"Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1" Review

"I'm Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question: Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.' 'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.' 'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.' I rejected these answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."
These words opened up one of my favorite games of all time, the original Bioshock. Since this game, the franchise has been all downhill. First, there was Bioshock 2, which was made by someone other than Ken Levine (the guy responsible for the original Bioshock) and which was nothing short of fan fiction. Then, there was the most recent game, Bioshock: Infinite, one of the worst games I've ever played despite having Ken Levine back in charge of the franchise. Critics have hailed Bioshock Infinite as one of the best games of the generation and the undisputed game of the year winner, and anybody who has had the displeasure of bringing the game up in my presence knows that I hate the ever-loving guts out of it. And yet, despite my blatant, utter hatred of Bioshock Infinite, I was looking forward to its first story-based DLC, "Burial at Sea Episode 1," a DLC in which we have pretty much the same cast of characters and gameplay mechanics, but we are placed back in the city of Rapture. I have had several friends ask me to review this DLC because they want to know how I believe the return to Rapture was handled in the shadow of such a horrible game.
Well, the wait is over. And I am proud to report that, while still incredibly flawed near the end, Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1 is the greatest gift to the Bioshock franchise since the original.
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Thats right! Atmosphere is BACK! (1)

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the original Bioshock was its atmosphere, its believable scene-setting. Bioshock: Infinite had the same kind of thorough atmosphere for perhaps the first twenty minutes or so before becoming Ken Levine's beloved corridor shooter. Well, luckily, Levine still knows how to create a compelling atmosphere. Pre-fall Rapture is beautiful and compelling, and there is so much exploring to be done. In both the combat filled and non-combat filled sections, there is an insane amount of exploration you can do, which I something I really missed since Bioshock Infinite had barely any exploration at all. I spent so much time just looking over every nook and cranny, and I had so much fun doing so. In the non-combat sections, you really get a sense that Booker is a prominent figure in Rapture. People will talk to him and ask him about things as you walk around the 1950's department stores and the fancy bars. As you walk through Rapture proper, the places that are populated with people, you truly feel like you are in this city. People's chatter rings incoherently in the background unless you get close enough, there is 1950's music being played through record players, and the music echoes throughout the shopping center, sometimes cacophonously. And when you get to places where combat takes place, it feels genuine. One of my qualms with Bioshock Infinite was the fact that it never felt like you were fighting through a city, just combat arenas made to vaguely resemble city buildings. It is part of what made the original Bioshock so compelling. Instead of battling through wide open buildings, you battled in dentists offices and offices, so it felt like you were fighting inside a city. I'm proud to say that in Burial at Sea, this feeling is once again granted. You fight through a series of department stores that Andrew Ryan sunk to the ocean floor because they were owned by Frank Fontaine (ah, the nostalgia). You leap on top of shelves and sprint through bookstores to fight your enemies, and it truly makes you feel like you are where the game says you are.
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Gameplay is compelling and challenging (2)

Now that I've discussed how genuine gameplay areas feel, lets talk about gameplay itself. My qualm with the combat of Bioshock Infinite proper was the fact that it was simple-minded and dull. In Burial at Sea, the gameplay is slowed down and resources are tight. This makes the gameplay more challenging and more thought-provoking. Instead of just rapidly mashing the right trigger and winning every fight without breaking a sweat, you instead really have to balance your usage of powers and guns, because you will run out of stuff quickly. The plasmids are essentially just the same vigors you have in Bioshock Infinite: You have the useless fire grenade power, the sometimes helpful possession spell, the shock jockey that automatically wins the fight, the bucking bronco (which...I didn't find, despite the massive amount of exploration that I did), and a new one: Old Man Winter, which also pretty much instantly wins the fight. With so many game-breaking powers, how can I say that combat is more challenging? Well, Elizabeth doesn't find nearly as much stuff as she finds in Infinite, and eve is in short supply, so you only get to use powers sparingly. The same goes for bullets. More often than not, every weapon in your inventory will be flashing red to show that you are low on ammo. I really appreciated Ken Levine taking a step back and slowing down the combat and making it more challenging, and he earns major point back because of it.
With the addition of skyline type things (pneumo lines, I believe they are called in Rapture), I was expecting to be disappointed. I hated the skylines in Infinite. All they did was make my shots miss and cause me to have to go back and forth multiple times to actually get anything done while on them. They were more trouble than they were worth. But in Burial at Sea, they are actually used sparingly and with justification. You will occasionally need a line to reach a second floor when the elevator is out or the stairs are covered with rubble. But ultimately, that is the only thing they are there for save for the occasional getaway, and I like that. I hated the role the skyline played in Infinite, and if I had to have them in Burial at Sea, I would give them this strictly occasional support role.
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The pre-fall little sisters (3)

Bioshock: Infinite's story was hailed as fantastic, as a better story than the original Bioshock, in fact (though it makes me shudder to even think of someone with such poor taste as to actually believe that). So, with the return to Rapture, the question arises: how is the story? Well, here is where I have to get nasty again.
Irrational Games story people, do you have any idea what you're doing anymore? Or can you not see through your money and 10/10 ratings? The story of Burial at Sea starts out incredibly compelling and different. For a second, I thought this was going to be a different kind of story from Infinite, but with Infinite's characters. But no. No. We have to keep the multiverse thing going. Granted, it was better handled here, I guess, but I still question whether or not it was necessary. I guess when Episode 2 comes out I might get an answer. But at the end, I felt cheated. I'm not going to spoil anything here, even though I believe the only way to really get my point across would be to tell you what happened. Lets just say, you start out with an objective, you go through all this fighting to get to it, and then the plot twist comes and it is something that could have easily happened right when Elizabeth walks into Booker's office at the beginning. It is a plot twist that is even less justified than Infinite's, and I didn't think that was possible. It really felt like they just wanted to make it tie into Infinite, but they needed it to be longer than 10 seconds long, so they sent us on a gigantic mission and then went "oh, by the way!" The ending and the story to Burial at Sea is horrible, which is such a shame because it showed so much promise up until the last few seconds. My family has a saying: "Don't grasp defeat out of the jaws of victory." Playing, of course, off of grasping victory out of the jaws of defeat. Well, Burial at Sea does what my family saying says not to do. The story was going so doggoned well, and then in quite literally the last few seconds the story writers screwed up. This is one negative, just one, but it left such a bitter taste in my mouth that it really took away from the overall experience.
I can only hope that in the Second Episode, things will be more clear and more justified. And that Ken Levine won't cheat his players with what was probably supposed to be a cliffhanger but was just a mess.
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"You can call me Elizabeth" (4). 

So, in the end, what do I think about Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1? I hated the story when it resolved, despite loving it up until that point. I loved the gameplay. I loved the atmosphere. I loved the exploration. I loved the more justified interpretations of characters from Infinite. I loved the little easter eggs from Infinite that popped up every now and then. I loved the return of Sander Cohen and Fitzpatrick (the guy who is strapped to the exploding piano in the original Bioshock). I never, ever, ever thought I would use the words "love," and "Bioshock Infinite" in the same sentence, but Burial at Sea is so good that I can't help but use these words together. I still hate the game that it is an add-on for, but I can't help but absolutely love this DLC despite the horrible twist it takes in its last seconds.
Irrational Games, you can rejoice, because I have decided to give this a high score.
9/10
Excellent work, Ken Levine. This is a step in the right direction. Now you just have to figure out your own story, but it looks like you have figured out how to do everything else the right way. This was a game that I was happy to pay for. Keep it up.

Picture Sources:
Cover: www.bioshock.wikia.com
(1) www.gamefreaks.co.nz
(2) www.vg247.com
(3) www.technobuffalo.com
(4) www.forbes.com