I feel like all of these games have aged really poorly. It's kind of sad, because I used to consider 1 one of my favorite games of all time. That isn't the case anymore.

I wasn't impressed with either game but BS1 was better than BSI and I never tried BS2

I'm genuinely surprised that Infinite got so much votes so far. Don't get me wrong, I loved Infinite, but that game got some serious backlash a few months after release and thought most people have fallen over it(I was not one of those people).

Glad to be mistaken!

But as for reasons, Bioshock still has one of the best uses of first-person narratives in the medium, it really redefined the genre in many ways.

Side note: I actually got to gianbomb because of Infinite, I was obsessed with it and watched every interview Levine did. So I came to site to watch an interview Jeff did with him....and never left

I played the Demo of BioShock and didn't really enjoy it, and I never played the full version or 2. Played Infinite though, and loved it. Still have great memories of it just being fun.

I only remember bits and pieces of the story through the game, with the exception of the ending which I remember pretty well, but mostly I recall the gameplay and map design being pretty great. Or at least being fun to play, and interesting to explore each area. It also looked beautiful.

Where are the rest of the Bioshock 2 fans? I wasn't going to play Bioshock 2 because I had HEARD it was bad. But then it was like $2.78 on the last Steam sale so I picked it up and it was great. I now rate them 2 > 1 > infinite. Only problem was that after I finished the single player nobody was playing multiplayer. Well, you need 4 people to start a multiplayer match and there was only ever me plus at most one other guy in there every time I checked. Still one of the best $2.78 I ever spent on a video game. I think I paid a full $5 for Bioshock 1 and as much as $10 for Infinite.

2013 was the year where I swore off ever pre-ordering or getting overly excited about a major game release. GTA V and Bioshock Infinite were the biggest disappointments in recent memory for me. Infinite had dull, repetitive arena style combat, an abhorrent story, and a completely unearned ending to go along with it.

The original Bioshock is still the most memorable for me, but probably doesn't hold up super well these days.

Bioshock 2 was a huge surprise, maybe because expectations were so low. The improvements in the feel of the combat and a surprisingly interesting story make up for the fact that you're just exploring Rapture again. For all of it's problems, at least Bioshock Infinite had atmosphere and a unique look.

So my heart says Bioshock is my favorite, but my brain says Bioshock 2.

How is this a discussion?

It's like asking whos better, Led Zep, The Darkness or One Direction.

There is no debate to be had.

Voted Bioshock, I really like all 3 but Bioshock has the advantage of being the first one. I remember playing the demo (which was the opening) over and over. I just loved the atmosphere, the sense of wonder and mystery as you enter the lighthouse and go down into Rapture. It hasn't been matched since.

Bioshock 2 is quite underrated and actually had some significant gameplay improvements over the original, such as being able to have plasmids and weapons out at the same time.

I'm going to say Infinite is easily the best story driven FPS ever made. BioShock was kind of overrated, especially the story. The whole 'would you kindly thing' had me unimpressed to say the least. I felt like because the main character didn't have a voice, it was supposed to be 'me'. I wasn't controlling a character, I was the character. So that entire bit didn't work, because I never did anything because he said 'would you kindly', I did them because I either wanted to, or was forced to because I couldn't continue the game otherwise. It felt like a very cheap twist.

The twist in Infinite however... no twists are better. It beats a ton of movie twists for me even. Not to mention the game is actually fun to play. I hold Infinite in very high regard. Barely played 2.

Bioshock is my favorite, if only because those first couple of hours are AMAAAAZING. Best opening in any video game. I bought 2 but never got around to playing because of the meh word of mouth, although I see more love for it lately.

Having played all three (though I only beat 1 and Infinite, I did watch the ending of 2 though), I guess I would say the first one.

I'm one of those sticks in the mud who didn't like the story of Infinite, and the ending makes no sense if you think about it for too long.

The first game's story wasn't a masterpiece by any means, but the twist that comes halfway through the game is one of the most memorable and shocking moments in a video game I've played. I remember my jaw dropping when that happened, though I will admit the game just dragged after that. It felt like the entire game was building up to that moment, and then it just lost all of its momentum when it happened.

Gameplay-wise, Infinite is probably the best, but I've never been a huge fan of first person shooters, and I just found it boring - same with the first and second games, FPS games just don't really do anything for me anymore.

Infinite, just such a complete package. Aside from the incredible atmosphere, world design and visual storytelling, it's pretty much the only video game that I can think of that handles themes of politics and racial and class prejudice in a way that's neither pandering nor preachy.

Five minutes left until PC release hits! I shouldn't be this excited for games I already beat but I cant wait to play through them again.

Johnny V retweeted this the other day, which I think is apropos to this discussion:

Personally, I loved Infinite. Think some of the criticisms of it are valid - namely the dissonance between Booker's motivations and countless people you're just slaughtering. I know they set some reasoning down, but it was a bit much. That being said, I loved the story, the setting, seeing the fall of Columbia. Definitely one of those games I kept thinking about after finishing.

...I never played Bioshock 1 or 2. *ducks*

Kept meaning to, but just kind of fell by the wayside at some point. Which I definitely regretted after playing Infinite. Maybe with this remaster!

The original is the only one I feel like replaying. Possibly this is just nostalgia as I haven't touched it in years.

Couldn't finish Infinite. Story didn't grab me and the combat wasn't interesting enough to continue.

I don't understand how so many people can be so wrong. Bioshock 2 is easily the best of these games. That's not really saying much though.

I really like BioShock 2, it does not have the wow factor of the first game but I truly believe it to have the best gameplay of the series. The first game and Infinite have better openings, I need to play Minerva's Den when the remaster hits!

I enjoyed the opening few hours of Infinite however later on, I felt the simplified gameplay (plasmids, ammo types, no traps) and reliance on Halo style arena shootouts added up and severely hampered my enjoyment.

bioshock 1, it sold me off of playing the demo and it's still the only bioshock i've finished even though i own them all.

While I appreciate BioShock for it's visual style and amazing plot twist, I didn't really like playing the game. The aiming never felt right, the gameplay felt monotonous and the automatic rifle felt like a pea shooter by the end of the game.

Infinite has an equally fantastic visual style, but greatly improve on the gameplay. I thought it had better enemy encounters and I ended up liking most of the weapons in Infinite. I do think the overall story is more interesting in BioShock, but overall I liked Infinite better.

Bioshock 2. It has better gameplay by far than 1, if not as good as Infinite, and told a really touching story.

Infinite is still an amazing game though, I did not bother trying to talk myself out of reasons to like it.

Okay, I lied. Got deeper into bioshock and it still holds up/is fantastic. The big issue is the shooting isn't perfect, but it's definitely serviceable. Looking back on when this game released and all the games released since then, I'd say bioshock's influence is undeniable. It's got plenty of rough edges, but it's still a masterpiece of game design and narrative.

Side note: people always point out that the addition of duel wielding a plasmid/weapon in 2 made it better to play, but I disagree. It takes up more screen real estate than is necessary, and doesn't really offer you much of a strategic advantage. They didn't add it to infinite for a reason.

I'm mostly interested in the DLC's, also playing 2 again will be fun. I liked it a whole lot when it came because it knew what it had to do to be a good sequel. It didn't try to create a New univere, it didn't try to e BioShock, it just took what was good about it, changed the mix a little and became a thing of it's own, well tied to BioShock.

I'd say Bioshock 1 for the world it built and its story. Bioshock 2 was great to me because it simply got me hooked in the sheer fact you play as a Big Daddy. Infinite unfortunately was disappointing with its gameplay and story. The story while interesting and bold to flesh out in a game yet was implemented badly in my opinion especially Burial at Sea. Also none of it made sense to me thinking about the rules the story laid out for itself. The ending to the series seemed sloppy to me leaving the feeling Levine just wanted to finished up the series knowing no more Bioshock games were going to made which goes against its very title.

I have a soft spot for Infinite, but it's one of those stories that falls apart the more you actually think about it. Bioshock 1 was basically one or two twists, but it didn't really live or die by them. It's still genuinely creepy and compelling, and while it may be showing it's age a bit now I'd say it still holds up for the most part.

The original game has some pretty serious pacing issues, but it really nails the whole "spiritual successor to System Shock" thing in terms of atmosphere and theme. The "objectivism is actually a pretty stupid way to organize a society" moral is ham-fisted as all hell, but it's so over-the-top that it ends up being delivered in a fairly compelling way and the game doesn't accidentally undermine its own message. Even the twist and the final confrontation with Ryan fit into it in a coherent manner. For a AAA release in 2008, it was extremely impressive.

Ironically, Infinite felt like way more of a cheap attempt to capitalize on the success of the first game than Bioshock 2 did. It aped the whole amusement park feeling of discovering the wacky world they've built, but to no real end. Sure, Columbia looks cool, but the story is spectacularly bad. It touches on some really, really heavy issues like labor struggles, race relations, the public enforcement of morals, but completely shits the bed on exploring them in any kind of meaningful way. At best they're just window dressing to make you think that Columbia is anything more than a vaguely old-timey amusement park to walk through, that there's actual depth to anything going on.

The whole game is predicated on the tension between the shiny, utopian visual presentation of Columbia and the fact that really messed-up shit goes down there. Like, "oh look, there are these crazy airships everywhere and barbershop quartets BUT OH LOOK a couple is being lynched for miscegenation." It's effective in the opening sequence because at that point you assume that these themes will explored as the game goes on, but they are never developed. They wind up getting folded into a larger conflict between the city authorities and a popular uprising, which is one of the worst-handled subplots I've seen in any piece of media.

I'm just going to come out and say this: the way the game handles the Vox Populi can easily be read as borderline apologism for white supremacy and brutal oppression of the working class. My jaw dropped when I realized the false equivalency the game was trying to establish between the two sides of the conflict. It's an appalling example of false intellectualism, where Ken Levine and his crew tried to look smart by refusing to take a position on the issues they themselves raised, instead just throwing up their hands and saying "IT'S REALLY COMPLICATED, GUYS; THE TRUTH IS SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE." It's cynical, cowardly, and disgusting, and it ruins what was already not a great game. All of the multiverse hijinks at the end were bad, too, but they were a welcome reprieve from the completely tone-deaf handling of the main Columbia conflict.

I don't like this opinion. You sound like that dude from GameSpot. Believe it or not, your story can actually be set in a universe but not be about that universe. It's one of the amazing things of world building: you don't explain every tiny bit of the world you created. It makes it feel less like a creation and more like it actually exists. Similar to how tons of movies are set in modern day life and yet say nothing about terrorism, islam, racism, sexism and so on and so forth, while still very clearly containing elements of those subjects simply because it's set in that universe. There is a 100% chance that you will find subjects unexplored while maintaining a feign of set up in older stories. There's millions of sex scenes in movies, tons of which portray shady forms of consent and they are never explored. Why? Because it wasn't part of the course back in the day. At all. Similarly, your example of the opening scene described is set in a universe and time where those things were normal, so it wouldn't even make sense for them to reach some type of weird conclusion and statement about that subject. In fact, Elizabeth asks Booker as an outsider who doesn't understand the world why there is separation between blacks and whites. Booker responds: 'There just is'. Solidifying and proving that in that time it was normal. The fact you missed that this was the purpose of it tells me you're just out to look for arguments to say why it's bad.

If you want to talk about cynical that might just be it though. How would you judge people from earlier days? They don't live up to today's standards, so they are all bad people? You won't live up to the standards 100 years from now, are you a bad person? I guarantee you there will be issues about subjects you are currently completely unaware about that are hot topic in 100 years. That is, you're doing something right now that is insane to people 100 years from now. Does that make you a bad person? I would argue that fact alone would not at all.

It's just the most easy type of dismissive argument you can make. It's not false intellectualism, it's not false equivalency, the story just isn't about the thing you want it to be about. Fine. Not your type of game at worst.

Bioshock's story had a greater impact on me due to it being first but I like Bioshock Infinite more as an overall package

What we all should be saying is fuck Bioshock 2!

@zevvion:

Right, your argument makes sense, but I don't think it applies to Bioshock Infinite. You're absolutely right that you can have a setting where these issues are incidental to the main story, but that necessitates not focusing in on them like they're the main point of the piece in the first place. This is where Bioshock Infinite runs into problems; the conflict between the Vox and the Columbia authorities plays such a huge role in the first half of the game (with the player character explicitly taking sides at times) that the player naturally expects some conclusion to this subplot, replete with commentary on the broader themes of labor vs capital, economic exploitation of racism, etc.

Because the player is led to expect this, the game's "solution" to the subplot, simply having the Vox Populi make a cartoonish heel turn out of nowhere, becomes fraught with thematic implications that really harm the game's overall integrity. If the game wanted to just use the Vox as a plot device or for setting, they should never have focused so strongly on their ideology and the underpinnings of their conflict with Columbia to begin with. It sets the player up to expect a conclusion which deals with the ideological conflict, which makes the heel turn have a whole lot of unfortunate implications that Irrational Games either didn't realize or didn't care about. If they weren't going to handle these issues well, they should never have raised them (and then focused on them so much) in their game. It would have been very easy to make the Vox a more generic rebel faction with a more nebulous ideology, which would have completely let Irrational off the hook when it came to dealing with these issues.

And as you mentioned, the game is set in the past. I don't expect anachronistic moral sentiments to come from the mouths of non-modern characters, but that also doesn't excuse Bioshock Infinite. For one thing, these sentiments were not at all new by the late 19th/early 20th century; literal giant battles were being fought in the continental United States over these issues from the 1870s onward. And these sentiments already feature heavily in the game. Plenty of characters in the game voice concerns about these issues; in fact, one of the two major factions of the game is formed in opposition to the system of racism and economic exploitation. It's not like I'm watching a Western movie and come out of it saying, "yeah, that was cool and all, but why did none of the characters discuss transgender rights?" If one of the major players in your videogame is a faction rebelling against the racism and exploitation of a society, it's not a stretch to expect some sort of commentary on these issues.

Irrational Games had absolute freedom to make this game about anything they wanted. They were the ones who chose to include class warfare, racism, and labor relations prominently. These are very serious topics which can be difficult to address, especially in a first person shooter videogame. If they didn't want to deal with them, they shouldn't have included them in the first place. Their conclusion to the Vox/Columbia storyline is absolutely a cop-out in that they avoid meaningfully dealing with the issues they raised while simultaneously suggesting that one side is just as bad as the other. It's a very, very bad look for a series which has always dabbled in philosophizing and social commentary. If we give them the benefit of the doubt, then your explanation is valid, where they just wanted to use the conflict as window dressing and didn't realize that their handling of the subject had so many unfortunate connotations. If not, it reflects a very ugly exploitation of these issues culminating in a sophomorically cynical suggestion that the oppressed are just as bad as their oppressors. Either way, it's a serious flaw in the final game's thematic integrity.

This isn't me trying to take one sentence from your post out of context, but I feel this sentence reflects your perception of the game very well and illustrates where we clash in our opinions. While playing the game I honestly felt that Infinite didn't set up racism and other parts of the corrupt society you mention as a means to unleash commentary on it later. I felt it was, for lack of a better term, set dressing and a reel in to the world they established. To me, the story was about Booker and his relationship with Elizabeth that seemingly never ends and must be broken. I didn't once think the opening scene was a taste of what's to come, I thought it was a reel in to get Booker where he needed to be for the story that wanted to be told to take off. There were other scenes that grabbed my attention to storytelling a lot better, such as the twins making remarks in the very first opening scene and the scene just before the racist one you described earlier. I felt that had to do with the actual story that was about to unfold.

Don't misunderstand, I understand your argument. I can also see why, from your experience, the experience I describe could sound like an inelegant way to push the story forward, but I didn't think of it like that. I think, somewhat ironically, you may just be overthinking it. To be clear, I understand why the game sucks to you, I just had a different experience and I got the sense that our perception and expectations of the game beforehand/in the early hours of the game, are indicative of our different opinions on it.

Also, your opinion is false.

In case lack of intonation made it confusing: that was a joke.

Or was it?

@zevvion:

Fair enough! I guess I went in expecting something more along the lines of Bioshock 1, where the player character's story kind of doesn't matter and just feeds into the larger thematic conflict. I was expecting the Booker/Elizabeth stuff to just be the plot device to move the player through different areas of the city, which would allow the player to explore the larger societal themes of Columbia, but it seems like the game works a lot better if you were more invested in them.

Does this version of BioShock 1 have all the additional stuff from the PS3 version like New Game Plus? Thinking of picking this up in a few weeks possibly but don't have the time to play it right now.

@dan_citi: it does indeed.

I'd put Bioshock Infinite as the best overall. My initial thought was that I was going to play the original 2 first, but for whatever reason the original just didn't feel as good as I remembered it being. I will definitely play 1 and 2 at some point, but for whatever reason I was expecting a bit more polish to the older games. Also, I feel that infinite's story beats you over the head a bit with its themes, but the story is way better than the 1st one with its pacing. I think people also don't really appreciate how much goes into contemporary games these days especially with shooters. Infinite just feels like a better made game that is made to have every bit of action feel satisfying. I haven't touched the 2nd game since I beat it, but I remember it telling a more emotionally driven story with Eleanor and I liked that a lot. We'll see once I play through 1 and 2 again, but for right now... the artistic design of Rapture seems to be the one timeless thing about those 2 games, but other than that they play like old sluggish shooters.