Oh it's very well designed, no mistake.
It just doesn't generate that same.... compulsion that the original had. I've stopped caring about Rapture, and I think it happened after i caved Ryan's skull in with a golf club.
Perhaps part of the problem is that i don't feel like a Big daddy while playing this game. I feel more like a fragile weakling. Somewhere along the line someone decided Bioshock needed to be faster paced and more of a twitch-based reflex shooter rather than an RPS, and I feel like this broke something.