I finished Bioshock Infinite two days ago after buying it on January 1st and approximately 12 hours of play time. And wow, this game is a massive letdown. I absolutely cannot understand all the tens the game received by critics. I cannot understand it at all.
Things Bioshock Infinite is good at:
- The setting of game is is fantastic and fresh. A city above the clouds? That's amazing! The first hour or so was astonishing: Walking through the streets of the city, watching lots of other people doing their stuff (kids play with water, etc.), seeing the buildings moving and connecting in the sky.
- The graphics are beautiful (played it on PC with ultra settings). There are quite a lot low resolution textures but the art style is just plain beautiful.
- The English synchronisation is pretty good.
Unfortunately, Bioshock Infinite is - in my opinion - not good at lots of other things, including the core gameplay:
- My biggest point of criticism: the gameplay. The game's structure is super linear but that's not the problem. The different areas are usually bigger than in other games of the same genre. The size of all those areas harms the fun due to two reasons: You have to fight lots of enemies in each and every area and those opponents often come at you from all directions which makes the fights a bit chaotic. In order to get stronger and enjoy the stroy you have to carefully examine the areas. The things you will find are quite useful to open some locked rooms, get some story background, find money for upgrades, etc. However, you will always find the exact same things in the exact same boxes. Those two things feel extremely repetitive after a few hours into the game.
- Discovering and using the different abilities is great. The sky tracks are great. Unfortunately both are mostly used in fights and almost not at all for puzzels, etc. And the use of those things in fights is also quite repetitive.
- The story has a surprising and interesting ending. But it is also very confusing and not really exciting during like 80% of the actual game.
Overall, I think Bioshock Infinite is just not a good game. The game's potential is huge but it is not used at all. All the ideas are trapped in the game's mechanics.
My wish for the next Bioshock game: They should turn it into an action adventure or so where you have to use the abilties, etc. also outside of combats for some puzzles, etc.