Bioshock Infinite - most overrated game of the year so far?
Don't get me wrong, i'm not saying Bioshock Infnite is a bad game. Far from it, it's a pretty good corridor shooter. But is it overrated? Yes, I think so. Very much so, in fact. We can start with good, old System Shock as an example. The game took place onboard a space station that had been taken over by an AI, so we had to go there to stop it. The fun thing is the whole game could be played on a time-limit, so you had a constant pressure through the whole game, if you wanted it. But System Shock was also quite open, so you had some freedom in exploring the space station as you wanted.
System Shock 2 was more of the same, only better in every way possible. But something cruicial to notice here is that we had three ways to play the game: We could shoot stuff like a normal FPS, hack into terminals etc and sneak around , or use mental powers (or 'magic' if you want.) Add a quite free-roaming space station, and you could have a heck of a lot of fun.
When they lost the license, they ended up making Bioshock instead of System Shock 3. The space station is now a city under water, and the names for various things like plasmids have changed. And yet, the game is very much identical to System Shock. Personally, I think SS is much better, and never cared much for Rapture. I did like the Big Daddy/Little Sister stuff, though. Then there was Bioshock 2, naturally. Which was just more of the same in most ways.
Anyway, now we have Bioshock Infinite. Is it good? Yes, if you like corridor shooters. But is it overrated? I think it is heavily overrated, yes. It starts by giving you an illusion that you can explore the big city as you please, but you don't. You explore a narrow path where the game wants you to go, and everything around you is conveniently blocked. This gives you a nice look at the city and a nice illusion of freedom, yet it's so heavily scripted that if you play it again later, you'll see the exact same things as you did the first time, simply because you can't go anywhere else than where you are supposed to go.
Then we add enemies. All of a sudden the game chances from "illusion of free-roaming in a peaceful city" to "go there, shoot them, repeat forever". The plasmids you get are mostly pointless. The few weapons you get are standard stuff found in any other games of this type. There are fun setpieces and scenes where you, say, swing from hook to hook to reach the house next door, but these parts are scripted and don't allow any freedom. At all.
Then we finally get to Elisabeth, and things were supposed to heat up. But cute as she is, she's pointless and, even worse, useless. Instead of having her involved in the fights or even protecting her, you can simply ignore her the whole time and focus on yourself. The enemies won't even notice she's there. I'm not a big fan of escort missions, but some games like Resident Evil 4 proved that it can work. But Bioshock Infinite doesn't even try. It just ignores the whole thing.
Add boring enemies, repetitive bosses and a rather boring story once the first "wow, awesome city!" feeling fades, and you're left with a corridor shooter that leads you down a narrow corridor with none of the exploration from System Shock and Bioshock, with very few 'new' things and repetitve, dime-a-dozen gunplay. It's not a bad game, but best game of the year? Not by a longshot.
