The 4 Best (Fictional) Video Game Cities

Popular Mechanics joins the fray by compiling their own video game-related list, in which they analyze the four best fictional cities that many of us have ventured in. Included among them is BioShock’s Rapture:

The first-person shooter Bioshock begins abruptly. Like the opening of Lost, you find yourself crash-landed in the ocean. Pull yourself out, and you soon find yourself wandering into the city of Rapture, an underwater utopia-gone-awry. The game is a graphical and stylistic masterpiece, and the city is the game’s center. Where Ayn Rand worshipping residents once lived harmoniously there is now little left but evil and one hell of a cityscape to explore.

Rapture is a twisted, carnival, art deco town. A world’s-fair-of-sorts taken over by demons a dark underbelly littered with fantastical steampunk machines and scenarios. You almost expect Tom Waits to break out in narration at any moment. And perhaps it’s the underwater setting that makes the city so, well, immersive.