I cant help but notice that the guns really steal the plasmids thunder the further you go into the game. Sure, its your choice to be creative with the plasmids and all, but theres very little incentive when the guns are so darn easy and effective. One possible remedy Ive considered would be tying the plasmids and the guns together later on in the game. To start with, perhaps the guns would be marginally effective against Splicers (youd be using the plasmids much more out of necessity). Later on, really go nuts with the guns and allow plasmids to be used with a gun. To fit this into the games style, this could be tweaked and re-tweaked by an additional variety of vending machine. The plasmid effects would naturally not be as effective as a plasmid alone (only the first level plasmid being usable on the gun might make sense), but it might present some creative combat techniques in a far more lucrative manner. Imagine electric buckshot replaced by the players manual combination of the shotgun with Electrobolt. Imagine combining your pistol with Gust, thus by dealing a two-fold attack in one combat action. I can see myself opening frozen passages with an enflamed wrench, telekinetically repelling grenades with every blast of my weapon, shooting bees out of my Tommy gun, deploying electric and enflamed sticky bombs, and so on.
Bizarro World: Everyone in Rapture is a lunatic, a scientist, or a power player. The average man is nowhere to be seen, theres virtually no trace left beyond the odd unmodified corpse. Leonard Cohen was the closest thing approaching a regular person surviving in Rapture (and even then, he was absolutely nuts/important). What I would have liked to see would be an area of the city under control of average, unmodified citizens, normal people basically surviving the apocalypse. Half-life has its baseline civilians; Halo has its baseline marines, and so on. Youve got your average Splicer, but theyre batshit insane and there are no average people caught in the middle to provide contrast.
Atlas the Wonder-Bastard: I knew the twist was coming, but I still cant help but feel disappointed. Atlas was developed as this sympathetic/heroic figure of sorts, but all of that was tossed out for cheap shock and an uninspired boss-fight. Heres my idea: Atlas doesnt turn, Ryan retains position as THE big bad and dies at the end. Working in my aforementioned civilian idea, the regular people basically band together and assault Ryans stronghold with Atlas and the player at the lead. Ryan meets his end as he did here, except it occurs close to the games conclusion. Wouldnt that be a more satisfying way to end things? The power players vie for power and attempt to eliminate each other for dominance, but in the end it is the plebeians who are the ones to rise up and take control of Raptures Great Chain.