Well, it certainly took a while :b but here I am talking about BioShock and as bonus, the sequel BioShock 2.
I played the first BioShock in 2007-2008, and without a doubt it is one of the best games I have played, BioShock is one of the few games I would think would pose as an example of "Games as Art", not only it has superb art design but also had top-of-the-line graphics (the PC version was one of the first games to use DirectX 10 effects, the Xbox 360 in contrast uses DirectX 9), and philosophical themes (rooted deeply in Ayn Rand's Objectivism). But all that is background since BioShock plays like a standard First Person Shooter, albeit a very good one.
You play as Jack, the sole survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic who amidst the flaming wreckage finds a lighthouse and in it, a bathysphere that takes him to Rapture, an underwater city built by business tycoon and ardent objectivist Andrew Ryan (a play on Ayn Rand); this city was built as an utopia where people would be free from collectivist constrains, however the city has collapsed into rioting and a turf war between the founder Ryan and a mob boss called Fontaine. Why has Jack arrived to the city of Rapture at this precise time?
The Rapture economy's backbone is a substance called "Adam" which allows its user to re-write her genetic code to acquire super-human abilities, this substance must be harvested by especially trained little girls called "Little Sisters" who are also the only one who can produce this substance thanks to a surgical implant on them. Because of their value the Little Sisters are always escorted by a "Big Daddy" to serve as her protector. While playing the game you will encounter them roaming all over Rapture and if you are able to defeat their Big Daddy you have the option of killing them and taking all their Adam for yourself, or freeing them on which you will obtain only half of the Adam. (Ultimately you obtain the same amount of Adam in the endgame so...).
The levels are beautifully detailed with a lot of Art Deco / Art Noveau influence, and the gameplay is very good, always finding new ways to combine powers to survive in Rapture.
BioShock was critically acclaimed and became a staple of classic gaming, as such a sequel was released in 2010.
BioShock 2 plays very similarly to BioShock 1, in this game you play as "Subject Delta", the prototype Big Daddy, the action takes place 8 years after the first game, and in this part since you are a Big Daddy you can experience firsthand what it is to adopt a Little Sister and protect her from attackers. The story lets you explore another facet of Rapture in which a collectivist called Sophia Lamb opposed Ryan and eventually took control of Rapture after the events of Bioshock 1.
In addition to the mutated dwellers of Rapture, the Big Daddies and Little Sisters, BioShock 2 introduces the "Big Sisters" to the equation, which are grown-up Little Sisters, in this case after dealing with all Little Sisters of a level a Big Sister will appear and attack you, acting as a boss encounter.
Although it is not a bad game BioShock 2 lacked a little of the impact the first one had, on the other hand the sequel does include some underwater sequences, something that was conspicuously absent from the first game.
BioShock and BioShock 2 are very good games, and the first one is definitely a classic which you must play.
There is a third game to be released in February 2013, BioShock Infinite, developed by Ken Levine, the main developer of the first game. This game will probably not have any connections to the other two.
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