Torrifica

26th March 2013

Post with 1 note

An hour or so with Bioshock Infinite.

The Religious fanaticism/militant nationalist conflation is pretty wicked, so far, with the “Founding Fathers” being cast more as deities. Also you can choose to throw a baseball at a black woman if you want to. They’re not exactly being subtle with any of the imagery here. I can only observe as I play through whether any of it evolves into something more, but I hear that it doesn’t. Meh.

I leave myself up to be pleasantly surprised with that part of the game - the level design alone makes the game worth it to me. On that front, the game does not disappoint. The only criticism I can level at it is that all of the people seem really, really vacant and don’t have that much going on. Many people don’t have any interaction at all and seem pretty mannequin-like, the barbershop quartet rendition of ‘God Only Knows’ notwithstanding.

The other weird feeling I have is that the story feels like it’s moving too fast. I can blitz through a game fairly easily on most of the hard difficulty settings, but I have B.I. on ‘Hard’ and already Booker is getting found out for being an outsider and False Shepherd, doing all sorts of acrobatics and flying through the air, shooting everyone, and he doesn’t have any idea why he’s doing what he’s doing, other than the knowledge that people that have some sort of sway sent him up to Columbia to nab this girl Elizabeth. 

I’ll accept wildly unrealistic motivations if they make sense within the universe they’re made in, but even with the concessions made for that, I still have trouble believing that Booker would be killing everyone on his way to get the girl without wondering more than “Why did they send me here?”

As a result, I felt like I didn’t spend more than a few minutes with Booker DeWitt as I didn’t learn anything more about him during the hour I played than I knew at the beginning sequence in the lighthouse, except to say that he’s plenty alright with shooting lots of people and lighting racists on fire. 

Tagged: BioshockInfinite