January 29th, 2008

I mentioned more than a year ago about how my sister Carolyn made an effort to reduce my free time to nil, destroy my marriage, frighten my pets, and damage my attention span by buying me the computer game Oblivion for my birthday in 2006. I played this game relentlessly and with a near-religious fervour that somewhat alarmed my wife, and, to be honest, made me feel a little silly since I'm supposed to be a grown man instead of a much-too-old teenager.

But, as time passed, Oblivion receded somewhat into the background: I still play it occasionally on my new laptop (whenever Windows Vista feels generous enough to run it for me) but not with the same kind of single-minded determination I previously devoted to it. This really is for the better; life is pretty short when you are burning hours by the score staring at a computer screen, swinging virtual swords at virtual trolls and casting virtual spells at virtual battlemages. (Though I miss that first blush of awe and wonder when I first started wandering the paths and byways in Oblivion, such was the immersive beauty and realism of that game.)

I bought a new game last weekend that isn't really much like Oblivion in any way, except that it has stunning immersive visual and aural qualities. And it has something of a siren's call to me, though nothing like the warm friendly magnetism of Oblivion. The game I am now playing is BioShock and my desire to keep playing it is more like a face-down-my-fears morbid fascination with what it might be like in that proverbial dystopian future when the small concerns of the obscenely disfigured (physically and mentally) are more important to them than my life ... than their own lives, in fact.

This game is dark and dirty, full of horrible little half-human people gone horribly wrong genetically. And an art deco atmosphere that is surreally sinister. Circus-clown vending machines that dispense genetic-altering material, and old 1930s-style "simpler times" advertising for plastic surgery that instill more shuddering fear than attraction to change my virtual self ... and yet my character is on a compelling and unavoidable course to that self-destruction through self-improvement-gone-wrong--and along the same dystopian lines that the huge underwater city followed.

Wow, it's really something, and that is just my first impression after playing the first 1-1/2 levels. From what I hear it gets darker and more shocking with spine-tingling surprises still in store.

Well, BioShock could never replace the beauty and soul-caressing warmth of Oblivion, but it isn't trying to: This game is out to make my nerves jangle and my mind reel at the dark dreadfulness of a genetically-altered free-for-all future. So far, it has done it in style.

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