The Best of the Best
While each game brings its own unique take to the series and everything that is associated with it, you simply cannot beat the original for the most authentic BioShock experience. BioShock’s Rapture was brought to life by incredible environmental effects (which will only look better in the Collection), its great story and huge amount of lore, and memorable characters. It’s one of the few games that you’ll play at night on your own and feel a real sense of excitement shrouded in discomfort as you grip your controller ready to cave someone’s head in with a wrench. Oh, and the gameplay is pretty darn good too!
While BioShock 2 may have helped to refine some of the systems at the heart of the original, returning to Rapture had lost a little bit of its magic. We’d already seen many of the places it had shown us, and the story wasn’t quite as captivating and satisfying as fans would have liked. Nonetheless, throwing players into the suit of Subject Delta was a little unexpected and was a great way to bring about a sequel in its own right.
Infinite’s shortcomings came in its pacing and settings. Dropping a middle chunk of the game would quite literally have no difference on how the story played out, with a lot of this being fetch quests and filler for the real interesting meat that comes at the beginning and end. Moving away from Rapture was a bold move and while it certainly paid off and made exploring this world interesting, the brighter and less sinister setting led to a large shift from the series’ horror roots to something that felt a lot like an FPS title.
