Irrational Games' Creative Director Ken Levine says he wants to polish BioShock Infinite a little more before release, and has delayed its arrival from February 23rd to March 26th. I for one am totally outraged -- I mean, what the hell am I supposed to play until then?
I jest, of course. As someone who covers PC games, right now I'm struggling to avoid being buried in an absolute avalanche of great games I barely have time to play. So if Levine thinks a promising game like BioShock Infinite can benefit from a few more weeks of tweaking, and the result is that I not only get more time to appreciate the multitude of just-released games and read less complaints about how a few bugs spoiled the experience for them, so be it. I'd rather have a smooth game in March than a rough one in February.
I asked Levine specifically what kind of improvements he expected to be able to make thanks to the delay, and he pointed to giving the technical guys more time to iron out bugs as well subtle, "boring" design tweaks like improved weapon balancing and dialog pacing, which he says can be surprisingly time consuming. He and the rest of Irrational seem very self conscious about it, going so far as to insert a line of dialog in which Elizabeth complains that the third part of her favorite puppet show "was delayed three times!"
So, now that BioShock Infinite is coming a little later, how will you fill that void in your gaming life? Me? I'm thinking Dead Space 3 (Feb 5th), Aliens: Colonial Marines (Feb 12th), Crysis 3 (Feb 19th), Tomb Raider (March 5th), SimCity (March 5th), and a little more PlanetSide 2 in the precious moments in between.