BioShock Infinite

BioShock Infinite traded the sunken city for a flying one: former detective Booker DeWitt arrives in Columbia, a grand airborne city full of flags, evangelism and suffocating nationalism, to get a girl named Elizabeth out of it. What starts as a stroll through a fairground and colonnades gradually becomes a journey through a crumbling utopia where racial hatred and a workers' uprising lurk beneath the surface of order. Elizabeth is the heart of it all: she accompanies the player, comments on her surroundings, tosses him ammo and health kits, and can tear open rifts into other possible versions of the world.

Combat is faster and more open than in the previous BioShock games. The player carries only two weapons, and in the other hand takes special abilities called vigors, which can lift enemies into the air, set them on fire, or turn them against each other; between fights he swings along aerial rails that turn the battlefield into a three-dimensional carousel. The visuals are pushed to the very limit of the Xbox 360's capabilities, but it's the atmosphere that wins over the technology: faded colors, choral singing, and anachronistic cover versions of popular songs played by street bands are among the most memorable sound ideas of their generation.

Reception was enthusiastic, and the game became one of the most discussed titles of 2013, mainly because of an ending that turns the entire story on its head and still fuels debate today about whether it holds up. There was also criticism that the brutal firefights don't quite match the serious themes the game raises. Today Infinite remains above all a powerful experience built on setting and the relationship between two characters; its influence can be seen everywhere a game builds around a companion who isn't dead weight but a partner. On the aging Xbox 360, it's still one of the most beautiful games ever released for it. Anyone unsatisfied with the ending will also find, in the Burial at Sea expansion, a bridge back to the underwater Rapture that ties both parts of the series together in a way one would scarcely have expected back in 2007.