This review contains spoilers
BioShock Infinite Burial at Sea continues the trend set by it’s main game- Surpassing all expectations and managing to be worse than its predecessor.
This $15 DLC doesn’t have enough content to be worth that price (especially when coupled with having to pay another $15 for the rest of the story- but part 2 will have to be its own review for the absolute dumpster fire it is). I mean for goodness’ sake this DLC’s first scene has Elizabeth, who’s boobs manage to get bigger with every outfit, borderline flirting with the man who she knows to be an alternate version of her dad. Like what a LOW bar to start off with and it only goes down hill as every moment and plot point is forced and contrived or built around fan service.
They try to score brownie points with the player by being like “hey here’s rapture PRE-fall isn’t that COOL” but the city feels like plastic, especially as they tie in some of the scale to fit Infinite’s style better so the city feels WAY taller than it did before combined with adding in the “need to know stations”, sky hook and their respective metal rails, big daddy’s having detachable drills and if you compare architecture in this DLC’s Rapture actually uses a later version of Art Deco instead of the same period as the first game. It very much feels like “not the Rapture from the first game.”- with the added value of that it’s the eve of 1959? Right before the initial riots that kick off the civil war? Rapture was in shambles after all the shoot outs between Ryan and Fontaine and the poor upkeep over the years. There were leaks everywhere and the city was failing. Sure there would’ve been some nice places left for the elite in Rapture but that’s a minority in the city, plus like Booker is still a drunk gambler here so I don’t know how he’s managing to afford to live in a clean part of the city instead of the poorer parts of town.
None of the NPCs even have anything interesting to say they’re all just very on the nose about Rapture’s ideals and going “wow have you heard about all that drama with Fontaine?” the only good bit of world building was the restaurant with Houdini Splicers as waiters warping around, that felt like a true moment to the city as they showed how Plasmids worked in the society outside of war times.
The story beats don’t even make any sense- Why would you go to Cohen to get information on Little Sisters and get into a sunken prison? Yeah, he’s connected to Ryan, but wouldn’t it make more sense to find people in the city who had experience with smuggling? Like Peach Wilkins? Realistically, its because Cohen is a big-name character, so more FANSERVICE if the player gets to do a drive by with Cohen instead of something that made more sense.
Having Cohen be Elizabeth’s contact also leads into the Elizabeth favoritism that is CLEAR through both parts of this forsaken DLC. Cohen let Elizabeth be one of his disciples, which is ridiculously stupid because Cohen is our Word of God Token Gay man, and his disciples is his boys club of people he wants to bone- but Elizabeth is just SO special and talented he’ll let her into his harem because she’s SUCH a good singer. (also side note: implicating the only gay character in human trafficking little girls to pedophiles is. Cool.) The hard on Ken Levine has for his fictional character hits harder in part two, but having like a full minute of Elizabeth resting her hand on her giant boobs and moan over music gives you a pretty good idea of the tone and treatment of her in this DLC. They don’t even bring back preexisting female characters to balance this out- Tenenbaum won’t appear at all and is almost exclusively referred in derogatory terms when talked about.
Once you actually get to the department store (and like?? When did Fontaine have a department store big enough to be its own building? The scale is TOO large for BS1 Rapture, and it would also compete with his smuggling business?? PLUS LIKE??? BS2 tells us about the prison Sinclair ran, Persephone, so why would Ryan need to sink a whole department store to lock up the left over splicers and Atlas’ supporters when he could’ve had then linked up for plasmid testing and the protector program? [I KNOW the answer is because Ken Levine hates BS2 but that doesn’t make it less stupid]) the gameplay just devolves back to the bland Infinite formula. It’s a bit harder because there’s less ammo but its by no means a challenge, the hardest part is suffering through Elizabeth talking and rambling to herself about constants and variables.
And like OKAY- I get they didn’t want to make new models for Plasmids- but couldn’t they have at least changed the names from Columbia Vigors to match the previous abilities? Like yeah I’m still like “Drinkables? In my Rapture?” but I could handwave it- but I CANNOT handwave them keeping “shock jockey” instead of swapping back to “electroblot” Having a cowboy ability in 1950s new deco atlantis is stupid, and lazy on the devs part.
Then you get the hamfisted plot twist that completely defeats the entire ending to BioShock Infinite- that you WEREN’T playing as Booker for this DLC but as a COMSTOCK that felt guilty and was starting over (and doing poorly but hey, points for trying) in Rapture. But like…. If he survived the ending of Infinite what stopping other Comstock’s from not having their existences deleted? How did THIS one avoid getting removed from existence? Sure he wasn’t in a Columbia dimension, but the end of Infinite wasn’t about deleting Columbia, it was about killing Comstock- so I don’t know how this guy survived.
So, Elizabeth went on this whole revenge quest to kill him so then all the Comstocks would be truly dead, which is kind of redundant because there was no way he was going to survive the civil war- he’d already stated splicing, so it was only a matter of time before he went mad. BUT- having Elizabeth’s means of going on this revenge being psychologically torturing Bookerstock and using an innocence little girl as bait and burning said girl alive in a vent and then getting mad at Bookerstock for trying to pull her out completely destroys whatever shreds of sympathy I could have for the character. Like girl I get you’ve had a hard life, but this is too much- Having Elizabeth’s gut reaction upon learning about Sally and her fate being “oh yeah, I can use this to my advantage” instead of having any concern for a child who was taken and tortured means she isn’t getting any of my sympathy. If part two had focused down on this flaw and actually explored what she did and held her as accountable as it did Daisy for pretending to kill a child that would be one thing- but that’s not what happens.
In the end it’s a contrived story, riddled with flawed logic and incest undertones, with the same old boring gameplay you’d expect from Infinite- and it’s only like 2 hours because its just a “taste” of what’s to come. And that’s an accurate statement because it only goes downhill from here.
This $15 DLC doesn’t have enough content to be worth that price (especially when coupled with having to pay another $15 for the rest of the story- but part 2 will have to be its own review for the absolute dumpster fire it is). I mean for goodness’ sake this DLC’s first scene has Elizabeth, who’s boobs manage to get bigger with every outfit, borderline flirting with the man who she knows to be an alternate version of her dad. Like what a LOW bar to start off with and it only goes down hill as every moment and plot point is forced and contrived or built around fan service.
They try to score brownie points with the player by being like “hey here’s rapture PRE-fall isn’t that COOL” but the city feels like plastic, especially as they tie in some of the scale to fit Infinite’s style better so the city feels WAY taller than it did before combined with adding in the “need to know stations”, sky hook and their respective metal rails, big daddy’s having detachable drills and if you compare architecture in this DLC’s Rapture actually uses a later version of Art Deco instead of the same period as the first game. It very much feels like “not the Rapture from the first game.”- with the added value of that it’s the eve of 1959? Right before the initial riots that kick off the civil war? Rapture was in shambles after all the shoot outs between Ryan and Fontaine and the poor upkeep over the years. There were leaks everywhere and the city was failing. Sure there would’ve been some nice places left for the elite in Rapture but that’s a minority in the city, plus like Booker is still a drunk gambler here so I don’t know how he’s managing to afford to live in a clean part of the city instead of the poorer parts of town.
None of the NPCs even have anything interesting to say they’re all just very on the nose about Rapture’s ideals and going “wow have you heard about all that drama with Fontaine?” the only good bit of world building was the restaurant with Houdini Splicers as waiters warping around, that felt like a true moment to the city as they showed how Plasmids worked in the society outside of war times.
The story beats don’t even make any sense- Why would you go to Cohen to get information on Little Sisters and get into a sunken prison? Yeah, he’s connected to Ryan, but wouldn’t it make more sense to find people in the city who had experience with smuggling? Like Peach Wilkins? Realistically, its because Cohen is a big-name character, so more FANSERVICE if the player gets to do a drive by with Cohen instead of something that made more sense.
Having Cohen be Elizabeth’s contact also leads into the Elizabeth favoritism that is CLEAR through both parts of this forsaken DLC. Cohen let Elizabeth be one of his disciples, which is ridiculously stupid because Cohen is our Word of God Token Gay man, and his disciples is his boys club of people he wants to bone- but Elizabeth is just SO special and talented he’ll let her into his harem because she’s SUCH a good singer. (also side note: implicating the only gay character in human trafficking little girls to pedophiles is. Cool.) The hard on Ken Levine has for his fictional character hits harder in part two, but having like a full minute of Elizabeth resting her hand on her giant boobs and moan over music gives you a pretty good idea of the tone and treatment of her in this DLC. They don’t even bring back preexisting female characters to balance this out- Tenenbaum won’t appear at all and is almost exclusively referred in derogatory terms when talked about.
Once you actually get to the department store (and like?? When did Fontaine have a department store big enough to be its own building? The scale is TOO large for BS1 Rapture, and it would also compete with his smuggling business?? PLUS LIKE??? BS2 tells us about the prison Sinclair ran, Persephone, so why would Ryan need to sink a whole department store to lock up the left over splicers and Atlas’ supporters when he could’ve had then linked up for plasmid testing and the protector program? [I KNOW the answer is because Ken Levine hates BS2 but that doesn’t make it less stupid]) the gameplay just devolves back to the bland Infinite formula. It’s a bit harder because there’s less ammo but its by no means a challenge, the hardest part is suffering through Elizabeth talking and rambling to herself about constants and variables.
And like OKAY- I get they didn’t want to make new models for Plasmids- but couldn’t they have at least changed the names from Columbia Vigors to match the previous abilities? Like yeah I’m still like “Drinkables? In my Rapture?” but I could handwave it- but I CANNOT handwave them keeping “shock jockey” instead of swapping back to “electroblot” Having a cowboy ability in 1950s new deco atlantis is stupid, and lazy on the devs part.
Then you get the hamfisted plot twist that completely defeats the entire ending to BioShock Infinite- that you WEREN’T playing as Booker for this DLC but as a COMSTOCK that felt guilty and was starting over (and doing poorly but hey, points for trying) in Rapture. But like…. If he survived the ending of Infinite what stopping other Comstock’s from not having their existences deleted? How did THIS one avoid getting removed from existence? Sure he wasn’t in a Columbia dimension, but the end of Infinite wasn’t about deleting Columbia, it was about killing Comstock- so I don’t know how this guy survived.
So, Elizabeth went on this whole revenge quest to kill him so then all the Comstocks would be truly dead, which is kind of redundant because there was no way he was going to survive the civil war- he’d already stated splicing, so it was only a matter of time before he went mad. BUT- having Elizabeth’s means of going on this revenge being psychologically torturing Bookerstock and using an innocence little girl as bait and burning said girl alive in a vent and then getting mad at Bookerstock for trying to pull her out completely destroys whatever shreds of sympathy I could have for the character. Like girl I get you’ve had a hard life, but this is too much- Having Elizabeth’s gut reaction upon learning about Sally and her fate being “oh yeah, I can use this to my advantage” instead of having any concern for a child who was taken and tortured means she isn’t getting any of my sympathy. If part two had focused down on this flaw and actually explored what she did and held her as accountable as it did Daisy for pretending to kill a child that would be one thing- but that’s not what happens.
In the end it’s a contrived story, riddled with flawed logic and incest undertones, with the same old boring gameplay you’d expect from Infinite- and it’s only like 2 hours because its just a “taste” of what’s to come. And that’s an accurate statement because it only goes downhill from here.