BioShock, I Shall Not Forget

When a game wins Game of the Year, there’s a reason. In this case, the reason is staring us in the face: it’s the whole thing. The whole game is an intricate weave of plotline and gameplay and Little Sisters. It’s a bloody, wonderful kaleidoscope of a realistic plot that screams in the face of society. Of course, with such a realistic setting, this game, which is for the PlayStation3 and Xbox 360, is indeed rated M. I certainly do not recommend this game for younger players. Parental discretion is advised, but it is mostly for blood, gore, general creepiness, and language.
The gameplay is simple: a first-person shooter with the added benefit of plasmids, which are genetic up-grades that let you use special powers like shooting fire from your fingertips (my dad, who played this game, quite enjoyed using this… a little too much). This opens up a surreal aspect that is brought down but the trashed surroundings of Rapture, a supposed utopia built by a man named Andrew Ryan. Ryan had created the ‘perfect society’, a place where no one relies on another, and the individual rules all. People who live above Rapture, which is beneath the Atlantic Ocean, are called ‘parasites’ and shunned by Ryan and his followers.
But alas, this so-called ‘utopia’ comes crashing down upon itself, and begins to destroy itself as people begin to join groups opposing Ryan’s power, such as a smuggler named Frank Fontaine. Then, in a plane crash over the Atlantic, the main character swims to a mysterious entrance leading down into the sea. Thus he comes to rapture, now run-down and populated by splicers, who have over-used plasmids and the substance used to use them, called ADAM. Splicers are extremely aggressive and murdered the rest of the human population of Rapture during its’ bloody civil war. They have become deformed and hideous from excessive ‘splicing’, which is the act of injecting oneself with a plasmid and ADAM abusively, much like drug addicts only more dangerous.
As the main character, named Jack, you learn about yourself and you soon discover that you must make the decision to save the remnants of humanity in Rapture or merely survive with disregard to their future. So it’s up to you now. Will you become a killing machine, with only your own safety cutting off your morals; or will you risk your own life to attempt to save Rapture’s future from those who would use and kill them? With danger literally around every corner and the looming shadow of conspiracy and betrayal above your head, what will you choose?
Survival or heroism?
The shadows or the light, which still filters through the grimy windows and water of the Atlantic Ocean’s depths?