Loved the open 15 minutes. The idea of exiting the baptismal waters into the glowing sun drenched world of Columbus is a fantastic and breath taking opening. I also loved the idea of blending the language of the "founding fathers" with religious language of "brothers" and "brotherhood" into a unified rhetoric. It's fascinating and well realized stuff.
But then you immediately start to notice how you are just going through a giant fun house, a fun house that likes to spout ideas and commentate at you, but a fun house none the less.
Non-player characters are stiff and will generally deliver their one or two line exchange with one another then stand there like mannequins. Doors and places that it appears that you can access everywhere, but as soon as you try, you are immediately reminded how on rails the experience is. Case in point. Early on I saw a ledge that was maybe 10 feet below me. So I jumped to it. Right before I hit what should have been the ground, I teleported magically back up to the ledge above. It all feels very fake in a way that the original Bioshock avoided by not trying to have a living city to begin with but smartly, instead, the aftermath of one. Similarly in Bioshock 1, it made sense when a crumbed pile stopped me from accessing an area because the world was literally falling apart. But here it is obvious there is often nothing stopping me from accessing a door or a ledge except for the fact that the designers decided I shouldn't be able to go there.
Then the combat started and the suspension of disbelief shot through the roof. I get the idea of a sudden violent scene when you first start mauling guarded faces with the skyhook. I understand that this intentionally over the top and shocking. But what took it to the level of absurd parody is that I didn't just carry out this violent act once or twice before being caught and carted away. No, instead, I paraded through the city like a mad man, murdering literally a hundred or so guards in the first half hour of the game alone. And every time you encounter a group of casual non-guard based NPC, they all suddenly become rambo-esque as well, immediately tearing after you with their pistols and machine guns. Apparently members of the weird KKK masonry cult all carry automatic weapons on them even during the ceremonies. Same for people that just happen to be hanging out drinking at a bar. This is a portrait of American gun usage that even Wayne LaPierre would not envision in his wettest of wet dreams.
And then the fight goes on and on and I continue entering new areas mowing down enemies with almost no commentary, except for a brief radio announcement that there is some mad man tearing through the city shooting everyone. A cheap trick that didn't really work the first time when Spec Ops tried it. Yes, I know I am being an immoral monster, videogame, you are forcing me to be. I tried just to run away and hide but you would not let me do it. Instead you insisted on throwing three or four other murder weapons at me in the next 10 minutes and encourage me to try them all out asap. It dawns on me that it is almost like I'm suddenly playing a different game than I was for the first 20 minutes with no explanation of why the entire game broke character and tone. One minute it's all Wizard of Oz, the next minute, Rambo. Again, they side stepped this problem somewhat in the original game by making the enemies splicers, people who seemingly had lost their minds along with their humanity long ago and were husks of their former selves.
And the more I think about it, the more I think that what they want to do here just simply doesn't work. It just shows how broken videogames are as a medium that we accept this type of tonal mishmash. If you went to see the latest Mission Impossible movie and it started pontificating to you about American Exceptionalism in between absurd action set pieces, you would wonder what the hell was going on. If a spy thriller suddenly trying to turn into a serious psychological drama it would be lambasted. Pulp fiction may have lower aspirations, but at least good pulp fiction is tonally consistent.
And here is the part where I alienate myself even further from the majority. I have been playing Resident Evil 6 co-op with my brothers over the past weekend since it was just released on PC. At least so far, I think mechanically and tonally, I prefer Resident Evil 6 to this game by a significant margin. I am going to tease out this comparison because I think it demonstrates some of the major issues I see developing with this game.
Mechanically speaking, I think I prefer RE6 because I enjoy picking my shots and waiting for the red laser sights to line up at that one right moment a lot more than circle strafing and throwing burst fire. Resident Evil's gunplay ever since 4 actually feels unique in sea of action games that all rely on the same skills we have become so accustomed to we can practice them without even thinking. Take cover to regen health, circle strafe around enemies, back pedal by firing. When I engage in the combat in Bioshock, I basically go on autopilot because it is the same kind of combat I have been conditioned to play in the same way for over a two decades.
Tonally, I prefer RE because it knows it is a big dumb roller coaster ride and it makes the most of it. When it has awkward animations like the thumbs up to your co-op partner it is carried out with intentional comic exaggeration that fits with the tone of the action itself. Call of Duty is banal, morally bankrupt and disgusting because it tries to maintain the guise of some sort of realism even playing off of real geopolitical and cultural tensions. Resident Evil 6 is Call of Duty mixed with Japanese anime. It's not trying to fool you with any notions of authenticity to anything. This is a game where soliders escape plan is to blow up a bus so that they can slide stylistically under it in mid air before it comes crashing to the ground. Yes, it's absolutely silly and absurd, but it knows what it is at all times and it is just trying to amuse you with its absurdity.
