Recent reviews by Squid Empire

huuge brain required
I like the plant person best 🌲

It’s hard for lots of people to call Bioshock Infinite a Bioshock game. If you’ve played Bioshock 1, 2, and system shock 2 you can see why. These games are about tight claustrophobic spaces and scary enemies as much as they’re about exciting stories with twists and turns.

Infinite is set in a polar opposite environment; wide open spaces with nary a corridor or ventilation shaft to be seen. Infinite isn’t set in the underwater city of rapture. There aren’t any monsters, just people. So in a lot of ways, it’s not like Bioshock 1 and 2.

But the fact of the matter is: would 2K and Irrational Games really have been justified in making Bioshock 3? If they had churned out another game in the same setting with better graphics and some other new gimmicks would it really have been better than trying something new?

As it stands the game is a tightly built single player experience with excellent production values (fantastic level design, seamless and fluid animations, an absence of bugs, truly beautiful sound design, and a gorgeous and unique alternative future design) that plays like a dream.

Bioshock infinite can reasonably be argued to not be a Bioshock game. But, if every studio continued making sequel after sequel of their most popular title, where would we be? By keeping the same general trends from Bioshock (not System Shock), alternative history, plasmids, fantastic cities, twists in the plot, even the vending machines; Bioshock as a series has grown immensely and now has the capacity to transfer its formula to any time period or crazy city you can think of. This game is good.