It starts with a lighthouse.

You are former Pinkerton private investigator Booker DeWitt, on a mysterious contract to “Bring us the girl and wipe away the debt”. Grab some snacks and a drink. You wont be leaving your seat for a while.

Enter Columbia, a city that literally floats above the clouds. Thrown into a world of radical American Conservatism and religious dogma, you will run, shoot, fall, and fly through a masterfully rendered, twisted, jingoistic take on America.

Irrational Games, the studio responsible for the Bioshock series, has made a name for itself by taking socio-political movements and stretching them to the extreme, providing pathological super-villains and eschewing the predictability of the First Person Shooter genre. Their first game, Bioshock, took place in Rapture, a city at the bottom of the ocean. Fitting then, that Bioshock Infinite takes place in the sky, its lofty goals flying high above its realistic potential. But Infinite hits these goals, again and again, leaving both critics and gamers in their seats, with a jaw-dropping mouth-wide-open “I can’t believe it” expression on their faces even hours after the credits rolled by.

Infinite melds an incredible storyline with a (surprisingly believable) city in the sky, supplementing both features with an assortment of patriotic and 1900’s records and tracks. Covers of “Fortunate Son” and “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” have originals like Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” and “The Grand Old Rag” stuck between them. Over a hundred audio snippets from the likes of Tchaikovsky, Chopin, and Richard Wagner to Django Reinhardt and Creedence Clearwater Revival are featured in Bioshock Infinite.

Columbia’s alternate 1912 reality is inundated with blatant racism, sexism, nationalism, and religion. It makes a point simply by placing you in the midst of revolutionary fervor, forcing you to think on these issues while progressing through the story. Columbia readily feeds you radical opinions of its leaders and dissenters through propaganda, characters, and memorable events. The city’s religious and political dictator, Father Comstock, aptly dubbed “The Prophet”, has created a world above the “sodom below” that idolizes and practically deifies America’s founding fathers. This extremely religious society is only further radicalized through White-Black-Irish discrimination, with Columbia’s own depiction of the 99% 1% debate taking place in the midst of a working class rebellion and the introduction of you, Booker DeWitt, as the city’s Antichrist, the “False Shepherd”. Needless to say, there is enough political and religious dialogue to leave even the least opinion-sensitive players’ mind spinning about.

The city’s ugly side (Yes, the aforementioned scenario was in fact Columbia in its idyllic state) eventually comes out. The oppressed underclass that keeps the city ticking rebels against the upper crust, pitting industrial workers with the city’s patriotic heroes. Columbia isn’t so much an alternate reality as it is a caricature and slight satire of American history and politics.

Just when you begin to get your bearings in this politically unstable and upheaval-ready city, you meet Elizabeth, the girl you were sent to retrieve. In the span of ten minutes, you are confronted with an even more pressing discovery than a city in the sky: Elizabeth has the ability to create tears, trans-dimensional holes in the fabric of reality that leads to different times and alternate worlds. That was before you were both assaulted by her titan-sized, steampunk-themed, oversized guardian that takes after a pigeon with a complimentary set of wolverine claws.

Hold on. Trans-dimensional tears? Alternate realities? Time travel? Psychopathic pigeon? Bioshock Infinite will drip-feed the explanation to your hungrily waiting brain in the form of world-class, Pixar-perfect environments, with a storyline that plays better than any Oscar Nomination in the past five years. Columbia will have you hooked the moment you are skyrocketed onto its heavenly platforms, and by the time Elizabeth comes along, you’re simply along for the ride, knowing that your expectations and predictions will be utterly and completely shattered by the largest plot twist ever attempted in the history of video games.

After over twelve hours of mind-boggling, space-time continuum defying, plot-twisting action, you will come to realize that the true value of BioShock Infinite isn’t the violence, or the story itself, but everything that comes after. Infinite introduces a myriad of thought-pressing ideas and beliefs that can double as a textbook explanation for American Exceptionalism and Extremism as well as a suitable Multi-Dimensional Physics 101 seminar.

This is the game and the ending that you will sleep on for weeks on end. You will identify with and become attached to Elizabeth and Booker more than you ever will with any other video game personality. Bioshock Infinite will be on the tip of your tongue in every conversation you have, and when you do start talking about it, it’ll be an hour before you realize that time has passed.

    –      “Are you afraid of God?”

9.5/10 “Bioshock Infinite is a game that you do not want to miss out on. Prepare to be blown away.”

Metascore  94/100 “Highest Rated Game of The Year”
IMDb 9.5/10
IGN “Brilliant” “You will believe a city can fly” 9.5/10
Game Informer “Unforgettable” 10/10
Entertainment Weekly “A stunning creation”
NBC News “A masterpiece of storytelling”
Time Magazine “BioShock Infinite is the kind of game you want to think about and talk about long after the credits roll, which is why the pile of thoughtful critiques keeps growing. You should play it, and join the conversation.” 5/5

100/100 Metacritic Ratings from: Gamer.no, DarkStation, Hyper Magazine, AtomicGamer, Gameplanet, Guardian, Giant Bomb, Eurogamer, Machinima, Toronto Sun, Gamereactor, GamesTM, Telegraph, Gameblog.fr, AusGamers, GamesRadar, Game Informer, The Escapist, Destuctoid, Gamer.nl, Joystiq, Polygon

In-Depth reviews that analyse game mechanics, graphics, storyline, as well as gameplay:

Machinima Inside Gaming | Game Informer | Game Planet | The Guardian | The Telegraph