BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 2
We know something’s wrong when we see the boy dancing with a baguette.
When we fade in to Burial At Sea Episode 2 as Elizabeth, we’re sitting in a quaint little French cafe looking out at the Eiffel Tower.
We’re drinking wine and eating croissants (breakfast of champions) and then we’re invited for a potter through the Paris streets, past playing children and men selling cheeses.
It is to Paris what videogame representations are to London: red phone boxes, Big Ben and a double-decker bus rolling past being driven by the Queen.
We’re used to American games taking a few artistic liberties with Europe. But that boy, dancing with his baguette… It’s just a bit too concentratedly French. Something is amiss.
Something is, of course, but we’re not telling you what.
Because, sadly, in a way, Burial At Sea Episode 2’s finest moment is its Paris opening.
Returning To Rapture In Burial At Sea Episode 2
If this final piece of DLC confirms one thing, it’s that BioShock Infinite as a whole is best when it drops its pretentious pseudo-science and shows us something simpler.
When Elizabeth eventually (and inevitably) returns to Rapture, we’re shown a delightfully grim new side to Andrew Ryan’s propaganda: an empty kindergarten showing black and white films of ‘Ryan the Lion’, a cartoon lion warning tots of the dangers of – what else? – the ‘parasite’.
We find a blackboard in the ‘Corner of Shame’ on which a child has scrawled “I will not share my toys” over and over – proof (if the Little Sisters weren’t proof enough) that Ryan’s philosophy is to get ’em young.
Sadly, these moments of exploration get frequently interrupted by the tedious business of shooting at lunatics. Let’s not mess about: the combat is bad. It’s worse than BioShock Infinite – and that’s not a high benchmark to start from.
For a start, Elizabeth, as she keeps saying to herself, is no Booker.
There are only four weapons for her to find in the DLC and two of them – the Hand Cannon and the Shotgun – are pretty well useless while fighting enemies in groups bigger than one.
On the bizarre flipside of that coin, Elizabeth’s new hand-crossbow is almost absurdly over-powered.
Problems With Burial At Sea Episode 2’s Combat
The tranquiliser darts it fires are silent, instantly knock out all enemies in the game in a single hit, ignore armour and can often be retrieved from bodies.
The ammo is capped at just four darts, but there’s little reason to buy anything except darts from vending machines, and using the Possession Vigor on them first ensures you’ll always have enough cash to restock.
Hand-to-hand has been nerfed to the point of near uselessness as well.
Elizabeth can’t just casually stove in people’s skulls with her Sky-Hook, as Booker did. If you manage to sneak up behind an enemy (which is difficult, as their patrol paths are erratic and they’ll often turn in directions that seem to make no sense) you can belt them over the head for one-hit knockout.
But in combat, melee attacks only stagger enemies. Dropping onto enemies from Skylines has also been scrapped, scratching out another option for dealing with Rapture’s fighty inhabitants.
Well, you might say: Elizabeth isn’t supposed to be Booker – of course she can’t take on an army of splicers on her lonesome.
And that’s true: Elizabeth’s story is supposed to be stealthy – it’s full of air vents, she can drop silently from heights by holding down crouch and enemies have new awareness indicators that show when you’ve been spotted.
And while the new Peeping Tom Plasmid gives Elizabeth limited invisibility and power to see through walls, Dishonored-style, all that did for us was remind us how much better stealth feels in games that are purpose built for it.
Burial At Sea Episode 2’s Pointless Puzzles
You didn’t buy Bioshock Infinite to sneak about, you bought it for guns and superpowers – and this piece of DLC feels out of sync with that.
But our biggest (and weirdest) complaint about BioShock Infinite: Burial At Sea Episode 2 is this: we can’t tell what the game thinks of us.
Elizabeth has puzzles to solve – switches to flip, objects to retrieve and so on – but the game will gabbily reveal the solution every time before you’ve even tried to figure it out for yourself.
In one segment, we had to break into the office of one of Rapture’s old guard, but the door – naturally – was jammed shut.
So, we wander next door to the maintenance room and – bam – cue cutscene.
Elizabeth, talking to herself like an expositional Loony Tunes character, muses that this is where the central heating is controlled, so there must be a vent shaft that leads into the office.
Then she looks up, stares directly at a vent shaft, and turns her head to follow it until the game resumes with us pointing straight at the opening, hidden behind a cabinet.
It’s like playing the game with an over-attentive mum. ‘Which block goes in this hole, Timmy? Is it the square one? Here, I’ll do it for you. Who’s a clever boy? Yes you are!’
Stop tousling our heads, Bioshock; we haven’t earned it.
BioShock Infinite Burial At Sea Episode 2 Review
But then at the same time, the game also expects you to keep up, not just with the multiple realities plotline of BioShock Infinite, but the political machinations and backstabbings going on in Rapture.
To its credit, the DLC includes an optional ‘Previously on Bioshock’ video – a who’s-who of the city’s power-wielding bastards – but Bioshock came out seven years ago.
If we asked you who was in power in your own country seven years ago, could you tell us without checking? Go on. Who was it?
So we ended up spending large parts of the DLC following the objective arrow, being autopiloted through non-puzzles and shunted into combat that fell well below even Infinite’s mediocre bullet-scraps.
But in spite of that, we liked it.
Between the pretentious galaxy-bending and mystical plot MacGuffins (in Bioshock it was Adam, in BioShock Infinite it was Tears – in Burial At Sea 2 it’s the ‘Lutece Particle’), Irrational builds some beautiful – and horrific – moments of story in its sets and its character interactions.
Seven years later, Rapture is still a special place, and the game is at its best when it puts away its splicers and gun turrets and lets you enjoy its faded glamour.
This isn’t the bang we wanted the series to go out on – more of a nostalgic, fan-servicing swansong.
It’s a little bit sad knowing that this is, in all likelihood, the last time we’ll splash through the corridors of Rapture, the last time we’ll hear the clunking of a Big Daddy moving nearby, the last time we’ll talk to a Little Sister (who, not to spoil the poignancy, still sound like somebody’s drowning a Furby in a metal bin full of water).
A bit like moving on from an old house, it is sad to leave Rapture – but it’s also time.