I was surprised at how much I liked this game in the context of a trilogy. Bioshock one set a certain standard for the series that the second one just did not meet. I think Infinite reaches that bar and teeters on the edge of surpassing it.

The story for this game begins on a boat headed towards a familiar lighthouse. You are to meet a man, to take you to rescue a girl and turn her over to wipe away your debt. Upon ascension of the tower, you find your contact is dead. You continue going up and end up sitting in a strange chair. The lighthouse then launches you into the clouds, which contains the city of Columbia. It’s an early 1900s city filled with patriots and religious fanatics. Racism and classism run rampant, but that’s not your problem. You are here to get the girl and get out. The only problem is that the girl is the daughter of the mayor (and owner) of the city, Comstock. You are also pegged as a “false prophet” as soon as you arrive, so people are constantly trying to kill you. Despite that, you reach the tower and meet the girl. She initially doesn’t trust you and even runs away a few times, before agreeing to work with you until she’s out of the city. Her name’s Elizabeth and she’s tired of being cooped up in the tower. She wants to see the world, but Comstock had her locked up for a reason. Elizabeth is dangerous as she can open up tears in reality. This allows her to access different timelines and even traverse them. From this point, there are a lot of various plot points and turns in the story that unfold so organically that I was constantly in suspense. This game fits so well into the Bioshock franchise that I was dumbfounded. How could a game that is literally the opposite, in terms of style, to the originals perfectly mesh with them? I’ll save spoiler discussions for the hidden section. Just know, this story is really sick.

The characters that inhabit the world are also wonderfully intricate. You are Booker, a man with past regrets who’s just trying to get by. He does what he needs to to get by and doesn’t really concern himself with the big picture. His disregard of this causes some conflict with Elizabeth that builds their rapport in such a genuine way. They need each other to survive this twisted society. Speaking of, Elizabeth is just amazing. She didn’t waste her time isolated in the tower; she learned. Elizabeth knows how to pick locks, decipher code and understands how to navigate social situations. Her tender heart provides a nice contrast to Booker’s stern one and their relationship brought so much life into the game. Comstock is almost psychotic in nature and though he’s only seen a couple times, his presence is heavy throughout the story. Almost everyone in Columbia is a believer in Comstock’s self-proclaimed prophet/ patriot persona. Many areas contain war memorials or scripture like depictions of Comstock where he has rewritten events in his favor. It makes the town almost feel like a cult (similar to the original game). Daisy Fitzroy is the leader of a revolutionary group (Vox) who are in the midst of overthrowing Comstock on your arrival. She has big dreams for the city and wants to bring the powerful, white men down. Her struggle against oppression is initially inspiring as African Americans and the handful of Chinese people shown in the game are treated worse than animals. I don’t think she has as much of a presence in the story as I would have liked as I felt like I never really understood her motives beyond making life better for the minorities in Columbia, but it was an admirable enough goal that I was able to sympathize. The Luteces were probably my favorite characters. They pop up from time to time and impart knowledge upon you and Elizabeth, initially seeming like tutorial characters. (They are much more than that.) Their influence on the story isn’t immediately felt, but once you get to know them, they’re really intriguing.

Gameplay here doesn’t differ much from previous entries. Vigor is the new name for Plasmids and they utilize salts (ADAM) to power them. Their powers are also relatively similar. It is harder to upgrade them though as it costs a ton of money to do so. This also applies to the weapon upgrades. Overall, guns are mostly the same as well. There is a weird one called the “Volley Gun” which is similar to a grenade launcher, but they explode on impact. Otherwise, there is a contraption called the “skyhook” which allows you to take the overhead rails to different locations. I wasn’t much of a fan of travel on these, but you do use the pinwheel-shaped device for melee and finishing someone with it was always satisfying. The biggest change, however, was the removal of hacking and thank heavens they did. All those minigames did for me was slow the game down and after a certain point, I hated them. The only other thing to shout out here from a gameplay perspective is the amount of enemies the game throws at you. There are so many firefights throughout the game and sometimes the baddies just keep coming. Vigors really help this from becoming too tedious, but it does get tiresome near the end.

As the final game in the Bioshock series (at least at the time of writing), this game does really well to wrap it all up, without actually wrapping it up. (See spoilers for more info.) Booker and Elizabeth’s dynamic and the general hope for things to work out for both of them, kept me engaged until the end. Though combat wasn’t very different from previous entries and it got monotonous at times, I was invested enough in the journey of the characters and the fantastical world of Columbia that it didn’t bother me much. Coupled with an ending that literally dropped my jaw, Bioshock Infinite is a game that I’ll remember as one of my favorites. (Bioshock 1 is still the better game though. ;)