Bioshock has that one part>, the stunning moment that locks the game in the memory forever. I’m talking, of course, about the opening plane crash and the first view of the lighthouse. The descent into Rapture, like the ascent into Columbia, employed tidy, efficient techniques to build a world that was eerie, allusive and oddly attractive. Alec wrote an entire post about that first sight of Rapture. The opening five minutes of Burial At Sea, Bioshock Infinite’s narrative DLC, contain a different side of Rapture, as Booker and Elizabeth walk the corridors before the Fall. Spoilers abound, obviously, with the plot’s initial direction outlined as the two take in some familiar sights.

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Small victories are important. Games For Windows Live has been minced into a fine paste and sent off to a major supermarket> chain as a horse meat substitute, but the effects of it are still being felt. Most games are still saddled with the client, and it takes an act of will on the part of the publishers to swab that canker sore. 2K did that to BioShock 2 last night. All traces of the client have been yanked out of the Steam version, with the publisher adding joypad and Big Picture support in, as well as bringing the DLC to Steam for you to buy (so it’s not totally altruistic). It’s the first time Minerva’s Den can be bought anywhere but the GFWL marketplace. (more…)

Eldritch just> got announced by former BioShock 2/Borderlands developers David and Kyle Pittman, but it’s already rocketed to the top of my list of Exciting Doodads That I Will (Lovingly) Obliterate With My Excitement Lasers. The headline does not lie. The roguelike-like counts games like Thief and Dishonored among its closest inspirations, bringing them together in a clammy, tentacle-slathered Lovecraftian embrace. In short, you can fight, sure, but you can also stealth past enemies, upgrade otherworldly powers, and climb around the environment to discover alternate paths through the harrowing infini-dungeon. Oh Eldritch, let me count the ways. Wait, I already did. You should probably just watch the (refreshingly silly) trailer, then.

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He might not have quite the profile of a Levine or Smith, but as a lead designer on Thief 3, particularly of The Cradle level, not to mention the similarly nerve-torturing Fort Frolic map in BioShock, Jordan Thomas is a name just as worth knowing. While being granted more overreaching control of a project resulted in 2K Marin’s smart, improved but too safe sequel BioShock 2, followed by a disappearance into the black hole which eventually morphed into The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, Thomas also took on some creative duties late in BioShock Infinite’s development. Now he’s moving away from franchises into creator-controlled, independent territory, and I am not-entirely-quietly confident that this will mean great things. (more…)

Heavy Spoilers, obv. (more…)

BioShock: Infinite is a new first-person shooter from Irrational, creators of BioShock, System Shock 2 and SWAT 4. It’s set on a flying city in 1912, where racism and religious fundamentalism dictate society. You’re up there, wielding guns and magic, to bring someone the girl and wipe away the debt. Here’s what I thought, spoiler-free.> (more…)

Notoriously, infamously broken gaming social network/store/DRM Games For Windows Live appears to be, if not quite yet dead, then at least waiting nervously for a visit from the priest. Few shall mourn its loss. Indeed, I had hoped to never experience again its peculiar, malfunctioning attempts to control my savegames, DLC and freedom to play videogames I already own. Unfortunately for me, yesterday I decided it’d be a jolly good idea to play the excellent, under-promoted BioShock 2 add-on, Minerva’s Den. I forgot that it could not be installed via conventional in-game methods or even via Steam. I forgot that I had to go into the very belly of Microsoft’s ill-tempered GFWL beast. What followed was a two-hour oddyssey of installations and reinstallations, hidden folder hunting and registry editing. I was so angry, and yet today I feel oddly grateful. (more…)

As we all know full well and is entirely obvious, BioShock: Elizabeth is a straightforward damsel in distress with a pretty face and a nice dress, and there’s nothing more to her than that. There definitely> isn’t anything surprising or sinister about her: she will be rescued by the big man with the big gun, the mean nasty boss will fall to his doom and everyone will live happily ever after.

Or maybe there’s some massive twist at the heart of the game and she’s not what she seems to be at all? Nah. (more…)

Matters are rather different for the third BioShock game than they were for the first. While Irrational’s original had to grab attention from a machinegun-crazed mass audience, their next one comes with built-in renown, potentially affording the studio more opportunity and freedom to indulge themselves in other aspects of the game. Where BioShock’s undersea city of Rapture was, in hindsight, much more of a concept than a functioning place, BioShock Infinite’s floating metropolis Columbia seems to be striving harder to have an explicable and finely-sketched society.

Reflecting this is newly-released ebook novella Mind In Revolt, by Irrational’s Joe Fielder with assistance from Ken Levine, which could technically be described as a prequel but seems more designed to flesh out the social pressures bubbling under Columbia’s utopian surface in the way that the rollercoaster ride of an action videogame might not. > (more…)

As if we hadn’t already heard enough from the man who steers the Irrational Zeppelin through developmental waters, Jim also had a long chat with Ken Levine, the creator of Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. Read on for thoughts that span the sadness of cholera, the mystery of condiments, the joy of turn-based historical war, and some stuff about a game set in a flying city.

I’ve marked out some mild spoilers towards the end of the piece. These are non-specific discussions of the plot themes, but you can decide whether to skip.> (more…)