Welcome to Rapture ... again

Just finished playing through Bioshock 2 on Xbox for the second time.

Those of you who are gamers probably are familiar with Bioshock even if you haven't played it.

The premise of the game is thus: Rapture is an underwater city created by Andrew Ryan who believed people should live as they want to, free of government and religion telling them how to live their lives.

Part of Ryan's "utopia" is that his scientists have developed a way for people to genetically alter themselves so that they can throw electric shocks, incinerate with fire, use telekinesis to manipulate objects ... you get the idea.

In the first game, Ryan basically losses his mind and dies and you have to defeat his under boss to save the city.

Bioshock 2 picks up where the first left off and you're now playing as one of the bad guys from the first game, a Big Daddy named "Subject Delta" who was the first Big Daddy ever created, so you're a good guy. This time out, you have to defeat the new leader of Rapture, Sophia Lamb, while looking for and saving your daughter, Eleanor.

And yes, I'm way over-simplifying the plot of the game and leaving out tons and tons of details (splicers, audio diaries, etc.). If you really want to delve deeper into the world of Bioshock, check out the Bioshock wiki here.

What's amazing about the game is how immersed one gets in the whole atmosphere of the game as you play. For starters, it looks simply gorgeous in the Art Deco style of the 1930s and 1940s. The sound, too, is all-encompassing as every single part of a good home theater system is used. More than once I would turn around because I heard something in the background and thought someone (or something) was behind me.

Making my way around Rapture and looking at the environments, I kept thinking (as I did with the first game) how cool it would have been to see Rapture before it went to hell. You're in a decaying world in which most things are broken down or rotting and it would be amazing to see what this world looked like at its zenith.

Anyway, the game play in BS2 is great, too, and improved upon from the first game. You're free to mix and match the genetic alteration you want to use in whatever combinations you want whereas in the first game it was more restrictive.

And quite frankly, walking around Rapture as a Big Daddy is just too damn cool. At the end of the first game you actually became a Big Daddy and the second game has another plot twist that's just as bizarre.

**ALERT: MAJOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW**

But for me, one of the best thing about the game is that it actually has three different endings. Depending on who and how many people you kill during the game, there can actually be three different outcomes:

• everyone lives happily ever after,
  
• you sacrifice yourself so that Eelanor may live, or
  
• you sacrifice Eleanor to save yourself.
  

What's really interesting, though, is that only if you sacrifice Eleanor do you get even the hint that there could be a Bioshock 3 and man, it's a hell of a teaser because of what the story line in the third game could be.

**SPOILER ALERT ENDS**

Overall, an excellent FPS game and a very worthy sequel to the first. As one reviewer put it, Bioshock didn't need a sequel, but I'm glad they made it anyway.

Yup, Tiger really CAN make that shot!

For those of you not in the know about video games ...

Every once in a while when a game is released, there can be glitches in the game that make graphics render incorrectly, code is wrong and will allow people to walk through walls, do weird things, whatever.

When this happens, the game maker will release a patch to fix these things so that when you fire up the game and play on a console that has internet access (like the Xbox 360 or the Sony Playstation), the patch is automatically downloaded and the problem fixed.

EA Games, which produces the excellent Tiger Woods golf games, recently became aware of a glitch that allowed the Tigers Woods character to stand on water to make a shot in the 2008 version of the game. Instead of tucking their tail between their legs, tho, EA made a fantastic commercial about it, to which ...

Red Lights of Death and why Best Buy rules

Noooooooooooooooooo!

This is the thing every Xbox 360 owner fears ... the 360 "red lights of death" which means your beloved machine is dead.

This was a wide-spread problem when the 360 debuted in late 2005. The first gen 360s, of which mine was, had problems with overheating, screen freezing during game play, hard drives crashing, etc. But the biggest problem was overheating. Two of my friends who bought 360s when they first came out had the RLOD on their machines, so I should have known it was only a matter of time for mine.

I bought my first 360 in June, 2007 and didn't realize (until yesterday) that is was a first gen machine, manufactured in Jan., 2006. So I went to play my favorite game du jour, Call of Duty 4, on Saturday and after about 10 minutes ... screen freeze. Uh oh ... never did that before. Re-booted, seemed OK. Played Sunday night ... screen freeze. Re-booted ... red lights of death. Crap crap crap crap crap crap.

Putting it into perspective, I shrugged it off because, as much of a bummer as a dead 360 is, it was still under warranty so I knew it'd be fixed by M$ for free. Granted, I'd be offline for a couple of weeks, but then that meant I'd have to pick up a book, go for a walk or spend more time with my family. (I keed, of course, I really play mostly at night after the family goes to bed.)

Then I remembered that when I bought the 360, I also bought Best Buy's 2-year Replacement Plan for $50, which says they replace the defective equipment with a brand new machine for free for two years from the purchase date (unlike M$, which sends you a refurbished machine, something that gave me the heebies and the geebies). When I bought my first 360, it seemed like cheap insurance so I ponied up the extra coin.

Now, the Replacement Plan contract says not to go to the store to get a new machine. You have to call a number, get an authorization code, send the machine, yadda yadda yadda. But, there's a BB near my house, so I went there anyway yesterday thinking the worse that can happen is that they don't let me do the exchange and I have to do it the way the RP states. Here's what happened when I walked up to the Customer Service counter with my dead comrade:

Me: Hi. My 360 is dead. Here's my Replacement Plan paperwork.
BB person: < looks over the paperwork > No problem. Go get another 360 and we'll take care of it.

Now, I had heard horror stories about BB and their Replacement Plan and it being a real hassle to get this done, so I still didn't think it was going to be this easy.

So I bring the new 360 up to the desk. The CS Rep scans everything, hands me the new machine (they don't give you all of the peripherals when doing this type of replacement, just the console itself) and I was done. Four points here:

1. I now have a brand new 360 (manufactured less than 3 months ago) that I didn't have to send out to get repaired.
   
2. The Replacement Plan contract from my original 360 transfered to the new 360.
   
3. The Customer Service Rep didn't take the HD off of the new machine as he should have, so now I have a spare (which I've since sold).
   
4. Because of the price drop since I bought my old 360, I have $54 in credit at Best Buy.

Yup, sometimes it really is that simple and all works out.

I heart Best Buy.