Presently, there are a couple of things rattling around in my brainpan like loose chunks of head gasket. And that forced automotive metaphor certainly has its place, as one of those things is BMW’s new i3 electric car. The other is Bioshock: Infinite’s Burial at Sea DLC. Also, somewhere on the back burner, the sense of crushing guilt dealt to me by the fluttering southern tones of a nice old lady that answered my call of apology to the dentist’s office when I forgot my appointment this morning. I haven’t heard disappointment in a woman’s voice that condemning since I lost my virginity. BOOM! I’m back. Class all the way.
I swear there’s a common thread between these events/announcements and if there isn’t, by god, I’ll stumble around my keyboard until I can duct tape them together well enough to give the impression that I have a vague sense of what I’m doing. First, the BMW i3.
I’ll keep this brief, as I doubt many people visiting a blog called “Whiskey and Video Games” yearn to read a diatribe about a disappointing automobile. But I must say (and bear in mind that I say this as a BMW owner/enthusiast): Seriously, BMW, what the fuck?
On its surface, the i3’s not really that horrible. Ok, well, on its surface it is because just look at this damn thing. It’s uglier than the wart on a wart. It looks like it should have “Playskool” written across the side of it. It makes the Pontiac Aztec look like a Jaguar E-Type. It’s the automotive equivalent of Donald Trump’s combover. Ok, I’m done.
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| No, I'm not. Seriously, if it were a human it would be the result of inbreeding and botched plastic surgery. |
It’s certainly comparable if not better than the Nissan Leaf and its ilk, it’s built by BMW, a car company that can’t make a machine that’s unpleasant to drive (except for the X6), and has a 0-60 time of around 7 seconds. In these ways it’s certainly not an automotive affront, but that’s not the whole story.
As pointed out concisely and without use of extraneous expletives on Slate.com, the i3 commits the cardinal sin of being “good for an electric car” in a post Tesla S world. The Tesla S, which aimed simply to be a good car that happened to be electric. And in a move that’s as hilarious as it is ironic, included in the price of the BMW i3 is a loan service that allows you to borrow a combustion car should you need to do anything that “real cars” do. Let that sink in. Part of BMW’s marketing strategy for selling you an electric car is that their electric car is mostly useless. A rental SUV would certainly not be a requirement if the i3 was “a good car” not “good for an electric car.”
(There is absolutely no way, at this point, I’ll go on a tangent about how ridiculous the electric car is as an environmental savior as their production is more environmentally damaging than that of a traditional car, and they receive their energy from coal fired power plants. Totally not going to do that. And I certainly wouldn’t link you to a study by the Journal of Industrial Ecology discussing just that. No way.)
One rattle down, one to go. Ok, two. I seriously can’t believe I forgot my dentist appointment. It was a long one too. Probably fucked up the day of a few people. The siren song of Old Lady Guilt has crashed the ship of my self-worth against the rocks of You Fucked Up and Should Feel Bad About It Island. Better get back on topic and finish this blog so I can go lie down and reevaluate my life choices.
And now the tale of DLC I hate from a game I love, and DLC I love from a game I hate. If my Ezio costume and blogs from March and April are any indication, I love Assassin’s Creed and hate Bioshock: Infinite. I honestly couldn’t tell you; my opinions change like the wind. What I will say is this: The multiplayer DLC for Assassin’s Creed III is utter shit. Compared with the DLC packs for AC: Revelations and AC: Brotherhood, AC3’s paltry character and map upgrades (for which I shelled out $10 I didn’t really have at the time) are an affront to fans of the series everywhere. Though, this was almost to be expected, as Ubisoft slapped supporters of its franchise in the face with F2P style microtransactions so absurd that they make Dead Space 3’s similar system look fan-friendly by comparison.
And Ubisoft’s cynical money grab is the perfect example of DLC gone wrong. Too much money for too little content that does nothing to improve upon the experience players shelled out $60 for, and instead feels like content that was created with the main game, then ripped from it to be sold back later. But at least there’s monetary evidence to back such a strategy. At least they didn’t add more content to the worst aspect of the original game and attempt to sell it for $5. That would just be ridiculous. And stupid. And would make any thinking person’s brain hurt. No one would ever do that.
Oh.
Clash of the Clouds is an extremely stupid idea, but in a brilliant bit of PR on its release day (today, as of publication), Irrational announced this.
And all is seemingly forgiven (at least by players. Game journalists are having a fucking ball trying to drum-up support for a pitchfork party).
But before we get to why Burial at Sea is so brilliant, let's get the ugly out of the way. It’s no secret that I really didn’t like Bioshock: Infinite, and the ire I hurled its way was mostly the result of its failed potential. All its impressive story beats were undercut by moments of cheese dense enough to be illegal in the US. All of its impressive environments were undercut by NPC’s that more closely resembled the animatronic denizens of a Disney ride from the 1970s than living, breathing people. And the entire affair was undercut by combat so abysmal that the act of actually playing the game felt like more like turning the crank on a phonograph than palpably engaging a digital space.
In spite of all of this, I applaud Irrational’s Burial at Sea with a fervor that would make my hands sting if I weren’t a complete powerhouse that hasn’t felt pain since 1996. What they are offering to not only Infinite fans, but fans of the Bioshock franchise as a whole, is - from what can be gathered - a piece of single player DLC that is tonally and aesthetically so different from the original game that to say it doesn’t add value to the initial Infinite experience is impossible. And yes, Rapture is back, Rapture was used before (twice), but in an interview with GameTrailers, Ken Levine says that all the assets for the city had to be recreated to work with Infinite. That’s work. That’s many man-hours of human effort. And despite what assholes with gaming blogs (hi!) might say about the game, the Burial at Sea add-on is (seemingly) a good product at a reasonable price that fans of the franchise will love. It’s not just “good for DLC” it’s not simply "good enough', it's "good" period.
Oh shit. Didn’t think I was going to be able to make that connection didja? Huh?! Well I fucking did! JOURNALISM’D!
At their core, both the BMW i3 and DLC the likes of AC3’s multiplayer add-on commit the sin of being “good enough,” while the likes of Tesla and Irrational Games aim for simply “good”. In a world of NSA monitoring, governments and corporations that are accountable for nothing, once great cities filing for bankruptcy while their law enforcement officials rob the populace, riots, coups and corrupt interim governments, We the People are exceedingly disheartened with our lack of control. The only way to have any control at all, the only means of conveying our collective discontent in a manner not completely impotent, is to speak with our wallets. Sadly, the only control we have left is control of what we buy. We the Informed Consumer.
If events like the XBone debacle and gay bars refusing to buy Russian Vodka have proven anything, it's that we might let our rights be destroyed, but we’ll choose the form of our destroyer. We might not have any power. We might not stop eating fast food long enough to revolt. We might do laps around a Wal-Mart exercising our “control” until a S.W.A.T. team kicks in our front door and breaks everything we own because we accidentally said “bomb” on the phone while having a heated debate about The Lone Ranger. But by God, if you release a product that's highest aspiration is to be “good enough”, you’ll have hell to pay. On Reddit.
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