Bucking the trend is nothing new for me, but lets get something said straight away - by all normal standards BioShock Infinite is a well made, reasonably fun game to play.  But I am rather disturbed by the common rhetoric that this game is on a par with the 2nd coming of Christ, or so you would believe if you read the reviews.


I am here to put forward a suggestion that its not quite as good as people think.  First up - the combat game play is dull.  I have never been so bored while playing a shooter.  I feel no sense of peril, I feel no sense of achievement, I feel like I am going from set piece combat location, to set piece combat location - and that the bad guys are simply pix-elated pieces of AI code waiting around for me to turn up, and even though in the real world that is obviously correct - it should not feel like that in the game world.  I should feel peril, I should feel that its not just a big long corridor of set pieces, and that I'm being dragged through a linear path of events to get me to the next bit of narrative.

But that is clearly the case, and I loose the sense of "being there".  

And another thing - the AI is laughable in that as soon as you are seen - everyone in the current set piece location becomes aware and active and all head directly for you. Now this would be reasonably acceptable if it didn't happen all the time - but it does.  Gears of War did this as well, and was utterly immersion blowing too.

  But its not just the set piece bits that are bad, the occasional combat is ruined by the music.  Every time I come across a couple of bad guys, the combat music kicks in, and after a couple of well placed head shots, the combat music does its little combat end riff.  Telling me immediately that combat is over, and that no other bad guys are lurking in the area - I mean - what the hell?

Talk about taking the game away, this is so poorly implemented, I shouldn't be able to judge if things are safe by the score stopping...


The other thing that fails for me, and this is probably even more important, is the linear nature of the game, it really does feel like an on rails shooter - nothing can be done out of order, there seems to be nothing else to do but the main storyline - despite the game telling me there are "SIDE QUESTS" - really? and what are those exactly - go back through some already visited content to open a chest to get a power up?  The very fact that the game calls them "SIDE QUESTS" is a clue to how cack handed this has been done.

The whole point of other things to do, is to build immersion and get involved in sub-plots that have very little to do with the main story - so far I have found NO sub-plots whatsoever.  In my view this is a massive missed opportunity for a game that would have grown in stature if other stories unfolded alongside the main one.    


Okay, enough of my ranting - and I'll mark the positives - which there are many - The main story, the look, the sound (when not badly implemented), are all exceptional.  The 1999 mode saves the game from being a total loss game play wise because it makes everything important and combat far more tense because you cannot be wasteful.


I think that if the 1999 mode had been the standard game mode (or at least available from the start - and not locked), then this game could / should possibly deserve a 10/10 100% rating. 


To sum up, it's a boring game to play - it would of made a great movie due to the excellent main story line, but because of the gameplay issues, and lack of alternative narratives, as a game it falls short of being exceptional and deserving of the high praise that others felt the need to express.