Now I've played through BioShock Infinite. It was okay, but I can't say that I agree with the absurd amount of praise it's gotten. First of all, there's the story - they clearly put a lot of effort into it, and there are some interesting ideas in there, which just makes it all the more frustrating that they screwed up so many of the more basic elements of storytelling. A lot's been made of the ending, and while there are some people out there who insist that it does totally make sense and here's a lengthy analysis of the lore that proves it, I think the mere fact that the ending was so controversial in the first place is ample evidence that the writers screwed it up. The game is a self-contained medium, and it should be able to explain itself in a satisfactory matter, not rely on a bunch of people writing essays on the Internet to justify what it portrayed.
I'm quite surprised that no reviewers seem to have taken issue with how incredibly generic Boring Booker DeWitt was. You'd think that a story that was this praised would have a protagonist who was at least somewhat interesting, but no, they just decided to go with every single cliché they possibly could. He has a stock design, a stock voice, a stock personality, a stock tragic backstory, stock alcoholism, stock everything. I honestly thought that there would be something clever that justified this, like an elaborate deconstruction of the typical homogeneous FPS hero or something, but they just played it painfully straight the entire way through (with the obvious exception of the dumb ending). He is literally every single FPS hero ever. I don't understand how such clearly ambitious writers could have been so lazy when it came to the hero.
In fact, the only thing that's more uninspired than Booker is the gameplay itself. This is a run and gun shooter, nothing more. Pour bullets into every enemy until they're dead. Move on to the next zone. Repeat. That's it. That's the game. There's no strategy. There's no planning. There's no using your head. You just make sure you're loaded up on ammo and fill up the bullet sponges that all come blindly charging at you. The skylines, the vigors, and the tears are cool, but most of the fighting still has to be done with your boring old guns. It's so strange. I almost feel like half of the dev team was trying to make this unique, creative adventure game, but the other half were trying to make a Halo clone, and then they mashed all their work together and came up with this.