Heh, I was thinking to ask what games people liked that either hated Bioshock Infinite or loved it. I can definitely tell this backlash isn't recent though, once we had time to get through the game it started to come out, even if it wasn't as pronounced as ME3's since it kind of did the opposite when it came to the ending, blowing a lot of people away even as a cheap sci-fi plot rather than being massive disappointments. If you were disappointed by BI's story it likely came long before the ending itself began to roll, like when it was clear thatI will never get the dislike such a big part of GAF has for Bioshock Infinite. Dissapointing? Maybe, but on its own it was absolutely bloody fantastic. Haters gonna hate.
(I think people who love it simply play Bioshock games for their atmosphere, story and design rather than purely for their gameplay or to get a satisfying RPG-ish experience aka System Shock 2, which Infinite wasn't at all nor ever intended to be. Just a matter of wanting different things out of the same game which makes it either GOTY or a mediocre shooter with an imaginative setting)
it wasn't going to properly tackle the themes it was built up on having before release.
ANYWAYS, throw me in the disappoint camp, Bioshock 1 actually wasn't a bad middle ground between those two camps but I'd like it to have embraced the RPG side a bit more again, and more importantly it could have not devolved into ENDLESS WAVES OF FUCKING ENEMIES WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH MODERN GAME DESIGN THAT SO MANY OF THEM FALL ON THAT BULLSHIT. I'd actually be more forgiving of it as an experience if it didn't feel like erecting those speed bumps so god damn often.
I may as well also answer my own question about what kind of games I prefer: Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, RPGs in general, and if a game is to focus on combat it may as well go all in like CoD, Bayonetta, or Metal Gear Rising do. As in if you remove the combat you have basically nothing left except environments to move around in, while Bioshock Infinite could ostensibly build up the adventure elements more, and with dialed down combat could've probably built up both the adventure and RPG elements and been something distinctive enough from the rest of AAA design. It's a shame the sales weren't enough to be a success, but I kinda hope it serves as a signal that unless you actually can pull GTA/CoD/whatever numbers you need to either be really smart with development (Naughty Dog and Epic) or focus on something cheaper but with a strong enough following to justify (Dark Souls.) Spending forever trying to be both a unique experience and also placate mainstream audiences doesn't seem to be actually successful as a business, even if you can still get some fans from it you can also get a lot who are somewhere in the other ends of the spectrum that aren't satisfied either because they wanted something other than another linear shooter or they have better linear shooters to play.
it was fun to plan ahead about how you to fight a big daddy and i liked the atmosphere. But yeah infinite was just not that good imo.
