Shodan Have Done This
By John Walker on May 15th, 2013.
We all have our embarrassing secrets. For instance, Jim has never hopped, too scared to take such a risk with gravity. Adam never realised you were supposed to apologise to ducks. And I’ve never played System Shock 2. It’s not my fault – I was busy. But with my first gap in my schedule since August 1999, I’ve been having a go at the freshly re-released version on Steam. It’s… it’s not easy, is it?
Booker T and his Machine-Guns
By Kieron Gillen on April 6th, 2013.
Heavy Spoilers, obv.
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Another World
By Alec Meer on March 26th, 2013.
4500 words, and I still feel I didn’t get anywhere near close to covering everthing I wanted to about BioShock: Infinite – that I made lengthy generalisations but not enough specification of the smaller, or at least subtler, details and events of a game which consistently barrages the player with imagery and ideas. Here are a few I missed, just to get them off my chest. Could maybe, possibly be said to contain some minor spoilers, depending on how absolute you are about these sorts of things.
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There we were, now here we are
By Alec Meer on March 25th, 2013.
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.
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By Craig Pearson on March 14th, 2013.
After years of speculation, I’ve finally figured out what the ‘Infinite’ stands for in the new BioShock’s title. It’s the number of trailers that they’re going to release before the game comes out. The closer we’ll get, the sheer mass of the trailers they’ve made will start warping time. We’ll slow down the closer we get to the March 26th, and time will stretch on and on. We’ll never escape the trailer singularity, and the closer we the less chance we’ll have of playing. So I have another trailer for you, because I passed the event horizon a long time ago.
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By Alec Meer on February 19th, 2013.
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.
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By Adam Smith on February 15th, 2013.
The investigative documentary style of Bioshock: Infinite’s Modern Day Icarus videos tickles my pleasure-nodes. The earlier reveals of the clockwork catastrophes and mechanical malignancies that roam Columbia are failures of imagination in contrast, and anyone fortunate enough to have instigated some form of media blackout regarding the game last year would be well-advised to continue that policy, with a glimmering exception for these informative and menacing reels. The first covers the vanishing of the city and the second, below, contains dark children’s rhymes and the sinister Songbird.
The Unreliable Narrator
By Jim Rossignol on February 1st, 2013.
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.
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By Jim Rossignol on January 31st, 2013.
Trailers are like dreams. You can’t really touch them or play with them in a way that is actually of any use, but they happen anyway, and when they’re over you’re left with a lingering feeling that they were trying to tell you something. I don’t know why I dreamed about eating marshmallows that morning when my pillows had disappeared, but I do know that Irrational want us to take note of what they’re trying to build with their setting for Bioshock Infinite: Columbia, a miraculous flying city at the turn of the 19th century. Here be philosophy and politics, there mechanical monsters and stuff on fire. There’s really no precarious uncertainty here, what they are trying to tell is that the expectations for this game should be sky high, and when giant metal ravens come for you, it’s time to find ammunition for the rocket launcher. Facts, you see, are super-true.
Bioshock Infinite will fall to Earth on March 26th.
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By Adam Smith on January 28th, 2013.
I’ve seen enough of Bioshock: Infinite for now. The next time I see Columbia, I want to be playing the game rather than watching somebody else falling out of the sky or presenting fast-cuts of footage. The latest video doesn’t show the game at all and, remarkably, that isn’t a problem. Presented as a fragment of documentary footage, a teaser for a fictional element of Infinite’s universe as well as for Infinite itself, the Truth From Legend video is as effective a piece of marketing as I’ve seen for a good while. Creepy, convincingly dated and mysterious, it’s an invitation to another world. More of this and less of that and that please, thank you.
And Relax
By Alec Meer on January 23rd, 2013.
“This is like your nightmare interview here, huh?”
Nah. This might not be going too well, but I’ve had worse. Much worse. (The most terrible was probably with an executive at one of the industry’s biggest PC game developers a couple of years back, where I had the distinct impression I was interviewing a robot who’d much rather murder me than talk to me).
This half hour with the lead designer of BioShock: Infinite would definitely win a place in my Top 40 Botched Interviews, but it’s not up there in shotgun-to-the-head territory yet. The mutual acknowledgement that it’s been a misfire does wonders too. Eventually.
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