But we are talking here about actors in video games and, in that frame, she is a significant individual. The writerly love this game pours into Elizabeth is, frankly, kind of embarrassing. She is given to adorably feminine displays of righteous petulance. She is resourceful, learned, kind and passionate. But Elizabeth, his female pal, is the star of the show. Booker DeWitt, the main protagonist, works diligently as gruff leading man. In video game terms, they are interesting enough. Throughout the game there are characters who flit in and out of the glare. Good and evil are mutable concepts, right through to the twist And yet, despite its video-gamey contradictions and hyper-convoluted propositions, here is, nevertheless, a good story. If you get bored, there is always a handy space-time portal waiting to take you to into different dimension, yet another reality, a new diversion. It is too much to say that this is aesthetically proper, but few of us come away unentertained. This game is written by people who love stories and so the genre costumes are pulled out of the chest and worn in crazy combinations. If writer Ken Levine could have grafted on a feel-good arc about plucky sporting underdogs, no doubt he would have. It is an action-adventure in the strictest sense, but it is also a ghost story, historical romance, satire, war movie, existential investigation, comedy, detective fiction, noir and goofy timeline sci-fi. Set aboard a floating city, the story leaps from one narrative platform to another. Good and evil are mutable concepts, right through to the twist. Nationalism, capitalism, religion are all excoriated, as are their antagonistic forces. When it is time to rage, this game wants to rage against a multiplicity of nasties. But the truth is that BioShock Infinite just couldn't live with squaring itself against merely one stripe of evil. Some critics have argued that the game's worldview represents a sensible moderation that we all crave, a cozy sophomoric ethics class in checks and balances. The game must also warn against the reaction to come: the rage of the people against their oppression. But for BioShock Infinite, the warnings against stupidity and unfettered capitalism are not enough. This evil lives today in the hearts of fools, and so it is a story that is always worth telling. In the engine room, the machines roar for silent icebergs.Ĭolumbia is a vision of the nationalistic, racist bombast that, 100 years ago, almost destroyed the world. Nations entwine in gargantuan pacts seemingly designed to lure disaster. Machines whirl in clockwork perfection, awaiting the deadly intervention of a scamp's screwdriver. The game is set at the height of late Victorian sophistication, when ornate complication was the notion du jour. BioShock Infinite embraces every color of the rainbow and makes of itself a thing of beauty.īioShock Infinite embraces every color of the rainbowĬonsider too its premise. The notion that "less is more" never seemed, well, less. Purples and reds wrap themselves around golds and azures in a bumptious rococo burlesque that shines ferociously, daring us to scoff at its wild excess. The world of Columbia is like a sunny day in grassy meadows while simultaneously being a childlike exploration of the grandest antique shop in the world, tinkling in the warm delirium of glowing things. BioShock Infinite is an exercise in excess.Ĭolor and light radiate from this game, via combinations hitherto undreamed of in the gray to brown palettes of so many run-and-gun walkabouts. If anyone in the planning meetings at developer Irrational Games advised that the shooter genre required focus or minimalism, that person was in the wrong place. BioShock Infinite is a game that decided to be a confectionery of opulence, without any thought for restraint. The answer is in its shameless grandiosity. How does such a simple game become endowed with a reputation for lofty sophistication? Such is the banality of BioShock Infinite's core activity that its status as one of the last generation's most notable achievements is worth investigation. This pop-pop gallery is designed for you to win. The business of overcoming enemies is rarely problematic. Moving from one area to another, you progress, killing bad guys by aiming and shooting a variety of firearms.
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