I don't want to invalidate the criticisms of Infinite, but it really was my GOTY and one of he greatest games of the generation for me. I just can't connect that to people saying it's not even just overrated, that it's a bad game, if not a horrible one.
Echo chamber is a bullshit term but I really wonder what makes such a divisive split. I don't see BI hated so much anywhere but NeoGAF. Something in the water I guess.
1) The gunplay is rote whack a mole FPS gunplay with skylines only barely taken advantage of, ammunition constantly given for weapons you don't have, and one of the worst implementations of Halo's shield mechanic. Talk about trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
2) It's hilarious how the game doesn't even try to hide that the choices given to you by Elizabeth don't matter. Saying that that's the whole point of the game just invalidates the decision made by a character at the end of the game.
3) The story has holes you could drive a truck through, and even aside from the ending you have a cop out with the Songbird, the lame choices up above, and this faux commentary that barely dips its toes into the racial divide. Of course, that it even tried apparently earned it plenty of brownie points.
And numerous other things:
- Bad weapon upgrade system for weapons you may barely ever actually find
- A horrible, repeated boss fight
- Elizabeth being a PEZ dispenser instead of making balanced, compelling combat
- Bland level design
- Audiologs as a way of storytelling done in the contrived way this medium always does audiologs.
- The art can look pretty, but egad at those plastic, awful looking human character models
I'm totally happy you enjoyed it. Shit, I really like the DLC, funnily enough. But the game has enough holes to claim its right in the cheese hall of fame, and that's before you go into the hilariously overrated story that got lauded because video game critics are the worst. A lot of my favorite games ever are really flawed too. The Last Guardian, yeah, the frame rate, the camera can be actual complaints. Petty complaints like "oh the animal won't listen to me" are where I draw the line about it, and in Infinite's case, I think that line, no matter how much you love it, is pretty far.