While the advances into the future are slightly more conservative than those found in "The Time Machine" or "Back to the Future", I found a way to travel into the future in chunks of a few hours. It happens every time I sit down in front of my PC at home and load up Bioshock.

A few months ago, I bought this game along with a new video card that represented the best of the old AGP generation cards. I never played more than 30 minutes because the game would crash and reboot my PC every five minutes or so. In addition, the mouse lag made the game near unplayable. I checked the publisher's site for a patch every few days and finally gave up after seeing so many complaints in their forum and no patch.

With having a few days to kick back for the holidays, I gave it another go. A patch did come out and I installed it before digging in for an hour. Man did that hour go by fast! I've since logged a slightly embarassing amount of time trying to rescue little sisters while figuring out less painful ways to fight their big daddy bodyguards. This game is fantastic in every respect. The story is original and immersive. The voice acting is top-notch. It blends role-playing and first-person shooting extremely well. I find myself taking my time on the various goals just to take in every element of a level. Even the enemies, which in other games can get monotonous, as each variety looks and acts the same, present themselves as little stories, some of them even a little sympathetically. I could go on, but no one is paying me for this.

If your PC has enough horsepower and you've got an Amazon or Target gift certificate to burn, I highly recommend this game. It sucked to have to wait months to play it, but it's worth the wait and frustration. I still haven't figured how to return back to the present, and my family didn't appreciate my efforts to recoup lost time by skipping showers.