A Late to the Party Review (Dat Interactivity Tho)
I bought this probably 2 years ago and just never got around to playing it. Having just played through, I kind of wish I'd just skipped it altogether. The game reminded me so much of all the criticism hurled at Final Fantasy 13 when it was released. You have this gorgeous game with an amazing world, great sound, beautiful attention to detail all wrapped around a bunch of tired gaming tropes with nothing to do (I would argue Final Fantasy 13 had redeeming gameplay, but that may very well be personal taste).
The core game here just isn't fun - period. At its core, it is a mediocre shooter as the shooting doesn't feel great relative to industry standards and the Vigors are terribly ineffective and disappointing. To this core, you add the ability to rail grind in some open world battle environments to give the feeling of player control and combat variety (dat interactivity tho). To finish, you throw in running down a bunch of corridors, humping countless walls and bins to collect items/money/collectibles/etc. and going on meaningless fetch quests. The whole game kept me engaged with the possibility of two things: 1. I wanted to see where the story went and 2. I wanted to look at the next pretty world. Everything else in the game pretty much found me clicking, running, shooting, fetching as quickly as possible just to get through it. At some point, I just have to stop and ask myself the following: If I spent most the game not having fun in the moment of what I'm doing, can I really say I liked a game? I've come to a point in my gaming life where I think the answer is probably no, but the fact that I finished the game means that the elements I mentioned seemed strong enough to keep me going (I have no hesitation in quitting games without finishing them if I'm not feeling it).
Ultimately, the worlds continue to be gorgeous and I really enjoyed just getting to experience each new world. The story ended up being a complete mess much in the same vein of M. Night Shyamalan or Hideo Kojima. What seemed like a big build up to something interesting ended up being mostly nonsense and the "twist" is something quite predictable (certainly will be if you played the first Bioshock). I definitely wouldn't even encourage someone to watch the ending on Youtube if they are interested in seeing without playing the game (you will likely be bored to tears). I heard a lot of people talk about how great a story this game had upon release, but I go back to the Final Fantasy 13 argument. I think Final Fantasy 13 had some of the most gorgeous, well designed individual characters in gaming history at that point in time. The problem was that Square-Enix dropped them all in a story that made little sense and didn't give them a story worthy of their design. The same is true here and that is unfortunate. I think any gamer will walk away thinking Booker and Elizabeth are great characters, but I would argue that they were saddled by a story that didn't live up to them.
If you want to trot around a world for 10 hours that is beautiful, I would absolutely recommend this game as the environments created are truly some of the best I've ever seen. Slap the difficulty on Easy, sit back and enjoy the ride. For those looking for a interesting story or a shooter/adventure/RPG hybrid, I think the gameplay here is seriously lacking and doesn't deserve your time. To those of you gaming for a while, I think the descriptions of "Final Fantasy 13 without the gameplay" or "Silent Hill 2 without the story" are apt.
