I finally finished Bioshock Infinite’s second DLC: Burial at Sea Part 1, which wasn’t exactly an easy feat. I see a lot of reviews stating that the game takes around two hours to complete, which sounds like a reasonable estimation, but I kept getting frustrated by multiple game-breaking bugs that the process from start to finish took a few days. If you aren’t an idiot like I am and knew where you were going, backtracking is literally impossible at the moment (at least in the PS3 version) because of the presence of a bug that causes the airlocks to spin forever when you try to enter through them a second time. I also faced several times where the game crashed, which I think had to do with attacking certain story-related splicers before I was supposed to. I haven’t seen a game crash from breaking NPC scripting in a long time.
My biggest complaint with Burial at Sea is that the game attempts to merge both worlds of Columbia and Rapture with varying success. In all honesty, I would have rather seen Infinite’s characters dealing with a more Rapture-centric lifestyle. Plasmids and Eve are the exact same Vigors and Salts you encountered in Infinite, they are just called Plasmids and Eve now. Elizabeth lies to Booker by telling him that her ability to rip tears is just a Plasmid called none of your damn business, and he doesn’t question much further. The sky-hook, or the air grabber as it is called here, has no contextual reason for existing in Rapture’s tight corridors and would have been better replaced by Bioshock’s large wrench, but I get the feeling that Ken Levine wouldn’t let this go through without the sky hook being present. Apparently someone created a tool to navigate Rapture’s equally pointless decorations.
There aren’t many upgrades, not that it matters because you won’t find enough money over the course of the game to afford more than two or three of them. I managed to pick up a generic weapon mod that gave +25% damage across the board and an upgrade to the shock jockey. Ken Levine said that Burial at Sea is all about stealth and resource management, a fancy way of saying that ammo is extremely scarce, and the game definitely feels like a constant fight for survival. You’ll find yourself regularly outnumbered and outgunned, and death comes very easy in Rapture. Even on the lower difficulty, your shield doesn’t protect from much and recharges very slowly. You have a very difficult game when you add in Rapture’s ability to fill what was previously a cleared out room with new splicers.
One bit I particularly enjoyed about Rapture is the ability to miss what otherwise would have been key features. Previous Bioshock games had a habit of ensuring you were forced to encounter new weapons and Plasmids in order to progress the story. Aside from the one or two Plasmids required to progress, it is very possible to walk by and completely pass them over if you aren’t paying attention. I actually missed the Carbine and the shotgun my first playthrough. The most powerful weapon in the game is the microwave gun, another creation that has no reason for existing, that literally cooks your enemy until they explode, can also be completely missed if you don’t find the audio log that reveals the door code.
The short glimpse of normal Rapture that you get is rigid and filled with emotionless exposition on topics you already know if you’ve played the original Bioshock games. It feels less like a walk through pre-crazy Rapture and more like a really inauthentic museum exhibit. Where they do manage to impress is in a couple of small areas where you see people using Plasmids in a context that has nothing to do with murder. The waiter, for instance, zips around the floor of a restaurant to better serve the customers with the use of a teleportation Plasmid. Booker snaps his fingers to create a flame to light Elizabeth’s cigarette. Small things, but interesting nonetheless.
I found myself more interested with Sander Cohen, the man who sends you to the prison Andrew Ryan set up for Fontaine’s men to find your lost daughter, than anyone else. After all, I already knew (or thought I knew) Booker’s story and Elizabeth is about as subtle as a hammer to the skull. Cohen is still the same brilliant artist and maniacal psychopath that he always was, and his art gallery and performance are bound to terrify and leave you in awe. As in Bioshock, Cohen seems to know a lot about what is going on, and what part Booker and Elizabeth play in it.
Burial at Sea definitely has closure in its ending, one that throws a curveball by playing on your knowledge of Infinite to get you guessing as to what the big reveal is, only to go in a completely opposite direction. If you enjoyed Infinite, pick up the season pass for $20. It includes a survival mode and Burial at Sea part 1 and 2.
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