QCF: Burial at Sea

ioshock Infinite was one of the best games to come out this year, but with new consoles launching and being overshadowed by the new Game of the Year favorite The Last of Us, some people may have forgotten what happened to Booker and Elizabeth towards the end of their adventure. To avoid any spoilers I won’t go into very much detail, but to put it bluntly Burial at Sea has a lot to live up to, and what better way to get people excited to go back to everyone’s favorite underwater kingdom…..Atlantis…Wait no…I mean Rapture.

Booker DeWitt is a private eye working in the underwater metropolis when one day a strange woman named Elizabeth comes to his office asking him to look into rumors about little girls going missing. Who is this mysterious woman and why does she know that Booker has a connection to one of the girls. I cannot go into much detail but believe me the story does have pay off; if you are into Infinite’s reality jumping narrative, love of plot twists, and callbacks then you’ll find yourself right at home in Rapture again. Burial at Sea will make you happy you waited to write that Bioshock Infinite sequel Fan Fiction--where Elizabeth goes back in time and convinces Abraham Lincoln to invade Canada….what. Am I the only one here?

Rapture is the showpiece for Irrational Games continuation of Bioshock Infinite, and to see this legendary game setting before it’s horrific fall from grace is a site to behold. You get a glimpse at some of the enemies from the game before they go all wacko on goofballs and start tearing up the joint. It brings back fond memories of the first game and seeing it in pristine condition is a treat for fans new and old alike. In fact the large majority of your playtime is going to depend on whether or not you take the opportunity to explore Rapture in all of its pre-collapse glory or not, and this is one Burial at Sea’s biggest flaws, it is extremely short. If you plow through this content, you can make it through in just over 60 minutes. Now that’s all well and good if the 60 minutes is worth it, and that’s going to be the biggest lynch pin on whether or not you should get this DLC extension.

So let’s talk combat. After the initial return jaunt through Rapture’s hallowed halls, the game turns back into Bioshock Infinite, the decorations are all there, but you are still taking vigor (now called Plasmids), using your Air Grabber (I see what you did there…) to ride along Rapture’s Pneumo Tubes and taking cover while you wait for your shields to refill. The feel of combat has changed a little bit, however. If you went for the Scavenger Hunt achievement in Infinite you will immediately feel at home as you will be fighting for resources more often as money and ammo is scarce and enemies tend to be harder to take down. The enemies will make you feel the change even more as the Splicers are more apt to run about and move as opposed to Columbia’s Police Force and soldiers who liked cover. If anything I can say that the combat felt BETTER than infinite because of these minor changes.

You’ll also get a couple more new toys to play with, with the addition of the Tommy Gun and the Radar Range. You also get a bonus plasmid in Old Man Winter, which interestingly enough, is submitted fan-work, allows you to freeze enemies in place. Using these new tools is fun especially the Radar Range, a Plasmid that’s  a laser that can link between enemies. Even with all of these changes, I was still able to get back into my Infinite groove after a few minutes of play.

All in all Burial at Sea does a great job of improving on where Infinite left off, whether it’s the minor improvements to Infinite’s combat or going back to a setting I thought was much more intriguing, if you are a fan of the Main Game, Burial at Sea is a must have extension. While your visit to Rapture is short, it is worth the wait for a return and any fan of the series will be left wanting more.