As time progressed, I got used to the nuances of the BenQ, but at the same time I’ve grown more and more aware of the move to widescreen formats. Previously not very well supported by many games, this is now no longer the case. Seeing all of Blizzard’s StarCraft II demos in widescreen format, I knew I’d have to make sure I was able to play it that way by the time it was out. So, I got myself a new monitor.

Whilst scanning the web over the last few months to research potential candidates, the Samsung 226BW showed itself to be the frontrunner amongst many forumers. Whilst there was some controversy surrounding the different panel variants sold under the same monitor model, the general consensus showed this screen to be the best for those willing to spend a bit more than what the cheaper brands could offer. However, by the time I was ready to get one two weeks ago, it had effectively been superceded by a newer model - the 2253BW. Similar specs, slightly different bezel and a different stand (still no height adjust). The best part though is that the 2253BW’s entry price point was lower than the 226BW was going for at the time - in fact, my purchase proved to be less than that of my old 17″ BenQ. How times have changed.

The first thing I will say is, the 2253BW is not perfect. It uses a TN panel, which is a type of LCD panel which by nature cannot reproduce colours perfectly - instead using algorithms to mimic the colours it can’t produce. Alternative panel types can reproduce all the colours needed, and with better viewing angles, but at a cost of speed. For gamers, the drastically better response times of a TN panel are typically more important - plus they’re cheaper. Unless you like editing photos, making graphics, or websites, then TN is generally the way to go.

Getting the colours right on the 2253BW took me a while, but to speed up the process for any of you who may get one, here are a couple of tips. Firstly, don’t bother using the MagicTune or Natural Color software that comes with the screen. These can make the colours on the screen appear more vibrant, but at a cost of accuracy. It was a week of fiddling before I finally uninstalled MagicTune, and only now am I generally satisfied with the colour accuracy of the screen. Even then, it’s certainly no CRT, but that’s to be expected. Secondly, don’t spend too long in a single sitting fiddling with the buttons on the monitor - it played havoc with my wrists. In a perfect example of form over function, the buttons for the screen are all hidden on the underside of the bezel. To press them, your fingers need to slide under the transparent plastic fitting and then up behind it to touch the buttons. It’s an attractive, minimal arrangement which does mean the power light is rather fancily reflected, but as far as usability goes it’s a disaster.

The viewing angles are distinctly better than other LCDs I have used, but the vertical angles could still be better. I can sit with my head 60cm from the screen and not notice any real degradation around the edges. This compares to my friend’s 22in Chimei 221D, on which you could see distinct yellow discolouration on the sides even when just sitting normally in front of it. With the 2253BW, it actually takes a bit of movement to see this discolouration, and even then it’s not as pronounced. I won’t bother telling you how it compares to my old BenQ. It’s just no contest there.

Backlight bleeding on my screen is particularly noticable at the top when playing dark movies (usually letterboxed slightly). Other 2253 owners I have read about have had various results with this, some getting it worse than others. It’s not a big issue for me, as I can’t notice it under any other circumstances. The backlighting itself is also still slightly uneven. It is much better than the BenQ, and is definitely within my realm of acceptability, but I certainly can’t wait until LED backlights become the norm on all LCD screens - the uniformity they bring looks to be truly worth it.

Since I got the monitor I’ve already seen a shift in the way I operate on the computer. Using full screen is now for movies and games only. The extra room does wonders for just general web viewing and chatting, with the IM contact list no longer taking up valuable browser window space when docked. In fact, it no longer needs to be docked - there’s so much room it just floats around on the side, completely out of the way.

Civilization 4 benefits greatly from the extra room. Just being able to see more around your cities and active units greatly assists with decision making. I did also give UT2004 a whirl to see how the screen does on an FPS. I haven’t tried more demanding games like Team Fortress 2 yet, but given that TF2 only runs OK-ish on medium detail on the smaller BenQ screen, I think I may be in over my head trying to run at even higher a resolution. Unfortunately the other games I’ve been playing again lately - StarCraft and WarCraft 3 - both don’t support widescreen resolutions (or in StarCraft’s case, any resolutions but 640×480). Thankfully Nvidia’s control panel means I can still play these games in their correct aspect ratio, a feature sorely missing from ATI’s drivers last time I checked a month ago.

I just now realised I haven’t made mention of ghosting or dead pixels - I guess that’s because I’ve not noticed any of either. For most people I would imagine these will similarly be non-issues. All in all, the Samsung 2253BW is a solid product on it’s own. The real killer though is the price - a year ago you’d be paying more for a much dodgier 22in screen, from a more questionable manufacturer. Now I just need to get my hands on a new PC that can power it properly.

What irritates me however, is despite the fact that they’ve been hugely common for decades now, you still can’t go out and buy a cheap one which has no glaring issues. Surely manufacturers have had enough experience over the years to iron out the bugs? The only way you can get a product approaching what I would deem an acceptable level of quality is to spend, spend, spend. So, being a very light sleeper and extremely fussy about the things I buy, that’s exactly what I did.

The clock in question is the Sangean RCR-1. I decided on this model after some exhaustive research in to what was out there - a depressing mass of cheap junk topped off with a few high quality Tivoli Audio devices approaching $300. Even for my tastes, that’s outlandish.

The RCR-1 slipped in at around $150, which was still far more than I expected to have to pay for a solid clock radio, but the lack of alternatives (given my strict requirements) meant I didn’t have much choice. The clock radio which it has now replaced was a $40 no-name brand from Target, so it wasn’t going to be hard to beat.

The Sangean is by no means perfect, and perhaps my irritation at that fact is why I felt the need to even write this piece at all, but it does represent what I feel is a good effort by a company which does what no others have really bothered to do. At least, not that I’ve seen. What follows is a list of clock radio pitfalls which I feel need to be addressed in every product, and how the Sangean stacks up.

• The real basics: Size matters. No-one wants an enormous device taking up valuable desk space when it doesn’t need to. This was one of the reasons I bought my last clock radio - it was super thin (maybe an inch and a half in depth) and had virtually no footprint. The Sangean is a fair bit bigger, but mostly in width and breadth (approx 6.5 inches each). At only 4 inches deep, it’s very reasonable.

  Decent sound quality is what the old model sacrificed to be so tiny, I suppose. The RCR-1’s speaker on the other hand is, for it’s size, quite respectable, with an output jack if you want something even better. Like all modern clock radios, it also has battery backup if the power goes out. Exciting stuff.

• A clear display: This one is a bit of a no brainer, but surprisingly the manufacturer of my last clock even got this wrong. While the digits were massive and easy to read from far away (face-on), reading them from an angle was near impossible due to the cheap LCD’s terrible viewing angle properties.

  The RCR-1 meanwhile trumps this with an amazingly clear digital display (with an extremely bright back light), but also with an analog display which amusingly catches up to the digital time when you set it. Having the analog display also means the time is easily readable when the backlight is switched off, which is how I usually have mine. Which brings us to the next big issue.

• A proper dimmer: Being the light sleeper I am, I find it terribly hard to get to sleep when there is a noticable source of light eminating from near my head. My outgoing clock radio had a neat feature in that it automatically dimmed itself depending on how much light was in the room. Unfortunately this meant that there was no manual dimmer - a big letdown as the “dim” setting was far too bright. The last few years I have kept a few small books to cover it up at night.

  The Sangean lacks the automated feature, but the manual dimmer is second to none. There is a switch for “bright” and “dim”, with the dim setting itself being adjustable in itself, right down to emitting no light at all. This is fantastic for me, as keeping it quite close to the lowest setting means I don’t need to worry about it at all.

• No backlight bleeding: Clock radios should not be made of a thin white shell of plastic, like my old one. The backlight of the LCD shone right through the case, effectively meaning that to blot out the light, I had to cover the entire clock rather than just the face of the display.

  The Sangean thankfully is made of solid materials and feels like a quality product, with no light shining through where it shouldn’t. Of course, it’s not such an issue with the excellent dimmer.

• Simple controls: This is one area where the old clock was reasonable - it didn’t have many features, so it only had a few buttons. However, there is one set of controls I have found to be difficult on all clock radios I have ever used. The tuning and volume slider wheels. On my old clock it was impossible to change the volume or the tuning without working myself into an odd position in bed while reaching over, incessantly fighting with the gritty movement of the wheels to get the volume or station I wanted.

  The Sangean fixes this by having larger, smooth sliding wheels on the side which are extremely easy to move, while being heavy enough so that brushing against them won’t change anything. The Sangean does have a lot of buttons, but this is a natural side effect of having a lot of features. Plus, seven of the buttons on the top of the radio are for present stations - something my last clock didn’t have at all, though admittedly not hard to find on other models.

• Smart alarm settings: I recall my first clock radio let me set the time for the radio to come on each morning. The next radio after that let me set two different times, which was good for uni with some days starting with later classes. The Sangean, however, takes this to the next level. With the RCR-1 you can specify which days of the week the alarm will go off. Need to be up at 7am each week day, but 9am each Sunday? This clock can do it, and you never have to remember to set the alarms (or unset them) the night before. This is a brilliant feature and given the lack of complexity in it’s computation, I can’t believe it wasn’t standard on more clocks years ago.

  The Sangean goes above and beyond with the alarm in two other ways as well. Usually a bright blue colour, the clock’s backlight changes to a light orange when the alarm goes off. This makes for an excellent visual cue on those darker early mornings, and also helps to make sure you don’t walk in to anything as you are getting up to find the light switch.

  Finally, the alarm audio (whether you have it set to a radio station or an actual beep) will come on very quietly, and gradually get louder. I can’t count the number of times I have been slightly startled awake with the old clock radio because the station was playing something a bit loud at the time. In addition to this, the Sangean’s radio alarm settings have their volume set differently from the regular radio, so if you turn it up during the day and forget to turn it down before you go to bed, it won’t wake up everyone in the house when the alarm goes off next morning. The station too is set independently, so if you left the clock tuned in to your usual techno-junk station, you can rest assured you’ll still wake up to your usual news station or classic concertos.

• No Humming! This is the one area where the old clock simply wins out, and is the only big beef I have with the Sangean. The quiet “humming” so common in small appliances like clock radios is from their power transformers. Whilst a quality transformer can be designed or treated in ways to mitigate this, the most basic way to eliminate this problem is to have the transformer separate from the device. As such, my old clock had the transformer at the wall plug, far away from my head, and causing no problems at all.

  Not so with the Sangean. While the humming is so quiet that it’s impossible to hear in the day time, at night when my head is right near the clock, it is infuriating. Thankfully, tightening the screws at the back of the device actually made a substantial difference, but I am still considering whether or not take take it back over this small yet critical shortfall. I have emailed Sangean and they said it should indeed be replaced, but given the nature of the problem I do really wonder if I would just be given a clock with the exact same issue.

And so, there we are. I never thought there would really be this much to write on what is certainly not the most exciting topic of the modern era, but it just goes to show how little thought has gone in to most products, and how different that makes the Sangean. But it’s still not perfect. The humming needs to go. The backlight really should have an photonic sensor for this kind of money, and the controls could be simpler. Enabling or disabling DST for example requires two button presses too many. And the manual was pretty lame.

That said, it does have even more bonuses which I haven’t gone over yet, simply because I find them superfluous. The clock can tune in to the atomic clock radio frequency to ensure it always has the right time - something not available to me in Australia though. There is also a “nap” feature, letting you easily set it to alarm in 30, 40, or however many minutes up to 120 before it alarms - perfect for afternoon siestas. It’s getting silly now.

But while it’s nice to know that one company can get so close to making the perfect clock radio, it’s a bit disturbing that after having these around for so long, we still don’t have a perfect one.

For the past 6 months I have made the hour-long journey to work in a 1992 Corolla Seca. Several dozen hail dents, mismatching and broken hub caps, disintegrating seat covers, and a steadily growing amount of rust. It also doesn’t have a working sound system. My trips to work were typically either in silence (or as silent as one can hope for, with all the road noise a car like this doesn’t block) or with my iPod Shuffle plugged in to my ears. When I say a Shuffle, I don’t mean one of these funky new clip-on ones. Mine is an original 512mb USB stick, and the lack of capacity really kills it’s usefulness once you’ve gone through the collection a few times and can’t be arsed plugging it back in to iTunes.

As of 2 weeks ago however, an opportunity arose for change. My new car, being a black one of these, actually has a working sound system. (For those who care, my variant is the 2.0 TDI with DSG). Not content to just burn MP3 CDs, I made my way to the department store last Saturday and bought myself some new gear worthy of the new car. And colour coded, too.

First up is a 3rd generation iPod Nano. Black, of course, to match the car, and 8GB, of course, to ensure my future needs are covered. Currently I have my entire music collection on there and am using barely a quarter of the space available, so I should be set. All with the added bonus of not having a hard drive to clunk out on me.

I have to admit that when the 3rd Nano was released, I thought it looked incredibly stupid. Gone were the slick dimensions of the first two models, only to add in video support which I felt (and to some extent still feel) to be completely inane on such a small screen. Seeing one in the flesh for the first time on Saturday, however, changed my opinion completely. I didn’t know just how darn small and how darn thin these things are. Up close they are incredibly slick, and once accustomed to the screen dimensions, the older Nanos seem visually restricted.

The only things I find odd about the Nano is that the earplugs for it are still white (which makes sense for any colour Nano except black), and there were no provided cushioned bud covers (luckily my Shuffle came with two pairs). Of course, given that my iPod lives in the car, neither of these are really much of an issue, but odd nonetheless.

This brings us to product number two. Since the VW doesn’t have any auxilary inputs (which should be considered a sin in any new car), the only way to realistically get sound moving through the car speakers has been to find an FM transmitter. And since there is only one easily accessible 12v power point in the car, it also needs to be able to charge the iPod at the same time. Thanfully, after a quick walk around the electronics section of the department store, a few options presented themselves.

The best of these, that I could see, was the Griffin iTrip Auto SmartScan. The device houses a few nifty features, such as a light on the charger which tells you what is going on using different colours, a good clear LCD screen, and the SmartScanner. This last feature supposedly scans the airwaves for the three best available frequencies to broadcast on, and lets you save them. All good, at least in theory, for a place like Sydney where the FM bands are chock full of useless stations.

Unfortunately, playing with the iTrip when I got home proved the SmartScan function to be somewhat useless. Scanning several times, none of the detected stations could ever broadcast my iPods music clearly, some not at all. It was through some manual fiddling that I settled on 103.7, which will be fine until I go to Brisbane, where that just happens to be a major radio station. But who wants to go to Brisbane anyway?

The actual biggest selling point of the iTrip Auto was it’s size. The charger is tiny, the FM transmitter is also nice and small, and that’s essentially what caused me to buy it over a chunkier Belkin option also in the store. It’s size means I can stuff it and the iPod in to the tiny dash compartment where the power outlet is, closed off and hidden from anyone peeking in through the Golf’s windows when not being used.

Overall the device is working well - the music from the iPod is quite clear, though the odd glitch has to be expected, given the tiny power output of the transmitter. I am a picky person, and even I find it acceptable, so I doubt anyone else would find it bothersome. That said, I can’t say that the SmartScan is worth the added cost over Griffin’s more basic iTrip Auto, assuming the transmitter is the same. I certainly would have gone for the cheaper option if it were available in the store.

And so, my very own black operation moves forward. Black sunglasses. Black phone. Black car. Black iPod. All that’s left on the list is the black computer, black screen, and hell, I’ll take the black president too.

No other game released in 2007 was quite the sensation that Portal was. Portal is a unique, puzzle-focused first-person shooter that clocks in at about three hours of length and, if my thorough reading of the internet is any indication, everyone and their mother has played it.

Portal has spawned a number of internet sensations since its debut. Probably the most significant, in terms of pop-culture, would be the wonderful end-credits song by Jonathan Coulton “Still Alive.” If you haven’t heard the song, you should find it and listen to it…now…and after you do, you should wait feverishly for the track to be released for Rock Band.

Another internet sensation created by Portal is the character of GLaDOS. GLaDOS is your malevolent benefactor-slash-tour-guide-slash-tormentor. She/it is a brilliantly personified, homicidal computer system that… conducts science… for those who are still alive. Also, she/it has cake. Which is another internet sensation… and a lie.

Finally, the last major internet sensation birthed from Portal is: the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube. “Companion Cube” or “Cube” for short. As you can see from the provided picture, the Companion Cube is a cube…with hearts on it. Apparently making it distinct from the Aperture Science Weighted Companion-less Cubes littered about the testing facility.

While reading over some of the coverage of GDC ‘08 the last week, I came across an interesting quote from the “Developer’s Rant” section of the conference.

Clint Hocking said: “It doesn’t surprise me that the most meaningful relationship we had in a AAA title this year is with a fucking cube.”

Now, I’m taking the quote slightly out of context, as he was talking, primarily, about how people went to see “The Lord of the Rings” not because of the nifty effects or the stunning locales, but because of the powerful bond between Frodo and Sam. From there, he rather quickly moves to the statement above, that the strongest bond between the player and a game this year occurred with a “fucking cube.”

I’m sorry, but when GLaDOS piped in that I was the Test Subject quickest to dispose of the Companion Cube, I smiled. I thought, in a Psycho Mantis sort of way, that Steam was tracking how long it took each player to dump the cube in the Memory Hole and rewarded my quick-thinking with an appropriately hilarious audio quip.

Unfortunately, it appears that every player gets the same message no matter how long it took to barbecue the cube.

Regardless, I simply do not understand where this internet-wide love of the weighted companion cube comes from. I do understand anthropomorphizing inanimate objects, I do it all the time. I feel bad for my car when it doesn’t work. I have pangs of guilt when I throw out an object I loved as a child, imagining it had feelings of neglect and uselessness. So, I get the need to become emotionally bonded to an object.

However, I simply don’t get the cube. The player encounters the cube for a total of one puzzle room in Portal. The map itself takes five to ten minutes to figure out the first time (if you’re me…I don’t know if that is fast, slow, or appropriate). The cube is used to safely traverse a section of map with a deadly energy ball and, if I remember correctly, weigh down one button.

That’s it.

From there a whole internet meme has been spawned. Companion Cube plushies were made and sold out. T-Shirts have been created, professing the wearer’s love for the cube. Developers are ranting about how the relationship between the cube and the player is the most emotionally-relevant in a game from the year 2007. I’ve even read about people spending an inordinate amount of time trying to save the cube from its fiery fate and, I ask you, why?

Have the long years as a single person chilled my heart to love? Can I no longer feel compassion for others? Have I died, fundamentally, somewhere deep inside my soul? Am I flawed as an individual because I hucked a six-sided object with hearts on it into a furnace without a second thought, laughing a black laugh when GLaDOS taunted my callousness?

No, no dear reader. There’s nothing wrong with me.

There’s something wrong with you.

Head881,

I originally composed this with a top ten list, then I realized I was just lowering the bar to fill it up entirely. Make no mistake, there were plenty of really awesome games in 2007 and if we expanded this out to a full feature length Game of the Year type thing (like you’d read on Gamespot or whatever), I’d have a million special commendations to give to games other than these. However I feel that less is more, and I needn’t include all of the games that were fun in 2007, as it just dilutes the recommendations of the games I have included. If there is a common thread through all the best games of the year, it’s that the games’ styles have become a form of substance. The graphics, sound and overall art direction enhance the experience such that it’s more than mere eye-candy. It’s a real improvement on the experience.

#3) The Orange Box: We generally have a pretty good idea what to expect for our 60 dollars when we go to buy a game. Orange box like so totally reset the scales on value for games. For 60 dollars you’re getting some of the best games in the last few years and three amazing new games. Each of the three new games would have been reasonable competitors for Game of the Year on their own but as a threesome they were that much more formidable.

Team Fortress 2 was a game in which the art style really made a huge difference. In a scenario where games had been leading towards more and more realistic graphics it was an incredible breath of fresh air with it’s beautiful Incredibles style visuals. This style though became substantive in a variety of ways. First of all the degree of expressiveness of the characters, even doing mundane things is a highpoint for games. After you die it cuts to a quick shot of the guy who killed you and at first you might think that these shots are in some way stylized but they come straight from regular gameplay.

Portal was the surprise game that got everyone talking. It was an indie game that was seemingly just the cherry on top of the Orange Box’s Sundae but it turned out that maybe the rest of the game could have been seen as the cherry on top of Portal. The writing for Portal was hysterical, containing some of the best dark humor that’s ever been in video games. In addition to that, it’s first person puzzle game mechanic was just utterly brilliant and while a lot of the puzzles weren’t particularity difficult some presented some really entertaining mind fucks trying to plan out what you needed to do. In addition to that Portal gave us some of the year’s great big Internet craze’s the cake is a lie, and some people fell in love with the companion cube—which was oddly enough a crate with a heart drawn on it. This was really quite an accomplishment. However I’d like to say that I never felt guilty about the companion cube as without choice there can be no heroism nor crime.

Episode Two was the middle chapter in the Half-Life 2 episodes saga. And as such, it really has neither a beginning nor a really proper ending but a bunch of actions that hopefully will all make more sense in the course of time. The game doesn’t really mess with the formula of Half-Life but that’s not really a bad thing is Half-Life 2 is one of two games i gave a 10 to and I’m not really tired of that game’s style. One thing I’d like to point out is how much more intellect Half-Life 2 assumes we have compared to it’s competition. There are some great puzzles in Half-Life 2…in one instance you need to use a grenade to jump and they teach you what you need to do not by some NPC beating you over the head with a solution but rather by using the art to clue you in on the solution just enough so that you can think up an answer. The game cements that by after having one of the most enjoyable final battles in recent memory adding one of the most outrageously shocking endings I can remember.

#2) Mass Effect: Mass Effect is the best example I can think of to illustrate the fact that games are more than the sum of their parts. Mass Effect created an awesome sci-fi world that apes a variety of sources Star Trek and \BSG probably most of all. Much to my surprise this game was not much of a Star Wars Imitator, it’s political not mystical, you’re not the chosen one just a experienced officer in the Human navy.

One of the real strengths of Mass Effect is its creation of a universe that’s full of characters who are really unique. It also created a lore that’s worth paying attention to if you’re the kind of person who enjoys reading books in Elder Scrolls there will be just as much of that kind of detail in the Codex of Mass Effect for you to dig into. The game’s graphics allow the creation of these really amazing characters who show emotion and are so very animated and sit right outside the beginning of the uncanny valley. It’s a case again of style becoming substance as when you’re standing there next to this huge Krogan Mercenary he doesn’t seem just like a human with bumps on his head but it really does a great job of creating various races. The voice acting is also really remarkable and that leant to creating amazing characters even your character is for the first time defined by the voice actor and they found some fantastic ones. I’d especially like to give credit to Jennifer Hale who has been a standout for Bioware in the past and does a fantastic job giving life to Jade Sheppard much like she did Bastilla in the past.

I’d like to take a minute to talk about the issue of sex in games. Mass Effect got a lot of press for having a sex scene that’s semi-explicit with a choice of two humans (male or female) or a mono-gendered alien race that for all intents and purposes aside from lore are female. These were handled very tastefully and I felt they really created a fantastic love story between my Andrew or Jade Sheppard and Liara T’Soni or Ashley Williams.

#1) Bioshock: I have not used this phrase lightly but Bioshock was one of the greatest games ever made. I don’t want to get into rewriting my review of Bioshock and do a blow for blow recreation of everything I loved about Bioshock and made me play it almost non-stop for two trips through Rapture. The primary where the game succeeded was in creating one of the most amazing game worlds that any game has ever created.

From the moment you step into the Bathysphere, and dropped down int Rapture it was an amazing place to visit. Like even months after my trip through Rapture I can vividly remember the beautiful levels throughout the game. The wharf of Neptune’s Bounty, the foundry of Hephaestus Core, the beautiful gardens of Arcadia, and finally the chaos of the residential districts. These zones were so memorable thanks to the tremendous artistic cohesiveness of the design. The whole game is so incredibly cohesive that it lent to a world. On this same note they also really nailed the 50s art style for the game’s wonderful advertisements and P.A. Announcements which were all so spot on. It is in this way that the game’s style becomes a substance because it’s tremendous graphics help really flesh out the immersion of being in a place that’s real and that’s frankly creepy.

Another part that really hit me with the game was how much thinking and feeling the game made me do. As I played through the game I spent a lot of time wondering….hmmm is Ryan really such a bad guy? Like one of the amusing things is, that like his disdain for altruism and religion is proven to be spot on. I never really had a completely certain picture as just when I thought I had a judgment figured out something a little twist came up. In addition to that the game inspired the feeling of guilt as I killed things. Splicers and Big Daddies I never particularity wanted to blow away as I felt like it was often them or me and I was acting out of necessity. I want to talk about the Little Sisters for a moment because they received so much attention that it’s worth exploring a bit more. I’m normally something of a completionist when it comes to games with branching paths so after playing the game through saving every single little sister I decided to go back and see what it was like harvesting everyone of the little girls. When I chose to save the little girls I really felt like I was doing something that was good, it brought a smile to my face, when I chose to harvest the girls I found it remarkably unpleasant.

Revisionists have recently retconned the debate about Bioshock and made the complaint that the choice about the Little Sisters is in fact the only real high level choice in the game, and that it’s a flaw that the endings represent that one choice in the game is somehow a flaw. I think this is nonsense, the theme of the game is about a lack of choice but yet you are presented with these little small choices along the way and I think that really is a good secondary message in that even when the path is really just someone else pulling the strings and making us dance the way we conduct ourselves on that path matters. One critic Jonathon Blow, even went so far as to say the action the player takes respecting the Companion cube, was superior to the choice presented with little sisters. The problem with this lies in the nature of your behavior. With the companion cube you do what you must to advance—if you feel guilt over it it’s only over a regret of the circumstances, much like I regret not being able to save the splicers or the big daddies. With the Little Sisters because i have made an active choice to sacrifice them to gain more power myself rather than to save them and give them a chance to escape the fate that they were sealed into, causes legitimate guilt because it was a choice made freely knowing that there was an alternative. IT was not a necessity to kill the little sisters if I did so I did so for my own reasons and that makes me worry about why people chose that path.

- Andrew “Vermouth” Martin