Rapture is art..

I wanted to share with you a few paragraphs from our GOTY Awards that weren't used for whatever reason. Enjoy!

The one thing that makes Bioshock stand out from all the other PC games that were released in 2007 is Rapture. Sure, all of the powers, characters, stories and plot twists ice the cake, but it is the environment alone that sets this game apart from any other game that has been released in 2007.

Bioshock introduces players to a truly unique setting, a technologically advanced civilization deep below the ocean. The first time you see it's glass domes, walkways and Las Vegas style neon lighting, you imagine a utopia. Oddly enough many of its first settlers felt the same way. But as soon as you try to enter the interior of this fantastic network of neon lit fishbowls built with the money of some lunatic millionaire, reality shakes you and you realize that this isn't paradise at all; this is hell 40,000 leagues under the sea.

Then you hit the ground running, listening to the radio chatter in your ear, trying to figure out just what the hell is going on here while avoiding whatever these things are trying to kill you. From this disturbing introduction to Rapture, Bioshock becomes a series of firsts for a little while; the first time you use a plasmid and your fingers light up with electricity; the first time you hack a machine by putting little pipes together before the fluid gets too far; the first time you hack a and watch it mow down a group of; your first battle with a big brother and a little sister; the first time you modify your weapon to lethal perfection; and the first time you listen to the haunting soundtrack echo through seemingly empty chambers and walkways filled with broken ceilings, dripping water, and the corpses of long dead inhabitants strewn everywhere like offal.

If any game could be called art, it's this one. Rapture is the canvas on which something beautiful has been made and the colors, the brush strokes and the texturing are all the other wonderful things that populate the world and bring it to life. - anon.