BioShock: Infinite is a mistake.

It’s no secret that I, like most people, am a huge fan of BioShock. I don’t really need to repeat why it’s so amazing, but if you have no idea what I am on about, you need to go and immerse yourself in this amazing world right now.

It’s quite surprising, then, that I’ve titled this post the way I have done. When the third installment in the BioShock series was announced, I took a few moments to consume what I was seeing, and I immediately expressed concerns. This has surprised a few people, but I’m going to take a moment now to explain just exactly why this game, or rather, it’s title, is a mistake.

Rapture, the setting of the previous two titles, is a very distinctive world. It’s been very carefully thought out by Ken Levine and his team, and it’s probably the most impressive playing environment I’ve ever experienced. I’ll be the first to admit that most FPS games are the setting and storyline equivalent of a very poor B movie, with notable exceptions, but if BioShock was a feature film, it would probably be one of the best of all time (there is actually a film adaptation in the works, but it remains to be seen how it compares. I don’t need to bring up the disastrous track record of game to movie transitions).

The game is set in the floating city of Columbia.

The one thing that does strike me about the universe, however, is that it seems somehow plausable. I know the concept of an “underwater city” built on 1940′s technology is impossible, but it does somehow feel believable.  Suspension of disbelief comes naturally to Rapture, at no point have I ever questioned it’s setting. It feels natural and, I suppose if you had unlimited resources, I’d go so far as to say it’s plausable. Infact the idea that there might be a secret city in the ocean like Rapture is very alluring.

This new title is set in a city called Columbia.  Apart from being a pretty unimaginative name, there is one major detail about it that is in total contrast to Rapture. It’s floating in the sky on giant hot air balloons.

This is a problem. It’s completely implausible on many levels; it makes no sense to fly a city in this way, the ammount of fuel required to keep such a city in the air makes no sense. Bad weather would destroy such a city in a moment. Everyone’s going to know it’s there because you can see it from the ground. It’s just bonkers in every single way.

The idea behind Columbia is that it’s a sort of “death ray” – fine, but you wouldn’t build an entire city. It lacks that feeling of “hey, you know, this kinda feels real” that rapture gives you, and that is the mistake. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying this is going to be a bad game. I’m not even saying it’s a bad setting, or a bad storyline, but the problem is this: BioShock Infinate.

Now if the game had been titled something else, I wouldn’t be typing this. I’m a fan of steampunk and, stand alone, I like the concept. But, even if the stories are not linked, the titles are. By putting this city in the same universe as Rapture, the former has now been tainted. I’m worried that this game will take away some of the magic Rapture gives me, by shattering the illusion, and that would be very sad.

Why too much spare time is dangerous.

We’ve all suffered from exhaustion, the point where the daily drudgery of working life becomes too much. I recently reached this point when I discovered that I was spending so much time working or worrying about it, I had no time for myself, or my other projects. I decided to hatch a cunning plan. I would book two weeks away from work, and use the time to catch up with everything I’ve fallen behind on, relax, and have some fun.

The only problem is, whenever you actually have spare time, you never use it particularly wisely. I’ve been on holiday for nearly five days now, and I’ve yet to do a single thing that I planned too. It’s taken me this long just to start writing this blog.

Without a deadline, the human body seems to go into some kind of “chill-out” mode. Whereas my life before was wake up, shower, change, grab my lunch and quickly run to the train station for a full day’s work, I now wake up after midday, and don’t leave my bed until gone one.

There are other strange symptoms to this, too. For example, I find myself distracted by things which I would otherwise consider relatively trivial. Not content with reskinning the FileFront Forums completely, or creating threads like this, I caught myself trying to partition my hard drive so I could install Ubuntu onto my computer. I have no idea why I wanted to do this, because it’s a shockingly poor operating system these days that doesn’t work with a single device that I own, yet I nearly did it. I then moved onto trying to install Mac OS X. I figured this too much effort to do, so I then thought about installing Windows XP, so I could reskin it to look like Mac OS X.

I finally snapped out of it and did something useful, but for a moment I was nearly going to throw away an entire evening on something meaningless and stupid.

Despite all this free time, I also find myself even lazier than I was before. Rather than going out to the shops to restock when my fridge is empty and I feel hungry, I keep going back every 10 minutes or so to see if there’s an uneaten sausage that I’ve somehow missed. I then return to the living room to play more Fallout 3 before realising I am hungry again, and going for another look.

Ultimately though, isn’t this what holidays are all about? Relaxing? Being able to take your sweet old time about everything? Who cares that I’ll never get anything done, I’ll worry about that when I go back to work.