Last year 2K Games delivered a huge gaming success to the industry in the form of Bioshock, the FPSRPG (First Person Shooter Role Play Game) based in the wonderful world of Rapture, a submerged Utopia with drug-influenced bad guys and incredibly terrifying little girls roaming the streets. The game scored multiple awards and to the technical gamer it was indeed game of the year and hailed much praise over such titles as Halo 3. Even though Bioshock lacked in any form of multiplayer, it more than made up for it with an extensive and free-ranged single player campaign that was easily re-doable in different ways to make each play through effectively a different experience. What was perhaps the highlight of the game, was its incredibly immersive environment that was simply creepy from the start. A clever mix of music and lighting really brought out an experience that rivalled such horror classics like Silent Hill and Condemned.

In the very near future, pairing up with Universal Studios, Gore Verbinski (the director of the exceptionally successful Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy), has set himself the task of adapting the critically acclaimed title into a big screen hit. Verbinski has had much practice with not only the action adventure side of directing, but he was also the main man in the American adaptation of Japanese horror sensation The Ring and the hilarious comedy Mousehunt. This gives Verbinski a wide pool of skills and knowledge in order to bring a game that so obviously has so many concrete and deep elements, to life. Not only this, but Verbinski was a noted guest speaker at the last DICE summit meetings which emphasizes his urge to be involved with the video game franchise and perhaps even infers that he himself, is a video gamer in his spare time.

Perhaps a fear of many fans will be the inability to portray the game’s atmosphere and exchange it for an Americanised tone that feels nothing more than fake and lose. We all hope that Verbinski is indeed a gamer and perhaps even takes the time to make his staff and cast play through Bioshock in order to get a feel for what the audience would want and indeed expect. Many video game transits to the big screen have been an absolute disaster; most notably was Jean Claude Van Damme's abysmal performance as Guile in Street Fighter: The Movie. Other, larger titles such as Halo: The Movie have yet to even establish a script because we all know how difficult it is to take a video game and really bring it to life because the whole point of video gaming is attaining that interactive experiences which movies simply cannot give. No director is daring to even go near that particular title in fear of destroying it and as a result annoying millions upon millions of fans worldwide.

Nevertheless, for the mean time I will hold my tongue and wait to hear for future news. It is very rare for projects like this to actually go correct but heck - Iron Man came out guns blazing; and after such horrible movies like Ghost Rider and Fantastic 4, no one was expecting anything big out of that. Yet look where it's going with the public - to the top of chart listings, that’s where !

Stay faithful fans, let us wait and see.

I.K.
CeX Towers

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