It’s the thinnest sort of exploration imaginable. All those fine period details become merely glowing objects to click through, and the game reveals FPS to mean first-person scavenger as much as first-person shooter. You ‘explore’ by rereading the same few propaganda posters, rummaging through desks for pineapples and bullets and hot dogs, and wandering around until you discover which way to go and then going the other way (for fabulous prizes). It hangs in the sky with no sense of altitude, since you can’t fall off. It’s a ‘living’ city filled with animatronic dummies and conveniently closed shops. This may be all too common in videogames – compelling visuals overlaid on stiff, conventional, unimaginative mechanics (see also: Sonic the Hedgehog, Limbo, Skyrim) – but Infinite doesn’t get a pass just because it’s all high-minded and old-timey about it.įor all its artfulness, BioShock Infinite’ s Columbia doesn’t even try that hard to suggest a world. The world calls to you, but you cannot respond. A basic dissonance is created between hand and eye, and you feel more like a viewer than a player. Striking images and loving details can actually make a game worse if they draw you in and suggest a world that the rest of the game cannot support. They are instead an integrated part of the entire game experience. That’s the old logic of graphics/sound/fun factor. That actively presents itself as fake, a theme park, but offers no mechanics to go behind the curtain.Ī game’s visuals cannot be separated into some separate category for evaluation. That I can interact with in no meaningful way except to shoot or loot. A beautiful, corrupt place that I can only see, not touch. “I don’t say this lightly…but Columbia is simply the most intriguing, fascinating setting I’ve ever set foot in as a player.”įor me, this is one reason the game is so disappointing. This is an obvious plus for most reviewers. That’s a real debate.īioShock Infinite is lauded for its art design and worldbuilding. We should be asking whether it deserves a 2 or a 10. We shouldn’t be asking whether BioShock Infinite deserves a 9 or a 10. It’s our values as gamers that are exactly at stake in reviews. As if anyone is sure just what makes a videogame great. They are not based on commonly held values. I expect to not have perspectives like mine looked upon as trolling. I expect to see more actual criticism in the videogame review community. But I expect to see more dissent than that offered by excellent outliers like Game Critics or Quarter to Three or Action Button. I don’t expect every reviewer to give BioShock Infinite a 2 out of 10, as I would. The question is not: why do none of these reviews agree with me? It is: why do they all agree with each other? Where is the diversity of opinion? Where is the spirited debate? In the aggregate, it becomes clear that the problem is not any one review. “ is about circles, and how you can go around them and end up in a completely new place. “Irrational’s achievements in BioShock Infinite dignify the medium.” “This is as close to perfect as videogames get.” Its overall Metacritic score is 94 out of 100. Across 3 platforms (PC, Xbox 360, and PS3), it has received 126 positive reviews and 2 mixed. It’s the worst game I’ve played this generation.īioShock Infinite is the third most highly reviewed game on Metacritic so far this year. It’s a craven, heartless game of false moral equivalencies that uses the suffering of oppressed people as window dressing, as theme, while it explores its own cold metaphysical conceits.įor its lack of humanity, for its fake guilt, for its flat boring gameplay, for its 100 million dollar cost, for its cleverness, for its cowardice, BioShock Infinite is not just the worst game of the year. It’s a self-gratifying spectacle that confuses cunning with depth. It’s an unjustified shooter without a single new idea. BioShock Infinite is the worst game of the year.
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