It's a been a while since a Bioshock game graced these pages. Bioshock 1 and 2 were some of my earliest Platinum trophies, as the 3rd and 26th respectively. That's a big gap when you consider the fact all 3 Bioshock games to date were originally released on the same platform, and there was only a 3 year gap between Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite.
Bioshock Infinite takes on a different flavour to the previously underwater themed Bioshock games, where you play as Booker DeWitt, who is tasked with rescuing a little girl called Elizabeth from a sky-themed metropolis called Columbia, from the hands of the game's main protagonist, Zachary Hale Comstock.
This is a large list, totalling 51 trophies, and switches the series back to being a purely Single Player experience, as you go through the Infinite story with no other game modes accounted for. The list for Bioshock titles has remained fairly varied as the series has progressed, and Infinite presents a host of differences not previously seen within other Bioshock games.
There are a large portion of progression based trophies as you work through the story, which is a fairly modest 10-12 hours in length, difficulty dependent.
Most of the other, non-progression trophies, can be earned naturally along the way, and there are vast opportunities to earn the majority of them without requiring much thought and given the fact you'll need to play the game through twice in order to unlock the Platinum, it's better to see what you manage to unlock naturally first time round and take in the story, then work on everything else on your second run.
The "Scavenger Hunt" trophy, awarded for Completing the Main Campaign in 1999 Mode without purchasing anything from a Dollar Bill machine, is the hardest trophy in this list. The player must first beat the game once on any difficulty in order to unlock it though, which is why it is a necessity to play through the game twice if you want the Platinum trophy.
1999 Mode is a step up from the game's most challenging difficulty, where enemies deal significantly more damage and are tougher to kill. The main distinguishing factor of 1999 Mode is the fact that every death comes at a cost of $100 for the player to be revived, and if you don't have the spare cash, then you'll be returned to the main menu and have to reload from the start of the last chapter. Not being able to use a Dollar Bill machine on top of this means you cannot purchase ammuntion, health packs or salt (which is used to charge up vigors, which are effectively like tonics from the previousy Bioshock games).
It labels itself as a "hardcore" experience, but in all honesty, the worst thing that can happen is, you may have to redo small portions of the game when restarting a chapter. It's a bit of a stretch to call itself a "hardcore" version of the game I've come to know from experiences with games like Dead Space, which will show no mercy on the player and end your game if you die at any point. Even not being able to use a Dollar Bill machine is more of a challenge of making sure you don't accidentally purchase an item from them, rather than actually being stuck for ammunition, health and salts, all of which are provided in abundance throughout. You are allowed to use other vending machines like Vigor and Weapon upgrade stations, which is something to be careful of, but generally, shouldn't be much of a problem.
However, the game does start to throw you around a little bit towards the end, and this is where 1999 mode's difficulties start to shine through. I was coasting through this game right up until about 3/4 of the way through, and had it set in my head that this was somewhere in the region of a 4 or 5 out of 10 Platinum, and I was suddenly halted in my tracks by a couple of standout segments in the game. There is a series of fights with Lady Comstock, whose ghost haunts you and her special ability is being able to revive the dead, which means you have to fight off hordes and also try to kill her at the same time. It's very overwhelming and you have to fight her on 3 separate occasions. The final fight provides more of the same, where you have to defend the Zeppelin, and is also about fending off hordes long enough to make your escape. The true difficulties of 1999 mode are apparent when you're fighting against large groups of enemies, because your health depletes quickly and it takes much longer to reduce their numbers.
It isn't exactly a "hardcore" experience though. The consequences to death aren't punishing enough for that, but it will test your skills to at least make sure you don't have an easy ride to completion. It also cannot be left unstated the importance of having access to Elizabeth's support either. Once you have access to her, and she is fighting alongside you, her tendency to generously support you is a game changer. She'll find money, health, ammunition and salts at very regular, and often dire times of need and it alleviates alot of bad situations.
Despite Bioshock lists being very varied throughout the course of the series, one of the constants that has remained is their fondness for collectible related trophies, and Infinite is loaded to the brim with collectibles in the form of Voxophones, Infusions and Telescopes/Kinetescopes.
The "Infused with Greatness" trophy, awarded for Collecting every Infusion upgrade in a single game, is the most notable of these collectibles, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, and this is more of a general note, for a game that has so many collectibles (147 in total), it doesn't do a great job of tracking them for the player. Voxophones are recorded in the in-game menu, yet Infusions are not, and these are the most well hidden collectibles in the game. Infusions are used to upgrade your health, shield and salt capacity, so these are not just optional, but very critical to progression as you hit some of the more challenging parts of the story.
Infusions are also easy to miss because they're either contained behind optional side quests that require you to find an item that corresponds to a secret code/message, which will then unlock an area of the game you would not have been able to access previously. In some instances, you'll see the code/secret message before you pick up the item to decipher it, and therefore have to backtrack to a previous area. Infusions are also very commonly found behind locked doors that need to be picked by Elizabeth, and if you don't have enough lockpicks to unlock a certain door, you cannot grab the Infusion you need, and because of the games very linear nature, you won't be able to revisit certain parts once you move onto a new area of the game.
Despite the game having a chapter select feature, which can help you go back and grab alot of the collectibles, the trophy description eludes to a very important difference, which is the fact this has to be done "in a single game". With Voxophones and Telescopes/Kinetiscopes, chapter select will bail you out if you miss any of them, which is something the previous Bioshock games did not offer. All collectibles in both previous Bioshock games had to be collected in one Playthrough, which is exactly what this trophy mirrors, and which is why Infusions are the standout collectible. This also ties into another trophy called "Raising the Bar", which requires you to max out either health, shield or salts when distributing infusion upgrades, and it is realistically possible to collect every infusion in the game, yet not max out any particular attribute. If this happens, you'll be running through the game again as per the same condition of having to fulfill it in a single game, and Infusions not being available through chapter select.
All other collectibles also carry over across playthroughs, though there is no way to tell which ones you have and which you need, and even though Voxophones are tracked in the pause menu under their own heading as you progress through a single playthrough, previously acquired Voxophones do not appear, so you'll start with a blank list regardless. Telescopes/Kinetiscopes, just like Infusions, are not tracked either, which almost makes chapter select pointless because you'll more than likely not know which ones you need. The collectible tracking is not handled very well by the game at all, and you're better off collecting everything within a single playthrough and sparing yourself the inconvenience of trying to work out what you may have missed.
Chapter select is very good for the clean up operation though, and the list contains alot of trophies where there is potential for chapter select farming, with cumulative kill totals for the games various weapons, environmental novelties such as tears and Sky-lines and use of vigors, though 2 full Playthroughs of the game will be more than enough to take care of these.
There are also stacklable trophies for easy, normal and hard difficulty, and even if you choose not to play through on hard first time round, 1999 Mode will unlock everything else upon completion (including another trophy for just beating the game in 1999 Mode without any additional parameters), so your first Playthrough doesn't really matter difficulty wise, which may be something to bear in mind if you wanted a more relaxed journey to focus on as many of these trophies as possible before running with 1999 Mode and leaving yourself as little to do as possible. I found it bearable enough to run collectibles in my 1999 run and grab most of the outstanding trophies I had left with very minimal need for chapter select.
1999 Mode is the main challenge here, and even though the game is very collectible heavy like it's predecessors, it's only really the Infusions that should give you problems. The addition of chapter select negates the previous necessity in Bioshock titles where you had to collect everything in 1 Playthrough, which was a headache to manage, and is subsequently alleviated here as a consequence.
It doesn't really lay a glove on the difficulty of Bioshock 1, and is more akin to that of Bioshock 2, scoring the same mark out of 10. Bioshock 2 had an easier Single Player offering, but more of the difficulty within that game lent towards the Multiplayer portion of the list, which is absent within Bioshock Infinite due to the exclusion of an online mode. 1999 Mode does lure you into a false sense of security with sudden peaks in difficulty towards the end of the game, and the Infusion collectibles could prove to be problematic for a couple of trophies without the advantage of being able to gather them via Chapter Select post-game. However, everything else in between can be naturally picked up within 2 Playthroughs, and you shouldn't need to rely too heavily on chapter select to finish the list.
The game ranges somewhere within the 25-30 hour mark for completion, and although 1999 Mode will eventually stand up for itself a bit, there are tougher Single player games out there, and as long as you can keep on top of the collectible management, this should find it's way into your collection relatively trouble-free.
Notable Trophies -
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| Scavenger Hunt - Completed the Main Campaign in 1999 Mode without purchasing anything from a Dollar Bill machine. Infused with Greatness - In the Main Campaign, collected every Infusion upgrade in a single game. |
Hardest Trophy -
Scavenger Hunt
Completed the Main Campaign in 1999 Mode without purchasing anything from a Doller Bill machine
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