BioShock
“A man chooses, a slave obeys.” With those
six words, THQ Boston opened the door
to a new era of gaming. Ken Levine’s team
built a gorgeous undersea world, fi lled it with
interesting and believable characters, invites
you to kill said characters using a perfectly
balanced combat system, and then uses
the game to do more than simply tell a tale.
Unlike every other game we’ve ever played,
BioShock uses the medium’s
interactivity to explore con-
cepts in a way that is
simply impossible in fi lms
and books.While other designers would have taken the underwa-
ter wonderland that is Rapture and driven the player through
increasingly diffi cult mazes, Levine uses the framework he built
to explore objectivism and free will with the player as an active
participant. By allowing the player to choose whether to save
or harvest the Little Sisters, but not whether to kill Andrew
Ryan at the game’s climactic moment, Levine forces players
to make diffi cult ethical choices, while confronting them with
the fallacy of free will in games.
Sadly, the fi nal act of the game doesn’t match the bril-
liance of the fi rst two parts, and the “big fi nish” is an offensively
clichéd boss battle.
Even with its fl awed
third act, BioShock
represents everything
that we want to cel-
ebrate with our Game of the Year
Award. Bravo.
http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/, ESRB: MGAMING AWARDS 2007
GAME OF THE YEAR
Unlike every other game we’ve ever played,
BioShock uses the medium’s
interactivity to explore con-
cepts in a way that is
simply impossible in fi lms
and books.While other designers would have taken the underwa-
ter wonderland that is Rapture and driven the player through
increasingly diffi cult mazes, Levine uses the framework he built
to explore objectivism and free will with the player as an active
participant. By allowing the player to choose whether to save
or harvest the Little Sisters, but not whether to kill Andrew
Ryan at the game’s climactic moment, Levine forces players
to make diffi cult ethical choices, while confronting them with
the fallacy of free will in games.
Sadly, the fi nal act of the game doesn’t match the bril-
liance of the fi rst two parts, and the “big fi nish” is an offensively
clichéd boss battle.
Even with its fl awed
third act, BioShock
represents everything
that we want to cel-
ebrate with our Game of the Year
Award. Bravo.
http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/, ESRB: M http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/, ESRB: M56 MAXIMUMPC | MAR 08 | http://www.maximumpc.com