by “You just complicate the narrative,” sneers one character to Bioshock Infinite protagonist Booker DeWitt. And what a narrative it is.
If you strip away the first person shooter elements, the swashbuckling combat set in a city amongst the clouds, and the Bioshock series’ use of superpowers, Bioshock Infinite (Mac App Store link, GameAgent link) is still a remarkable piece of storytelling. Developed by Irrational Games and ported to the Mac by Aspyr, Bioshock Infinite explores concepts such as memory, linearity, time travel, changing history, parallel universes and the impact that our choices make—all while fighting your way through one of the most spectacular first person shooter campaigns ever. Bioshock Infinite isn’t just a worthy successor to the Bioshock series, it’s easily one of the most bizarre and exciting titles to be released this decade.
Bioshock Infinite is the latest installment in the Bioshock series, and while the time period and setting have emerged from the 1950s art deco oceans to turn-of-the-century steampunk cloud cities, the game is still fundamentally a sci-fi first person shooter. You’ll be running and gunning with similar weaponry, including an assortment of guns and super powers. Instead of Bioshock’s plasmids, the powers this time are supplied by vigors that enable you to cast profoundly powerful abilities like lightning bolts, fireballs, and vengeful crows. Though your powers seem to have less intractability with the environment this time around (few moments to electrocute the water of a room, for example), the added ability for nearly every power to have a secondary tripmine mode creates some new potential tactics. Plus, unleashing a swarm of birds at your foes just never gets old.
Bioshock Infinite’s plot is best kept under wraps, but the basic premise is that you’re a Pinkerton’s agent who has been sent to the floating city of Columbia to recover a girl. This girl turns out to be Elizabeth, who will accompany you for the majority of your quest. She isn’t a hapless bullet-magnet either: through her own space time-continuum manipulating abilities, she can often aid you in combat by finding useful items or opening tears to get you additional guns, helpful turrets, or new vantage points.
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