BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode One Reviews
Burial at Sea has a real pacing problem, stemming from the very literal segregation of its narrative and combat sections. It makes you finish your meat before your can start on your vegetables, where the metaphorical meat is the talking and the vegetables are the shooting. As a digested mush in your tummy, Burial at Sea is a beautiful brown ride through gaming's most iconic city and a compelling return of two remixed and much loved characters. On the plate however, its two very different games struggling to find a common ground, and both doing themselves a disservice as they try.
A criminally short opening chapter that nonetheless offers a glimpse of Rapture at its opulent heights. The noir intentions are dispensed too soon, so the Booker/Elizabeth relationship and familiar combat have to see Burial at Sea through to its disturbing, perplexing climax.
Burial at Sea, Episode One is good but not essential - the only piece of BioShock story content you could say that about.
The mystery of how these characters fit into this setting is the big draw, but don't expect a complete answer until the second (and final) episode hits
The first narrative addition to the BioShock Infinite delivers everything it promised – it's an affectionately crafted homage to the first game, retroactively building on the grim story and Ayn Rand-ian themes, galvanising them with a fresh perspective whilst simultaneously tying Rapture more wholly into the Columbian narrative. It's intelligent, indulgent and nostalgic in equal measure, left dangling on a transfixing narrative hook. It's everything we love about BioShock, condensed.
Burial at Sea is a worthy return to Rapture, but by the end you'll wish you could've spent more time absorbing the sights and sounds of the city's unspoiled areas. The grand tourism of the game's opening versus the constant combat in the rest of the DLC creates a disconnect that makes both halves feel underdeveloped. Hopefully episode two will mend the tear of Burial at Sea's two disparate parts.
Practically oozing fan service from every pore, Burial at Sea is both as glorious and as imperfect as Rapture itself. The visuals are sensational, the combat a reasonably healthy marriage between Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite. Booker and Elizabeth both take well to their detective noir roles. Yet, like the promise of Rapture itself, Burial at Sea's splendor doesn't last forever. Things go unexplained, shrugged off as the too-short DLC rushes towards its conclusion.
I wasn't too impressed by Burial at Sea Episode One, mostly because it just doesn't add a whole lot to the overall franchise outside of the last 30 seconds, and it's simply not compelling enough. While it's quite possible that Episode Two will tie everything together in a neat bow and blow us all away, Irrational Games has yet to make a legitimate case for a return to Rapture.
Part 1 of BioShock Infinite's story-centric DLC returns to Rapture but doesn't give you long to enjoy it.
There's a sadness to that as much as there is to our limited time with a fully-operational Rapture, but at the same time Burial At Sea is extremely effective at posing big, gnawing and dramatic new questions to a riddle we thought answered. I am so very hungry for part two, but I do hope it gives us more Rapture-in-light as well as answers, self-reference and metatextuality. Burial
With Burial at Sea, Irrational's greatest accomplishment is resuscitating Rapture. The city is a visual feast, and the developer once again proves that it has some of the most talented environment artists in the industry.
And, of course, it takes us back to Rapture, one of gaming's most compelling spaces, where we can draw expansive parallels between its present and its past and feel clever for connecting the dots. How heavily invested you are in Irrational's artistry will ultimately determine how much you get out of this slender expansion.
Burial At Sea tells an interesting tale with plenty of twists, but it doesn't have enough substance on the gameplay side of things to back it up.
BioShock Infinite's mechanics don't play nicely with the underwater city of Rapture in Burial at Sea - Episode 1.