2K Boston

Disclosure: This post has nothing to do with gender, sexism, or the like.

Playing inFamous made me think of other games that I've played where I have the ability to make choices that effect the story or other parts of the game—to be "good" or "evil" so to speak. And after some thought on the subject, I discovered I was hungry and made a sandwich. After that, games such as Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, BioShock, Morrowind/Oblivion, and Fallout 3 came to mind. The question that I pose is this—what makes a good way to allow the player to "choose" their path while not pandering to ideological extremes and still providing an engrossing experience? Ideally I would be able to chose virtually any action I wanted, and have the game respond accordingly regardless of what I chose. Is this even possible? Or has it been done already?

So via Critical Distance I found this feminist critique of BioShock, written by Richard Terrell (who, you may have noticed, is a man). But it is really not sitting right with me. His thesis is that BioShock depicts women as weak and men as strong. So I thought the rest of the article would try to show how BioShock upholds patriarchal values.

I think we were all pretty excited by the idea of Gore Verbinski directing the cinematic adaptation of 2K Games' BioShock. Unfortunately, though, the global economy and other issues killed that dream and cast the future of the project into doubt—at least it did until last night.

Variety is reporting that director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo is currently in negotiations to take over the project.

While Fresnadillo isn't a household name, he did direct 28 Weeks Later—which was nice piece of apocalyptic zombie cinema. The style he displayed behind the camera in that film certainly gives me hope for BioShock.

This isn't official yet, but I'll keep you posted as details emerge.

Bad news for anyone hoping for another trip to the underwater utopia of Rapture this year. Shacknews is reporting that BioShock 2 has been delayed. The title has shifted from its original November 3rd street date to a much more vague "sometime in the first six months of 2010".

Once the wave of initial disappointment wears off, this might actually be for the best. Releasing Bioshock 2 in November makes sense (it's out in time for the holiday rush), but as we all know that's a window where there are too many games and not enough time to play them all. Moving it to sometime after the holidays (or even to June of 2010) gives gamers a triple A title to look forward to during what is the biggest gaming drought period of the year, and it pretty much guarantees that Take Two will sell more units as there's not much in the way of competition. Metal Gear Solid 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV released in a similar fashion and both did well. There's no reason to expect that BioShock 2 won't reap the same benefits.

That being said, it's still a bummer. I was really looking forward to duking it out with Big Sisters this November…