My heart beats as I unload standard clip from my pistol and load an armor piercing ammo. Two hybrids that attacked me with shotguns lie dead behind me, but I have just used my last medical hypo and I have a military bot to deal with. I have not yet activated respawn chamber on this level, so I've got only one shot at this.
One last breath,I lean out of corner slowly, aim my pistol carefully and shoot. BANG. Armor piercing bullet hit the bot and damaged it, but I also got his attention. Recoil of the gun messed my aim, so I have to aim again. BANG. Another hit! Military bot is almost dead but I don't have time to aim again, because he starts to shoot with his machine guns. I hide behind the wall just in time to hear the bot's burst fire hit empty space where I was half a second ago. Burst ends, now its time to finish it. I lean out once again, aim and... pistol jams! God damn it, not now.
I'm out of auto-repair units, so now its time to run. I use a speed booster hypo and run frenetically down the hallway. The bot runs after me, I hear another burst of machine gun fire and expect the worst, but... The burst was a machine gun turret I hacked a while ago. It finished the mech and I have a few more minutes to live at least. Dr. Polito congratulates me via my cyber-implanted communication device and sends me some Cybernetic Modules. Guess I shall use them to improve my repair skill so that I can make the damn gun working again. There is something strange about this Dr. Polito though, I'm not sure I like her.
This here above authentically describes how it feels to play System Shock 2. Bioshock: Infinite calls itself a spiritual successor to System Shock franchise, but I have no idea why. It is basically a fast-paced arcade shooter. It feels very simillar to Bulletstorm. You are esentially running around, trying to dodge dozens of enemies that are after you and kill them in the process. You also collect items, but you dont actually care what items you found, you just press the [] button to pick up anything. It either boosts your health, your mana (called "salt"), gives you ammo or money that you don't care about because there is not much to spend them for. The shooting mechanics are not very satisfying, guns have no weight and no "umph". You have shield that regenerates automatically once you are out of enemy fire for a few seconds and the only thing that sets it apart from hundreds of other average arcade shooters is impressive setting. And a gimmick called "vigors" which is a collection of a few spells you can use in combat. I found the one that possessed enemy turret (or even a soldier once you upgrade it) the most useful.
Slow methodical approach is out of the question. The character moves too fast, the enemies move too fast, and overall the design doesn't allow you to play like that.
Levels are perfect corridors. You can't get lost, there is no exploration. If you are not sure where to go, you can press a button to see direction (like in Killzone 2 for example).
You dont care if you die, because the girl that is with you always revives you and you barely lose a few seconds before you get on the place where you died. The enemies you killed before you died are still dead, so you can basically just run around and shoot, die, and repeat (I'm playing on the hardest difficulty and there is precisely ZERO challenge in this game - if you die, you just respawn and your enemies don't, so you will eventually kill them all).
The story is interesting, although a bit confusing.
Overall this is a game that can be fun to play for a while and then go away and forget it. I would probably rate it 5/10, because it is completely average in my opinion, but I put 1 point down because it pretends it is more than it is - a successor to one of the best games of all time, System Shock 2. Well, it is not. Not even remotely. Has literally NOTHING to do with it except the "shock" word in the title.