So Bioshock hits shelves tomorrow, and like 90% of other 360 owners, I’ll be receiving my copy. I’ve had the collector’s edition pre-ordered for months, since before they even knew what was going to be in the collector’s edition. Well, it turns out it’s a little Big Daddy figurine, and it occurs to me that maybe I don’t want one of those hanging around on a shelf somewhere. At eye level. For me to stumble across in the dark.

Bioshock has been a hugely anticipated title for me since I saw the first videos ages ago, and I always expected it was going to be an outstanding game, and the demo confirmed this for me (and many others). But even I’m surprised at the reviews the game has been getting. Have you seen these? 9.7’s, 100/100’s… it’s crazy. I was expecting a great game, not the messiah of FPS games. So now I’m really intrigued to see how it plays out post-demo level.

However, though the game arrives tomorrow, I most likely won’t really be getting into it until early September, for a number of reasons. Up front are obvious are the fact that I’m getting ready to move, and work plus that ordeal is taking up most of my time. Also I’m determined to finish Zelda (I just finished the Sky City, so I think I’m closing in on some sort of victory here) and I don’t want to get distracted

But I am also waiting for my best friend to come up from New York (post-move to the new place) to play it. Because even though Bioshock is a strictly single-player game, it’s the type of single player game that lends itself perfectly to a social activity. And I know this because it shares a lot of gameplay elements with Condemned, which we played in a similar fashion.

With Condemned, we sat down one weekend and, taking turns playing the levels, plowed through the game over the three days. And it was the kind of game where lots of cool shit happens, even during normal combat, and if you were playing it alone and you pulled off some crazy escape or did something silly, nobody but you would be there to see it. But, if you have a friend there to witness it, well then you have a common experience to laugh about. I can foresee a lot of really cool combat moments in Bioshock with the various weapons, plasmids and nutty inhabitants.

I’ve heard it’s a 20 hour game if you take your time, and I think it’s perfectly feasible to get through that in a weekend, if you focus. See, a game like Twilight Princess is a single player adventure by necessity, it’s just so damned long, and it’s not likely anybody is going to want to stick around for the entire thing but you.

Two Worlds also comes out this week, so perhaps I’ll dabble in that. I really have no idea what this game is supposed to be like, it hasn’t been hyped at all, aside from that controversial “best RPG of all-time” advertising quote from a while back. It could be alright, or it could be rubbish. I really can’t seem to find enough information about the game to make a pre-release assumption on the subject.

Just have to wait and see, I guess.