SPOILER ALERT: IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING THERE ARE MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD AS I WILL BE DESCRIBING THE FINAL MOMENTS OF BIOSHOCK INFINITE IN DEPTH. THAT BEING SAID, BE AWARE THIS BLOG WILL BE AS ABSOLUTELY SPOILERIFIC AS POSSIBLE AND YOU SHOULD NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED PLAYING YET. I WILL ALSO BE DISCUSSING THE ENDINGS OF THE PREVIOUS BIOSHOCK GAMES , SO IF YOU STILL HAVENT PLAYED THOSE, YOU HAVE SOME CATCHING UP TO DO.

BioShock Infinite has been getting rave reviews. As it well should. I absolutely loved it. I loved the way it stayed true to the classic BioShock formula while being unique enough to be its own game. I loved the unique environment of the floating city of Columbia circa 1912. I loved the characters, particularly the wonderful companion character Elizabeth and the quirky Luteces. I even loved the gameplay, which many critics, much to my confusion, have pulled out as the game's weakness. While it's not cool to say this right now, I loved the violence. I loved hitting someone with Possession and then not looking away as they finished themselves in over-the-top ways. I loved the visceral violence as I laid into an enemy with my Sky-Hook, snapping their neck or chopping their head clean off. I found it satisfying in the same way as stealthily dispatching one of Lara Croft's oppressors with a climbing axe in Square Enix's Tomb Raider earlier this year. Mind you, I would find these actions absolutely appalling in real life. The debate over whether or not video game violence causes violence in real life society will continue to rage as it always has, and I believe that train of thought is as misguided as ever. But I digress. There was only one thing I didn't love about BioShock Infinite, and that was the ending.

The game's mind-screw of an ending seems to be garnering as much praise from critics as the violent combat is drawing derision, being called a tour-de-force of story-telling, with some saying enduring the grueling combat again would be worth it just to experience the ending. Mind you, I didn't love the ending, but I wouldn't say I hated it. I found it hard to even work up enough vitriol for the much reviled Mass Effect 3 ending, managing little more than a disappointed shrug at the end of each playthrough. At least Irrational Games managed to avoid the biggest pitfall of ME3's ending. In that case, fans expected to experience the culmination of hundreds of decisions they had made over the course of about a hundred hours of gameplay throughout the trilogy, only to find there was very little variation among the bitter end they each arrived at. Not only is BioShock Infinite a separate entity from the previous two BioShock games, but it downplays decision-making, with most of the choices being made early on in the game, easily forgotten by the final act. If there had been a similar mechanic to Harvesting or Rescuing Little Sisters throughout the game, I think more people would have been disappointed by Infinite's single outcome. There aren't a lot of video game endings I love, either, but, perhaps because of the high expectations I had for BioShock Infinite through all the release delays, I found the conclusion particularly disappointing. I've played through twice before attempting to adequately explain why, and since it's difficult to decide just where to start discussing all the twists-and-turns, I'll just follow the events chronologically as they're revealed throughout the game's final act.

Let's start just outside of Comstock's cabin on the Hand of the Prophet.

One thing I'd like to point out in this area; while Elizabeth puzzles over the nature of the Siphon, you can observe some artwork on the wall behind it. These show just how much of the future the Prophet has seen, illustrating your progress through the game from the destruction of Elizabeth's tower on Monument Island, to Elizabeth's slaying of Daisy Fitzroy with a pair of scissors, to an ominous picture of Comstock beside a baptismal fount. I thought I'd poked my head in every corner of Columbia, but I completely missed this on my first playthrough. Yet another reason I never get tired of replaying the BioShock games.

Meeting Comstock is similar to meeting Andrew Ryan in the first game. While he's been issuing threats to you until the moment you arrive at his door, he suddenly doesn't seem so bad when you arrive. While Ryan was amusing himself by practicing his putting, Comstock seems even more congenial. "Come here, child. I don't bite." For a crazed zealot, he's surprisingly gentle taking Elizabeth's hands and washing them. It's only when he begins leveling accusations against Booker that Elizabeth becomes frightened. No matter how far you are from the two, you're only choice to proceed is to approach and press "X" to intervene. This is a problem that has been prevalent throughout the game, though it bothered me most during the ending. Ken Levine, in the years leading up to the game's release, talked about how he wanted to avoid cut scenes and scripted sequences, and I eagerly awaited seeing this, as he'd managed pretty well in the first BioShock game. For the most part this is true, but at various stages playing was reduced to just this one button. Like Heavy Rain's infamous "Press 'X' to Jason" sequence, it doesn't matter how long you wait to hit that button or how hard or how often you press it, the only possible conclusion is pre-determined. At least Heavy Rain had an interesting array of controls to perform mundane activities with. How aggressively the character brushed his teeth on screen was controlled by how quickly you shook your PS3 controller. Here, everything from accepting a baptism (which has generated a bit of controversy recently) to lacing up Elizabeth's corset all come down to the same button press. More on that later. This button press leads to a larger issue. It's not long before Booker goes beyond just intervening. The first game had a legitimate reason for wrestling control away from the player to kill Andrew Ryan, explained by the storyline. The great element of the original BioShock's big twist was the meta- quality to it. You weren't just observing a twist like the twists at the end of M. Night Shyamalan's movies. You were experiencing it. Early in that game, Atlas' phrase "Would you kindly" stuck out for me. I liked the sound of it. Even though I noticed Atlas used it frequently, I never suspected its sinister meaning. When Andrew Ryan draws your attention to it, you realize you haven't been experiencing the main character's brainwashing through cutscenes; you've been living it yourself. When Atlas says "Would you kindly find a crowbar or somethin'?" you gladly grab the convenient wrench to destroy the rubble blocking your progress. When he tells you to move to a new location, you proceed to the next level. Even when you think you're moving at your own pace, it's only a matter of time before you do exactly what was preceded by "Would you kindly." This becomes even more apparent on subsequent playthroughs. When Ryan orders you to kill him, your character does so through a cut scene. But it makes sense that control is taken from you, because you're reflecting on how you've never really been in control the whole time. You've been doing exactly what Frank Fontaine, and Ken Levine, want you to.

But Booker DeWitt isn't a cypher under mind control. You've been able to control him from the earliest moments of the game, even if it was only choosing which direction you turned your head on the Lutece's rowboat. The second time through, I did realize the clever writing in that Booker was talking to himself in more ways than one as he murders Comstock. "You abandoned your own daughter! You cut off her finger!" But the first time, I couldn't get over how frustrated I was that Booker was killing Comstock without my consent. Comstock was about to deliver a massive revelation about Booker, and I wanted to hear what he had to say. Of course, this needed to happen for the story's sake, and to hide the big reveal for a few more minutes, but I still feel betrayed that Booker took Comstock's fate into his own hands, in cold blood, without a plot device as simple as "Would you kindly" to explain why the player character is suddenly not in the player's control.

Most people found the final moments of the original BioShock the most disappointing in the game.

They were. The escort mission with the Little Sisters was far from the most infuriating escort missions I've played, but it seemed out of place. The end boss felt like he was there because video games are supposed to end with an epic boss fight. Both sequences introduced mechanics that didn't mesh well with the rest of the gameplay, and the final fight with Fontaine was disappointingly easy compared with any battle with a Big Daddy. On my last playthrough, I defeated him simply by booby-trapping the entire room and then running around it like the proverbial chicken-with-his-head-cut-off. While disappointing, I still found this ending diverting and reasonably satisfying. My first playthrough of Infinite, I found the final sequence on the Prophet's Hand comparable. On 1999 Mode, it was far more frustrating. An iffy 360 controller combined with the mode's more destructive enemies and less forgiving aim had me getting shot in the back while wildly trying to aim and press "X" long enough to have Songbird attack the zeppelins. It was far more frustrating than the ending to the original. Still, there was a good idea there, and if the controls had been better, even though it felt just as out-of-place as the original's ending, it was a novel idea commanding Songbird. After all, you were never able to give out specific instructions to a Big Daddy.

Another sign that the final battle is only a lateral move from the original's end boss: the ships core has its own health meter. When it's depleted, you must return to your last auto save rather than respawn, much like the Vita-Chambers suddenly being disabled during your rumble with Fontaine. But I don't have as much issue with the final battle as I do with what happens after you join Elizabeth on the bow.