Developer/Publisher: Irrational Games/2K Games Released: March 2013

Played on: PS3 (also available on 360, PC, Mac)

The original Bioshock played with some big themes and ideas around power and freedom, underpinned by a metanarrative that provokes the power relationship between a game’s design and the player without undermining it. Bioshock Infinite pursues the same ideas and more, perhaps to a fault, including racism, revolution, religious zealotry, space/time conundrums, and the illusion of choice a user is given when playing. That big ideas can form a major part of highly successful mainstream video games is an exciting development for the medium, particularly when the Bioshock games do it so well. Infinite perhaps bites off more than it can chew, and doesn’t fully explore some of it’s ideas as well as they deserve, but is overall an extremely satisfying and thought provoking game. Fun to play too, but not necessarily for the same reasons.

Bioshock Infinite is set in 1912 Columbia, a utopian American city in the clouds at the peak of its glory, just before it descends into a bloody civil war. The art direction and design is phenomenal – Columbia’s pristine, floating steampunk city is bathed in brilliant sunlight, and is one of the prettiest things I’ve seen on the PS3. Infinite’s storytelling is at its best when integrated into the game’s world through its remarkable environments, posters and propaganda, and clever use of licensed music. One of the best moments in the game is early on, when you stumble upon a barbershop quartet to the side of the main path, signing on a floating platform. You soon realise they’re singing the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows, a song written in the 60s, and you realise that something is up in Columbia… Clues like these are littered through the game and they make you constantly second guess what is going on.

There is no shortage of stories within Infinite’s world, and a host of characters and Columbian history is introduced through film projectors called Kinetescopes that you can find and watch throughout the game. The most prominent backstory mechanism however is one which felt fresh in the original game, but is starting to feel tired in 2013, which is discovering and collecting Voxophones that allow you to listen to citizens of Columbia recalling their stories. Some of these recordings are essential to understanding the game’s story, others are extra backstory to side-narratives or simply world building. I have mixed feelings about Voxophones, they are a reasonably efficient and unobtrusive way of giving us lots of extra narrative details, but they are also quite incongruous and absurd by nature, characters are extremely candid with their voxophones and many are strewn seemingly randomly across Columbia. There was an effort made to place many of them in areas that made sense for them to be in, and they are mostly well written, but in the end their absurd nature did often serve as distractions that took you out of the game a bit.

You play as Booker, and you’re tasked with retrieving a mysteriously powerful girl named Elizabeth and bringing her back to the world below. There is a big plot here that you can read about elsewhere, centring around these 2 characters and Columbia’s saviour/dictator Comstock. There has been a lot of criticism around the story but I thought it was quite a fun one, each plot development took me by surprise as I tried to second guess what would happen next, and I was genuinely drawn in by each development. I remember many moments of leaning forward with my chin dropped declaring “What the fuck!” as some piece of plot unraveled or a large jump in time/space occurred. Small niggle, I was a bit annoyed at how the civil war/uprising narrative developed, I felt that had potential to be integrated and explored in a more meaningful way than it was.

Elizabeth is your companion for much of the game and we watch her grow from innocent to hardened, and its quite nicely done. The main plot unfolds with her by your side, and you read a lot from her face and dialogue – she is a wonderfully realised character. I’m not sure if she’s necessarily believable, but you’re in a city in the sky, its ok. While Elizabeth does not actively engage in the game’s combat, she does assist in many ways including throwing you ammo (and sometimes money!) as well as opening “tears” through time to provide cover or useful items.

Oh yeah – combat! You wouldn’t know if you’d only read this ramble, but Bioshock Infinite is a first-person shooter. And you do a lot of shooting, with a lot of guns, and a bunch of magic powers (Vigors). There are some light RPG upgrade elements in there too. As an FPS, I enjoyed it a lot. It plays like an 90s PC shooter in the right ways, and introduces a very fun “skyrail” mechanic that helps you navigate large areas and perform aerial attacks on the baddies. It also looks and sounds fantastic, and is at times quite difficult.

Even though I enjoyed it – the combat feels like its almost in a different game. The game developers have gone to such lengths to make Columbia as fleshed out and believable as possible through its design and backstory, and yet as a player I am constantly fishing through rubbish to try to find apples or hot dogs to restore my health. I’m not sure if the phrase “ludonarrative dissonance” is correctly applicable here, but the chasm between the game’s narrative convictions and its gameplay mechanics and player behaviours is particularly pronounced in Bioshock Infinite. This is partly due to the quality of the predefined narrative and the world, but also a gradual shift in videogame design since the original Bioshock. A lot has changed since 2007.

Verdict: Bioshock Infinite is an outstanding game with a riveting sci-fi plot and some incredible visual and audio design. Its also a very fun shooter, but a handful of incongruous game design decisions prevent it from being perfect.

Should Bradley play this: Yep – I think he’d love it! Play the original Bioshock first though, if you haven’t already.