This is a Bioshock prototype image from early builds, but it still demonstrates the terror.

First Person Shooters (FPSs for short), are not the kind of games I recommend to everyone. Currently, yes, they are everywhere in video games, but not everyone can get into them or really enjoy them. I am terrible at FPSs and therefore, I prefer not to play them when given the choice. However, there are some FPSs that I’ve played and that I really enjoy. One such example is Bioshock for the Xbox 360, PS3, and now PC, and it’s a Game You Should Have Played.

A Plot Worthy of a Movie

That is terrifying. Like Spider-Man combined with a mutated ex-girlfriend.

Bioshock revolves around the character of Jack as he survives a plane crash during the year 1960. He swims to the only land nearby which happens to be a lighthouse-like structure that serves as the entrance to an underwater city known as Rapture. Not too long into the game you are helped by a man named Atlas as the city is, surprisingly, in total chaos and swarming with genetically altered humans called “Splicers.” The villain is the creator of Rapture, a one Andrew Ryan. You will very quickly learn to fear and loath Andrew Ryan.

Beyond just acquiring guns, you have Plasmids at your arsenal. What is a Plasmid? Think of them as super powers and you’re set. You can fire lightning, fire, ice, bees, levitate things, and all for the purpose of escaping the city, but not before killing Ryan and probably a bunch of Little Sisters in the process.

Wait, you don’t know what a Little Sister is? Well what about a Big Daddy? Ah, you’ll find out. That thing on the game’s front cover? That’s a Big Daddy. Lightly put, Big Daddies will ruin your face and you in turn will ruin your shorts. Every Little Sister has a Big Daddy following them around, and if you can kill a Big Daddy you can decide to save the Little Sister or harvest her for Adam. What’s Adam? Okay, seriously, no more questions.

Focus on Plot, Not Random Shooting

The key focus of the game does not revolve around shooting everything that moves (though you will be doing a lot of that). The plot for this game is frankly one of the best plots for any game to recently come out. I was genuinely interested to find out more about this world. The entirety of Rapture’s history is conveyed to you via radio diaries that you can find scattered all over the game. They are entirely optional to find, but you’ll soon discover yourself scouring every last corner to find them all.

In short, the backstory is so intriguing that I’m salivating at the very thought of a novelization (why books make me salivate I am unclear).

Possibly the only aspect of gameplay you may take offense with has to do with the difficulty. The game is…not exactly difficult and this is all because you have no penalty for death, nor does it do much except inconvenience you slightly by ...

Looks promising, doesn't it?

I am a fan of Ninja Turtles . I am not a fan of remakes. There are some exceptions to each of those rules, but typically they hold true. Turtles in Time for the SNES is one of my favorite Super Nintendo games and for good reason beyond just having Ninja Turtles in it. Turtles in Time Re-Shelled is an Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network remake from the 2D sprite beat ‘em up to a 3D rendered cash-in. So let’s get this gravy train rolling!

When I heard that Turtles in Time would be remade for the Turtles’ 25th anniversary I was extremely skeptical. Mainly I wanted to know why they felt they needed to remake an already fantastic game. What’s the point? The game was great, so what needed to be changed? From the standpoint of both a gamer and a Turtles fan, I only had one suggestion: Something new. We don’t get that here. We get some shag carpet tacked over hardwood floors.

Turtles in Time was a perfect combination of all its elements into something greater as a whole. The levels were fun and vibrant, the animations were cartoony and exactly what we’d expect from Ninja Turtles, hit detection was perfect and hitting things FELT good, the game wasn’t overly long or overly short, and the music was slap-your-fanny amazing. I still listen to the soundtrack to both the SNES and the arcade versions every so often because the music gets me that jazzed.

Graphically sound; nostalgically blah.

Re-Shelled doesn’t keep anything from the original save for locations and enemies. Graphically it gets bumped up to include 3D models of everything but in the process all the life is sucked out of the Turtles. Now they look bland and “cool.” When I say “cool,” I’m talking the Poochie-style “Hey kids, this is cool and edgy and you’ll love it” brand of cool that fails to understand the point. Graphics look good but don’t do the mate...

I still place this above most other games. Can anything change my mind?

I love video games. I play them frequently (and sometimes write about them, as you may have noticed). I always get excited with every new Mario and Zelda game , or anything that seems to interest me beyond a simple, “Oh, that looks like a fun game to rent.” But when I get down to it I always inevitably say to myself, “Yeah, this is good, but it’s no Mario Bros 3 / Ocarina of Time / Final Fantasy 6 .” Why is that? I know I’m not the only one to think this way. We’ve got to a point where we’re demanding games replicate our favorites from the past, but when they can’t we throw a fit. Can we ever make a new “Perfect Game?” Let’s Think Deep.

The Problem With Perfection

A good recent game to use as a jumping point here is New Super Mario Bros Wii, a game that borrows heavily from the classic Mario games, specifically Super Mario Bros 3 and Super Mario World. It seems almost like a “greatest hits” from the 2-D Mario platformers. I loved it. I wrote about this on more than one occasion. I stand by my statements. But I didn’t like it as much as Mario Bros 3. Why? Because it wasn’t Mario Bros 3. That’s not a very fair thing to say, but it just didn’t wow me like Mario Bros 3 did when I was a wee child. Perhaps the nostalgic aspect got in the way and forced me to find a qualifier somewhere, so that when I said, “This game is amazing!” it didn’t somehow, in some way, obliterate the memories of my childhood past. I simply can’t allow myself to like a Mario game more than 3, purely because I remember childhood as something wonderful and the world today as something bleak. How can something from a place that’s bleak outshine something from a world that was wonderful?

Can I ever separate this moment from my mind when playing new Zelda titles?

The same problem presented itself when I played through Twilight Princess . I thought Twilight Princess was one of the best Zelda games, let alone best games, I’d ever played. I’d rank it somewhere within my top 15 games of all time. But I couldn’t bring myself to like it more than Ocarina of Time. “Oh wow, this is so cool! Uh, but, Ocarina was better.” Was it really? It’s impossible to tell since at the time of its release, Ocarina of Time was the absolute peak of adventure-style video gaming. It was, to me (and many others), the perfect game. If you’ve never played it before and try playing it now, you might not really agree with that statement. In fact, you may think I’m crazy for ever liking the game in the first place. It just holds so much of my childhood in it that it becomes hard to separate it from what it is and how I remember it.

Retro Is In

There has been a big push from major developers as of late to search back through their “classic” games and find some gold to resell, either in a remake of the classic or in a straight port to one of the online networks. Nintendo hit on a great concept with the Virtual...