the city’s secrets as you progress. Even the city itself is frozen in time, stuck in the aftermath of the New Year’s Eve party of 1959 as the splicers still wear their suits and masquerade masks not realizing that time has left them behind.

Bioshock was so refreshingly different that I still remember climbing into the bathysphere and marveling at the art deco Atlantis that was Rapture. All I truly needed to become intrigued with the title was the first trailer, which I still consider one of the most intense and impactful pieces of marketing in the gaming industry. Even watching it today, takes me back to that moment when I knew that I needed to see where this game would take me.