Just quit, developers. Just do it. Oh, all right. Don’t quit. At the very least, know that you can never blow my asshole out quit like Ken Levine and his games. In a new developer diary, Levine explains how Elizabeth can harness tears in reality to bring in objects from other universes.

Good lord.

Stop reading my vomit, hit the jump and watch.

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Oh boy. The trailer for BioShock Infinite just karate-chopped every other reveal trailer I’ve seen in the neck. It may be a fatal chop. The medics are looking over the victims now. The best part? It’s purely gorgeous gameplay, which is executed with a fluidity and rapidity that wasn’t there in the original. We’ll get all of this, and what is assuredly a storyline built to milk the philosophical glands of all us thinking geeks.

Hit the jump for the trailer.

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Who the hell releases four screens of something. I’ll tell you who, fools. I’ll tell you good and plenty: Irrational fucking Games. Why and how do they do it? The answer is the same: because they know fanboys of Bioshock (okay, only the original, the sequel was meh-tastic to me) will eat anything Infinite related right up. Gobble it up out of their hands like fuggin’ swine. A piggy pig. Swine like me? Need/want/have to have anything Bioshock Infinite related? Hit the jump for the four new screens.

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Came across these sons a bitches today over at the illustrious Mad Gear Solid. New Bioshock Infinite screens. Jesus Christ am I looking forward to this game. Especially after finishing the exercise in mediocrity, Bioshock 2. Aiight boys, now that Levine and company are delivering the goods, let’s get this shit done.

We get a first look at the Handyman, who looks god damn gorgeous/terrifying, as well as some looks at the City in the Sky. Hit the jump and check out the bonery.

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God damn. You guys know I love a lot of things, but there are seldom things I love more than both the original Bioshock, and retro-future art and universes. Well Jesus Christ, the covers to this month’s Game Informer bring the two together in ways that may cause inappropriate orgasming.

The three covers reveal the Handyman the Bioshock Infinite equivalent of the Big Daddy, as well as advertisements for what may be the equivalent of plasmids called Vigors. Who knows. The covers are ornate beyond reason, and total porn for geeks like me.

Hit the jump to check out the covers.

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Bioshock Infinite ain’t set in Rapture. It’s set in Columbia. And it ain’t got a Big Daddy in it. Instead, those dudes who look like steampunk-ified Big Daddies? That new version of the Daddy is a Handyman.

Destructoid:

On the latest episode of the consistently excellent Irrational Behavior podcast, the beast was given a name — the “Handyman.” Concept artist Rob Waters details the origins and evolution of the character, saying it went from featuring giant mechanic crab claws to the hands (made out of porcelain, apparently) that we see today.

“The functionality problem was that claws are for grabbing, and not for pushing or punching,” he explains. “This guy’s actual functionality was to punch.”

Interesting. They’re a clear analogue (at this point, and to me, I know) for the Big Daddies of this new universe, but they have a different name. Here’s hoping they induce the same awe and terror as the Big Daddies did. Those son of a bitches freaked me out every time I tried to drill shotgun shells into their heavily fortified face.

The big question is, what does a Handyman sound like?

[pixelation | weekly gaming & life column every wednesday or uh thursday]

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Dear comrades, sometimes, in my darkest moments, I think about hanging up my blogging shoes. They are crusty shoes, albeit comfortable. More than that, they’re familiar shoes, my toes fitting snugly in them. Right where they should be. Nonetheless, sometimes in a fit of madness and what is exhaustion at vomiting out thousands of words a day, I say, no, I am done.

Then shit like Bioshock Infinite happens.

I exist within a weird nebulous bubble. I am graduated from my undergrad career. Eight years and three million credits later! But I have not wasted away enough hours and dollars to acquire both my Master’s Degree, nor my certification to teach in the lovely state of Massachusetts.

Not yet.

Even within this weird bubble where I have far too many hundreds of pages to blow off and what seems like endless time, fuck, sometimes I get tired of wading into the data stream and culling from it interesting pieces of Non-Essential-But-Intriguing Information.

Then shit like Bioshock Infinite happens.

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Oh Sweet Jesus Christ. The game by the creators of the original Bioshock has been revealed: Bioshock Infinite. Retarded title, whatever. What is it? It’s Bioshock atop a floating city, as opposed to an underwater haven. What is it? Absolutely fucking gorgeous, and epic. I don’t think any other game could have me geeking out like this, the original Bioshock being one of my favorite games of all time.

Kotaku:

Levine began explaining the game to his audience. Infinite is set in the early 1910s. Its main setting is Columbia, a city that floats on balloons and drifted across an ascendant United States, showing the accomplishments of a post-Civil War American ready to express its idea of excellence.

“Something terrible happens,” Levine said, establishing the stakes and the mystery. Columbia proves to be something worse than a beacon of prosperity. “This is not a floating world’s fair. Columbia is a Death Star.” In the lead-up to the events of Infinite, Columbia is embroiled in an international incident of unspecified horror and then disappears into the clouds. Our character, a “disgruntled former Pinkerton agent” named Booker DeWitt, is contacted by a mysterious man who knows where Columbia is. In that city, DeWitt is told, is Elizabeth, a woman who has been raised there and who the man wants rescued. DeWitt accepts the mission, which will be ours as a player: to rescue Elizabeth and, with her super-powered help, get out of the patriotic-turned-violent Columbia.

So it seems to be another deconstruction of American ideals and the forces behind them, this time in a different although seemingly thematically similar place. I cannot fucking wait. Oh jesus.

Hit the jump for the trailer.

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