Does Ken Levine think his audience is stupid?

That's a rhetorical question, because he admitted to underestimating the intelligence of his audience in the Bioshock Remastered director's commentary. Though to be fair to him, the general reception to Bioshock 2 goes a long way towards proving him right.

It's hard to talk about Bioshock Infinite without writing the equivalent of a graduate dissertation on it or oversimplifying it in a way that feels completely disingenuous. This game's story is so convoluted that organizing my thoughts and feelings on it in a comprehensible way is difficult, and I'm starting to believe that was an intentional effect. There's no easy way to structure a review or analysis of a piece of media with a story this needlessly complex, so I'm not going to structure it. I'm going to ♥♥♥♥ my thoughts and ideas out into cyberspace and hope for the best. Just like my four favorite storytellers; George Lucas, M. Night Shyamalan, Hideo Kojima, and Ken Levine.

Combat in Bioshock Infinite is at best a sidegrade on Bioshock 2. It's definitely better than Bioshock 1's combat, but by no means is it any better than 2's. Infinite adopted the many improvements 2 made on 1's combat but contributed nothing interesting of it's own. I think another big part of why Infinite's gameplay doesn't feel any better than 2's is because of just how different the weapons are from the previous two games. And the worst part about the change is how forgettable Infinite's weapons are as a result. Combat in 1 definitely has some problems but I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ remember all of it's weapons. Even if they weren't all great they were at least visually satisfying. Some developers still don't understand that it's okay to make the combat in their single player game unbalanced in favor of the player so long as it's really fun. Irrational did that on accident in Bioshock 1 but didn't in Infinite. It's possible for developers to take balance a little too far, and Infinite's combat is so over tuned that it often feels like a chore.

Columbia as a setting isn't as good as Rapture. Rapture has that quality of almost feeling like it's in the realm of possibility, and it makes all the difference. In reality it would probably be easier to build a city on the moon than it would be to build one at the bottom of the ocean, but Rapture has enough science behind it to make it feel like a place that could exist. We could send submersibles to the bottom of the ocean in 1959, it's not a gigantic stretch of the imagination for a city to exist down there. Columbia is an entire flying city that exists nine years after flight was discovered. I know that for some people this seems like a silly thing to complain about, but believability is an important part of immersion and immersion is a major reason why Bioshock 1 is celebrated.

Why did they make the Vox Populi seem like communists but then refuse to fully commit to that idea? The color of their political movement is red and they talk vaguely about overthrowing the rich who've oppressed them but that's about it. Why don't they ever talk about seizing the means of production? Or any of that other crap economic determinists love to use as an excuse for starving people to death? The most you hear about the class system of Columbia is a few lines about how evil the money men are and some muttering about destroying the factories. Why would you invoke the signs of that ideology in such a toothless and unsatisfactory way, Ken?

You can't use racism as a story element but then decide to not accurately depict just how truly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrible it was during that era. Show all of it or none of it at all. You're doing a major disservice to the real life people who were forced to live through it by pulling your punches here. It also makes your story seem brittle and feckless to the audience. Americans are aware of racism and it's obvious to us when a depiction of historical racism is leaving out the worst parts of it.

Bioshock Infinite feels much more linear than the previous two games. Obviously all three of the Bioshock games are linear, but Infinite really feels like it. The problem here is player choice, or rather, the severely reduced amount of player choice. In Bioshock 1 and 2 the player has choices to make. Where to go in a level first, how to deal with the sisters, when to harvest them, how to ambush the big daddies etc. Those kinds of choices may not seem like a big deal, but when the player has literally zero meaningful choices to make the result is a game that feels exactly as linear as it really is. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to see why not having choices is fun, but as far as I'm concerned the illusion of choice is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ waste of the player's time. It's a shallow and lazy attempt at giving the player a false sense of agency over the story. Elizabeth giving you a bunch of excuses for why you don't have choice just makes it more infuriating.

I hate songbird so much. Don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tempt me with a potentially awesome boss fight and then refuse to give it to me. It's the video game equivalent of blue balls. What's even worse is how Ken uses songbird as his handy dandy improbable story device. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing always shows up at the perfect moment. ♥♥♥♥ JESUS ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ CHRISTS smelly ♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥ with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ POPe tagteaming a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DEAD BELUGA WHALE in it's gigantic rancid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and BLOWHOLE I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hate songbird. Ken Levine is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HACK.

Booker being Comstock is not an interesting twist. He's also annoying as ♥♥♥♥. The story and characters in 1 are bad but at least Jack was mercifully silent, even if it was for no good reason. And Delta is a big daddy so he literally can't speak. Can you imagine what those games would be like if either of those characters were talking to themselves all the time about what's happening and what they need to do?

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, my dad is Andrew Ryan?! And I've been under hypnotic compulsion this whole time?! No way!!! I have to escape!

My daughter is going to get turned into a container for the tang from Neon Genesis Evangelion?! ♥♥♥♥! I have to get to her as soon as possible and get us both out of Rapture!


Wait a minute, that card...


♥♥♥♥ it, time to wrap it up. I'm tired of spending mental energy on this.

I don't know whether to recommend this game or not. The main reason why I don't like it is the story, but I'm very aware of the fact that most gamers seemed to like it explicitly for the story. I think the main reason for that is they see the story in video games as fluff and really only care about the gameplay and visuals. That, or they're simply blinded by love. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying, I'm not saying everyone who likes the story of Infinite is stupid, I'm saying that the people who like Infinite, whatever their reasons for liking it may be, are a little too willing to overlook the problems with the story. Or maybe they just don't care enough about video game stories to bother with thinking about them beyond the surface level. I'm not leveling a value judgment at those kinds of people either, that way of enjoying games is perfectly valid as far as I'm concerned.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it until game developers start taking it to heart; if your game has a story there is no reason not to make it a good one. Bioshock Infinite's story is weak, toothless, needlessly complex, desperate, contrived, melodramatic, and boring. So I guess for the zero people in the world who care about story in video games but haven't played Bioshock Infinite yet, I wouldn't recommend it to you. For everyone else, that is, the gamers, this game is perfect for you.