Numerous years ago, Hollywood went through a "people trapped underwater" phase, a renaissance of sorts (not really) that produced such classics as The Abyss, Leviathan, and the always entertaining man versus hamburger romp, Deep Star Six. Good times were had by all, but such deep sea shenanigans have never dominated the videogame scene until E3 2006, when 2K Games wowed attendees with Bioshock. Developed by Irrational Games, the team behind the celebrated System Shock 2, Bioshock is a creepy underwater action adventure game that, while it could certainly use a few mutant hamburgers, is not only one of the best looking videogames, but also pretty damn terrifying.

Bioshock's narrative revolves around the underwater city of Rapture, a place that time forgot. Created in the 1940s as a refuge for people seeking to say goodbye to the rest of the world, its architecture reflects the time period. Art deco covers the place like muscles on an old pier, and there's plenty more that reflects the time period such as records and rudimentary traps that have obviously been pieced together by humans with MacGyver-like intelligence. It's also been the scene of some unfortunate trauma. Not only have its many denizens gone missing, but the ocean has been busy poking it with its salty fingers. Thus, some areas of the city are quite flooded.

Since the game's story isn't finished, there's still plenty of unanswered questions, the most important being A.) Why has the main character traveled down here, and B.) Just who in the hell is the main character? You see, at the onset, you have no clue who you are, so part of the mystery is uncovering your identity as well as your purpose in life. The other is finding out what's been going on down here.

To do this, you'll collect voice recordings that have been littered about Rapture. Similar to Doom 3, these voices from beyond the grave should fill in most of the pieces, and if they're anything like id's sci-fi extravaganza, some if not all of them will be downright creepy. That's one of Irrational's primary goals, to make Bioshock a terrifying experience, and based on what I've seen, the developers are succeeding in their goal. Similar to the classic film, Aliens, the game has this fantastic looking derelict colony that piques the imagination, and with any luck, Irrational Games has populated it with all sorts of horrors just waiting to spring upon unsuspecting gamers.

The demo that I saw was quite brief, but detailed enough to give me a good idea in the direction Irrational's traveling. Basically, the people down here were messing around with gene modifiers or something to that effect, essentially meddling in affairs that do not concern them, and some of Rapture's inhabitants took too many of them and were turned into monsters. There's also this substance called Adam that everyone/thing (including you) is after. I'm not exactly sure what Adam is, but I do know that it's a substance found in the many corpses littered about the environment, and that it can be easily harvested.

During the demonstration the main character happened upon a Big Daddy, this strange weirdo that wears old school deep sea diving equipment, the type that features a little window that opens and shuts where a person's face would be. Now unless he's provoked he's not a threat, so left to his own devices, he lumbers around and goes about his business. But when pissed off, a Big Daddy will pretty much kick your ass, especially early on, so it's best to just leave him alone. Besides, doing so sometimes rewards you with a rather disturbing scene. The guy walks up to a vent, the vent opens, and out pops this pale and creepy little girl (sans deep sea diving equipment) known as the Little Sister. Now ugly little girls are bad enough, but what she does makes her even worse. She walks up to a corpse, looks over her shoulder at Big Daddy and exclaims something to the effect of, "Look Big Daddy! Adam!" Then she produces a needle/drill and plunges it into the body, and when she's finished extracting the resource she downs it like a protein shake before crawling back from whence she came.

Now if you want to break up this intimate moment you can invade the terrible twosome's personal space, and doing so causes the Little Sister to scream and run for cover. The Big Daddy, however, does not retreat. He actually goes into defensive mode and attempts to protect the little girl, and to calm him down, you'll have to run like hell. Once he doesn't see you as a threat, he'll return to his normal routine.

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