Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
System requirements: Windows Vista SP2/Win 7 SP1, 2.4 GHz Core2Duo/2.7 GHz Athlon X2 or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, 512 MB DirectX10-compatible graphics card (GeForce 8800 GT/Radeon HD 3870/Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics or better), DirectX-compatible sound device, 20 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG/Shooter
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

You find yourself in a rowboat headed towards a lighthouse in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maine. You have a cigar box that contains a picture of a pretty, nicely dressed young woman, and a pistol. A chattering couple sporting British accents argues about who’s rowing and who isn’t. Once the boat reaches its destination, you pause in your seat to take in the scene. “He’s not moving,” one of your boatmen says. “He will…eventually,” is the reply. Substitute the boat ride and the pithy banter with a fiery plane crash and the scene becomes all too familiar for those who played developer Irrational’s 2007 masterpiece, BioShock. The parallels between the games don’t end here, as you will discover during your journey through Irrational’s new magnum opus, Bioshock Infinite.

You play private detective Booker DeWitt, a haunted former cavalry officer who participated in the massacre of 150 Indians at Wounded Knee in 1890. It’s 22 years later, and DeWitt has gotten himself in deep debt to an unknown creditor, who has offered him a get-out-of-debtors-prison-free card: Go to the floating city of Columbia, find the girl in the picture in his cigar box and return her to New York City. After reaching the aforementioned lighthouse, he’s treated to a Close Encounters of the Third Kind-style exchange of colored lights and musical tones, after which he’s shot into the air, chair and all, coming to rest in a religious shrine on Columbia. From here he begins his search for the mysterious young woman, who becomes more closely entwined in his fate than he could ever imagine.

For a game as expansive as Infinite, it’s good that the control scheme is very simple. Unlike the original BioShock, which forced you to switch from weapons to Plasmids, in Infinite you use weapons with the left mouse button and Vigors (the salt-powered version of Plasmids) with the right. Switch weapons with the mouse wheel, switch Vigors with a single button press (hold the button to reveal a rotary menu, from which you can equip two of the eight possible Vigors). Ammunition and cash are everywhere (at least at Normal difficulty), and vending machines are spread throughout the maps, so staying stocked is never a problem, provided you take the time to look around.

And look around you should. Infinite is one of the prettiest games you’ll ever play. Hummingbirds hover in mid-air in ornate gardens, filled with statues of The Founders (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin) and The Prophet, Zachary Hale Comstock, spiritual leader of the citizens of Columbia. The city itself is a collection of giant buildings, floating on the updraft generated by enormous fans, bobbing up and down like apples in a barrel. It took me almost four hours of gameplay to finally find the elusive Elizabeth (the woman in the picture) because I spent so much time looking around and appreciating the look of the place. Once you find and rescue Elizabeth, the action part of the game kicks into high gear. Elizabeth is probably the best female video-game character since Half Life 2‘s Alyx Vance. Liz is resourceful, smart, and excellent in a fight since she requires no hand-holding; she gets out of the way, can take care of herself, and even functions as a support character, finding you health and ammo when you need them the most. She also has the ability to open tears in space-time and bring objects through the tears to your reality. These can include cover structures, a floating high-caliber machine gun and several varieties of sentry guns. The ease in which you can combine your weapons and Vigors during fight sequences makes the combat in Infinite more fun than in most shooters. I usually find one or two weapons that I like and ignore the rest, but in this game I found myself trying out lots of different weapon and Vigor combinations tailored to the situation at hand. Also, there are little things that give Infinite a special touch, such as the excellent use of period music and, conversely, a barbershop quartet singing a Beach Boys song 50 years before it was actually written (if you miss it in the game proper, be sure to watch the closing credits).

So, why no Seal of Excellence? Because there were enough nagging problems to keep Infinite from achieving Avault greatness. One of my pet peeves with RPGs and shooters is the necessity of turning over every rock and twig to find powerups and collectibles, and it’s a major factor in this game. Especially worrisome is the idea that you can walk into someone’s home, steal all that they own and never be challenged for it (although there are certain points later in the story when stealing turns you into a target). Most of my 20-hour initial playthrough was spent searching trash cans, purses and safes (provided I had enough lockpicks to give to Elizabeth to break into them) for important items, not just the ones that help you get your 100-percent achievement or your platinum trophy. Of the three brands of vending machines, the one for the Vigors is the least useful, because almost all of the items it sells are much too expensive. As for health, I wondered why the game doesn’t stop you from eating all the food you can find when your health bar is full. You can’t use a medicine bag with a full bar, so why should you be allowed to waste apples and popcorn and such when you might need them later on? Then there’s the tone of the narrative, which gets decidedly dark and unsavory as you move along. Columbia’s residents gleefully practice all flavors of racism, and children can be seen smoking like chimneys. These might’ve been the norm in the early 20th century, but they’re very risky themes in the current climate. On a more practical note, Irrational has bowed to console pressure and has replaced the save-anywhere mechanic used in the original game with a checkpoint system that has far too few checkpoints. The game autosaves when you move to a new area, and you’re revived where you fall when you die (with a cash deduction), but if you quit you could find yourself having to replay large chunks of the game because of a lack of checkpoints. Combat is fairly easy until the final battle, which is ridiculously frustrating to win, even on Normal. And the battle leads immediately to a very long, interactive cutscene and a very trippy ending that deep thinkers will be debating for months. And almost every cash register in Columbia shows its last sale was for $4.53. Be sure to play 453 in your local lottery.

Bioshock Infinite is an amazing gaming experience that should definitely be part of every player’s wish list. It looks fantastic, the pace is fast (once you find Elizabeth), and it has much in common with the equally outstanding BioShock, all the way down to the layout of the interface. But it also has a dash of ugliness, a bad save-game system and some other unfortunate problems (not to mention a nasty bug that can erase your progress if the game crashes — take my advice and disable Steam Cloud saving). But even with these issues, Infinite remains one of the best games of 2013 thus far, and will no doubt be a frontrunner for Game of the Year.

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