And Now For Something Completely Different---Underwater Objectivists
I'm not kidding.
WordGirl and I are currently addicted to The Greatest Videogame Ever: "Bioshock."
I picked it up just before the holiday weekend as a surprise for WG, figuring that the mix of style and shooting would prove irresistable. Hours and hours and red, watery eyes later, I was right.
The conceit of "Bioshock" is pure genius.
In the 50s, a man holding essentially to the Objectivist teachings of Ayn Rand decided to fund a community immune from the restrictions of State and Church. He decided to build it at the bottom of the sea, and call it Rapture. Moreover, he decided to make it an Art Deco dreamworld.
The player winds up in Rapture some years later, when his plane crashes into the ocean in 1960 near the spot where a bathysphere to Rapture docks. From that point on, the game is a quest to survive, while learning all about Rapture and what has happened to it, in many ways a natural consequence of Randian philosophy.
Oh, there's shooting---lots of shooting. But there's also a surprisingly deep mythology at play here, a story behind the story which is compelling and makes the game seem more like a movie than anything else.
Excellent, well worth your time, and growing proof that the major art form today is moving from film to videogames, now in their Golden Age.
WordGirl and I are currently addicted to The Greatest Videogame Ever: "Bioshock."
I picked it up just before the holiday weekend as a surprise for WG, figuring that the mix of style and shooting would prove irresistable. Hours and hours and red, watery eyes later, I was right.
The conceit of "Bioshock" is pure genius.
In the 50s, a man holding essentially to the Objectivist teachings of Ayn Rand decided to fund a community immune from the restrictions of State and Church. He decided to build it at the bottom of the sea, and call it Rapture. Moreover, he decided to make it an Art Deco dreamworld.
The player winds up in Rapture some years later, when his plane crashes into the ocean in 1960 near the spot where a bathysphere to Rapture docks. From that point on, the game is a quest to survive, while learning all about Rapture and what has happened to it, in many ways a natural consequence of Randian philosophy.
Oh, there's shooting---lots of shooting. But there's also a surprisingly deep mythology at play here, a story behind the story which is compelling and makes the game seem more like a movie than anything else.
Excellent, well worth your time, and growing proof that the major art form today is moving from film to videogames, now in their Golden Age.
Labels: Games
posted by Teflon at 3:41 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Teflon, your post was exciting and intriguing enough to follow up and share with a dyed-in-the-wool underwater (ex-submariner) Objectivist. Doubt that you two would have very much beyond intellect in common, and am as interested as you to read his reaction (which usually takes a while):
My comment about your post was left at his Tuesday, September 04, 2007 post here: http://gusvanhorn.blogspot.com/
Hope we both enjoy.
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