Having just completed BioShock Infinite, I thought I would sort my thoughts in a blog post regarding the three games. I think they're all good, but there are things each one does better than the others. I figured sorting them would be a good way to reflect, but I have to admit this will probably end up being a blog entry about splitting hairs.

As mostly solid experiences, the things that make or break them when compared to each other are sometimes small touches that no one but me probably care about. So, your mileage may vary.

WARNING: Tons of spoilers for all three BioShock games. So if that kind of thing bothers you, watch out!

BioShock

In terms of these three games, I think the original BioShock is a nice introduction that lays a lot of groundwork. You know, making a solid first impression. It's a much slower game than the others, focusing more on atmosphere rather than effortless first person shooting. It has more in common with horror games with somewhat awkward dynamic of switching between guns and plasmids before using each. However, Rapture is a cool place and exploring the city under the sea was a lot of fun. It was also cool to prepare and pick fights with Big Daddies at your own leisure, get that delicious ADAM, and buy cooler stuff.

A few things that bother me from this game are more like itches. A lot of the (almost) sane people you meet and talk to don't have their own character models. They're just enemy splicer models repurposed and put at a distance or in shadow. Only Andrew Ryan, Sander Cohen, and juiced up Fontaine have unique models. The others are just versions like Nitro Splicers (for Peach Wilkins) or random female models (for Tannenbaum and Langford). I don't know why that bothers me so much, but when their dialogue is so well fleshed out I guess it would be nice to have a face to match up in the game.

BioShock 2

BioShock 2 is easily my favorite game of the bunch. I know it's the black sheep of the three, spawning as some Frankenstein's monster from the cold, calculating, ever present hand of business. But this game plays and feels so damn well in the story mode that a lot of the shortcomings such as justification for its existence, doesn't bother me. It was awesome to play as a Big Daddy. It was awesome to use the Drill on enemies, especially when you get the dash move. It was awesome to dual wield with plasmids. All the weapons felt like they meant business, especially the double barreled shotgun and heavy machine gun.

I also found the Big Sister boss battles legitimately terrifying as they're incredibly fast and armed to the teeth with plasmid abilities and such. The lead up to a fight them is also really good as they shriek and make it clear that 'oh shit, they're coming for me' and you should probably get ready. The fights with the other Alpha series were also really good. Timing a melee strike to stop them charging always felt good. One thing Bioshock 2 really nailed, I felt, was combat. You even had a reason to use trap Plasmids to protect Little Sisters, provided you bothered collecting ADAM with them.

It was also nice that everyone had a unique character model from Tannenbaum, to Sinclair, to Poole, to Eleanor and Sofia Lamb. It felt like Bioshock 2 was way more polished than the first game, even if it struggles to justify its place in the universe. I remember having zero interest when this game came out, and I'm kinda sorry I didn't try to check it out then.

BioShock Infinite

While a good game, BioShock Infinite is probably my least favorite of the trio for a number of reasons. The fact I started on Hard out of the gate is probably the biggest mistake, as it made boss battles and many combat encounters really frustrating. Handymen especially so, as they soak up stupid amounts of damage and rush you endlessly with no way to escape their range. The final escort mission with Songbird was such a pain in the ass that I eventually lowered the difficulty just to beat the damn thing and be done with it. It wasn't a slog the whole way through, but there are some really annoying parts in this game I don't feel have comparisons in the other two BioShocks. That boss fight with Lady Comstock? Fuuuuuuuccckk man. Why?

The limitations to the guns and plasmids aren't all that terrible, but it's a pretty generic 2-weapon Halo style. But the change feels useless when guns are everywhere (with RPGs and Sniper Rifles in areas when you need them) and seems like they might as well let you carry all of them. Running over to the edge of a room just to pick up a shotgun or using Elizabeth to open up a tear to grab a Gatling gun feels like busy work. Also, probably due to the hard mode, the only weapons worth using were the power weapons like the Handcannon, the shotgun, the RPG, and the sniper rifle. The machine guns and burst fire weapons hardly do any damage even when upgraded. And that mortar weapon is a piece of junk as it hardly scrapes enemies when I shoot them at point blank range. I really started to miss alternate ammo types.

The skyhook executions are pretty savage though.

The way the story is set up using the idea of multiple universes or "infinite" possibilities played out from either/or scenarios, does anything you do in the game even matter to Booker and Elizabeth? Even if the version of Booker you play as wins or loses, there's always another universe where Booker saved the day, or didn't, or talked everyone into becoming friends, or destroyed Colombia, or was Kanji Tatsumi, whatever. Or a universe where Elizabeth was the hero, or the villain, or a nobody, etc. It marginalizes every outcome. Regarding the ending where Booker kills himself... doesn't that mean there's a universe where Booker decided not to kill himself? Therefore Comstock still exists in another universe from that choice over baptism? Why does it matter what Booker chooses given how all that works? Or what Elizabeth chooses?

Those Luteces, man. No wonder they're crazy.

The ending is very Twilight Zone in that respect with some trippy visuals, which is really cool on one hand, but it's hard to feel like anything was accomplished other than spouting some parable about the choices we make or don't make. Either way, it does make the oddities of Robert and Rosalind Lutece possible. And they are two of my favorite characters ever. It probably wouldn't work, but I wish there was a game where you could play as them, flipping coins... or something.

Then there's the setting, the racism, the religion, the extremes of American exceptionalism. All that probably depends on how sensitive you are to those things, what your family is like, where you live, etc. For me, it makes the majority of the game super uncomfortable. I really started the miss the dynamic of monsters in diving suits, creepy little girls, and mobsters with bad Irish accents. Not to say that Bioshock Infinite is a bad game. I still had fun with it, just no where near as much as Bioshock 2 or the original.

Yeah, the character model thing bugged me a lot in the first Bioshock too.

Also, there is barely any lip synching aside from a few key scenes. That part bugged the hell out of me and I can't unsee it

I like all three for many different reasons, Bioshock 2 is my least favorite though BUT!!! that doesn't mean I don't really really like it still.

@somedelicook:Yeah, I think they're all great games. But ordering them within the series was a little tricky.

@sarumarine: Bioshock 1 has really great atmosphere and I've replayed it well over 5 times and the recent rerelease with all the DLC for Bioshock 1 and 2 added New Game + to the Xbox version, so now Ii've been replaying it more and more.

Bioshock 2 definitely has the best gameplay out of them all, but there's some decisions they went with that really disappointed me. One of the bigger ones is they got rid of the charm of the vending machines yelling at you though they also did give you a tonic that named your turrets.

Bioshock Infinite just feels like a much bigger more grander game, but they took out and changed some gameplay mechanics that I feel soured it for me a little bit, but I still really enjoyed it.

@sarumarine: You didn't talk about Minerva's Den!

@sarumarine: One thing I learned from playing Bioshock is that there's no reason to play a game with no death penalty on anything other than easy; playing it on hard just makes it more tedious and time consuming it doesn't actually make it more difficult (except the last boss I suppose, still pretty easy).

I agree that the implications of Bioshock Infinite's endings basically made it so I could no longer care about the story of Booker or Elizabeth as individuals because I just saw them as one more variation on the infinite possibilities. So I had no emotional attachment to either of them after the reveal, making replaying the game kinda pointless to me. I know a lot of people liked the idea of playing again to get all the foreshadowing, but I feel like I can remember what happened two days ago pretty reliably anyway.

@awesomeusername: That's still technically story mode, and still plays great even if it's DLC. But yeah, Minerva's Den is pretty cool. I didn't know what I could possibly say about it other than it's cool and has laser beams.

I actually turned off the Vita-chambers first chance I got on all difficulties in BioShock 1 and 2. Therefore death had meaning again and prevents the strategy of just throwing yourself at enemies until they died.. But I agree, the Borderlands-style penalty of taking your money for dying is really lame and sucks a lot of fun out of things.

I guess that's another reason why Infinite became frustrating for me. Because you couldn't turn that stuff off (due to story reasons) so it was always annoying just to spawn again.