From my blog, here's a review of The Wolf Among Us, based on Fables, by Bill Willingham. As always here's a link if you want to generate some traffic for me, but full text reproduced below.

Since as of the time I'm writing this the Playstation Network is still down, I've been playing The Wolf Among Us on an un-networked PS4 instead of the game I was really looking forward to since I made my Christmas list. If you haven't heard of this game before, it's probably because it's far from your typical video game

The Wolf Among Us is by Telltale Games, a company which is practically synonymous with the genre of game they make. It describes itself as a "graphic adventure game," but contrary to almost every other use of the word "graphic" to describe video games, what it means is that it's an incredibly immersive story-based role playing game (don't worry, it's also graphic). There is little of what modern gamers would recognize as gameplay. You don't run around through an environment of non-stop action and linear story. Instead, this game focuses on bringing you an in-depth look at a pivotal series of events in the lives of its characters. Player interaction with the game is almost entirely in the form of choosing how your character responds to others and what he notices in the environment. By now most of you are probably thinking "that sounds boring," and you'd be right, if not for the phenomenal story the game is based around.

You play as Bigby Wolf (read Big B. Wolf) the Sheriff of a small community of Fables living in New York City. Fables are characters from myths, legends, and especially fairy tales who live in the real world, but instead of the Disney versions you're probably used to, none of these Fables lived happily ever after. This dark, half-familiar world is the perfect setting for a game which revolves around story and character: the way you interact with the story elements allows you to either flush out details and become a part of this unique community, or shut yourself out like a cold son of a bitch.

The amount of influence you have over the game is reminiscent of old text-based games or a choose-your-own-adventure novel. The game allows you to choose how your character acts in the world, whether that's a by-the-books lawman, loose-cannon cop, or dozens of in-betweens, and the NPCs react accordingly. What you say and what you do affects the development of all the characters, and good or bad, you'll have to live with the consequences for the rest of the game. Sometimes you'll pick what you think sounds like a reasonable dialogue choice and immediately regret it when another character throws it back in your face, sometimes you'll be surprised how well things worked out for you. More than anything you'll feel that your choices are an integral part of how the story advances.

The graphics aren't stunning, but they do fit the game by further its graphic novel style. The same could be said about the controls. For most of the game you can hold the controller with one hand while you snack with the other, although you definitely still have to pay attention as NPCs will just assume you're giving them the silent treatment if you take too long to respond. Overall I'd say if you're looking for a fast-paced action-packed game then this is definitely not the choice for you. If you want a unique story with amazing scripting that feels fresh the entire way through (guaranteed no grinding) then you'll probably want to play this a few times over.

Here's another from my blog. There's a link here if you want to generate some traffic for me but reproduced in entirety below.

Apples to Oranges - It's an expression that means two things are totally different and beyond comparison, yet apples and oranges aren't that different. They're both fruits, they grow on trees, have skin on the outside and seeds inside, etc. Any 4th grader could draw you a venn diagram of apples and oranges. It would make more sense to say "like nuclear submarines to shag carpets."

The Definition of Insanity Is Doing the Same Thing Over and Over and Expecting Different Results - That could be the definition of "unreasonable expectations," but mental health professionals around the world have a very long and precise list of what constitutes a serious mental illness, (ie insanity) and somewhere in there is repeating sayings as if they're facts.

It Takes All Kinds - No it doesn't. The world would be much better off without some kinds. Rapists, violent psychopaths, corrupt authority figures, etc are not essential parts of our society, and neither is the sh1tty person you're defending when you say "it takes all kinds."

Engaged To Be Married - Unless you're also stupid to be unlearned pick one.

Yeah, No/No, Yeah - A totally different case of just pick one. People use this almost as a filler to show they're paying attention but it does the exact opposite. It always just sounds like "I don't care, it's my turn to talk now."

Public Nuisance - Generally used to describe low level offenders who have pissed off their neighbors. Should be used to describe Wall St. bankers who crippled our economy, "too big to fail" companies which required bailouts, companies who destroy the environment, corrupt politicians, and all others who routinely screw large groups of people for their own gain. A Wal-Mart in your town is a bigger public nuisance than any of your neighbors will ever be.

ATM Machine/PIN Number - Just as dumb as saying scuba apparatus, light laser, NASCAR racing, gross GDP, or Navy NCIS.

Fight Fire with Fire - Have you ever wondered why flamethrowers aren't standard issue for firefighters (outside of Fahrenheit 451)? It's because fire is one of the least effective ways of fighting fire. Every Pokemon trainer knows this.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up/Stranger Than Fiction - All sayings that try to tell you real life is more surprising than imagination are complete BS. In real life you go to work and the most interesting thing that can possibly happen is Keifer Sutherland bursts onto the scene to detain your boss who is really a terrorist. It could happen, but it won't. Because real life blows.

Keep Calm And . . . - It doesn't matter what you follow that with, all options are terrible. I don't know or care how people began attaching literally anything you could think of to this phrase and thinking themselves somehow clever or amusing, but it has to stop if we as a society are to progress.

You Don't Know Me - Has never been said by someone I'd like to get to know. Routinely used as a way of saying "don't judge me" in the most aggressively bitchy way possible. It's a sure sign that the speaker is defensive, withdrawn, and unable or unwilling to express complex ideas.

Sassy - People who describe themselves as "sassy" are basically saying that they think they're clever but they're really just annoying. It's a quality that people seem to think is endearing despite the fact that it's very heavily tied in with narcissism. Sassy people think that whatever they have to say is important, and they aren't afraid to interrupt or belittle the ideas of others to show how smart they think they are. For whatever reason we almost always use this term for women and gay men, but the closest thing we use for men is probably "smug" (although I personally think "smug" has passive connotations while "sassy" is more active).

Here's a post from my actual blog (the poor neglected thing). Link included if you'd like to give me some traffic but post included in entirety below:

This is a Link, it is for clicking.

I recently came across this article through a Facebook friend about an Oklahoma City police officer being charged with three dozen counts of sexual assault. It's obviously a very troubling story but not exactly what I want to talk about here. While I do hope for all victims of abuse of any kind to receive justice, what I couldn't stop focusing on was the picture in the article, which I've reproduced here. (picture credit to Paul L. McCord Jr. [I think. The original article just gives that name with a link to a Flickr page. Although that's more credit than the writer, Mr. or Ms. "Feminist Newswire" received])

It took me a while to wrap my head around this picture because I wasn't aware that Oklahoma City refers to itself as "The City of Oklahoma City," which, let's be honest with ourselves, is completely insane. I stared at the text in this photo for a while trying to make sense of it, because surely, I thought, no one would do that. Instead this poorly designed logo (note the weird spacing) must be meant to be read like "The City of Oklahoma: City Police," or even "The City of Oklahoma City Police" with no breaks or pauses in a misguided attempt at seeming protective while really just being ominously possessive. Somehow worse than that is the actual answer: Oklahoma City is the city equivalent of a person who talks in third person.

If you go the extra mile and add the state to the end you have "The City of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma," (capital city of the state of Oklahoma) which can easily be said with just the two words: "Oklahoma City." It needs no further explanation. It's literally smack dab in the middle of Oklahoma, and unlike what you probably think of when you hear "Oklahoma," it's a city. If you had never heard of it before there are still two assumptions you would have made upon hearing of Oklahoma City: 1) it is a city 2) it is in Oklahoma. But still, just in case you didn't figure it out, Oklahoma City would like to remind you that it is a city.

Further investigations into this matter show that there is no Town of Oklahoma City, no Oklahoma City County, (the county the city is in is actually called [surprise] Oklahoma County) no People's Republic of Oklahoma City, no State of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City Plantations, and as far as I can tell there are no celestial bodies of any kind named Oklahoma City (although who knows what's really out there?). There are no other places, concepts or entities of any kind with which Oklahoma City can possibly be confused, so why are they doubling down on the citys (sic) like they're pieces of fried chicken that are somehow the healthiest parts of the sandwich they're in?

To be fair to Oklahoma City, they are still the number one city in the US if you rank cities by the number of times they call themselves a city. Even New York sticks to at most just New York City or the City of New York, but never both at the same time, so in that regard they beat what is largely considered the greatest city in the world. Congratulations. Now that that's been said they can finally stop overcompensating and stick to being one city at a time.

I went to see GotG last night, and loved the movie. As a long time sci-fi fan it had a lot of really cool concepts and good use of special effects to bring these concepts to life, which when you get down to it is the crux of any successful science fiction movie. There was one thing about the movie which bugged me, and to be fair it's not something the movie-makers could have avoided without straying too far from the source material: humanoid aliens.

The practice of taking regular people, giving them a couple of additional features, and casting them as aliens is a practice that's been around as long as sci-fi movies and TV shows have been around. To this day, the word "Martian" still registers a thought of "little green men," and it's understandable why production companies prefer to cast humans rather than spend billions to create a whole cast of CGI characters, but as a sci-fi fan who love the "science" part of science fiction, I cringe every time I see a Vulcan, Klingon, or now, Xandarian.

Why does this bug me so much? Well consider that here on Earth all life essentially evolved from a single organism and through billions of years sprang into the diversity we see today. We still share DNA with everything on this planet. Humans and chimps share 90%+ DNA, we share 35% of the DNA found in around 7,000 different species of algae, and 15% DNA with rice. So for aliens on the opposite side of the galaxy to look nearly identical to humans and yet still be some entirely different species is a bit of a preposterous leap. This has been written off in many sci-fi series by the explanation that humans share some distant ancestry with other aliens, but if we're talking about a planet on which life arouse parallel to life on Earth (ie no connections between the two) then I would expect to see alien life that looks nothing like it does here on Earth, especially when it comes to that planet's most evolved, intelligent species.

I think the best sci-fi I've ever seen try to tackle this issue is probably Farscape. Sure it had its fair share of humans in makeup and prosthetics, but it also had a stunning cast of (believe it or not) Muppets to round out its human cast. Characters like Rigel and Pilot, and even Moya, the living ship on which most of the series takes place, are what I want to see when we're talking aliens.

And again, to be entirely fair, sci-fi isn't the only genre guilty of making non-human characters look entirely too human. World of Warcraft features a NPC called Therazane, who is basically the elemental queen (pictured below).

Notice anything wrong with that? Why does an elemental have breasts? In this case it's almost certainly because the creators wanted you to identify this character as female (despite her having "Queen" in her title), because there's absolutely no reason an elemental would need that anatomy. The same goes for all reptilian species with breasts: those are a distinctly mammalian trait, which is why they're called mammary glands.

By itself this isn't enough for me to immediately lose interest in any given story, if the characters and plot are interesting I can ignore these details. But as we develop better special effects and further expand these genres, the need for aliens that are basically just humans in face paint or with pointy ears should diminish. I look forward to future sci-fi that explores the concept of aliens not in terms of how similar they look to us, but how drastically different they appear to be while still sharing so much of what we value.

The story's below, feel free to skip this intro.

This is the first actual "fan-fic" I've written, but I felt it needed to be done as Legend of Dragoon absolutely deserves a sequel or a reboot at the very least. If you're unfamiliar with Legend of Dragoon, you should immediately drop what you're doing and find the game on Steam or the Playstation Network.

Legend of Dragoon was one of the best RPGs ever made for any platform. It was released for the original Playstation in 1999, and despite selling just under a million copies in the US, no additional games were ever made. At one point a sequel was in development, but for unknown reasons it was abandoned early on.

How good was LoD? When I'm ranking RPGs my top 3 of all-time are Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 7, and Legend of Dragoon. What allows LoD to hold its own among those mega-titles are its unique gameplay elements (like the addition system), vast world history, and character depth. Each of the main characters has such a rich backstory that most of them are actually connected, and the world is flushed out enough that the group often gets derailed from one mission by some other threat that needs to be dealt with.

This sequel that I've written is meant to bring closure to some elements of LoD, while expanding on others. Its a story of humans, winglies, gigantos, and the seldom seen minitos learning to live together in a new age, and of the other intelligent species they know nothing of.

Story:

For the 120 years following what is now known as the second Dragon Campaign (the events of LoD), the world has enjoyed an unprecedented level of peace and prosperity, leading to major growth and development of almost all the areas seen in LoD. In the New Serdian Empire (Tiberoa and Serdio become one country after Albert and Emile wed) science and technology has advanced to the point of primitive steam engines and firearms, while in Mille Seseau Wingly magic is almost as strong as it was during the first Dragon Campaign, allowing for the resurrection of Kadessa and some of their flying fortresses. Some especially talented humans are even able to study and learn magic from Winglies, though their power is never quite as great as the Winglies.

Our story starts in the village of Rogue, which is not very different than it was in LoD due to its remoteness. The main character, Zang, is currently the best fighter in the Rogue School and our story opens on his final test to become a master of the school. The whole village is gathered to watch and support him, and most of the school's other fighters are involved in the testing. (By having him do some “exercises” or “warm-ups” the player can get a feel for the addition system instead of just being thrown into it like in LoD.) Upon the completion of the test a ceremony begins in which Claire, Dart and Shana's youngest daughter, awards him a belt to signify being a master of the school. She tells you that the Rogue School's purpose is not war and power, but discipline and conflict resolution, as taught by Grand Master Haschell after he returned from the second Dragon Campaign. As Claire speaks we see a large purple gem embedded in her own belt, a gem that we and Claire know of as the purple Dragon Soul, but Zang and the other villagers do not recognize.

After the ceremony a party begins, in which the player can talk to the other villagers/fighters and get a feel for the village of Rogue 120 years later. Eventually, Claire pulls Zang aside to talk to him in private on the cliffs overlooking the ruins of Aglis. She asks what he plans to do now that he has mastered the Rogue Art, and the player is given some stock response choices. Claire encourages him to travel and gain some worldly experience, as the rest of the world is very different than Rogue and Zang says he'll consider it. She tells him of her own youth, growing up the youngest daughter of Dart and Shana, and favorite great-granddaughter of Haschell, and starts to tell him of the places she's visited when they are interrupted by a loud rumbling.

The mighty whirlpool around the ruins of Aglis suddenly increases its intensity, and the ruins are sucked down below the water. The rumbling continues for a bit after they disappear from view and finally stops, leaving the celebration a little shaken (pun intended). Zang and Claire still stand on the cliffs, awestruck as the dragoon soul on her belt glows a bright white and floats into the air between them. It glides gently into Zang's hand and briefly shines a bright purple with little lightning effects before fading.

Claire tells you to meet her back at the village, and rushes off in a manner unbefitting of her extreme old age. You are left to contemplate the meaning of the events you just witnessed, and again free to talk to the villagers and feel out their reactions to the “earthquake” as you make your way to the mayor's house to meet Claire. The mayor and Claire both await you, Claire patiently sitting and sipping tea, and the much younger mayor frantically pacing. Claire explains that it is an honor to be chosen as a bearer of Dragon Soul, but that this honor also carries a duty, for the Dragon Souls are only active when the world is in great need of saviors.

The mayor steps in and says it is surely no coincidence that the Dragon Soul activated right after the ruins of Aglis were sucked back into the sea, and Claire agrees. He continues by saying that he's arranged for their fastest ship (which admittedly isn't particularly fast) to take Zang to Fletz where can hopefully find some answers, or at least give some kind of warning to the unknown danger. The mayor then excuses himself, saying he has other preparations to attend to and Claire and Zang talk privately about the Dragon Soul.

Claire warns Zang that while the Dragon Soul may have chosen him as its user, he should not use it until he finds someone to instruct him in its use as it is very powerful and he could harm himself. She also mentions that one of the bearers of the Dragon Souls during the second Dragon Campaign is still alive, and resides near Fletz in Doelan, a place we've not yet heard of. She implores you to train with this person, who she refers to only as “The Chief,” before using the Dragon Soul on his own, and Zang agrees.

Zang rests for his coming journey, and in the morning he sets sail for Fletz.

Recently a big debate has sparked over a controversial ad used in Colorado to attempt to get people to sign up for the Affordable Care Act. A whole series of these ads were made, mostly targeted at college age residents, most of them having very little content or appeal aside from the "YOLO" or "who cares about consequences? mentality in various college party scenarios. One of them however (pictured below), caused more of a stir than others because it once again brings up this "controversial" topic of covering birth control.

I too think this ad is a bit controversial, though not for the same reasons, which frankly are ridiculous in this age (Viagra and other "enhancements" have been covered for years). To me this is in bad taste because if the text included with the picture were to be attributed to the man instead of the woman, the outcry would be from feminists over how sexist this image is.

I consider myself to be a feminist, and if you don't think the same about yourself than you probably don't know what the word means. All it means is someone who believes in social equality between genders, be it in the workplace, education, our criminal justice system, or the public eye. It's a concept that most everyday we get a little closer towards achieving, though we are still a long way from actual equality. I don't usually speak up on individual feminist concerns because typically there are a million strong female voices which drown mine out and do more to show how valid the cause is than my male voice ever could. But in this case it saddens me to see so few voices speaking up about the sexism of this ad, and to see those that do speak about it be drowned out by the very loud debate over whether healthcare should cover birth control (which we will not be having here, take it to another thread).

So I have to ask, why is it OK to objectify men but not women? Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not arguing that women should go back to letting us objectify them. What I'm saying is: you don't like to be seen purely as sexual objects, well neither do we. Of course there are some (far too many) of us who think we're "God's gift to women," and would be perfectly content never being valued or appreciated for anything else. But there are plenty of men, just as there are plenty of women, who want to be respected, remembered, and admired for their intelligence, their creativity, humanitarianism, or their abilities in any given area rather than their looks.

And yes, I understand that this is one example among thousands of others which objectify women, but that doesn't mean I condone that material while rejecting this. I admire courageous, independent women regardless of what they look like or whether or not I have a chance at sleeping with them. As a skinny guy with glasses I'd like to think that my chances of finding happiness don't entirely hinge on wearing the right clothes and haircut, going to the gym everyday, and being willing to put out. Maybe it's a bit narcissistic, but I like to think there's more to me than that. I'm sure if you're a feminist you can relate.

This is a story idea I created for an off-topic forum the other day (link) which is essentially a League of Extraordinary Gentleman fan-fic. I've decided to take a page out of Marvel's Lazy Titling Book and just call it the Avenging Gentleman for now, but that's subject to change. I've got nothing new to add to the story from the other day, but the idea got stuck in my head and I'd kind of like to actually write this story. So if you viners could do me a favor and read this, let me know what you think and if you'd like to see me (or if not), and I'll actually take some suggestions as far as characters, settings, plot points you'd like to see (especially strong, interesting, female characters, I'm kind of sparse in that department for this time period). Without further ado, here's my synopsis for the League of Avenging Gentleman:

Setting: The early 20th century, in a world very different from our own.

Cast:

Sherlock Holmes (Obviously the leader, how could he not be?)

Jack the Ripper (Skilled close quarters fighter with mysterious motives of his own)

Dracula (Master of the Night, knowledge of the occult, immune to most forms of attack)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Skilled ranged fighters and covert operatives, but easily bought, never fully trusted)

A young Amelia Earhart (Engineer specializing in re-purposed Martian [see below] technology, transportation, and communications)

General Tarzan and Queen Jane (Much more savage versions of their original selves, they unified the animals of the South American [I know the books say Africa] to fight against the Martian invasion [see below]

Pre-Story Synopsis:

At the end of the 19th century the world faced a devastating crisis as a Martian invasion similar to that of War of the Worlds occurred. However, the Martians were not defeated by a virus, they were beaten back only with a combined effort of the world's military forces and intelligence experts, leading to the creation of an invasive global security force known as the Global Defensive Alliance (GDA). The GDA was successful in disabling Martian communications, and destroying, downing, or seizing most of their ships, leading to a boom of technology well ahead of it's time, but the Martians maintained footholds in Australia, South East Asia, and South Africa.

In the early 20th century with the world just recovering from these events, the cults of the Elder Gods begin to rise to power after centuries of laying low. They start gathering historical artifacts from top-secret facilities under examination in the wake of the Martian invasion because of their otherworldly qualities. When Holmes and his trusty partner Dr. Watson are called in by the GDA to investigate, they are ambushed by cultists with powers even Holmes had not predicted. He narrowly escapes with his life, thanks only to Watson's noble sacrifice.

Holmes realizes that in order to defeat this enemy and avenge Watson's death he must assemble a team of experts which would never be found working with the GDA. A team of rebels and deviants whose knowledge would have forced them into hiding.

There is no "holiday," no modern tradition which proudly displays the dystopian values of greed, jealousy, and material possessions as well as the American tradition of Black Friday. The day after American Thanksgiving, which is itself a disturbingly conflicted holiday (we celebrate being thankful for the little things by remembering the people we committed genocide against and enjoying our most gluttonous meal of the year) is of course dedicated to the rampant consumerism which fuels the next month's holidays.

Black Friday has to be one of the worst modern traditions in America. It's a disgusting practice which drives shoppers to literally attack one another in an effort to give their money to retailers and manufacturers who will still make exceptional profit margins on those items. We proudly line up like cattle to display our total apathy for the conditions of the third-world factory workers who made the vast majority of these significantly marked up products, because we think the retailers are actually doing us a favor by reducing their profit margins for a single day (or in some cases, up to a whole week!).

We've been so socialized to value marketing practices that we can no longer even have an honest conversation about how lopsided our distribution of wealth is without it devolving to shouts of "communist" or "class warfare." We're so used to routinely eating corporate sh!t that when we're offered something for free and we don't see any gain in it for the party offering, we're immediately suspicious. "Too good to be true" is a phrase which became popular on this kind of mentality, because at least when we're getting screwed we know what the score is. We've escalated to a society that cares about nothing but profit, where "The All-Mighty Dollar" isn't thrown around as a saying or a jest, it's a concept approved by the Supreme Court with the Citizen's United decision (money = free speech). It's a way of life that allows Wal-Mart, one of the biggest corporations in America, to pay it's full-time employees a salary that is below the cost of living, allowing them to qualify for governmental social programs, forcing the tax payers to shoulder the burden of not letting these people die in the streets all so Wal-Mart can pinch every penny possible.

But of course, Wal-Mart and every other retailer which thrives through sociopathic business practices offers some real "doorbusters" (derived from the overzealous crowds of consumers who are ready to kick down the door in their fanaticism for savings) in their Black Friday sale because they really care about you, the consumer.

First blog post here, and it's gonna be a review of Bioshock Infinite that I wrote for my personal site on blogspot, because that game was awesome and if you didn't know that you should. Here you go:

I know I'm a little behind with this review as the game came out at the end of August, but I finally had the chance to play through Bioshock Infinite this weekend, and it is hands down my favorite shooter of the year. I loved the previous two installments of Bioshock for their gritty sci-fi/horror take on first person shooters, but this one blew the others out of the water in terms of story, depth, and gameplay.

Bioshock Infinite takes place in 1912 in the city of Columbia, which is the Heaven to Rapture's (the underwater city of the first two games) Hellish nightmare city. Columbia floats high above the clouds while Rapture is sunk deep beneath the ocean, and the society of Columbia is a virtual utopia founded on American patriotism and a cult-like sect of Christianity. While the first two installments had you fighting zombie-like junkies with guns and genetically modified powers you inject into yourself, in Infinite you'll be fighting more or less normal humans with twisted ambitions. You no longer inject yourself with plasmids to grant powers either, Columbia's technology allows you to drink a tonic which uses the salts in your character's body to power the genetic enhancements. The overall feel of Columbia is that it's a city which managed to pull off the utopia that Rapture was aiming for, but after spending about 5 minutes walking through its streets you'll get the feeling that the society is far too good to be true, even if you haven't played the other games.

The image of perfection shatters when you attend the Founder's Day raffle and are greeted with some old fashioned racism like a slap in the face, and when I say that I mean they don't slowly build up to it, the way it's introduced will make you say "Woah," when you get to it. At this point things turn sour very quickly for the main character, Booker DeWitt. He's labeled as the "False Prophet," the equivalent of "Enemy of the State" in this brainwashed community. From here you evade and kill the people coming after you until you meet up with Elizabeth, and things really start getting interesting. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Elizabeth may be the coolest support character ever to appear in a shooter game. She will find you money, open locked doors and safes, throw you health packs and salt when you are running low, and toss you fully loaded guns when you are running low on ammo, replenishing your ammo stock and removing the need for reload time every once in a while. You don't need to protect her from being killed, she's not just thrown in as fan service or eye candy, and she has some really cool abilities which I won't go into because they tie into the central story and I'm trying to avoid spoilers.

The actual gameplay is very similar to the previous Bioshock installments, but with the added bonus of a shield which recharges after taking cover for a few seconds, gear which adds abilities (don't worry no RPG type stats to manage) and the addition of Elizabeth which, as already mentioned, is awesome. All your weapons and powers are upgradable through the currency system used in Columbia: Silver Eagles, and your health, shield, and salt levels are upgraded by drinking Infusions found throughout the game, usually in the more secretive areas. Instead of farming Big Daddies and Little Sisters for ADAM the optional content of this game is found through exploring locked rooms which Elizabeth opens for you, code books and ciphers which she also decodes, and locked chests that you need to find keys for. There's enough optional content in the game to keep you entertained, and it's arranged in such a way that you won't need to backtrack for half an hour to get back to the actual mission.

The highlight of Bioshock Infinite is the amazingly beautiful and complex world through which the story is presented. Like its predecessors, Infinite is built on a world of duality which harkens back to the olden days of the early 20th century: men and women wear hats, the music is all done in styles which the majority of gamers are not going to hear anywhere except in games like this and Fallout (listen closely for some fantastic anachronistic versions of songs like "Tainted Love" and "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"), and nobody walks around staring at a handheld device. At the same time though, this is a flying city with automated "Patriots" and a giant mechanical bird to protect it, and they've developed a tonic that allows you to do things like shoot fire or lightning out of your hands or summon a flock of crows to attack. It's a world which appears to be a utopia, yet just a scratch at the surface shows the atrocities it's built upon, and the propaganda used to keep the people believing.

And if I can just go back to the music for a moment. Except in combat scenes, the music in this game is not at all background music. Every time you encounter a radio, phonograph, or the few "live" musical scenes it's a captivating event that reminds you just how similar this world is to our own. I know I just put a lot of time into telling you how different and unique the world of Infinite is, but when you stop to listen to the beautiful rendition of "Shake Sugaree" sung in Shantytown or this haunting version of "Fortunate Son" sung while a war rages all around, it gives you the feeling that the people of this world are not so different from those of our own. They have the same ambitions of greed, revenge, redemption, longing for freedom, love, and hope. (Video may have minor spoilers but if you haven't played through the game it's almost certainly not what you think)

Bioshock Infinite is an all-around stunning game, easily the best of the Bioshock games and easily the most original and entertaining shooter of the year. I recently bought it used for about half price, but I wish I had purchased it on release for full price because I was missing out. I highly recommend picking up a copy of your own, this is a game I definitely won't be trading in anytime soon.