Rock, Paper, Shotgun

50% of the conversations I had at GamesCom went something along the lines of “have you seen the BioShock Infinite demo? Game of the show!” The other 50% went “God, I can’t believe they’re making another BioShock game. Why can’t they do something new instead?”

There’s point and purpose to the latter, and it has flicked across my mind too. Not forcibly enough, however, to defeat the excitement I felt when I saw the teaser, and redoubled when I saw in-game footage in Cologne last week. Cast your mind back to 2007, when RPS was a tiny digital acorn getting impossibly excited about the prospect of a new high-concept sci-fi game from the creators of System Shock 2. Bioshock was almost all we posted about for a frightening amount of time. Whether the game itself did enough to live up to that early promise, mystery and anticipation seems academic now, to me. I want to get back to that excitement.

Whatever BioShock Infinite turns out to be, it’s an attempt to do that.

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Ashes. All is ashes. All I’ve eaten is ashes. I’ve slept on ashes. I’m covered in ashes, following an unfortunate incident in which 31 Finnish journalists mistook me for an ashtray. I thought of Quintin, and how he had talked of sleeping on a mattress made of phoenix down. Perhaps he could spare a cup of water to throw at me, to wash some of the soot from my face. But then I thought of how he’d sneer and say how that water came from the highest mountain spring in Scotland, and that I owed him £500 for it. No. Better to carry on, to my next appointment, to a real world of ashes. To New Vegas!
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It took me eight straight hours to crawl through the sewers, beneath Cologne’s conference centre and then up through an impossibly tight U-bend into a disused toilet somewhere in the North Hall, but finally I was back at GamesCom. The guards had turned me away when I’d tried to enter through the main doors – disgusted by the foul breath that had resulted from eating a sleeping tramp’s shoes and by the rotting pigeon-skin loincloth I had been forced to don once I’d sold my last clothes to afford a cup of frightening grey coffee. I thought of Quintin, and his shoes made of finest unicorn hide. Perhaps he could spare me a promotional t-shirt to cover my filthy body? But not. He would have his minders throw in the Rein on sight. Better to carry on, and to my next appointment. At least the world of this game would mirror my own condition. Onwards, and to the Witcher 2.
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Dragging myself by the knuckles across Cologne’s pavements to reach my Portal 2 viewing, I reflected upon how much easier this would have been had I eaten at any point in the last four days. I had tried my best, plucking small kernels of tarry fluff from the thin carpet I had slept on. The bouncer/landlord who watched me at all times felt this was taking unfair advantage of the hotel’s facilities, and duly evicted me. I thought of calling Quintin, who had earlier talked of eating quail’s eggs by the dozen from plates made of narwhal horn. Could he spare just one egg? I thought of how he would sneer at my ragged clothes, my £3 haircut, my clear poverty. I was starving, but I could not possibly face his contempt. I dragged myself on, to Hall 7. I might not be able to eat, but I could at least see a new videogame from Valve.
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