Lessons from the Past, Hope for the Future...Courtesy of Killer Space Monsters

Sometimes it's impossible to stay cynical.

Last night I went to the movies. That's noteworthy enough considering how my enjoyment of theater-going has soured over the years, with half the blame resting on the plague of advertising that precedes a feature and the other on the degradation of movie patron's code of behavior, a general sense that everyone under 35 is there for some reason other than to watch the damn movie. But last night, despite my encroaching crotchetiness, I made an exception. The old Madison was showing Jim Cameron's Aliens. I'd call it incentive enough to see one of my top ten favorite sci-fi films of all time on the big screen; no twisting of the arm is required on that score. But the Madison has a history with my city and I have a history with the Madison, for it was between her walls of faux velvet and acoustic fabric I learned to love the silver screen and forged friendships with a handful of noble cinephiles that continue to this day. The place has fallen on hard times more than once, endured fight-ending ribcage blows from bad financing, corrupt management, urban renewal, corporate buyouts, the rise of megaplexes and the march of time. But damned if the place isn't still kickin', newly purchased, newly renovated and reimagined as a second-hand movie house where classics – and ageless marvels like Aliens – still decorate the wall for two hours at a clip and set you back no more than a fair $5 punch. I hadn't been in years.

The neighborhood around the Madison has improved since I was a teenager. The nearby college has swollen, blob-like, so it now incorporates a swath of neglected properties and Gilded Age homes once gutted and blunder-constructed into flats that sat ugly on their foundations like badly-healed bones. Everything's been spiffed up, waxed, glossed and emblazoned with the crosses and crests of St. Rose, and the surrounding streets boast restaurant chains and coffee shops. There's more students than ever there now, and where you don't see them you see a burgeoning cross-section of working class diversity, a sea of ethnic faces laboring like yeoman and not interested in making trouble.

The Madison's patrons last night were a mix of sci-fi geeks (we can smell members of our own pack, like bespectacled wolves), bedraggled hipsters, and a handful of couples old enough to remember the original theatrical release of Aliens back in 1986. After a glorious two – TWO! - previews for upcoming shows (Hitchcock's The Birds and Jurassic Park, in time for the 20^th anniversary), the first synthesized notes of James Horner's minimalist techno-dallied score thundered through the speakers and I entered something akin to meditative bliss. I'm two shades too young to have seen Aliens during its first run but, being a resourceful geek and the product of a symbiotic relationship with older relatives, I was exposed to the xenomorphs at a pretty juvie age. I remember the days before CGI, and more to the point I remember when filmmakers gave a shit enough to sweat the details in ways you hardly ever see today, from the straps on the space marine's armor to the length of ash on an actor's cigarette from one scene to the next. (For that matter I can remember when heroes smoked in movies without an obligatory line about how a butt would kill him. Yes, I remember movies when there were worse things than tobacco).

Five minutes in and Ripley was just learning from slimy bureaucrat Carter Burke that she'd been in hyper-sleep for 57 years when a couple scurried in and sat in front of me. I got a good look at them because the film was at one of the rare spots when the sets were bright and the lighting was intense. They were young, these two, probably no more than 20 and likely even younger than that – the guy wore a St. Rose shirt but his hat bore a high school logo; he was still holding on to the past. They settled in and snuggled like young lovers are supposed to and it occurred to me that these two possibly hadn't been born when Cameron's 1994 exploda-fest True Lies had been released, much less the infinitely more sublime Aliens. I wondered if either of them had even seen the film before, watched the special edition DVD or caught a criminally edited TV version late night during midterms. Maybe, maybe not. It probably couldn't hold a candle to Avatar in their eyes anyway, right?

But by the time Ripley and company landed on LV-426 I knew the girl at least had never partaken. She fairly bumped the ceiling she jumped so high when the first face-hugger appeared, straining against the glass jar in med lab trying to attack the newly arrived Marines. When the motion detectors started their iconic chirp-ping and the xenomorphs materialized out of the walls she sucked in her breath like she was preparing for a pearl dive and I heard her first of many gasps when, seconds later, the poor soldiers started dying in droves. By the time the company's few survivors withdrew and the pulse-rifle toting Drake took a face full of alien acid the boyfriend had channels dug into his forearm courtesy of his date's fingernails. When Act Two opened I heard her say “Oh my God, that was horrible!” I knew she wasn't referring to the rubber monsters or the exploding prop dummies, the shaky camera work or the lack of computer-rendered guts. She had been completely taken in by the scene, that frantic first encounter with the xenomorphs where three-fifths of the cast are butchered in a master class of negative-space action, proving what you don't see is infinitely more horrifying than what you do. The boyfriend moved in a time or two after that, attempting a strategic repositioning of hands and body parts in an effort, I imagine, to enhance his own cinematic experience. But the girl was having none of it. She was riveted, implacable, rooted to the spot. Cameron had her in his clutches and Aliens had another convert.

For the rest of the film I enjoyed the girl's reactions almost as much as I enjoyed my umpteenth viewing of the film itself. Here was a flick closer in style if not in actual years to her mother's age, bereft of sweeping computer-assisted Steadicam shots, denuded of flash and visual excess with nary a 'modern' effect to be seen, a gritty spit-'n-varnish action tale of yesteryear, and she was positively enraptured. Sure the dropship sequences look cheesy today – holy crap, that is so a model dangling on a wire!- and I swear there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot where you can clearly see a prop guy throwing one of the aliens into the frame, but who gives a toss? We were never supposed to care about that stuff; it's a testament to the quality of the filmmaking that after two decades of innovation and special effects 'improvements' we still revel in the verisimilitude of the moment, the illusion that what we're seeing isn't an 'old' movie but a chilling story of survival on an uncaring rock peopled by good characters. And what a joy it was after so long to witness someone who had never seen the damn thing! I'd forgotten how exhausting it was to see Ripley through her confrontation with the alien queen only to discover the last dropship was gone, the placid android Bishop having apparently abandoned her, yet here I was feeling it again by virtue of my voyeuristic spying on this doe-eyed surrogate before me! But the best was Ripley's final stand in the power-loader and her timeless, utterly perfect delivery of the single best line in the film: “Get away from her, you bitch!” The girl uttered an excited “Yeaahh!” and clapped, just twice, banishing the last of my mouldering disenchantment.

Yes, much as it did when the last dragons died, some of the magic has gone out of the world.

But not all of it.

Not yet.

Full Circle - Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea - Episode 2

Last night I finished Episode 2 of BioShock Infinite's “Burial at Sea” DLC and so came to the end of the BioShock saga as we know it, the conclusion of one of the greatest game series I've ever had the joy of playing. There's a moment at the end of where you're prompted to take what is quite obviously the last conscious action of the game – one final button press that triggers the climax and final cutscenes. With the possible exception of the infamous red/blue/green choice at the end of the Mass Effect trilogy I doubt I have ever faced a finale with such trepidation, such a melancholic reluctance to let go. When the credits rolled and the lights came up I was left with a sense of loss but also tremendous satisfaction. Ken Levine did everything he said he was going to do with BioShock and, with BaS: Episode 2, he brought the whole ball of ADAM stretching back to the first game full circle in ways that would impress even the most jaded gamer. A multitude of questions are answered, long-lingering mysteries are solved, and the curtain is peeled back on the world of Rapture in ways both startling and significant. The end result is an already great story rendered well and truly epic. Minor spoilers ahead for BaS: Episode 2, major plot-ruining spoilers for everything else – if you're playing this without playing the other content first – uh, what?? - and tough beans to boot.

Burial at Sea: Episode 1 brought us back to the undersea metropolis of Rapture on December 31^st, 1958 - the eve of its destruction – and introduced us to a grown-up Elizabeth and a Booker Dewitt who seemed a little...off. After a brief (criminally brief, many gamers maintain) stint of play that allowed us to explore an as-yet-unsullied city and reconnect with old loonies like Sander Cohen, the DLC concluded with the revelation that this Dewitt was in fact an older, post-baptism Zachary Comstock recently fled from Columbia and hiding in shame. Unwilling to let him languish in false memories, Elizabeth had trailed this version of the mad prophet to Rapture to force him to recall a horrifying alternate outcome to his original crime: his zealous theft of an infant Elizabeth which, in that particular Comstock's reality, resulted in the girl losing her head instead of the tip of her pinky. “I felt it,” a vengeful Elizabeth says later. “It was another Elizabeth but I felt it as if it had happened to me.” Elizabeth's 'case' – the search for the missing orphan Sally – had only been a ruse to jog Comstock's memory...right before he was given an industrial-strength colonoscopy by a Big Daddy.

Episode 2 begins with Elizabeth caught in a moral quandary. Though she functioned only as bait, Sally is very much a real girl - one of the many Little Sisters exploited by Rapture scientists to produce the addictive elixir ADAM. Alas, immediately following Comstock's comeuppance Sally is summarily abducted by card-carrying evil shit Frank Fontaine, the Bill the Butcher of Rapture, and threatened with a slow, torturous death unless Elizabeth does what he wants. Our heroine, being a reality-hopping goddess of sorts, has already foreseen a terrible end for Sally and is haunted by portents of doom should she leave the poor girl to die. Thus, in one of those “huh?” moments you have to watch twice to understand, Elizabeth uses her powers to return to the critical moment of Sally's abduction and vows to put things right.

For the rest of the game the player occupies Elizabeth's ankle-strap wedgies, picking up the action mere seconds after the end of the first segment. We even see Comstock's eviscerated body on the floor, dressed in Dewitt's trademark vest and rolled shirtsleeves but sporting a shock of white hair – a cool touch since we might have originally assumed he was youthful like the Booker we knew. In what is explained as a “consequence” for her meddling in realities Elizabeth is stripped of her tear-opening powers and becomes, in her words, “just a girl with a handful of lockpicks.” Urged on by the disembodied voice of a Booker who may or may not be all in her head, she delves deep into Rapture's underbelly. But there's a caveat: not being a soldier or gunfighter, Elizabeth must rely on stealth to win to day instead of spraying room-clearing quantities of lead in all directions – a somewhat counterintuitive strategy for BioShock players, but one that allows ample opportunity for tense, inventive gameplay. Sneaking is the name of the game. Lightly armed with a only a handful of small weapons, players have to be observant, watching for broken glass, puddles, and anything else where an errant step might alert enemies and bring an overwhelming response. Plasmids are there to help, too, including the indispensable Peeping Tom, which allows you to see through walls and even turn invisible when the going gets rough. The folks at Irrational tweaked the gameplay mechanics to favor the path of least resistance – though Elizabeth has conventional firearms they've been enervated to Nerf-levels of stopping power (three direct hits from a hand cannon to down ONE splicer!) and ammo is scarce, so while it may be tempting to blast away like a boss, don't: it will most likely end with your back to a wall, dry-firing at a horde of piss-off foes. So step light and use your head.

Tiptoeing aside, much of the gameplay follows the standard BioShock approach of completing little tasks to accomplish a bigger one. Elizabeth has been given the herculean chore of finding a way to free Fontaine from his sunken department store and return the whole place to Rapture proper. BioShock veterans will know these are the events that immediately precede the outbreak of war between Fontaine – in the guise of the Irish revolutionary 'Atlas' - and Rapture's Rand-ian demagogue Andrew Ryan, a conflict which will destroy Rapture and leave it the charnel house found at the beginning of the first game. Everything Elizabeth does in some way contributes to the events as we already know them, making her role in the entire saga more meaningful than we ever suspected. Action-less segments walk the player through expository flashbacks and clue-heavy prehistory that expose BioShock's most persistent mysteries or confirm things we've always suspected: the origin of Songbird, the miraculous nature of quantum particles, and, most shockingly, the role played by Vox Populi leader Daisy Fitzroy. The middle portion even features an interlude in a previously unseen portion of Columbia – the Finkton Laboratories – at a crucial moment where the playable Elizabeth makes like Marty McFly, dodging the original Booker and her younger self during Infinite's action. If it sounds like lunacy, it is...at first, until it all comes together in the end and everything makes a strange kind of sense.

Symbolism and side references abound, as do oodles of great detail. Patient gamers will be rewarded for some extra exploration in all the shadowy nooks and crannies. Or, if you're especially anal (like me) you can replay the first BioShock prior to tackling BaS: Episode 2 for maximum appreciation of even the subtlest nods-'n-winks to the source material. The designers must have had a field day with some of Rapture's new environs, like cantankerous scientist Suchong's lab and his hastily scrawled notes over grainy footage of the floating city (“Giant balloons?? Ridiculous!!”).

We hardly recognize the woman Elizabeth's become...

Major kudos also to voice actress Courtnee Draper, who gives her most nuanced performance as Elizabeth yet, carrying virtually the entire game without much help – she manages awe, terror, rage, and gravitas with equal aplomb (side note: as proof that the Universe is a fair and just place, Ms. Draper disclosed in a recent interview that despite earning a law degree she intends to continue working in the world of video games, depriving the world of one more attorney but blessing us with many more years of her singular talent. The better portion of this world rejoices).

The tear-jerker of an ending, which you'll reach in about five hours (six if you kick all the tires), is as beautiful and wrenching and satisfying a conclusion as any gamer could hope for. The banner question of BioShock infinite is “Will the circle be unbroken?”, a rather loaded query one might think only applies to the latest game. BaS: Episode 2 reveals that 'the circle' in fact encompasses all of BioShock, Rapture and Columbia alike, and that the entire story, from Jack's plane crash to Booker's baptism and Elizabeth's decision is all one, united narrative; the Infinite refers not necessarily to infinite possibilities but an infinite loop in which one tale begets the other and back again without end. The number of “ah-ha!” moments is something to behold and is a testament to the brilliance and craftiness of creator Ken Levine, who caps his masterpiece with a swansong that trumps his ambitious beginnings. It is a bittersweet end for another reason, of course, as Levine and his Irrational Games are no more. Levine is off to different pastures to make different games; the mysteries of what he's working on now and when we'll next hear from him are yet to be revealed, though the phrases “something amazing” and “sooner than you think” leap unbidden to my mind (no pressure, Ken). Scuttlebutt is the BioShock franchise may continue under 2K games, but the creative direction will almost certainly change come new management; the saga we know has indeed ended. But Lord, what an end. I could wax poetic a ream or two longer. I could sing a lament for all that has come and gone and break the thesaurus while I'm at it. But the simple fact is I am sad to see the story conclude but happy that I had a chance to experience it. In an industry that has given us good games, great games, a few outstanding games and whole LOT of dreck, BioShock stands – will stand – as a shining example of what can happen when truly inspired people care enough to tell a truly magnificent story.