Bioshock

This game is great. I'm not sure it rivals Half Life, but it gets darn close if it doesn't. It might if I had read anything by Ayn Rand and had an appreciation for objectivism, a concept of which I still don't have a complete grasp. Apparently much of the game is based on it. Anyway; it's a fantastic take on a first-person-shooter with an actual message and moral issues. Amazing graphics, especially the water effects and stylized character models.

It's a spooky sort of game. It made me jump in my seat a few times when corpses decided that they were actually alive and wanted to kill me for my bodily fluids. Very dark and dirty. I guess you might call it an RPG in a sense, as it had several elements of the genre. You are playing the role of a specific character whose story is quite interesting, and there is a sort of leveling system via various vending machines that allow you to improve yourself and your weapons. That part was one of the most fun bits.

I got the PC version of course, seeing as I don't own any consoles. I just built a new computer and it handles it pretty great. I ordered a new cooler for the graphics card because it keeps freezing the system randomly, I assume due to overheating. I was disappointed to discover that the achievement system was left out of the PC version; something to do with it not having Windows Live. I don't see why that would matter.

I went through the first round mostly rescuing the little sisters. This route aligns with the human rights aspect of objectivism. Next round I'm doing hard mode and I plan on harvesting them all; the pursuit of selfish happiness.

UPDATE: Finished my second run last night. The ending was pretty badass; instead of a happy life with the little sisters, you become a warmongering evil and unleash the splicers on the landlubbers. There is apparently a third ending that doesn't differ much from this one except for the tone of the voiceover. I won't be going through it again for a while, but I'll probably try for that one when I do. There will be a PS3 release later this year with possibly improved graphics; hopefully some of those improvements will be available for the PC version as well.

There have been rumors that Bioshock II will be a prequel accounting the times before the downfall of Rapture. This makes a lot of sense since there really isn't much that could be done past the ending of the first one. It will probably be a 2009 release; I'm looking forward to it wholeheartedly.