2K's futuristic alien shooter Prey was part of the ongoing Steam end-of-the-year sale, until they ran out. That's right, Steam is completely sold out of a downloadable title, running out of keys for the game before the sale could run its course. How does this happen? Well this is speculation, but I would assume a game like Prey requires some sort of CD key, which are generated by the company selling it on Steam, and there is a finite number of them available.

That, or they were stolen by key gnomes. Goddamned key gnomes.

It isn't a total loss, however. 2K has replaced Prey in the sale with 75% off of BioShock. $4.99 BioShock trumps Prey at any price.

Thanks to everyone who sent in this tip, especially Klaus, who saved me the trouble of pressing the print screen button.

Let it be known that I have ventured no further into BioShock 2's first-person guns-and-superpowers multiplayer modes than its playable lobby. Such are the limits of preview builds that playing an online multiplayer session requires coordination with a game publisher that can be compromised by the flu, vacations and other stuff.

But here's the shock: Even just stepping into the lobby it seems that, well, maybe this multiplayer mode can serve as a prequel to the first BioShock. (To slightly-latecomers, the single-player part of BioShock 2 is a sequel to the first game , previewed on this site earlier this week. Also, please note I have no visuals to illustrate what I'm about to describe. The screenshot up top is from single-player.)

The BioShock 2 multiplayer mode begins with a choice. The player needs to choose one of several citizens of Rapture to be. I chose football player Danny Wilkins, though I apologize for not remembering the details of his written profile. I've yet to figure out if you can change your character, as I wasn't able to back out to a character-selection screen.

To start playing my multiplayer experience, I chose a menu option called "Prologue." This triggered a cutscene that put me in an apartment in BioShock's undersea former Utopia, Rapture. From a first-person perspective, my character picked himself off the floor, a dripping syringe of blue liquid near him. On Wilkins' black and white TV screen, Rapture leader Andrew Ryan was making an address to all citizen, celebrating the turning of the calendar from 1958 to 1959. "Andrew Ryan offers you a toast, to Rapture, 1959... May it be our finest year!"

Ryan was wrong, fans know. Rapture endures civil war in the year that follows. That's the content you apparently play in multiplayer.

The apartment, which presumably belongs to my character, is a 3D space like any other room in BioShock's campaign. Amid the decor were a desk and chairs, a working stereo, and a recording machine that played back a message welcoming me into the Sinclair Solutions rewards program. Sinclair Solutions makes the Plasmid super-powers available in the series. I/Wilkins was being selected to test some of the company's "home defense products in the field." Test them well and I'd be eligible for company rewards.

Standard options that you would expect in a multiplayer set-up menu screen were rendered as elements of Wilkins' apartment. At my closet, I could change my outfit and melee weapon. I had my football hero put on a goat mask and wield a football trophy as his weapon. At a Gene Bank device on the wall, I could configure and save up to three weapons load-outs. For my guns, I chose a revolver and shotgun. For my Plasmid powers, I went with Electro Bolt and Incinerate, leaving Winter Blast behind. Other weapons and Plasmids were locked, presumably accessible only when my character levels up (make that: only when my character earns more Sinclair Solutions customer appreciation rewards.)

But before I could even make all my wardrobe and weapons selections, an audio alert played, informing me that there was trouble and people should return to the safety of their homes. Yeah, right. I assumed that was my cue to gear up for multiplayer battle. To do that I'd need to leave the apartment. Before I did so, however, a tape recorder caught my eye. It was sitting on a coffee table. I activated it and discovered that it contained audio messages from all of the playable characters. Each character had one unlocked and two locked monologues. The locked audio clips had messages next to them, explaining which level my character would have to achieve to hear each one. The levels required were different for each clip, meaning that players will be steadily unlocking a new one bit by bit as they level up in multiplayer, until all of the monologues are available in full. Wilkins' first one was all about how he told a young football player that the way to be as great a player as he was is to recognize that, the way Danny Wilkins spells it, there is an I in team. It's no wonder this guy made it to the Objectivist, individualist paradise-to-be of Rapture.

I couldn't get more information out of this lobby/apartment.

To progress I'd have to leave and step into the Bathysphere, located down a hallway containing a bucket catching ceiling leaks. In that Bathysphere, I'd be able to select a multiplayer mode of play — Survival of the Fittest, Civil War, Capture the Sister, Turf War or Team ADAM Grab — and proceed with traditional online multiplayer matchmaking.

I can't say, therefore, whether actually playing multiplayer advances the story and makes the mode feel like a prequel that has narrative to it. I can say, though, that the apartment will be able to serve as a means for telling some story and revealing some lore. That's already more than I expected. It gets me thinking that, as with BioShock 2's single-player mode, I may have been too hasty in assuming such limited potential in the storytelling ability of the series' multiplayer offering.

Lop the boss battle off of the original BioShock and the 2007 game would seem to be just about perfect. It was a novel dive into a failed Objectivist utopia called Rapture. It was a philosophical exploration of free will played as a first-person shooter designed to accommodate a player's tactical ingenuity. It introduced one of the great and weird new relationships in video games, the life-force/Adam-draining Little Sisters and their monstrously powerful protectors, the Big Daddys.

And aside from that final boss battle, BioShock ended well enough that nothing could improve it, not the addition of a 2 at the end of the title, not the tacking on of multiplayer and certainly not the opening title screen that credits twice as many studios for the sequel (four, none of which are the series' founding studio, 2K Boston).

I have, however, returned to Rapture, with the help of 2K Marin, 2K Australia, 2K China and Digital Extremes. I have played BioShock 2's single player campaign through its prologue and first full level, and I am both impressed and pleased. Dare I write this, but the new game has improved elements of the first.

BioShock 2, in its preview form, does not start with the elegance and magic of the first game. There is no scene-setting plane crash, swim through sinking, blazing wreckage nor an elevator ride down to an Art Deco paradise gone wrong on the sea floor. There is instead an abrupt awakening, a look into a reflecting pool that confirms, that, yes, I will be playing this game as a Big Daddy. And then, swiftly, there's combat. It is less artful, and it continued my worry, though that worry would soon end.

Jarring though the beginning of BioShock 2 may be, it is more with the gradual awakened clearing of the eyes that Rapture is revealed as a better-looking place this time. Outside the windows, the sea is now blue instead of green, its waters more clear and the sea-life around it more abundant and vivid. Graphical improvements are, I remembered as I began playing, a reasonable expectation even in the successor to something that was so good.

I'll stay light on story spoilers, and instead reveal the mood. Rapture is still a wreck, still one with wrecked lives in it. The city feels changed. Sofia Lamb, a psychiatrist brought in by BioShock's Andrew Ryan, is now a worshipped leader and apparently our nemesis within radio contact. On the attack, she sends splicers and the well-publicized Big Sister, a stalking seemingly invincible foe that leaps and springs through levels, only to be beaten back temporarily as was so many times the dark Samus in the sequel to Metroid Prime. There are friends within radio contact, but most of the character that emerges in the new game appears to do so in the same successful manner as it did in the first: From, literally, the writing on the walls of Rapture, from discarded radio logs, from the posture of corpses that reveal failed dreams and failed struggles.

Rapture as a place of wonder and as a trigger of player curiosity is back, successfully.

In the early going, being a Big Daddy feels different only in armament. On our right arm is a drill, a better melee weapon than a wrench. Soon, we earn well-animated guns, like a rivet gun and a 50-cal. Machine gun. On the left hand we earn plasmids, some of the same early ones as in the first game: Electric shocks and fire. New is the ability to dual-wield, which leads to the discovery of the shock/stun-and-shoot left-right combo. Even more useful is a hacking tool which can even, with the help of a rare type of dart, hack from afar. I played many fights from a distance, shooting a hacking needle into a turret and then hacking it so it would kill the enemies for me. Hacking, by the way, is no longer a puzzle game of pipes but a reflex test of well-timed button presses, like a gaming golf swing.

What's so winning in BioShock 2 is that, as it refrains early on from re-writing the rules of the first game, it instead amplifies that original's best aspects. It doesn't just look better or explore more of Rapture's interesting world, but it recognizes what played best in the first and does more of it.

There were two things that had played so well in the first BioShock.

The first, was the original game's linear sequences, passageways through Rapture's sights and sounds that allowed the player to absorb the history of the place and its people. This is best executed early in the sequel in an area called Ryan's Amusements, which is a theme park and museum that reintroduces and elaborates on Rapture's history, Ryan's philosophy and, as much of the place is defaced, on the views of those who rebelled against Ryan shortly before the first game began. Walking through this place makes evident the genius and madness of Rapture.

The second gameplay achievement in the first game was the dynamism of its combat, the offering to the player of numerous direct and indirect ways to fight. This was a key element, utilized when attempting to take down a Big Daddy. Players could fill a room with explosive traps, plan to electrify water when a Big Daddy might rush through it, and then begin shooting. The new game makes these tactics all the more available, thanks to the ability to hack from afar and with projectile-based trap ammo. The game requires this kind of play when a player prepares to take down a Big Daddy. It also requires it of them when the alert sounds that Big Sister is coming in for an attack. And, in a twist, it forces this kind of planned combat when a player has taken their own Little Sister to a corpse full of Adam energy. Placing her next to the body is prelude to setting the room up to defend against Splicer attack. Give her the signal to begin and they swarm. You have to keep her safe until she drains the energy. Then you can decide whether she is rescued or harvested. These types of planned offensive and defensive combat work so well, the designers of the new game clearly relishing the opportunity to let the player strategize and orchestrate organized chaos.

Earlier demos and hype for BioShock 2 showed off the ability to walk outside on the sea floor, and much has been made of the game's placement 10 years later in the timeline from the first. I did indeed walk on the sea floor in the new game, and while it was a beautiful sight, the sequence lasted too briefly for me to recognize any significant gameplay change it introduces. The plot is mostly still a mystery to me now, as it is intentionally unclear just why and how the player's Big Daddy, one of the original line, has been revived nor how some of the supporting characters who appear really relate to each other.

I started playing BioShock 2 worried that the inspired execution of the first BioShock would consign a sequel to being a pale imitation. It seems, though, that I had underestimated the room for technical improvement and gameplay refinement. I see little sign of re-invention and a lot of signs of love and polish. That love could smother, that fealty to the past could still render this game as superfluous. But in the early going, I am happily immersed in Rapture again, joyfully mystified as to what its inhabitants are up to, pleased with the way it plays and wanting to play more.

Here's the full list. It rates a standard spoiler-alert warning but, going through this, the descriptions don't seem to give up many details of the singleplayer campaign. Be sure to check the link to see the achievement icon art.

• Bought a Slot (5 points)
Buy one Plasmid or Tonic Slot at a Gatherer's Garden.

• Max Plasmid Slots (10 points)
Fully upgrade to the maximum number of Plasmid Slots.

• Upgraded a Weapon (10 points)
Upgrade any weapon at a Power to the People Station.

• Fully Upgraded a Weapon (10 points)
Install the third and final upgrade to any of your weapons.

• All Weapon Upgrades (20 points)
Find all 14 Power to the People weapon upgrades in the game.

• Prolific Hacker (20 points)
Successfully hack at least one of every type of machine.

• Master Hacker (20 points)
Hack 30 machines at a distance with the Hack Tool.

• First Research (5 points)
Research a Splicer with the Research Camera.

• One Research Track (20 points)
Max out one Research Track.

• Research Master (20 points)
Max out research on all 9 research subjects.

• Grand Daddy (25 points)
Defeat 3 Big Daddies without dying during the fight.

• Master Gatherer (30 points)
Gather 600 ADAM with Little Sisters.

• Fully Upgraded a Plasmid (10 points)
Fully upgrade one of your Plasmids to the level 3 version at a Gatherer's Garden.

• All Plasmids (20 points)
Find or purchase all 11 basic Plasmid types.

• Trap Master (15 points)
Kill 30 enemies using only Traps.

• Master Protector (15 points)
Get through a Gather with no damage and no one getting to the Little Sister.

• Big Spender (15 points)
Spend 2000 dollars at Vending Machines.

• Dealt with Every Little Sister (50 points)
Either Harvest or Save every Little Sister in the game.

• Against All Odds (30 points)
Finish the game on the hardest difficulty level.

• Big Brass Balls (25 points)
Finish the game without using Vita-Chambers.

• Rapture Historian (40 points)
Find 100 audio diaries.

• Unnatural Selection (10 points)
Score your first kill in a non-private match.

• Welcome to Rapture (10 points)
Complete your first non-private match.

• Disgusting Frankenstein (10 points)
Become a Big Daddy for the first time in a non-private match.

• "Mr. Bubbles– No!" (20 points)
Take down your first Big Daddy in a non-private match.

• Mother Goose (20 points)
Save your first Little Sister in a non-private match.

• Two-Bit Heroics (10 points)
Complete your first trial in a non-private match.

• Parasite (10 points)
Achieve Rank 10.

• Little Moth (20 points)
Achieve Rank 20.

• Skin Job (20 points)
Achieve Rank 30.

• Choose the Impossible (50 points)
Achieve Rank 40.

• Proving Grounds (20 points)
Win your first non-private match.

• Man About Town (10 points)
Play at least one non-private match on each multiplayer map.

• Two Secret Achievements worth 5 points.

• Two Secret Achievements worth 10 points.

• One Secret Achievement worth 15 points.

• Six Secret Achievements worth 20 points.

• One Secret Achievement worth 50 points.

• Two Secret Achievements worth 25 points.

• One Secret Achievement worth 100 points.

BioShock 2 Achievements List [Xbox 360 Achievements via HBG]

So you've got a choice! Either indoctrinate your baby from an early age that its entire existence has been to serve as a puppet for its maniacal master, or...teach it that killing helpless, innocent monsters just to save some dead broad is an OK thing to do.

SaltyandSweet's Shop Announcement [Etsy]

[GameVideos]

Aquarium Photoshoot!

The gameplay shows the firepower; the cinematics show a suspense factor to match. And pay attention to the final title card. Of course it'd behoove you to check back here on Thursday, because when an embargo breaks, we fix it!

Siren Alley Trailer [GameTrailers]

Five more days of pumpkin-loving left, Kotaku. Get 'em done!

Despite the fact that the two giant puppets were part of France's Royal de Luxe street theatre company performance entitled "The Berlin Reunion", gamers can be forgiven if they thought a bit of Bioshock had come to life.

Many more wondrous pictures of the event can be found at Big Picture.

The Berlin Reunion [Big Picture at The Boston Globe, thanks Parker]

Ashley Davis' dramatic reading of BioShock the Bedtime Story is compelling and moving, but ultimately serves only to underscore on terrible fact: no one reads me bedtime stories anymore. Forget live sex webcams. I want to start up a bedtime story live webcam service so no one has to spend another night falling asleep without story time.

I say that as a 23-year user and consumer of Mac products, too. It's no fault of Feral, they can only buy the rights to games and then build the ports, a necessarily reactive process that takes a long time start to finish. But this announcement is grimace-inducing to the core Mac gaming community, all six of us, utterly forsaken by Cupertino. Every time I go into an Apple Store and see people perusing the games section, I stare at them the way one stares at a freshman earnestly debating the quad preacher.

Where was I? Oh yeah, BioShock, for the Mac, Oct. 7. It's $49.95 in North America, £34.99 in the UK, €39.95 in Europe.

BioShock Hitting Mac Next Month [VG247]

Knights of the Old Republic was a four-star achievement in role playing games, but I do agree with Richard Naik at GameCritics. The choices you faced - even in the dialogue - lacked a lot of subtlety as to what they said about your character. It might have been a lot to ask of a game at the time, but you were still presented with a binary good/evil character, and games still have not evolved much more into shades of gray since then.

Naik brings inFamous, KOTOR, BioShock Mass Effect and Fallout 3, all of them acclaimed games, in for some criticism. The choices in inFamous were simply about power acquisition, he argues. Mass Effect let you be either a paragon of virtue or a belligerent jerk. And he even says the choice outcomes in BioShock "barely change the game at all," although I disagree with that. Fallout 3 is the most open ended, but it leaves Naik wondering when, or if, a game will allow true open-ended decision making, and then react to that. Or has one already?

Decisions, Decisions [GameCritics, Sept. 16, 2009.]

The original Knights of the Old Republic is, as of the time of this writing, my favorite product of the Star Wars franchise. And its choice system generally serves the game well, but even a well-done implementation of choices such as this still leaves a somewhat odd aftertaste. To go down the evil path I have to make many choices throughout the game that lead me to the dark side, eventually leading to me becoming a cold, cruel, and calculating Sith Lord. But here's the thing-would such an intelligent Sith Lord (as dictated by the game) really waste his/her time with senseless acts of brutality such as common mugging? I would imagine that an up-and-coming Sith Lord would try to use his victims to their fullest extent, then dispose of them when they no longer had value. Instead I found myself being a run-of-the-mill asshole, and that somehow led to me conquering the galaxy. The moral extremes of sainthood and belligerent sadism were extremely stark and awkward despite the quality of the story, leaving me to wonder how the ideal choice system would actually work.

Mass Effect (which has been getting lots of discussion time on this site lately) does a better job here, but the problem of moral extremes is still evident. Most of the time the evil choice is represented by a simple act of aggression instead of a more subtle cruelty or self-serving action. Now to be fair, such acts are more believably associated with the character of Commander Shepard rather than my character in Knights of the Old Republic. However, the basic problem still exists-I can't be the scoundrel with a golden heart, only a universally loved hero. I can't be the insidious mastermind, only an arrogant bully. While Mass Effect does present a better moral middle ground than many of its ilk, that path is largely dull and uninteresting. In order to access more conversation options I have to go towards one extreme or the other, meaning I have no real reason to toe the line in the middle. So now that we have an area between the two extremes, what next?

[...]Where does the evolution of player choices go from here? Someday I'd like to see a game where I can make virtually any choice in any situation within the bounds of the game world's reason, and be rewarded or punished appropriately for it. Am I being too greedy? Is this impossible with currently existing technology?
- Richard Naik

Weekend Reader is Kotaku's look at the critical thinking in, and of video games. It appears Saturdays at noon. Please take the time to read the full article cited before getting involved in the debate here.

You're going to need plenty of cardboard, foam and a working drill—yes, that Big Daddy drill spins—plus you're going to need to start, well, right about now. Krix's D.I.Y. Big Daddy took him a good seven weeks to build, but that includes things like built-in fans, the aforementioned spinning drill arm and a serious attention to detail.

I imagine you could probably knock out something in six weeks, six and a half, tops, using his method.

Really, Krix is a pro—or at least semi-pro—but his knowledge may be useful to you, even if you're just trying to sort out the problem of a functional drill bit or think your own Big Daddy costume's normal hand is a bit too stubby.

Big Daddy (BioShock) [Volpin Props via Make - thanks, Andrew!] [Image Credit]

Schyman is a great catch on EA's part. His score to BioShock managed to subtly capture the conflict of the utopian society gone wrong in such a way that you barely even noticed there was music at times - it just melded with the experience, becoming part of the game. Hopefully he'll be able to do the same with Dante. He certainly seems to have enjoyed himself at least.

"Scoring Dante's Inferno was one of the most interesting and challenging projects I have ever tackled," said Garry Schyman. "Literally being asked to score hell was fantastic especially once I saw the surrealistically frightening world that Visceral Games had developed. I thought long and hard about every piece of music I wrote to create something new, surprising and fitting. It has turned out to be one of the most creative experiences in my career."

Sure beats my idea of having the entire game accompanied by Meatloaf tunes.

Maruscak started drawing this BioShock art when the doors opened at PAX on Friday. The artist told Kotaku last night that he was into his 26th hour and counting, hoping to be finished today. Don't get your hopes up if you want to keep it for yourself. After being displayed at PAX, the huge pastel drawing will be heading back to it's publisher and financier, 2K Games.

According to SlashFilm, Spaniard Juan Carlos Fresnadillo will replace Gore Verbinski in the director's chair (though Verbinski will remain as a "producer"). Never heard of Fresnadillo? He's the guy who directed 28 Weeks Later, and...nothing else you've ever heard of

Hrm.

Whether you liked his zombie sequel or not (brilliant opening aside, I hated it), replacing Verbinski with a relative unknown is certainly a step down for the production, which was - courtesy of the big-name director and big-time budget - at one time being hailed in this post-Peter-Jackson-Halo world as Hollywood's first crack at really taking a game adaptation seriously.

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo To Direct Bioshock [SlashFilm]