BioShock

BioShock begins with a plane crashing into the Atlantic and a descent into Rapture, an underwater city built as a refuge for the best of the best, which instead of a utopia turned into a bloody labyrinth full of ruined inhabitants. The player moves through flooded art deco halls, listens to the recorded messages of long-dead residents, and gradually pieces together the story of what happened when an ideology of unlimited freedom collided with human nature. The narrative is almost entirely hidden in the environment and audio diaries, so Rapture feels like a place with its own history rather than mere backdrop for shooting.

The combat system is built on a combination of classic weapons and plasmids, genetically induced abilities that let the player electrify water, set enemies on fire, control swarms of bees, or hack automated turrets. Improvisation and use of the environment matter a great deal, since the game is by no means generous with ammunition. The Little Sisters, protected by hulking Big Daddies, play a key role: the player must decide whether to harvest them for resources or save them, one of the first genuinely weighty moral choices in shooters. The mid-game twist, which retroactively reframes the meaning of everything the player has been doing, remains to this day one of the most-quoted scenes in the medium.

The PlayStation 3 version arrived roughly a year after the original release and brought minor improvements as well as bonus content. Technically it held up well; the atmosphere is underscored by water effects, rusted metal interiors, and period music from the thirties and forties that sounds all the more unsettling in the empty halls. Critics received the game enthusiastically, considering it proof that a shooter could also be a thoughtful piece of writing. Even today BioShock is excellently playable, and its art direction and storytelling have aged better than most of its contemporaries. Rapture remains one of the best-conceived game settings ever, and it only takes a few minutes in its flooded corridors to see why.