A classic... peak of the franchise!

I completed this game today and I have to say, everything they said about the game in the reviews was true. This was an extraordinary game and it was an enthralling experience from start to finish.

I have been a fan of the "Shock" franchise from the very beginning and I have to say this latest installment was the best. While it did not have the deeper roleplaying elements featured in System Shock 2 or the survival horror-type visceral experience of BioShock, it delivered the most balanced experience I have ever seen. It was epic in scale and I felt as though I was participating in the greatest action/adventure film ever made.

The story telling was magnificent. It told a very specific story in a very specific way, so it was very much a linear game. However, it counteracted the linearity by being ambiguous to the point the player had to constantly think for themselves to figure out what the heck is doing on, as well as viewing kinescopes and voxophones to find out more about the backstory. It also did not do what so many films, TV shows, or even some games do, which is to deliver an ending so open to interpretation that we are left wondering what we just spent countless hours trying to accomplish.

The characters - what can be said? Booker DeWitt was an awesome playable character. He is someone is you really become; you feel his anguish, fear and pain. As for Elizabeth, well, let us just say she has topped Luigi as the greatest game sidekick in gaming history. No other sidekick in gaming is as endearing as Elizabeth is. She is your savior, but you also feel a sense of responsibility for her. All of the characters were brought to life so well by the outstanding voice acting, particularly on the part of Troy Baker (Booker DeWitt) and Courtnee Draper (Elizabeth), whom I had the pleasure of meeting at a midnight opening of the game!

I have no complaints about any of the other areas of the game. While the story is really the only thing that truly stands out, BioShock Infinite, along with its predecessors, is a game that must be evaluated in its totality - it is not a game that lives/dies off of one or two features. That being said, I felt as though the graphics could have used some more work. While they looked incredible from a distance, they lost considerable detail closer up. As a matter of fact, it seemed as if graphical quality had not changed considerably since BioShock. Perhaps this is due in part to these games being optimized for platforms, with the PC version simply being a port (I played the PC version).

If anyone in 1994 said a game called System Shock, a financial flop at the time (but a critical success), was the genesis of one of the most critically acclaimed and bestselling games of 2013, you would have been called crazy. If anyone thought so, pat yourselves on the back.

12/10