BioShock is a masterpiece of a game, stunning in its looks, execution, story and sheer, visceral impact. If you've ever publicly uttered some variant of that "video games are not art" line, BioShock makes you a liar and a fool virtually simultaneously. It ends too quickly, as do most of the best things, but while it lasts, the ride is Rapture -- literally, in this case.

Rapture is the name given to a dream of undersea utopia gone terribly wrong -- a failed underwater-community experiment into which players are thrust, with little hope of escape. As a game environment, it's brilliant -- you can explore all you want, picking up crucial pieces of the plot from the clunky tape recorders to be found throughout the underwater city. The ever-present sense of claustrophobia and lurking failure/doom about Rapture is what can only be called spectacularly oppressive, and is only matched by the Rapture denizens themselves -- a population of long-isolated, hopelessly tweaked-up genetic freaks who started off by losing their utopian vision, and stayed along for the ride as things got worse ...and worse ...and worse... You need to survive this place somehow ...but at what cost?

The "good" news (for lack of a better word) is that you have the ability to "survival up" -- to "splice" yourself with the same kind of genetic super-science-run-amok that has turned the Rapture folks into blood-hungry threats (it's not really a matter of if you're going to start in with the bio-grafted weapons in this lost, creaking undersea dream, but how soon and how bad). The bad news is... well, there's a lot of bad news, but much of it revolves around the "Little Sisters" -- the mutated-but-adorable little girls that carry the genetic material necessary for you to improve your abilities (and chances of survival): Each time you "harvest" one of them, you get a huge increase in the old survival-modification genetic bank-account.

That's right, the game's scheme for increasing your survival odds hinges on the killing (or not) of the little girls for "fuel," and the designers make damn sure that the Little Sisters are nice and human and huggable and guilt-trippingly heart-ripping. You get to balance your potential power with your humanity, and the game makes it nice and clear just what you are becoming as you make your choices throughout. Yeah, it's pretty nasty. It's a deep story with twists and revelations aplenty, and that's all you need to know -- to say anything more just wouldn't be right. This is no mere game, it's an experience.

Of course, there's much more here than a critical moral dilemma. It's a first-person action adventure, after all, and you'll have access to telekinetic and pyrokinetic abilities, computer hacking and other puzzle-solving elements, and a host of the traditional weapon types (with various possible upgrades).

One of the (many) great things about BioShock is that there usually isn't any single "one way" to get around obstacles, so players can compare notes afterwards on how they've chosen to attack the game's challenges. The voice acting and narrative presentation are all top-shelf, the environments and ambient audio are spectacular, and the control is excellent.

One genuine bummer -- it's always something with these game-critics, innit? -- is that the game is relatively short (about 25 hours), and in a world this awesomely-presented, it's hard not to want, well, more. At least it's worth more than one play, as the choices on makes in the game really mean something (another lesson the gaming world can take from BioShock).

There's no multiplayer, of course, but BioShock doesn't need it; it's not what you're here for -- and frankly, you'll have enough on your plate, in your eyes and on your conscience as it is. BioShock is a must-play.