If you haven’t played or finished BioShock yet, skip this post. That is, unless you have no plans whatsoever of playing or finishing said game. In that case, continue reading, please!

I stayed up until nearly 1 a.m. on Thursday night/Friday morning last week playing BioShock, and if I could have stayed up later than that, I would have. I ended the night with the revelation behind who Atlas was and who Jack really was. I walked away after impaling a golf putter in Andrew Ryan’s brain while he was demanding I figure out if I was a man or slave. Spoiler, Mr. Ryan…I’m neither as I’m a girl.

I was seriously blown away. I had theories in my brain, but I was way off. I never truly saw any of this coming, including the hints behind the phrase, “would you kindly.”

That said, the game was a bit of a let-down from that point on. The only revelation after that was learning of the demise of the awful Dr. Suchong. Even the boss fight was a massive disappointment. I beefed myself up and carried as many health and EVE packs as I could…and I didn’t need even half of them. Even my ending was just okay. If you’re curious, I got the unicorns and rainbows ending. I saw the evil ending on YouTube, and it barely made sense to me. After saving himself, just because he harvested a Little Sister or 10, he automatically becomes so evil he hijacks a nuclear sub? Huh? At least my rainbow ending made sense.

I’m very glad that I played through BioShock, and I can’t wait for BioShock Infinite next year. But now, I need to get my ass in gear. It’s time to focus on The Witcher 2, Prototype 2, and most likely, Game of Thrones and Dragon’s Dogma. I’ve made a dent in my stack of shame, but I’ve sacrificed my to-do list in the process. And game devs, ya ain’t helping by releasing all these good RPGs.

This is a horrible problem to have, I know, but we will get through it.

It’s amazing at how much can change with one simple EvilCast podcast. This past week, while recording, I was discussing what games I was playing like we do every week. I said I was burning through my Stack of Shame with the completion of Halo 3 last week, and I’ve started Resistance 2. Somehow, that got the conversation shifting to what I should be playing right now vs. what I am playing, so the entire crew “helped” me reorganize the priority list of my Stack of Shame. It was unanimously voted that I drop Resistance 2 immediately and move it down my list. Then it was almost unanimously voted that I play BioShock immediately. The one person who did not vote for BioShock had not played BioShock, so he couldn’t fully comment.

I agreed, and I reorganized my stack into how it is on the right. No, Assassin’s Creed Revelations was not in the voting pool, but it has to take priority soon. Even with an impending copyright infringement lawsuit, I believe that Assassin’s Creed 3 will release on schedule, and therefore, I need to be prepared. And yes, I’m going to somehow do this while I keep my current review schedule. In unrelated news, I may not finish The Witcher 2 until the end of the year.

So I did start BioShock on Friday. I have a rare talent in keeping blind to spoilers of pretty much any game. The only one I failed at was FFVII, but to be fair, that game is 15 years old. And playing Crisis Core first wouldn’t have helped matters at all anyway. But I digress. The point in me saying that I have such a talent was to explain that I knew absolutely nothing about BioShock before playing other than the fact that it takes place in a utopia under water. Oh, and I knew that all screenshots of Big Daddies and Little Sisters creeped me the fuck out. The main reason why I had put off playing it for so long, despite the critical acclaim, was that I was afraid it would be scary. I’m not a fan of horror and suspense, and Gears of War and Resistance have put me on enough edge about things jumping out at me in the dark. Everyone assured me that it would not scare me. I double-checked with another horror-pansy friend, and he affirmed what my friends said.

And so, I took the plunge. And I was definitely not prepared for what was waiting for me.

It’s true that it isn’t scaring me, but it’s so damn disturbing that that makes it scary enough. I’ve only played for a few hours, and that was enough to make me take a mental break for a bit. I had no idea what I was in store for, but this certainly wasn’t anywhere near my mind. The writers behind this mess could give Stephen King a run for his money when it comes to the mind fuck.

The gameplay was also a huge surprise to me. I knew it was FPS, and that’s all I thought it was. In some ways, I wish that’s all it was, because I really hate coming across my burn victims. If I didn’t have to search them for money and bullets, I’d completely ignore them, but ugh, I have to look. And it really ain’t pretty. So damn disturbing.

While I’m getting all of these genetic powers to do horrible things to people, do I ever get an upgrade for running? Jack really sucks at getting away from Big Daddies. All I want is the ability to run. I think all Jack can do is walk fast, but if you press the analog stick too hard, the jerk walks fast while crouching, which means he doesn’t do anything quickly but die. Jerk.

I love these guys.

Let me just get this out of the way: the ending to Halo 2 was unbelievably awful. Or, should I say non-ending? The non-ending to Final Fantasy XIII-2 was better than that. But all in all, Halo 2 was unbelievably awful. I might have felt differently back when it first released, but eh, it definitely didn’t age well.

So let’s move on to Halo 3, a far superior game in practically every way. What do I love about Halo 3?

• No Cortana yammering in my ear. I don’t like her creepy holographic flashbacks either, but at least she’s not always telling me what to do like a computerized Navi.
• Fighting with the Arbiter and the Covenant Elites is always hilarious. Their comments completely crack me up; although, their hilarity will never top the Covenant Grunts.
• I’ve only run into the Flood once, and I’m in the 7th chapter of 9.
• My Marine teammates stay alive longer than 5 seconds.

That said, I have learned the hard way to never ride with AI drivers for very long. And really, I can’t win in these situations. I tried driving, but then they wouldn’t shoot at what I needed and we died. If I man the turret, they will drive directly toward a Wraith tank and kill us. Or they’ll get the damn Warthog stuck on a rock, thereby forcing me to get out of the Warthog and toss a grenade under the rock so that the vehicle will dislodge itself. Sometimes the Marines hop out of the Warthog. Sometimes they don’t. And then they die. The Scorpion tank is by far the best Marine vehicle in that I can drive AND shoot at the same time. Too bad they don’t give enough tank missions.

So essentially, whenever I’m in a vehicle situation, I man the turret until we take down a Ghost or a Prowler. I then jump out and run screaming toward the enemy vehicle and live ten times longer than any other Marine vehicle. Idiot drivers.

And how am I doing with Witcher 2? I’m never going to complete the first chapter, thanks to all of these sidequests. At least with this game, unlike Reckoning, all of these sidequests feel like they matter in what is going on with the world. I’ll let you know in 60 hours.