For context, their original review was 10/10.
After playing Infinite through a second time, I dug out my original review of the game (written for Custom PC Magazine) and was surprised to find myself describe it as "the pinnacle of what the mainstream FPS can offer." Three years down the line, I couldn't feel further from that assertion.
I can understand where I was coming from. In terms of its ambition, BioShock Infinite is a shooter that's second to none. How many other FPS' do you know that attempt to tackle themes ranging from religion to the physics of spacetime, that addresses topics such as racism and the oppression of the working classes? I also still believe that, as an FPS, it's a fun one. When it all comes together, the skyrails, Vigors and tears all make for some colourful and dynamic combat.
But the central problem with BioShock Infinite is that it so rarely does come together. Like the City of Colombia itself, Infinite is a drifting archipelago of ideas held together by the flimsiest of connections. What we see when we play Infinite is a glimpse of a much larger and more cohesive game that was ultimately chopped up, thinned out and stapled back together in order to ship a product.
At this funfair the player is introduced to Vigors, rehabilitative tonics that imbue the drinker with magical powers. They're Infinite's equivalent of BioShock's Plasmids. But they lack the same grounding within the world. How precisely do they work? Why do so few of Colombia's inhabitants use them when they are so readily available? And how come they haven't resulted in the same downfall of society that BioShock's Plasmids caused? Infinite's Vigors seem to exist for one reason - BioShock had them.
As the game progresses, more such inconsistencies reveal themselves. The skyrails, great arches of suspended metal which are ostensibly used to travel between islands, and looked so impressive in early footage of the game, are more often than not limited to tiny closed loops that bear little resemblance to their initial presentation. This, coupled with the fact that Infinite is a strictly linear experience that nevertheless offers the player side-quests, appear to be the lingering ghosts of a larger game.
There's quite a bit more at the link - and I absolutely recommend you read it. Glad to see more people coming to terms with the game now that the honeymoon period is long buried and dead - though there's still nothing inherently wrong if you love the game.In contrast, I cannot think of a single likeable character in Infinite. Both Comstock and Fitzroy are thoroughly detestable. The Luteces' clipped and condescending dialogue quickly begins to grate. DeWitt might sport the rugged jawline of Indiana Jones, but the charm is gouged out in favour of sneering misanthropy. Even Elizabeth, Comstock's doe-eyed talisman, cannot escape the plot's determination to see her miserable and corrupted, switching within heartbeats from childish naivety to adolescent pouting and, finally, weary resignation. In my second play-through the only character who provoked a strong emotional response in me was Songbird, Elizabeth's gigantic avian jailer whose possessive love for her tragically suffocates them both.
Infinite is so obsessed with pushing the plot forward, on giving you vigors and skyrails and tears, contemplating religion then racism then capitalism then socialism then quantum physics, that its characters and relationships never get a chance to blossom. Whatever happened during those five years at Irrational, at some point down the line the heart was cut out of Infinite, resulting in a shooter that ponders an awful lots of subjects, but doesn't really care about any of them.
BioShock Infinite is a game that wants to have its cake and eat it, and rather than accept its limitations, rips a hole in the fabric of reality to do so. It's gaming's loftiest and most spectacular folly, a monument to the mad extremes this industry will sometimes go to in search of a better version of an idea already explored to exhaustion.