BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter made by Irrational Games, the studio behind the original BioShock (which sold over 4 million units worldwide). Set in 1912, BioShock Infinite introduces an entirely new narrative and gameplay experience that lifts players out of the familiar confines of Rapture and rockets them to Columbia, an immense city in the sky. Former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt has been sent to rescue Elizabeth, a young woman imprisoned in Columbia since childhood. Booker develops a relationship with Elizabeth, augmenting his abilities with hers so the pair may escape from a city that is literally falling from the sky. DeWitt must learn to fight foes in high-speed Sky-Line battles, engage in combat both indoors and amongst the clouds, and harness the power of dozens of new weapons and abilities.
This game is very beautiful and richly detailed, a environment unique that I really haven't seen before. Problem is your character although voiced this time around, he doesn't really interact with characters. Alot of the places while spectacularly beautiful don't contain nearly enough interesting stories.
Also the whole alternate timeline cracks that you can peak through don't show characters so you don't know who's talking to whom. Thats not a improvement over audiotapes, its the same thing!
The gameplay improvements we where shown in videos are not here, Elizabeth's power to alter reality like make yourself a door or pull in a train to squash all the enemies is mysteriously gone in the released version. They Scaled back what she can do, completely making this otherwise unique and interesting concept pretty dull on execution. In fact in the alternate realities all there seems to be is the same turrets and sky hooks, which is pretty unimaginative.
Bioshock infinite has made the gameplay a tad weaker with less depth to the abilities (ie just lots of ways to kill and no real utility stuff) they try to make up for it with a more challenging, 1999 difficulty setting. Shooting guns is what these games are about.
The game also carries over a issue we've seen before, the lack of choice. We don't really make any meaningful choices in fact we are barred from doing so when they would logically make sense.
+Visual Design
+Voice acting
+Hard bosses
+Quite long at 10-11 hours
+-Story that does touch on a philosophical underlining, that leaves us thinking.. if a bit to heavyhanded.
+Gameplay seems to feel more concrete, difficult & rewarding.
-You feel more like a observer than a participant (no real choices to make)
-Merging realities concept has wasted potential
-Bad guy is so generically evil, everything feels like caricature than any attempt at a real representation.
-Vigors are unexplained and why no one else becomes a Handyman, except old people..