Two of the many -isms supercharging BioShock Infinite's narrative is the religious extremism and racism of Zachary Comstock, the zealous ultra-nationalist founder of Columbia and a figure of worship for many of its citizens. In an interview with GameSpot, Creative Director Ken Levine stresses the difficulty in creating Comstock as a designer from a non-religious background, and he recalls how a certain end-game scene with the character nearly caused an Irrational artist to quit in protest.

"There was a scene in the game at the end where one of our artists got to a point in the game, played it, turned off BioShock, opened up his computer, opened Microsoft Word, and wrote a resignation letter," Levine says. "It had offended him so much."

Last month, Levine spoke of a certain Infinite character getting "highly altered" after input from religious team members. It seems the character in question is Comstock, and Levine used the artist's concerns as a springboard for deepening the character's traits regarding faith beyond his limited interaction with religion.

"I realized that something I could connect to was a notion of forgiveness and what an important part that is of the New Testament and why Christ was such a revolutionary figure," Levine explains. "And thinking about how I would incorporate the power of that notion to Comstock into his world was, to me, the key. Because who hasn't done things that they don't want to be forgiven for?

"And it occurred to me that I had to figure out why people follow him," he continues. "That was the key to his character. Why do people follow him? What does he provide to them? And I struggled with that for a long time because obviously an ecstatic religious experience is something that a religious leader provides but I don't have a connection to as a writer. And it's always hard when you're trying to write something that you have never felt. And that would feel dishonest to me."

Head over to GameSpot for the full interview.

Worried that the download copies of BioShock Infinite will sell out, when it lands on the 26th of March? You might want to sit and think about that for a moment, or alternatively you could pre-order the game from Steam - you know, before you know whether it's any good or not. Your wallet may or may not thank you in the long run, but at least you'll get a bunch of free stuff, including the spin-off Industrial Revolution puzzle game, some in-game tat, and a copy of the original BioShock. If an unspecified number of other people put their money down as well, you'll also get a copy of XCOM and several TF2 items, but I don't see how anyone would be interested in those.

Those TF2 items you won't be interested in include Vox Diabolus (a "Vox Populi anarchist mask"), The Pounding Father ("Heavy cannot tell lie. Heavy is first President of United States. Of crushing little baby men"), and The Steel Songbird ("Why not treat yourself to the haunting rhythmic symphony of bolts being constantly pooped by this mute, easily terrified incontinent bird?") However, they will only be unlocked if other people pre-order too - the counter is currently at 19%. The reward tier after that doles out a copy of the excellent XCOM.

BioShock Infinite is out in just a few weeks, and Tom was rather impressed with it in his recent hands-on with the game.

It's time to make sure your tickets are in order and your tweed vests are properly packed in your steamer trunks, because the (sky)train to BioShock: Infinite's floating metropolis is on schedule to depart on March 26. That is, Irrational's Ken Levine wrote in a blog post that the game has gone gold.

"When we first announced BioShock Infinite, we made a promise to deliver a game that was very much a BioShock experience, and at the same time something completely different," Levine says. "And our commitment to making good on that promise, no matter what, has been our driving force for the last three years or so."

Levine breaks down the damage in delivering a worthy successor to BioShock after five years in development: "The total cost of the game was five years, 941 billion Klingon darseks (plus tip), 47 camels, a cranberry flan, and the blood, sweat, and tears of the Irrational team." Useless fact of the day: a darsek roughly equals one half of a bar of gold-pressed latinum.

Over at Polygon, Design Director Bill Gardner talks about the bumps and design redirections encountered in Infinite's long skyrail leading to release, revealing he initially conceived the game's setting taking place during the Renaissance period and that the team ultimately culled enough content to "make five or six games."

"I will say that I was actually pushing for something more Renaissance, but within six months, Assassin's Creed II was announced and I was like, 'OK, well they beat us to the punch,'" Gardner says.

With one of the most contextually sensitive remarks I've ever seen, Gardner comments on Infinite's canned content: "I mean, it pains you when you're talking about about cutting one of your babies, but ultimately, you've got to to look at the final piece."

Though Gardner didn't elaborate on how fleshed-out the cut content actually was, I find it somewhat difficult not to address the slight hyperbole in the reported quantity of Infinite's axed portions. It's more likely Gardner is referring to possible ideas for levels and mechanics that were eventually discarded or half-finished areas eliminated for the sake of time or to ensure what the player experiences jives with Irrational's intended theme. And from what we saw during our recent and lengthy visit to Columbia, its surviving districts pull off that obligation most handily.

There’s something I can’t tell you about BioShock Infinite. Not because it’s a spoiler – I’ll avoid those too – but because I can’t quite communicate it. It’s something I felt after playing Half-Life 2, and again after playing BioShock 1. It’s the sense you get after experiencing something so vivid and rich that you know you’ll never be able to fully describe what it felt like. But I’ll try.

"‘City in the clouds’ doesn’t really express the sheer size of it: there seem to be several of those in every direction."
That’s not how I expected to feel after playing Infinite for the first time. They’d kept it out of journalistic hands until suspiciously close to release, and the trailers and walkthroughs didn’t give a good sense of what kind of game it was. Somewhere in my head, I just copied BioShock 1 from the bottom of the sea and pasted it into the clouds.

Some of that is accurate. In BioShock 1, you played an outsider discovering a failed utopian city at the bottom of the sea; in BioShock Infinite, you play an outsider discovering a failing utopian city floating in the sky. Both games let you explore an extraordinary place, piecing together its story from evidence left lying around. And both games alternate that with combat: you wield both conventional guns and a suite of basically-magical powers that let you do interesting things to your enemies.

Once you arrive, though, it’s hard to call them similar. ‘City in the clouds’ doesn’t really express the sheer size of it: there seem to be several of those in every direction. Columbia’s huge districts are disjointed, drifting in loose formation as the impossible flotilla tours the world. The first one I explore feels disjointed in itself: half the buildings seem to be bobbing and lurching independently, like some weird dream. Curving skyrails take massive carriages of cargo, like sidewinding trains. Airships propel themselves slowly between districts on twin fans. And the smoke from every chimney streaks in the same direction: we’re moving.



But the most startling difference from BioShock 1 isn’t the views: it’s the people. Rapture was a failed utopia, Columbia is still very much in the process of failing.

"Exploring a dead place by yourself, with you being this cypher, we’ve kind of done that."
Plenty of times in my five hours, I’d enter a new district of the city where no-one has any particular reason to hate, fear or shoot me yet. Columbia is full of civilians milling around, gossiping, griping, and going about their business. It’s exactly what Irrational Games had avoided doing not only in BioShock, but in its spiritual predecessor System Shock 2, simply because it’s so hard to make it work. I asked creative director Ken Levine: what changed?

“If we went back to that now, I think people would say we were just repeating ourselves. Listen, it would have been a lot easier. We would have been having this conversation two years ago... but exploring a dead place by yourself, with you being this cypher, we’ve kind of done that.”

Was it as hard as they feared back then? “So, I don’t want to bore you with my problems, but the writing task was monstrous. It was huge. I remember the first level I wrote, the first draft for this prologue, I sat back and looked at this script, and I realised this script alone was longer than my entire script for BioShock.”



As I’m playing it, though, it’s not a game of long conversations. A lot of that work seems to have gone into a depth of story, rather than length. Even more so than in BioShock, the density of information encoded into the world around you is overwhelming. Every poster is propaganda for a faction you’ll meet, or a product you’ll buy, or a cryptic hint to one of the game’s dozens of connected mysteries. Pre-television viewing booths show flickery greyscale government infotainment, with title-card dialogue and jaunty music.

"Almost every line of dialogue has some payload of information about this foreign place."
Plot characters still leave audio diaries of their thoughts lying around, but now they’re joined by living people having normal conversations. And almost every line of their daily lives has some payload of information about this foreign place.

“It’s damned inconvenient when buildings don’t dock on time,” a well-dressed man complains to his companion as I walk by. “Yesterday I had to take a gondola, rubbing shoulders with all sorts.” If you’re ‘someone’ in Columbia, your destination comes to you.

Later on, I actually see it happen. As I’m walking towards a bridge, Chas White’s Home and Garden Supply shop floats slowly towards me and docks noisily with a pair of metal teeth jutting out of the street, clanking into place and steadying as it locks. A nearby troupe of a cappella singers harmonise over the noise.



It’s all terribly... nice. It has the atmosphere of a cheerful village fete, but in a village that couldn’t exist. At one point, we seem to be in a cloud: a thick haze turns everyone in the street to silhouettes, picked out by spectacular rays of golden sunlight. Confetti floats through the air, and hummingbirds pause to probe flowers. Two children splash each other in a leaking fire hydrant.

"Blood geysers all over my face. I’m drenched. Everyone’s screaming."
Half an hour later, for reasons I won’t go into, I’m ramming a metal gear into a man’s eye socket until blood geysers all over my face. I’m drenched. Everyone’s screaming. Four more men are coming for me, and this blunt steel prong is all I have to kill them with.

I skipped ahead there for two reasons: one, I don’t want to spoil why violence does finally break out in BioShock Infinite. It’s a moment that will become notorious in gaming, and a hard one to forget.

Two, I wanted it to sound jarring, because it is. Extremely, intentionally and upsettingly so. When I ask Ken about it, he describes the intended effect as “biting into an apple and finding the worm at the core”.

It works as that. But it’s also jarring in another way. A moment ago I’d been enthralled by this place, fascinated by how different and fresh it was, hanging on every word of these people’s everyday lives. When I realised my next task was to ram a piece of metal into eight different people until they were all dead, part of me thought, sadly, “Oh yeah. Videogames.”



It’s not a new thought, it only stands out here because Infinite is so superb at conjuring this place and luring you into its story. When I mention it to Ken, he’s sympathetic. “It’s an intensely bizarre concept that you play a character – whether it’s Uncharted, or this game, or even like an Indiana Jones movie – who’s essentially a psychopathic mass murderer. You’re fucking insane. I’m very aware of this issue... it’s something we actually attempt to confront at some point.”

"It’s strange to see white-on-black discrimination so unflinchingly depicted."
The other thing Infinite confronts, with surprising directness, is racism. I’m so used to games having some orc- or elf-based analogue for it that it’s strange to see regular white-on-black discrimination so unflinchingly depicted.

“I didn’t want a game that just had some racism in the background,” says Ken. “I wanted you to be engaged and confront those issues – in the same way we confronted you with what capitalism does when it goes to its maximum extreme.”

“In this game we think it’d be honest to deal with these topics, and these aren’t topics we take lightly, and they’re not necessarily going where you think they’re going. This is not... I don’t want to spoil anything.” Well, mission accomplished.




It’s a very story-driven game – you’re always heading to an excitingly new part of the city with a specific purpose. As far as I played, it never lapses into a formula, which gives it a sense of adventure and discovery that BioShock didn’t always have. And the places it takes you to are what really made me fall in love with it.

"You’re always heading to an excitingly new part of the city. It never lapses into a formula."
I’m in a temple. Soulful gospel music echoes through the dark halls as I wade through knee-deep holy water. Spectacular statues sparkle in shafts of sunlight. A preacher’s speech to his damp-robed congregation crosses the line from passionate to unhinged.

I’m on a beach. There’s actual sand, and an ocean of sorts. I can still see Columbia in the sky... and after a moment I realise I’m still in Columbia. The ocean runs off the edge of this district in a vast, Niagara-style waterfall.

I’m in an exhibit, of sorts. A huge statue of Columbia’s first lady catches beams of brilliant pink light, as plaques tell the story of her life. In the next room, a spectacular diorama has larger-than-life statues of dozens of soldiers tumbling off a cliff, a frozen snapshot of a massacre, shrill opera music blaring out of bad speakers to underscore the unmoving drama.

I’m in a mansion, old and gloomy. Stairs lead up. A banquet hall is to the left, and I see what looks like a butler in there. He’s facing the wall. I walk around to get his attention, but he just stares blankly. I look at the table. It’s piled with rotting food, and there are crows everywhere.



Even taking it slowly, these new places come at a rate and a density of detail that feels like sensory overload. Each one has that depth of story I described earlier: dozens of clues and hints and references and traces of people’s lives and stories. And each one has an extraordinary visual design that makes you stop and gawp.

Most of them, of course, are also battlegrounds. At first, I didn’t think much of Infinite’s combat. Not just its videogameyness in a world that’s otherwise so real; I also felt like I didn’t have a lot of options, and you’re fighting a crazy number of soldiers and turrets. There doesn’t seem to be a good way to avoid getting hit.

"Taking cover gets you cornered. Hooking onto a skyrail and going full throttle makes you too fast to track."
It gets better when skyrails are introduced. Steel tracks worm their way through the plentiful empty space in Columbia, and your sky hook lets you launch yourself onto them and ride them like a rollercoaster. That, ultimately, is how you avoid getting hit. Taking cover usually just gets you cornered by someone you can’t take on at close range, but hooking onto a skyrail and going full throttle makes you too fast to track.

From there, you can aim a jump to any of the various platforms and vantage points, pounce on an enemy with lethal force, or just stay on the rail until it loops around, to get an overview of the war zone.

Your set of abilities expands gradually, and the spaces you’re fighting in get bigger and have more interesting stuff going on in them. So to get a sense of how it scales up, I asked to play a late-game fight.



The first thing I do is hop on a skyrail and take a tour: a bunch of heavily armoured soldiers are shooting at me from a central balcony, some more from a moving airship, and a half-robot giant – a Handyman – is stomping around below.

As I watch, he jumps onto the rail I’m on and sends an electric charge through it, shocking me. I stay on until I’m in a position to pounce on one of the armoured guys on the central balcony. My flying skyhook attack knocks him clear off it, but his partner fights back hard. My shotgun doesn’t do much against him, so I try a new ability: Charge. I fly forwards and slam into him with alarming force, and he goes down.

"Elizabeth's most useful ability is to open a ‘tear’ – a rift in space that brings forth some useful object."
I’m low on health, so I run over to some medkits – or rather, where some medkits could be.

Your companion, Elizabeth, joins you in combat, riding skyrails with you, tossing you ammo, and reviving you when you’re down. But her most useful ability is to open a ‘tear’ – a potential rift in space that brings forth some useful object or feature. You can see all the potential tears in an area in grey fuzzyvision, and ‘use’ one to ask Elizabeth to make it real. She can only sustain one at a time, and by this point in the game, a big combat space like this has at least eight.

So I ask Elizabeth to open the tear in front of me, grab a medkit from the box that appears, and heal myself. I decide to try another new ability: Undertow. As I hold down the right mouse button, a tendril of water creeps out of my hand, curls around the arena, grabs onto the Handyman and sucks him in front of me. Oh, thanks Undertow!



I switch to Shock Jockey and electrocute him while he’s wet, then ask Elizabeth to open a nearby tear that brings in a pool of water. I try to lure the Handyman into it in order to shock him again, but he has an annoying habit of jumping directly to me. He’s pounding me to oblivion with his articulated fists.

I skyrail over to a high balcony to get away. A tear here handily contains a barrel of rocket launchers, so we open it and I grab one. Another tear has an automated turret, so I tell Elizabeth to open that one before we move on.

"Late-game combat is still hectic, but you’ve got a lot of options."
The Handyman chases, and is pelted by both the turret and my rockets as I ride away. He grabs the rail in both hands, but I’m wise to it this time: I drop down just before the current shoots through the metal. I hit him with two more rockets as he leaps around the arena, then use Undertow – intentionally this time. A snake of liquid seeks him out and pulls him to me, and holds him in place for a second. I use the time to back up a little, switch to Charge, and hold down the right mouse button. The moment he’s free, I slam into him full force, and he crumples.

Late-game combat is still hectic, but you’ve got a lot of options and they’re more satisfying than just shooting dudes with the bog-standard weapons. The constant skyrailing and leaping around make it fast, dramatic and acrobatic to play.



I’m glad the combat gets more interesting, but combat wasn’t the most common complaint about BioShock – it was the ending. I ask Ken if he agrees that BioShock got less interesting after the Andrew Ryan encounter. “Yeah,” he says succinctly.

"The ending of the game is the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done, as a company."
I ask if they’ve learnt anything from it, hoping for a post mortem. Instead, he jumps straight to BioShock Infinite.

“I would say that the ending of the game is the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done, as a company. It is either going to be something incredibly wonderful, or people are going to burn down our office... So I can’t tell you whether people will like it or not. I can tell you it is absolutely different to anything you’ve seen in a videogame.”

It’s the sort of ridiculous thing Peter Molyneux would say. But after playing BioShock Infinite, after coming away with an experience I can’t fully express, and after thinking back to the scene in Andrew Ryan’s office in BioShock 1... I half believe it.

Coming to you LIVE from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it's time to celebrate Valentine's Day with Rapture's number one radio dating programme: Would You Kindly! Free from the tyrannical oppression of government broadcasting standards and hosted by the founder of Rapture, Andrew Ryan, Would You Kindly challenges one contestant to choose from three viable paramours (sitting unseen behind a screen) by asking them a series of romance-based questions. So, inject your plasmid of choice, spider-walk to your favorite spot on the ceiling, telekenetically turn up the volume on your radio, and enjoy the show!

 



Good evening, my friends. This is Andrew Ryan. I hope you are enjoying your Valentine's Day celebration. Tonight I wish to remind each of you that RAPTURE, the utopian paradise I founded at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, is still home to your FAVORITE DATING PROGRAMME! WELCOME to another broadcast of... WOULD! YOU! KINDLY!


*RAUCOUS APPLAUSE*




I came up with this programme on my own, without the man in Washington, without the man in the Vatican, without the man in Moscow, to distract you from the fact that my perfect city is filling with water and populated by shrieking lunatics and giggling vampire children.


*hesitant, scattered applause*




Here is how the show works. A young woman shall sit here and ask questions of three viable paramours. She will not be able to gaze upon their visages, nor they hers. At the end of the programme, she will select her favorite and they shall enjoy a romantic excursion to Rapture's most expensive, least water-damaged restaurant, where they will sip tonics and dine upon whatever they can find in the trash bins. That's right, a woman CHOOSES, a viable paramour ACCOMPANIES HER TO DINNER! Let us meet our candidate. Please introduce yourself.






Hello! My name is Faith Connors. I live in a futuristic dystopia where I work as a courier, delivering messages for the revolution by running over the rooftops and using acrobatic maneuvers known as parkour.




And what a striking woman you are! Slim and athletic, you appear to be the product of superior genetic material! I, for one, would not kick you out of my luxurious penthouse bed for being a filthy socialist parasite!


Thank you. I guess.


I would, however, attack you with SWARMS OF STINGING BEES. Now! Let us meet our first paramour! Would you kindly sign in!


Alfred. Come in, Alfred. I've infiltrated Ryan's dating show. They're asking me for some sort of introduction. Access the bat computer to find an appropriately witty response, and contact me when you have it.


He appears to be speaking into some sort of portable longwave radio device. Paramour Two? Would you kindly introduce yourself!


My name is Corvo Attano, but I'm also known as The Masked Felon! I'm a shadowy supernatural assassin in Dunwall, which is also a dystopia. See, we already have something in common!


MASKED FELON! You WON'T get away this time.




What? What are you talking about?






I WILL find you, Masked Felon!






I'm right here. You're sitting next to me.






SILENCE! Paramour Three! Would you kindly sign in!







Paramour Three is not in his chair, but instead appears to be staring at us from across the room and through a window. Very well! Candidate, begin your questioning!




Okay. Paramour One, give me your best pick-up line!






Oracle. I need to you access the mainframe of a popular dating website and compile a list of the most successful pick-up lines. Contact me when you have them.






It's sort of rude to talk into your communicator when I'm talking to you.






Yeah, man. Really.






It's ALL OVER for you, Masked Felon! Did you REALLY think your plan would WORK?






Fellow, what is your deal?






There is NO ESCAPE, Masked Felon! I WILL FIND YOU!






Again, I'm sitting right here. Our knees are almost touching.






Okay, Paramour Two: Describe your perfect date.






Well, it starts with us moving quickly and silently over rooftops and ledges to avoid being seen by patrolling guards.






I'm listening.






Then, we slip down to street level and into my favorite cafe, where I subdue everyone to give us some privacy. Non-lethally, of course!






Nonlethal takedowns? You're speaking my language.






Then, I summon a swarm of rats to eat all the unconscious bodies, and my magic mechanical heart tells me all about you in a voice only I can hear!






Ooh, you lost me at the end there. Nice try! Paramour Three, describe our romantic first encounter.




You are ssstanding in a test chammmber, Miss Con-nors. It is fill-ing with radioactiiive waste. I am watch-ing you frommm... a catwalk.


That's... really weird. But continue.


Our eyes mmmmeet, and time seems... to stand still. This is be-cause I am actually stop-ping time.


I can stop time, too! If the time-stopping thing works for you, I'm all over it.


Your TIME TRICKS won't save you, MASKED FELON!


Guys, shut up. Paramour Three, go on, please. Time is stopped, we're gazing at each other, and...


I approach you. I take your hannnd in mine. And then I ssstore you in di-mennnsional stasis for fff-fifteen years.


There's the horrifying final detail I was waiting for. Out of curiosity, what happens fifteen years later?


Then, it's rise and shine, Miss Con-nors.  Wake up and... smell the omelette.


Well. I guess it's nice that you like to cook breakfast.





He seems to have disappeared. He did not even leave behind the sweat of his brow, which, HERE IN RAPTURE, he would be ENTITLED TO!


I'm starting to think this was a terrible idea.


And you are free to THINK that in RAPTURE, where you cannot be slapped around by GOVERNMENT MUSCLE! FREE from the BOLSHEVIK POISON fed to the masses by ROOSEVELT to--


Calm down. Okay, Paramour One? What do you look for in a woman?


Oracle. I need--


Forget it. Paramour Two, same question.


Physically? Oh, someone about your height, your weight, and with a healthy cone of vision, like yours. And three coins in her pocket.


So... wait, you can see me? You can see through walls?


And then some! I bet Paramour One can't top that!


Female subject is conscious and sitting. Solid skeletal structure. No weapons. Pulse is normal.


So you can both see through walls. You're both just staring at me. Isn't that against the rules?


Rules? Here in RAPTURE, game show hosts do not fear the CENSOR, and are not bound by MORALITY!


Sounds like we've actually got a lot in common, Paramour One.


The GAME IS UP, Masked Felon!


Ugh. Maybe you two peeping toms should just go to dinner with each other. Um... hello?


They appear to have choked each other unconscious.


Swell. Just tell me the quickest roof out of here and I'll be on my way.


And that brings us to the end of WOULD YOU KINDLY! Please enjoy this promotional clip from our next episode!


Did I ever tell you... what the definition... of romantic is? Romantic is when I give you a dozen roses and a box of candy... over and over again... and expect nothing in return. That. Is. Romantic. A florist told me that. I thought he was bullshitting me, so I shot him.


I think I am going to pass.

Here's a rather splendid new trailer for Bioshock Infinite; one that packs together grand vistas of the soaring city of Columbia, insight into its fire-and-brimstone ruler Zachary Comstock, and plenty of explosive combat against men and monstrosities. It's also likely to be the only trailer you'll see today that features a minigun-toting mechanical George Washington.

He only makes a brief appearance, but Comstock seems set to be a great character. His zealous, patriotic fervour seems like a nice counterpoint to the grand idealism of Bioshock's Andrew Ryan.

Also: a game trailer made entirely from footage of said game! What a novel idea. We approve.

This week has seen the release of several pre-rendered cinematic trailers. Exciting though they were, brows were raised, then furrowed, then frowned in the PCG office as we noted how precious little these dramatic scenes reflected the actual action of the game.

It need not be so. Even fully pre-rendered trailers can do a better job of encapsulating the games they promote - and probably do a better job of selling them too. We cast our minds back to our favourite trailers of yore, and picked out the five that we felt best captured the games within, while offering visuals that are every bit as thrilling, powerful and cool.

Supreme Commander
 


Save for a snippet of pre-rendered CGI at the beginning, this is pretty much just an expertly-edited grab from the game itself. Not only does this, succinctly explain the action and features of the game, but it creates an epic four-minute trajectory of awesome escalation. Then the camera pans back from what seemed surely to be its climax, to reveal yet another immense level of robotic carnage. Even now, six years after Supreme Commander’s release, the trailer still makes it look like the ultimate future of the RTS.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
 


A cinematic trailer done right, Human Revolution’s pre-rendered preamble introduces us to the world with expert scene-setting. It quickly sketches out the themes and setting, establishing Jensen as an embittered cyborg with super powerful robo-arms, a vengeful purpose and uncertain allegiance. And then its action sequences, while slightly more fluid and dramatic than possible in game, do describe powers at the player’s disposal: invisibility, x-ray vision, and retractable elbow chisels. It may have flash camera angles, bespoke mo-cap, and sumptuous subsurface scattering - but it’s an honest evocation of the glories of the game itself.

Team Fortress 2
 


The jaunty crime-caper music and freeze-frame introductions make it clear: TF2 doesn’t have classes so much as characters. The game’s team-shooter action takes a backseat here to showcasing the vibrant art-style and humour, as well as articulating the distinct roles and capabilities of each of TF2’s nine classes. A multiplayer shooter might normally offer scant cinematic thrills, or struggle to communicate what it’s about without a dry breakdown of its mechanics - TF2 elegantly dances round these problems without being disingenuous about the game’s contents.

BioShock
 


There’s no in-game footage here, but BioShock’s trailer nonetheless captures a tremendous amount of the game within its short three-minute running time. Its opening panning shot establishes Rapture - its majesty, its dereliction and the ideals that created it. Then the trailer quickly and unexpectedly segues into a thrilling action scene, witnessed in firstperson. The ferocious combat seen here is more dynamic than that of the game, certainly, but the battle establishes the core relationship of the game: that between the little sisters and the big daddies. And, by putting you in the head of an child-stealing aggressor, also demonstrates the game’s ambiguous moralities.

GTA 4
 


There’s little in the way of explicit action in this trailer, even though it’s shot within the game engine itself. Action isn’t what the trailer is selling, however - it’s selling the city itself. As Niko struts through its succession of quick cuts, the sheer variety of Liberty City is elegantly illustrated, and Niko’s many guises suggests at the freedom the player will have to self-define within that space. Meanwhile, the exquisitely cool LCD Soundsystem track reaffirms Rockstar as gaming’s foremost tastemakers. It’s a brilliantly simple and boldly idiosyncratic trailer, intriguing and evocative in equal measure.

Blocky recreations of BioShock's city beneath the sea are a popular construction choice for Minecraft's watery areas. Builders Kevin, Jake, and Stewie of the HungerCraft community chose the impossible, sinking their Rapture remake entirely underwater with meticulous detail. The scale and sheer complexity of their project would impress even the industrious Andrew Ryan, I suspect.

This version of Rapture also happens to be the next arena for HungerCraft's upcoming multiplayer match on January 19 themed around—you guessed it—author Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series. A playthrough video of an early build (via FPS General) synchronizes the opening moments of BioShock quite seamlessly with the map, including the swim to the rain-drenched lighthouse and the bathysphere descent to the briny depths.

HungerCraft is holding a random drawing for participating in the match, which you can sign up for after registering on the forums.

Face Off pits two gladiators against each other as they tackle gaming's most perplexing conundrums. This New Year's Eve edition is a chronological throw-down: which decade gave PC gaming the most? Podcast Producer Erik Belsaas says it was the '90s—the origin of modern PC gaming. Executive Editor Evan Lahti insists it was the '00s, with its speedy internet, better PCs, and shinier graphics engines.

Evan: The 1990s had the CD-ROM and the McRib sandwich. The ‘00s had Windows XP and two terrible Star Wars movies. I think the latter birthed better games: the Battlefield series, Crysis, Company of Heroes, BioShock, Dragon Age: Origins, Guild Wars, The Sims, Rome: Total War, Star Wars: KOTOR, and the best Civilization games happened then. What've you got, Erik?

Erik: Lucasarts, id, Ion Storm, Interplay, Blizzard: the iconic names that created franchises that we still discuss today. “RTS,” “FPS,” and “MMO” had no meaning before the pioneers of the '90s came along with some-thing other than sequels and rehashes: Baldur's Gate, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, MechWarrior, Unreal Tournament and every LucasArts adventure game from Sam & Max to Grim Fandango.

Evan: This is going to devolve into who can name-drop more game titles, isn't it?

Erik: Pretty much.

Evan: Cool. In that case, let’s put the best we've got on the page. What are the top three games from your decade? Mine: WoW, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life 2.

Erik: Just three? How about X-COM, Fallout, and The Secret of Monkey Island. Timeless classics that we still play today.

Evan: Is that the best that the decade that gave us the Spice Girls has got, grandpa? The innovations of the '00s will last far longer. Half-Life 2 wasn't just the basis for the way modern action games tell stories, it’s the technological foundation for the most ambitious mods we have today and the preferred canvas for machinima creators. World of Warcraft’s meteoric rise brought PC gaming into popular culture, ruined innumerable marriages, and earned its own South Park episode. Top that.

Erik:Your great games are all parts of established franchises that began in the '90s. For that matter, the original Counter-Strike mod came out in 1999, before Valve turned it into a retail product! Take away the names that began in the '90s, the '00s would've created very little of their own.

Evan: Megabyte for megabyte, I’d rather replay Half-Life 2 than its predecessor. Likewise for Diablo II, Warcraft III, Fallout 3 and other major franchises that began in the '90s but matured in the '00s. I really think that the tech of the '00s (better operating systems, fast internet, faster PCs) produced better gaming experiences. EVE Online couldn't exist in the '90s. Team Fortress 2's dozens of free content updates couldn't have streamed down our wimpy modems—the same goes for 25-man WoW raids or a heavily modded playthrough of Oblivion or Morrowind.

Erik: You've got a short memory. EverQuest allowed 72-man raids. And before Oblivion and Morrowind came Daggerfall, which was amazing and heavily modded. Doom, the father of modding, came out in '93.

Evan: I’ll play your game, Belsaas. Here's my ace: Deus Ex, our most favorite game ever, happened in 2000.

Erik: Deus Ex is a good game...but how about StarCraft? Has any other game absolutely defined its genre or rallied an entire nation behind it like a sport?



Evan: I was worried you’d play the Korea card. What can I counter that with? The 100-million-selling main-stream success of The Sims? The booming popularity of independent gaming? ...Peggle?

Erik: Peggle? Well I’ve got...you know...uh...Carmen Sandiego. Fine. Peggle wins.

Irrational have just posted a video showing the first few minutes of Bioshock Infinite. That's the first minutes of actual campaign footage, not the minutes directly after loading up the game. That trailer would be a parade of splash screens followed by someone meticulously combing through all the option menus to make sure everything was set up properly. No, this has... well, spoilers, obviously. See the trailer below.



Is this the start of a promotional campaign that will systematically run through the entire game in five minute chunks? Unlikely. And yes, in case you're wondering - the reason I'm not talking about what's in the video is because I made it as far as the opening quote before deciding to just wait for the game to come out. Was it good?