Disappointment.
I love system shock 2 and I used to be a major thief fan as well, but Ken Levine has let me and other fans down by taking infinite's lazy route. By lazy, I don't mean that he and his company didn't work hard at all, I'm sure they did in many regards, but overall the product they chose to create was not original in the least. The game is a disappointment. It was hyped so much that in the end it just shatters before succeeding in what it is trying to do. Bioshock 1 was a lot better than this.
Despite what you'll read in all of these other super glowing reviews, Infinite is a cop out because it basically just takes bioshock and puts it in the sky but with none of the things that made that game phenominal. The story... Bioshock was about a city underneath the ocean but that was at least somewhat believable. You might be able to believe in that, but a city floating in the clouds? My first gut reaction to that was the same one I'm having now despite the fact that I convinced myself otherwise. I told myself that I probably would like it just as much as bioshock 1 even though its setting is beyond stupid but I was wrong. The game is just not believable. There are several plot holes and inconsistencies that ruin the experience.
And Elizabeth... I knew all along that a permanent NPC tagging along the entire game would ruin it and she does. She never shuts up and she gets in the way when you're trying to run somewhere. I don't care if she has hundreds of lines of dialogue because she points out obvious crap and I don't care about her. I feel like I want infinite to be about me and my exciting adventure in the floating city, but instead it's about this annoying character's feelings all the way through. Her behavior is disgustingly predictable. First she likes you, then she goes through an omg I hate you phase, and spazes out and knocks your character out (because you're too stupid to handle yourself even though you're capable of slaughtering 500 enemies...)
I really don't understand why are people so overwhelmed by this game. Not even the graphics are that stellar. It is such a clever ruse, all that bloom, fog and light shafts are well placed to cover poor models and textures in general. Next thing is horrible collision zones, at first it was not a big deal but it became more and more annoying.
I bought this game mainly for the story and characters, but it is not good, and are mix up of several clichés with several ups and downs. The enemy AI is quite poor and you will see big number of enemies stucked in some obstacle. There is also that unpleasant fact that this game embrace only checkpoint saves. Also difficulty is pretty low i cannot even imagine how easier the game could get on lower difficulties.
There are no amazing villains like Andrew Ryan or Fontaine, or Shodan. No. Instead you're supposed to fear and respect an old dude with a beard. Oh and he's a racist. Wow, let's just hit all of the stereotypical bad guy traits on the checklist. So yeah, if he's that generic and he's supposed to be the antagonist, yawn-o-rama.
This thing is just an easy copy paste of bioshock with a much weaker generic story in the sky instead of under the water. It's not believable, it's not interesting, scary or heart wrenching, it's just boring. And that is the worst sin a game can commit.
