Welcome to Rapture.

It’s probably the most consistent dystopia you’ll have the pleasure to walk through in your gaming life. It’s so beautiful and so hideous, in equal measure, that you’ll wonder how it came to a human mind. This year, losing your senses in Rapture was the holiday that everyone wanted to go on.

Bioshock has flaws that are as plain as the nose on your face - the combat is somewhat slow and clunky, progress is linear and occasionally repetitive and your character is a very vague, silent sort of chap. But as you progress through the art-deco nightmare city all this melts away in the face of everything that is so overwhelmingly brilliant. The most obvious star being the wonderful setting, a retro futuristic paradise that is in a state of terminal decay. Pools of stagnant water stand everywhere as Rapture slowly collapses before your eyes and the gaudy mutilated beauty is bathed in shocking neon and swallowed by the growing shadows. One mans idea of heaven rapidly becoming an all-consuming hell for everyone else.

Then there are the other inhabitants of the city, a clutch of vividly drawn psychopaths in the purest sense of the word. The audio-tapes that litter the city are the key to experiencing Bioshock as they contain some of the finest vocal talents ever used in a game. They will make you believe that you are stumbling from the clutches of one madman to the next. The main denizens of Rapture are the Clive Barker-esque Splicers, humans who have tampered with their genes in search of greater abilities and have eventually been driven over the edge of sanity. But they are merely a precursor to the true madness at the root of Rapture’s decay.

Society in Rapture has been torn from the common anchors that ethically contain the pursuit of knowledge. And it's bleedin' terrifying when that happens. It's epitomised by the luminaries of Rapture's different districts. Meet Dr Steinman the perfection obsessed plastic surgeon whose scalpel activities are recounted through the haunting audio diaries of his patients, Sander Cohen is the master of grisly entertainments in Rapture's Fort Frolic district and finally Andrew Ryan. Ryan is dreamer who made the dreamer who made the nightmare city you stand in and possibly the most troubled individual in the game. You'll never forget your meeting with him. But that isn't where Bioshock grabs you. It grabs you by the nuts well before that when you meet the big fella.

The combination of the Big Daddy and Little Sister is a masterstroke. A behemoth bodyguard protecting a child. Simple enough. But with the Little Sisters being the main source of ADAM, the fuel for the splicing implant madness, they become a tricky proposition indeed. After dealing with the Big Daddy you have a choice to make, harvest or save the child. The consequences of the choice can be very, very traumatic. It is this kind of emotional quandary that is the heartbeat of Bioshock, it engages you and makes demands of you beyond the literary nudge-nudge wink-wink it could so easily have been.

Bioshock is the moving experience we hoped it could be, wrapped in an exquisite decoration like nothing we have seen before and, as if I needed another reason, that is why it is my game of the year.

January 2008

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