The snob in me feels a little uncomfortable with advocating a video game as work of art, but I think that Bioshock deserves that kind of credit. The first-person, shooter RPG blends distinctive visual style, brilliant sound design, and above all, great storytelling to create a thrilling gaming experience. I’m a Johnny-come-lately to the Bioshock craze; Bioshock Infinite has also received rave reviews, but I’m waiting for it to go on sale for Mac before I get it, so you’re stuck with this.

     Bioshock is set in an alternate America circa 1960. Your character named Jack survives a devastating plane crash and washes up at the portal to an aquatic utopia known as the city of Rapture. Rapture is modeled on the Objectivist ideas of Ayn Rand: logic, production, and free enterprise.

     Not surprisingly, things have gone horribly wrong in Rapture. Jack arrives to find the city vacant and derelict, inhabited predominantly by mindless, bloodthirsty monsters. Through the course of the game Jack fights off deranged creatures addicted to a substance known as ADAM, a chemical that modifies human DNA to grant people what are essentially super powers. 

     Over the course of the story we discover the mysterious origins of Jack’s identity and what he was “designed” to do.

     I don’t want to give away too much, but essentially the world of Rapture, with its eerie Steampunk aesthetic, was designed to serve as a refuge for the talented and productive members of society who were “suffocated” by the weak and entitled. At first, Rapture produced a modern Renaissance of technological innovation, but human greed and lust for power created infighting and degeneracy. Jack is intimately entwined in a battle for supremacy that can only end in disaster. The choices that the player makes along the course of the story open up two different possible endings.

          Would you kindly buy Bioshock and unlock what they are? You won’t regret it.

     -Josane Cumandala