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As I write this, I’m sitting at at my desk in the basement with only the sights and sounds of Bioshock behind me.  Nicole’s played, I’d say no less than 7 hours or so today, meticulously working through a strategy guide to research every last splicer, recover each and every audio log, and rescue every last little sister.  Normally I’d implore her to pop in something we can both play together, but not tonight.  No, tonight I’m simply as fascinated watching her play through Andrew Ryan’s twisted and derelict underwater dystopia as I was the first time I entered that fateful bathysphere over two years ago. So why am I so enthralled at the adventure I’ve already experienced?  Is it because the sequel is just around the corner, launching next week?  Certainly, but it’s more than just that.  Read on if you’d like to know more about why I hold Irrational Games’ masterpiece in such a high esteem.

I remember quite vividly my decision to purchase Bioshock.  It was August and I’d just stopped for some coffee on my way to work at a Kroger.  I can’t say for certain what game I’d recently completed, but I knew that I was planning to stop by Gamestop after I got off to see if I could find something tasty and new to satiate my palate.  After thinking it over for a few minutes during my commute, I remembered that Bioshock was launching that day.  Up to this point I’d scarcely researched the game and didn’t much understand all of the hype surrounding it.  Out of nowhere I figured I’d give it a shot and called my local game store to see if they had any in stock.  As it turned out, they had one collector’s edition left and offered to hold it for me considering I was a regular and all.  I can’t for the life of me tell you what made me decide to cough up the extra dough for a collector’s edition of a game I was only mildly interested in at best, but I did.  I told my friend I’d be in around 6 to pick it up.

I remember opening the box, eyeing my Big Daddy figurine with a kind of skepticism, wondering if the game could really be so overwhelmingly polished as to warrant packaging it with an oddly heavy, tiny diver man.  However, that skepticism vanished the instant I found myself awash in the cold, unforgiving waters of the Atlantic, surrounded by the burning wreckage of the plane I was on, desperately swimming toward a perplexing obelisk, defiantly reaching toward the sky.  More still I was immediately absorbed when I found my way inside, looking up at that leering statue of Andrew Ryan with his outstretched banner- No Gods or Kings.  Only Man.

Then, as I made my descent in the bathysphere and got my first glorious glance at the city of Rapture, I knew this underwater story would be as grand as the city itself- vast, deep, and shrouded in mystery.

Bioshock was an incredible turning point for me as a gamer.  Oftentimes when a game aspired to engage me on some higher level with an enthralling narrative, I’d simply gloss over it to get to the action or yawn through cutscenes that embraced one cliche’ after another.  Bioshock was very different, however.  Nearly every aspect of the game exudes a measure of quality I simply hadn’t seen before.  I’m not merely referring to the polygon count in its character models or the level of detail within its textures, but rather the artistic care that had been put into every conceivable aspect of its presentation.  The actors voicing the characters did so with enduring passion.  The story wasn’t content to be shoehorned into play-interrupting cutscenes, but rather was a living concept, chillingly delivered through defunct audiologs littered throughout the remains of a would-be utopia, marred by the civil war of its now shambling inhabitants.

So now that I’ve gone on my rant about the artistic merit of this unlikely shooter, would you kindly, tell me how many of you are as excited for Bioshock 2 as we are?