EDIT: Please do not post anything about what comes after this in the comments. I'm trying to avoid spoilers and I purposely avoided any posts on this before I got a copy of my own.

So yeah, thanks to my tax refund I was able to purchase myself a copy of Bioshock Infinite (the rest going to my college) and I was able to play through the first couple bits before work today. As always major spoilers incoming so if you don't want them go elsewhere now. You have been warned.

Story starts out very similar to Bioshock ironically enough. This time you're sent to a lighthouse on an island by rowboat rather than crashing a plane there, but I get the feeling this was an intentional nod to their old series. Rather than taking a bathysphere down into the sea however you're launched up into the sky to Columbia, a city that flies through the clouds. Its quite the contrast. Unlike Rapture, which was dark, shadowy, and felt oppressive, Columbia is colorful and vibrant, also not yet a war-torn hellhole like Rapture was when Jack first arrived. There's people everywhere, children playing, young couples out together, it looks like something out of Norman Rockwell, if he did his art in the 1920s and had a fondness for steampunk. It seems rather utopian until you win the raffle... and then things take a turn for the worse.

The 'raffle' is basically picking differently numbered baseballs out of a basket. The baseballs have numbers on them and the winner is given the opportunity to... well... this is where it goes bad. The curtain on the stage where the raffle is being held rises up and two people tied to posts are behind it. A young man with a star of david on his shirt and a black woman. Behind them a couple cartoon monkeys are painted holding wedding rings with a very very very overstereotyped cartoon of a black voodoo priest depicted peforming wedding rites. The winnner gets to throw the baseball at them... or do what I did and throw it at the guy holding the raffle.

Naturally I went with option B but before I could foul ball him the guards caught me and saw a brand on my hand that apparently marked me as the "False Shepard", who is going to ruin their little perfect white utopia. Well, after giving the guards the one-two and stealing their weapons I began my departure, which basically entailed to running like all holy hell as every cop in the area began to come after me.

During my flight I came across my first "Vigors" which seem to be basically plasmids, but in some sort of old-timey energy drink style. So far I have:

Possession: Allows me to take control of machines (and humans after I got the first upgrade).

Devil's Kiss: Similar to the Incinerate plasmids from Rapture, but in this case I throw hunks of flame like Super Mario.

The gameplay is very similar to Bioshock. Left hand is your vigors, right hand is for guns, though you don't need to select your melee weapon as your main one, just hit Y (I'm using my 360 controller rather than keyboard and mouse) to smack an enemy with your claw.

Anyways, I quickly found out that this place was less a utopian society and more a cult that has declared itself the master race and worships the founding fathers of the US, specifically George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. Its like the Tea Party took over Laputa. (Screenshot of one of the images of Washington, go ahead and count the stereotypes!: http://i.imgur.com/gMYPJ8v.jpg )

Definitely like that as I soon found out when I came across a shrine in the city to Lincon, specifically his assassination. There's a statue in the entryway of John Wilkes Booth, paintings depicting him in a ray of shining light plugging Lincon in the head with Lincon painted as a shadowy demon (pictured here: http://i.imgur.com/tnHs65d.jpg ) and then one of my favorite parts in the game so far happened...

I found a meeting of what was essentially the Klu Klux Klan in the backroom... and by this time I had a machine gun added to my arsenal along with my Devil's Kiss power. One rat-a-tat-tat and some foom-kaboom later and I can check one more thing off the list of shit to do before I die! :D

Their leader buggered off before I could take him down too, but I managed to catch up to him quickly enough, though not before seeing him demonstrate his own Vigor on a hapless prisoner. Their leader had the vigor "Murder of Crows", which did exactly what it sounded like. It summoned a flock of flesh-eating ravens to peck out the eyes (and nose, and tongue, and lungs, and etc) from whoever he didn't like very much.

Well, after sorting him out good and proper I got his power for my own and before you could say "Fly my pretties!" the cops had caught up with me again. I tested out my new bird-summoning powers on them, finished the last couple off with my pistol, and then exited stage right... and thats when I noticed it was 3:30 and I had to get the hell out to work.

So yeah, thats how its gone so far. I'm enjoying this one immensely so far and, as soon as I post this, am hopping right back in.