*Editors note: All spoiler text will be hidden. To reveal simply highlight the text in between the [spoiler] tags. Side note – In the spoiler tags for Infinite there are references to Spec Ops: The Line that are spoiler-ish as well*

BioShock

The animation of BioShock was beautiful. Compared to some of the other games I’ve seen, it is almost movie quality. If it was, in fact, a movie instead of a video game, it would be Pixar’s first R rated film.

In the first BioShock, I felt the claustrophobic nature of Rapture. Yeah, it’s a big city, but it’s still underwater. One of the windows breaks and it’s “sayonara in two micro-seconds“.

Everything had a blue-green tinge to it. You knew that you were underwater, and it was appropriately creepy. Almost like when Ariel first swims into Ursula’s grotto and she sees all the seaweed people with eyes. (There weren’t any seaweed people with eyes in BioShock, as far as I know.)

I’m still unclear on the storyline, though. I know there’s a character named Andrew Ryan (side note: that name has been ringing a bell in my head for days now; I just figured out how I know it; in Kathy Reich’s Temperance Brennan novels [the show Bones is based on these books], there is a detective named Andrew Ryan.)

From what I understand, Ryan is a cult leader of sorts. He has a sort of eugenics program or something, to “create” only beautiful people. I think there was even a plastic surgeon who wanted to shoot ugly people.

I originally thought the Little Sisters were possessed dolls, like something from a horror movie. They reminded me almost of the twins from The Shining. “Come play with us, Jack…” But I don’t know what their purpose was in the game. I know it somehow relates to Ryan’s program, which also gives people powers (like electricity shooting out of their fingers!) I also missed the climax, so I don’t know how this game ends. I would guess that Jack defeats Ryan. I don’t know.

BioShock: Infinite

I preferred the setting of Infinite. Columbia was not claustrophobic at all (obviously. It’s Cloud City without the Wookies.) It definitely had the feeling of 1912. It was like walking down Main Street, USA at Disneyland, or watching The Music Man. The people in Columbia were horrible, but most people were kind of racist in 1912 anyway. I mean, were there any black people in first class on the Titanic? (Note to self: look this up.) And of course the racism is integral to the story line.

Which was hard for me to follow, since I wasn’t actually playing the game. I watched a good amount of gameplay, enough to give me a basic grasp of what was happening. This is the kind of game where you really have to play it to understand it. Though the casual observer can still appreciate it.

I caught the ending of BioShock: Infinite. And, well, the name is fitting. It was shocking. But (SPOILER ALERT) [spoiler]it had pretty much the same ending as Spec Ops: The Line. Different details, of course, but essentially, in both games you find that your character has been the bad guy all along. It’s a good twist to have in a video game, but after seeing it in two games in a (almost) row, it feels like M. Night Shyamalan’s later projects. Spec Ops: The Line is The Sixth Sense. Holy crap! Bruce Willis has been dead. The entire. Time. BioShock: Infinite is The Village. Oh, okay, cool, so they’re not living in the past, they’re just extremely, extremely Amish.[/spoiler]

Of course, it would be switched if I had seen BioShock: Infinite first. [spoiler]It is a better twist, because there is more to it than just finding out that Booker is Comstock. There’s a whole alternate-universe/time loop thing, as opposed to mental illness in Spec Ops: The Line.[/spoiler]

But the thing I liked best about Infinite? The soundtrack. The barbershop quartet version of “God Only Knows” (by The Beach Boys) was my favorite and I’m probably going to download it and make it my ringtone.

Disclaimer
Girlfriend Review is not an official review. It is intended as an entertaining look into the perception of a game by an outsider.