You hit the nail on the head. The narrative is not half as smart as it believes itself to be and bites off way more than it can chew. For example, there's the obvious dealings with race and genetic superiority, nothing new to Bioshock as it is a main theme for the first game. In the original Bioshock your enemies were often splicers who had modified themselves to such an extent that they had gone mad via isolation, greed, addiction, and paranoia. The only way to "level up" in the game is to modify yourself and become ever more like the poor bastards you are mowing down. The player knows they have to make progress, but there's a bit of anxiety about where the story is going. You begin to realize that perhaps you aren't so different from the crazies lining up to kill you. That's a bit of passive story telling that made the game special. In Infinite, the player is presented with situations such as, "Press B if racist, Press A if not."
The game tries to deal with the unionization of labor, the whitewashing of history, the idea of free will, nationalism, and several other lofty themes. The problem is that the game is just a run of the mill corridor shooter. You run into a new area, kill all the baddies, take their chocolates, rinse and repeat. Your enemies never pick up the super human powers that are freely scattered around the world. So the game wants you to contemplate these heavy themes, which are incredibly over-simplified (the laughable and insulting part), while you mass murder regular, human guards. But its ok to kill them because they are probably racist, sexist, homophobic, nationalist assholes.
The relationship between Booker and Elizabeth is a great mechanic to move the story forward. Unfortunately, Elizabeth’s presence is enough to break the immersion. She is invincible and ignored by enemies, never in any real danger that the game doesn’t force on you, and she constantly throws you items to help you out during fights. This game will make you feel like a bullet sponge. While her help is appreciated, it does make you feel silly to be taking cover while she’s running about as though she’s on a scavenger hunt.
I've always enjoyed multiplayer FPS but the the single player campaigns usually bore me to tears. Bioshock was really interesting for me and had me hooked. Going into Infinite I was expecting something special but it was a dumbed down experience, seemingly written by a Freshman philosophy major. It’s just a harmless little game and I mean it no harm. I'm not mad at it. I just had to reply because I found it to be so underwhelming and undeserving of all its accolades. Infinite wants you to believe it has something important to say but this is simply not the case. This game's narrative literally broke my immersion more times than I can count and that's why I say its a bad game. I can forgive mechanics and an underwhelming story but this game seemed like it was actively working against my enjoyment of it. Too harsh? Maybe, but I don't want any more games like this one.
I'd also like to try Tactics since I never did; weird, since I've even played the shitty Fallout 3 Van Buren Beta. BTW, how are people liking Wasteland 2?