Bioshock Infinite

I want to take this time to talk to those who care, about my favorite thing in Bioshock Infinite. Is it the fast paced, adrenaline-inducing combat? No of course not, you idiot. Is it the brilliant story that successfully ties together all questions at the end? Alright, seriously, sit down, nobody cares about writing. No, my answer, obviously, is the tutorial…. ok, maybe it wasn’t that obvious. That’s basically because the tutorial is normally the worst and most annoying part of any game. So then why would you choose that to be your favorite moment in Bioshock? Oh my god, be quiet for two seconds and I’ll tell you. Ok, fine, I’ll admit that reminiscing on the tutorial does feel like a wasted opportunity when I could have chosen the war scene where I’m leading an army of rebels through the industry district as my favorite moment, but the thing is, is that Bioshock did it right. The tutorial is the game’s way of teaching the player the basics of control and how they can use their abilities to their advantage. Sometimes the game teaches you by making you run an obstacle course while an npc on an intercom tells you what to do, sometimes the game will show you a picture of a console with a diagram of what the buttons do and says “We really expect you to remember all of this in one go.”, and the very worst of the rest is the tutorial that stops you in the middle of gameplay just to tell you something. So, that means I’m prepping to stab a dude in the back, but as soon as I’m two feet away from him, the game breaks the pace by stopping me mid-impale and then teaches me how to stab a dude in the back. I kind of wish the more mature games would assume that the people who buy them would already know how to play, especially when they already beat the game and are replaying it from the start, or teach them how to perform the more unusual and uncommon controls, or at least make the tutorial optional. Though, that doesn’t mean there aren’t games that drop someone in the wilderness without telling them a single thing about how to avoid getting eaten by wolves. What Bioshock Infinite did was clever, and you wouldn’t have even figured out that it was a tutorial at first glance. A few minutes after you start playing the game you find yourself at a carnival, filled with shooting galleries where you can shoot the ducks with two different guns and a magic missile, vending machines you can possess, and some world-building bits on the side, and if you do the sideshows well, you will be rewarded with money, which you’re most likely going to spend preparing for the upcoming genocide. Not only does the game secretly teach you but it also rewards you, and if you have a busy schedule you can even skip past the entire carnival and go straight to the massacre. It wasn’t until I was at the carnival exit, stealing money from the vending machines, when I realized “Hold up a minute. Did the game just teach me how to play the game?” I was pleasantly surprised and it gives thought that other games can learn from this; that they can teach people how to play without them even knowing they’re being taught, instead of forcing them to run obstacles or shoving handbooks into their faces. So yes, the carnival was my highlighted moment of Bioshock Infinite, and you’re free to send all the hate-filled e-mails as you please.