The post-apocalyptic underwater nature of Rapture dictated that it was a tight, claustrophobic place populated solely by enemies and automated machines, which meant that while it was limited in scope.
Levels are linear and the fact that the city is in the sky is largely irrelevant.
#Bioshock infinite gameplay series#
While at first glance it seems to have a fully realized city with all the great care put into it that Rapture did the way the player actually experiences it is as a series of shooting galleries with impressive skyboxes. In contrast Infinite is first and foremost a shooter, but it’s stated narrative goals are at odds with it’s gameplay. The combat encouraged an engagement with the environment – various environmental hazards (such as puddles of water the player can electricute, or oil they can set alight), machines and turrets that could be hacked, places to lay traps and a focus on looting to survive organically encouraged the player to find and listen to audio logs found beside the health and ammo they found and act as archaeologist of a ruined city. Friendly NPCs conveniently always find themselves behind a bulletproof glass wall or in the dark, and are heard over the radio rather than interacted with face to face. The underwater city of Rapture is an iconic video game setting, but a impressive a setting as it was it was a city experienced post-mortem – long after the citizens had become drug-fuelled rioters with superpowers. While the System Shock games are lauded among a cult following to this day it was only when Bioshock was released in 2007 with its impressive art and memorable plot twist on the nature of games that allowed the series to break into the mainstream. The Shock series is a loose series of first person RPGs that began with System Shock and found a Spiritual Successor in Bioshock. In order to understand how Infinite’s gameplay works it is worth considering its genealogy in gaming history.
Instead I will be focusing on one of the repeated criticisms among the various reviews of the game (Critical Distance, 2019) – that the violence in Bioshock: Infinite is misused or jarring, somehow inappropriate for a game that is meant to be important and serious. It is a harsh but I think accurate statement, although the topic of games journalism is too broad for this blog. I will not get too deep into the media coverage surrounding the game but I personally believe the video essayist Matthew Matosis (2013) the praise lauded on it as games journalists trying to “justify their own existence by evangelizing games like Bioshock Infinite as mature storytelling”. Infinite’s story and gameplay did not resonate as much as it’s iconography. I will admit this is a hard statement to quantify but I believe the only real proof needed is to look at the current landscape of gaming and see the lack of games that look, feel or play like Bioshock: Infinite, compared to a game such as Dark Souls.
In terms of gameplay it did not introduce anything radically different in its mechanics, and the story did not resonate enough to endure as much as it’s iconography. BioShock Infinite too has an unshakable claim to be challenging what we think games are capable of.” (Cowen, 2013).
“BioShock Infinite exists in a pantheon tagged “required reading” in the gaming medium… important touchstones in the maturity of video games as an art form. Bioshock Infinite was a game that promised to change the industry and provide a watershed moment for gaming culture as a whole, featuring a storyline of fantasy and intense emotion while simultaneously being about class struggle, racial relations and religion.
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