BioShock Infinite Complete Edition

The art direction is a 10/10, the game is engaging and the story is great but it's art direction is one of the best there ever was in an FPS.

Deeply, profoundly flawed but also kind of magnificent. Yes the gameplay has been dumbed down from Bioshock 1 and 2 into a corridor shooter (which is fine with me because I'm too stupid for Immersive Sims but YMMV) and yes, Levine's insistence that there's no difference between a white supremacist zealot and the leader of a communist resistance group is the kind of insanity that you'd expect Andrew Ryan to be bellowing at you from one of The Rapture's rusty speakers. BUT I can deal with all that because Columbia is one of the most astonishing game worlds ever realized. It's gorgeous and brimming with colour (unlike 99% of other shooters) and full of tiny details that it became a much needed bit of digital tourism for me as Ireland goes through yet another lockdown. So much thought has been put into the history of Columbia and the forces that brought it into being. People say there's no environmental storytelling in this and sure, there's not really anything like OG Bioshock where you find a badly tortured corpse and an accompanying audio log. But the environments are CONSTANTLY telling the story of Columbia through its stores, its culture, its architecture. They're so packed to the rafters with information that I prolly added the better part of 4 hours to my playthru because I stopped progressing so many times just to admire the areas I found myself in. For all Infinite's many failures, it's one of the few games that truly felt like it brought me to another world (even if it's largely a horrible one), and at a time where I'm going to lose my f*ck*ng sh*t if I have to spend another day in my apartment, that is something to be dearly treasured.

LIke being trapped inside!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!! Make it stop! Make it stop!

Bioshock Infinite is a linear, story driven fps game unlike it's more open world predecessors. Because of that the story plays a big part of the game, and the story is where the greatest flaws are. The gameplay is good, but flawed thanks to a poor UI and proper explanation of the systems. I beat the dlc thinking that you could only use two weapons when there is a 'hidden' menu that allows you to switch between all of them. The fact that it is possible to miss something so important is unacceptable. The other major gameplay flaw is the save system which is check point based and largely out of your control. While the game is linear it allows you to backtrack to find extra stuff. The problem is that there isn't always a checkpoint when doing that and you face losing all of your progress. I found myself playing way longer than I wanted to trying to make sure I hit a checkpoint so I wouldn't lose my progress. This is bad design. The game is also a little unbalanced and throws you into practically unwinnable situations where you are so overwhelmed that you have no option but to die. Spoilers: The story aspect of the game is also flawed in that it seems the writers tried to get too fancy with time travel and stuff like that. The main driving force behind the story is a father trying to do right by his lost daughter. When he eventually finds her though there is no emotion whatsoever. The daughter reacts in kind and literally nothing is made of the fact that they both finally found each other. To make matters worse the daughter ends up killing her own father in order to 'fix' things, and she seems to relish it. In the DLC the daughter sacrifices herself for some little girl that no one knows anything about. She sacrifices herself even though the game presents her as some genius who has omniscience and time travel powers. It's clear they wanted to kill her off because they made her too powerful and needed some excuse.

So, I completed the game a few minutes ago and my impression - deep sad :( I'll try to avoid spoilers, so... If you want positive emotions at end the game - it's not right choice. Technically everything good with game. Only DLC have small issue with "Use" button, but it's not critical. 4/5 from me. -1 for too sad story without possibility to choose fate.