I played this game after purchasing the collection, and I'm planning to work my way through the second and third game too.
This game has a very clear and structured system. I cannot help but draw parallels to something like super Mario whenever you save one of the little sisters. Of course it's not the same thing mechanically but it gives you the same sense of progression as in those types of games.
The gameplay itself resulted as a bit repetitive. Yes you have plenty of plasmids to switch between but most of them usually serve the same purposes, like the ice, fire, electro shock and bee plasmids, which all essentially just stun your opponents in almost the same way. Ofcourse these plasmids had some cool enviromental usages, giving the game a little bit of a puzzle feel at times, but each plasmid was essentially a one trick pony. Fire melts ice or sets oil puddles on fire, shock short circuits some broken door mechanisms and electrocutes enemies through water, but sadly the bees don't make any honey for you :(.
This sort of repetition is also mirrored in the level design, where the missions mostly escalate to someone on a phone telling you where to go and you shooting your way through, and while it is connected to the plot in some way, where the game attempts to be self aware of this choice, it never actually subverts this video-gamey trope.
As for the plot, it was good, the game relies mostly on telling the story through gameplay, only having two cut scenes at the start and end of the game, however, lot of this games story is removed by the level design, where people try to speak to you while you're in the middle of trying to not to die while 3 drones are shooting at you and 2 spider splicers are jumping at you from the ceiling. I missed a lot of lore and exposition in that way. Speaking of which, this game relies heavily on the exposition, while the world and atmosphere are amazing, the main plot is kind of like someone stumbling into a great story after it already happened. By no means am I saying that the story should have taken place when the rapture started, but it does get old when every single person you are fighting or talking to is just some crazy guy who went crazy. It gives these characters no real personality.
One of the parts that was very aggravating to me was the checkpoint system. I played on normal and by no means am I gonna complain about dying a lot, but I'm not the best player either, and it felt like I was cheesing the game every time I would die, and the health of a big daddy or any enemy would not regenerate when re spawning. There was virtually no punishment to dying often and I felt like you could have simply altered the health system to be more rugged instead of having the player die so much and not losing any progress. I am not sure if anyone else had this issue, but I do tend to under-perform in games like these so maybe it was my fault.
Either way while I have a lot of problems with this game, I am glad to have experienced such a classic. The best part about this game truly is the presentation and the lore. Such an interesting world that could honestly be explored for a lot more than just three games but sadly never was. The intro to this game was spectacular and while the rest of the game didn't entirely reflect that, I am still glad I played through it.
