Bioshock: Burial at Sea

My eyes open and I’m in a familiar place.  It’s my office, that same old office.  It’s dark and feels somehow barren and cramped at the same time.  My eyes are bleary, and as I reach for my cigarettes there’s a knock at the door.  It’s a dame.  It’s always a dame.  She seems familiar, but I can’t quite place her face.  This whole thing seems familiar – I’ve got a sense of deja vu running through my brain like a bullet from a smoking .45.  And then it hits me.  I’m back in Rapture.

That’s how I felt when playing through the opening of Burial at Sea, the new expansion for Bioshock: Infinite that takes you back to where it all began.  It’s actually quite confusing dealing with Elizabeth in Rapture.  My memories of the three major Bioshock games keep blending together when I try to remember the minor characters and situations they make reference to in the game, which I suppose was the entire point.  It’s a very meta way of linking the player in to the entire infinite worlds concept from Infinite, while also giving them the same popular style and feel from the originals.  It works well, in my case, because I love the games, but it’s been a while since I’ve played them, so I’m very hazy on the details.

The first thing I noticed when wandering around Rapture is that inside the city the graphic quality is a bit reduced from Infinite.  The people are a bit jaggier, and there are fewer models to go around.  They don’t seem quite as detailed either.  Outside of the city looks incredible, however.  The various water effects are quite good, and the schools of fish and whales swimming around add tremendously to the atmosphere.

The second thing I noticed was that I can wander around Rapture.  The first section of the game lets you wander around a relatively large section of Rapture freely, interacting with people as you do.  This was something that was in Infinite, but missing from the first two games, as the city was already in ruin by the time you got there.  It’s absolutely fantastic to overhear conversations and feel the build up to the civil war in Rapture.  The first time I walked into a club and the waiter asks if I needed anything, and then Houdini’d away just blew my mind.  Seeing the people of the city before they became crazy splicers, and then contrasting it to the building insanity of both Sandor Cohen and trapped followers of Fontaine would show you exactly where the city was headed, even if you didn’t already know.

I’m finding the play control a little bit worse than in Infinite for some reason.  I’m having quite a bit of difficulty actually shooting splicers as they run toward me, which is fine since I hardly have any ammo at all.  You start the game with a whopping three bullets, and for some reason I seem mostly unable to make purchases from the vending machines.  So, I pretty much end up just beating people to death with my sky hook.  The trap mechanic from Infinite has been preserved for the plasmids, as have the infusions.  Gear has also been preserved, which I’m not a huge fan of, as it’s basically just a super stripped down equipment system that kind of sucks.  But, who plays Bioshock for the fps gameplay?  We play for the story.

I haven’t finished the game yet, but what I’m feeling is that while the story is interesting, it’s interesting because I’ve played the past games.  That makes sense in some way, because it IS an expansion, not a standalone game.  But on the other hand, Infinite was a complete story, and this is just an offshoot of Infinite, so I feel like maybe it should stand on it’s own a little more.  It’s really lacking a good ‘hook’ to get me involved.  The hook is, I suppose, the return to Rapture, but that doesn’t work nearly as well as the baptism and racial abuse scenes from Bioshock: Infinite.  Those scenes got you invested fast.

All in all, I’d put Burial at Sea on the same level as Bioshock 2.  It’s a very good and worthwhile experience, but doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor.