Bioshock.(Irrational Games)(Product/service evaluation)

No, it's not you. Technically speaking, and thanks to the corporate miracle of "everything-everywhere-every time," we inhabit an era so swollen with ricocheting motifs that even the most steroid-pumped movie-comic-game plots, monsters, and themes these days look like clip-art collectives, a museum to our American obsession with speed, guns, and girth. So what does an award-winning developer who's "been there, done that" do for an encore?

"For all its ups and downs as a movie, the most frightening part in Titanic is when the water takes over," muses Irrational Games founder and Bioshock Creative Director Ken Levine. He's talking about something Hitchcock, Lynch, Shyamalan--and you--understand instantly. "In a game, I can throw all the rocket-launching demons at you in the world. So what?"

Not that …