A) Should I play the 2nd one first? Any of you guys liked it?
B) If I can ignore the 2nd one, then would you say that Infinite is "just as good" or actually "better" than the first one?
I never finished Bioshock or Bioshock 2, but I did finish Infinite. Personally, I think it's a good game overall; it's not perfect, but it's definitely worth playing. However, as I noted, it's not perfect, and I absolutely agree with the criticism that the game receives. The shooter mechanics are probably the biggest thorn in the side for most people playing the game, and that stems around the 2-gun carry limitation. Where this really hurts you is the fact that you upgrade weapons separately, and you don't really have the funds to upgrade
everything (this includes your plasmids).
Now, that may not sound terrible. You may think, "Well, I'll just stick with the weapons that I like!" Unfortunately, you can't really do that. On boss fights, weapon ammunition is incredibly limiting -- especially since most weapons don't have much in the way of ammo capacity upgrades (I believe the pistol has the most). So, when you run out of ammo, you have to switch to your other weapon, which you hope is good for the fight, or find something lying around to use... and hope that you've upgraded it.
With all those complaints, I still thought it was fun to play. Albeit, I never played the game's higher difficulty level. The game doesn't really require you to play any of the previous Bioshock games, but it would be nice to play the first one and then play the Burial at Sea DLC since it takes place entirely in Rapture.