Bioshock Infinite Review

As soon as the game starts, it feels like the old games.  It’s a first person shooter, just like the first two, and you are pretty much abandoned in the middle of crappy weather in the ocean, much like the opening of the original Bioshock.  However, instead of a plane crash in 1960 that leads you to an elevator that takes you to an underwater city, you are dropped off via rowboat on a dock at a lighthouse in 1912.  From this lighthouse you are propelled into Columbia.

The first thing I want to point out here is how amazing the architecture is.  It’s a true period piece, but with Bioshock’s own steampunk spin.  I can only imagine the countless hours that went into modeling and designing the buildings and structures in this city.  I was content with just looking around at first, and completely ignore the storyline for a full fifteen minutes.  It really feels like a beautiful Utopia.

Well, at first it seems like a Utopia.  However, it doesn’t take long to realize that the amazing floating world around you is saturated with the leader’s evil religious ways, vile racism, corrupt law enforcement, and a demand for patriotism and loyalty that leaves the inhabitants the choice of doing as told or dying.  And these people do as they are told.

The place is run by Father Zachary Comstock, and he has long preached of a “false prophet” who would come and try to tear Columbia apart.  The player is cast in the role of Booker DeWitt, a man who has agreed to go to Columbia to retrieve a girl named Elizabeth in exchange for having his substantial gambling debt erased.  However, it doesn’t take long for local police to realize that you are not one of them, and you are seen as the false prophet.  From here on in, it’s a battle to stay alive as an entire city makes it their duty to kill you and stop your blasphemous ways.

Eventually you make it to where Elizabeth is being held prisoner, and as you work toward your goal of getting her out of Columbia and back to your employers in New York, you start to realize that this girl is no ordinary person.  She has the ability to manipulate “tears” in the fabric of space and time, and can summon many useful items for you.

As the game goes along, you come into contact with a hardcore black woman named Daisy Fitzroy, who is the leader of the Vox Populi.  She and her followers are on a mission to bring down Comstock and his obsession of an all-white world.  Yeah, the guy is an asshole.  Told you that paragraphs ago.  So in order to get out of Columbia with Elizabeth in tow, you are required to retrieve weapons and supplies for Daisy’s cause.  I was only happy to do this.  Booker’s goal might have been to get out of Dodge, but I wanted nothing more than to bring that city down the moment I realized what Comstock was all about.