It makes for a fascinating setting - and, interestingly, one that seems relevant to the world in 2020 in a way that the game’s creators probably didn’t envision when they first made the game nearly a decade ago. That means there’s a heavy dose of religion coupled with racism, but also the conflicting desires of being separate from the world while also spreading the American Way. Again, Bioshock Infinite differs from the first two Bioshocks, but just as the original Bioshock was built around a critique of Randian objectivism, this one strongly captures the specific kind of American exceptionalism that drove the United States at the end of the Gilded Age. To be sure, a big part of the lived-in feeling also comes from the game’s ideological underpinnings. Despite being fantastical, the world of Columbia nonetheless feels lived-in, and that stems from the way it builds on American architecture circa the late 1800s/early 1900s. Much like the first two games were given a distinctive character by their Art Deco environments, Bioshock Infinite feels like it’s of a specific time and place thanks to its reliance on the Beaux_Arts movement. Of course, it helps that Bioshock Infinite is driven by such a strong artistic vision. There’s less opportunity to hide weaknesses behind dark corners here - yet, remarkably, the game still looks stunning. Bioshock Infinite, by contrast, takes place mostly outdoors, in the bright, shiny, floating city of Columbia.

While the first two Bioshocks looked fantastic and ran fairly well on the Switch, they also had the advantage of taking place in the dark, underwater city of Rapture. The latter, actually, is a bit of a surprise. Not-too-surprisingly, Bioshock Infinite succeeds on both counts: it’s every bit as good as I remember, and it runs perfectly well too.

Admittedly, seven years is a long time, so I was as curious to see whether the game lived up to my memories as I was to see how it performed on the Switch. Whereas I’d barely played the first Bioshock before its arrival on the Switch, and the second one not at all, I have fond memories of playing Bioshock Infinite way back when it first came out on the PS3 in 2013. Unlike the other two games in the Bioshock trilogy, I went into Bioshock Infinite with a pretty good idea of what to expect.

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