Your very first action in "Bioshock" is to haul your half-drowned self out of the ocean after a fiery plane crash. You wash up on the steps of a lighthouse. The only landmark in a sea of midnight blue. The only place to go is in and down, into the underwater city of Rapture.

Spike Lee once said one of his favorite characters to shoot in his movies was the city of New York. Rapture steals the show in "Bioshock." Here's the low-down. If you've ever taken a history of art class, you've probably heard of art deco, that 1920's style of architecture best known for its polished, industrial look. If not, go watch "The Aviator" or imagine a city where all the buildings look like the Empire State Building. Now imagine this city completely underwater. I'm not talking about some dumb glass bubble city, I mean totally underwater, where fish swim by the window.

ADAM is this goo extracted from sea slugs that cures diseases, makes people stronger and heals wounds. It also makes you crazy if you use too much of it. Down comes the hubris hammer, half the populace turns into Splicers - mutant psychopaths - and proceed to kill and burn. Now you're stuck in a broken, leaking city on the bottom of the ocean surrounded by killers, looking for this Ryan guy.

Themes of destroyed grandeur, despair and water are displayed throughout your time in Rapture. A lot of noise has been made about how video games can or cannot be works of art. Yes, yes, there's plenty of gore and violence - this is a shooter after all - but there's so much more under the surface. Character development, from the wretched Splicers to the maniacal but idealistic Ryan, and the stunning visuals will pull the player in deeper than any other game in recent memory.

Now, about that gore and violence. For a shooter "Bioshock" brings in most of the usual suspects. The weapons range from the typical blunt object, pistol, machine gun, shotgun and grenade launcher with a nifty "chemical" gun which sprays acid. Each weapon has three types of ammo for different situations but a Tommy gun is still a Tommy gun.

The previously mentioned ADAM is used to upgrade your body with what can only be called magic powers. The citizens of Rapture used ADAM to create plasmids and tonics. Plasmids are like different spells, there's one for fire, one for ice and one that makes enemies attack each other. Tonics boost your physical abilities and make you deal more damage with your trusty wrench, take less damage or shock people who hit you. There are dozens of these plasmids and tonics in the game. "Bioshock" quickly sheds the mundane shooter label once you start mixing and matching these various abilities and weapons with play-styles. Using a mix of tonics and plasmids, you can become a stealthy sneak who freezes enemies and smashes them to bits with a single bash from behind or a fire-starting explosives expert.

The enemies you face aren't quite as varied as your weapon choice. Splicers make up the bulk of your cannon fodder. Lead pipes, pistols and the occasional grenade are their weapons of choice. Most can be taken out with a single well-aimed shotgun blast, but a few, like the wall-crawling Spider Splicer are harder to kill. The real challenge are the hulking, divesuit-wearing Big Daddies.

Most of your ADAM comes from what the Big Daddy guards, the childlike Little Sister. These pairs roam the halls of Rapture, and if you want to power up, you have to take them out. But where the Splicers go down with a headshot, the Big Daddies take six or seven grenades and some explosive buckshot. For FPS veterans, I recommend playing the game on the hard setting. Even on medium the Splicers tend to get predictable. On hard each fight feels like it means something.

The story line follows a well narrated path through the various levels of Rapture. Along the way you find out why the city fell into ruin and who the major players are and their motives. The voice acting is decent and scripted action scenes and encounters keep the story moving at a nice pace.

Like I said, the visuals are stunning. The Xbox 360 version doesn't look as good as the top-end PC run version but it's still shocking at times. PC system requirements are rather hefty. I would recommend running the game on the higher settings for total immersion. Anything lower than a 3 GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and a hefty video card will not do the game justice. If you have a DirectX 10 card you're in for a treat as the video settings can be bumped up a notch to pristine levels.

This is a real gem of a game. I knew I was playing something special when the Splicer I just set on fire ran to a pool of water to cool off and set an oil slick ablaze that roasted two of his buddies. Meanwhile, I'm making the pool a deathtrap with my lightning bolt plasmid. Scenarios like this play out around each corner in "Bioshock," and no two people will handle an encounter in the same way.

That's the hallmark of a great action game.