BioShock Infinite, a beautiful bore.
To me, this game was incredibly mediocre. Now, I didn't necessarily hate it, but it's not something I'd recommend to others. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are great. I thought the gunplay was decent even though, unlike the previous two games, you could now only carry two at a time; I thought some of the Vigors were cool despite some feeling useless and also feeling like a step down from Plasmids; and I thought Elizabeth was a pretty decent follower/character. But where the game falls flat is when it comes to its story, pacing, and some of the characters that appear.
Spoilers for the story:
[spoiler] I thought that the first third of the game was actually pretty decent. I enjoyed exploring Columbia, learning about the world, the people, and slowly figuring out what was going on, how things worked. Then the longer the game goes on it starts to get into the time-traveling, alternate-timeline, jumping-between-realities stuff, and that's where I started losing interest. At first I was like, "That kinda interesting I suppose." But then I started to think about it, and the more I thought about it, the more it made everything feel meaningless. [/spoiler]
[spoiler] The second they start jumping between timelines, it feels like everything they've done up to that point loses some of its significance because those events may or may not have actually happened in the timeline they're currently in. And then if you think about it, anything that they may or may not do in the new timeline feels like it could become meaningless too if they decide to jump again. I mean maybe that the point, to show how there's Infinite possibilities of different timelines based on the choices made, but it feels lazy. [/spoiler]
[spoiler] Also, something that I feel like is never addressed is: what exactly happens to the Elizabeths in the new timelines they travel to? For example in one of the realities we jump to, we see that Booker was the face of the revolution and died fighting in it, but what happened to that timeline's Elizabeth? She obviously existed before Booker died, so where is she? Did she die? Is she still around somewhere? Did she become completely different because of the events of that timeline? Maybe it wasn't important enough to answer, but it just kinda felt like a plot hole at certain times. [/spoiler]
[spoiler] I honestly think this is were the story started to lose me. It's not necessarily that I hate the idea of alternate timelines. Actually I think they can be pretty interesting if done properly. It's just that this game keeps adding more and more stuff on top of itself without making me feel like any of it actually matters. Every time I started to get an idea of what was going on, the game would just introduce another timeline, another version of a character, or another twist, and eventually I just stopped caring. [/spoiler]
[spoiler] Then there's the big reveal that Booker and Comstock are the same person. Honestly... wasn't really impressed. To me, it felt like they lazily tried rehashing the awesome twist BioShock one had with Andrew Ryan and Fontaine. Except unlike the first game, I don't really think this one really changes much about how I viewed the characters or the story. Finding out that Booker is just a different reality version of Comstock if he made a different choice is an interesting idea, I suppose, but it didn't have nearly the same impact on me as the reveal in the first game had. When you learn the truth in the first, it changes how you look at what you've been doing throughout the entire game, whereas with Booker and Comstock, it mostly just felt like an explanation for why and how these two characters are connected to each other. [/spoiler]
[spoiler] And then we have the pacing. I don't necessarily think the game is too slow, but I do think it has a problem with how it handles its story. You know, the beginning takes its time and lets you explore Columbia, learn about the world, the people, and it lets you get a feel for what kind of place it is. I thought that was pretty cool. But as the game keeps going on, it feels like it becomes more and more focused on getting you from one big story moment to the next. There's always another revelation, another twist, or another big thing happening; there's really no time to process any of what just happened before you're whisked away to the next big thing. [/spoiler]
[spoiler] One last thing I want to add before I forget: Lady Comstock's ghost fight. Good lord, this fight was awful. I've seen people complain about the final boss of the original BioShock, but by God, I never want to hear anyone complain about that fight again after playing Infinite. Lady Comstock's ghost is one of the worst boss fights I've ever played in a game. It's tedious, annoying, she's a bullet sponge, and she's just not fun. And It's not even that she's hard; it's that she's so tedious and takes so long to kill. Now that I'm thinking of slightly annoying things, Songbird was disappointing. I think Songbird is a cool-looking character, and I liked the idea of this giant mechanical bird protecting Elizabeth. But the game spends so much time building him up, having him chase you around, and making him seem like this terrifying threat, only for you to barely do anything with him. You what, use him to destroy some ships and the end of the game and then drown him? What a waste of a potentially cool boss fight that was built up throughout the game. [/spoiler]
In the end though, I think that ultimately my biggest problem with BioShock Infinite is just the way it's told. How it constantly introduces these big ideas and tries to make everything seem deeper and more complicated, but never really has it all come together in a satisfying way, for me at least; that's how I feel.
