All good things of this Earth flow into the city

August 15, 2007

It was about 10:45 on Sunday when I decided it was time for bed. I had work the next morning and was always grumpy when I didn't get my full allotment of sleep (~12.5 hours). But, the ravenous Internet addict that I am, I decided to check my usual gaming blogs one more time before the day was up. Kotaku said something about a Bioshock demo. Yeah right, I thought, you wish they had any incentive to release a demo to a game that has this level of hype. But it's a new story, so I click through and read.

Thirteen seconds later I throw myself down the stairs and furiously boot up my Xbox 360. There's a Bioshock demo on Xbox Live? On Sunday? With no prior warning? Indeed it is there, and as the progress bar slowly advanced I wondered if I was hallucinating. It wasn't until the next morning that the download finished; somehow the demo of this game released this late was able to bring down Xbox Live, something even the Halo 3 beta hadn't accomplished.

As if you needed me to tell you: Bioshock is incredible. The graphics are seamless, the audio is great, and the level of interactivity of the environments is something I would expect from 3D Realms. When a robot explodes it sends smoldering rubble every which way. Smoke clouds your vision when you burn yourself. Taking a wrench to a thug causes the screen to shudder significantly with the impact.

And that's just the gameplay. The true wonders of Bioshock come from the world they created. Andrew Ryan (or someone whose name sounds like his) created an underwater city called Rapture where the great thinkers, artists and engineers can get away from oppressive governments and religion. But they discovered a way to genetically modify their bodies and everything went to hell.

You show up just after the city's collapse.

I would say more, but... well, I don't know what to say. The game is wonderful, or at least the demo is, and I expect more and better from the retail release (if I could somehow get my hands on it).

Nothing much else crosses my mind. Saw the Simpsons movie; it was funny. Got my list of things to do for PAX, one of which being to weep that I have only a day and a half to play Bioshock before my plane takes off. Alas. Punch a Big Daddy in the face for me, won't you?