Shock and Awe

It may sound like an oxymoron, but BioShock is the thinking man’s shooter. The plot’s way too complicated to go into here, but suffice it to say it deals with some Big Themes: the failure of a utopian society, the evils of genetic manipulation and the scourge of rampant drug use. The game is set in a brilliantly realized Art Deco underwater city named Rapture, a 1940s social experiment gone awry; the action takes place in the 1960s, and you, a lone plane-crash survivor, must face off against a population driven mad by DNA tinkering.

As for the shooting, there’s an impressive array of retro-futuristic weapons, plus drug-induced genetic upgrades that give players amazing attack powers—like the ability to sic a swarm of insects on enemies. But the mutant citizens of Rapture won’t go down easy, so you’ll also have to use the environment and devise deadly traps to survive. Smart players will set trip-wire explosives and tamper with first-aid stations so that bad guys seeking medical treatment wind up poisoned instead. The myriad options you have for picking off enemies make up for the plot’s fairly linear path and the sometimes-repetitive nature of the puzzles.

But the real star of the game is the Holly-wood-quality art direction. The ruins of this once-bustling big-band-era city, with its period advertisements and Buck Rogers–style science labs, are a sight to behold. And it’s cast brilliantly too: The creepy corpse-robbing girls called Little Sisters and their hulking, metal-clad protectors, the Big Daddies, will make your family seem positively normal by comparison.