BioShock

Game music has been a passion of ours roughly since, oh, 1985, but in the past 10 years, it’s come to mean something more. Don’t get us wrong, we still love the beepatronic music of the 8- and 16-bit periods (and the wave of chiptune artists it inspired), but the past decade has also seen licensed music become a surprisingly important part of gaming. Sometimes, this just means a selection of familiar hits to accompany our music games, but every so often, a game will use licensed tracks to careful, brilliant effect – and in the process, will expose legions of gamers to music they might never have heard otherwise.

What follows are the games and franchises that have been the most influential in bringing strange and terrifying new musical styles to gamers’ ears – and in the interest of making this our most self-indulgent Top 7 since that other one, we’ve asked a handful of our editors to explain what made each one important to them personally...

One in five Americans are born with some sort of personality disorder – something that makes them zag when everyone else zigs. It might be as subtle as a nervous tic, as confusing as Asperger's or as overt as psychopathy. But mentally unstable individuals are part of the real world – and part of the world of videogames as well. Sometimes their damage leads them to be horrible, monstrous villains, and other times it can make them loyal friends, or complex protagonists. No matter what it does to them, though, it's usually hard not to be sympathetic to their problems, and to, in a way, fall in love with them... even if they're murdering sociopaths...

All week, we've been bringing you retro reimaginings of modern classics, except for yesterday after everyone got sad about the pre-roll adverts on the videos. Well, it's all been building up to this - BioShock as a 1994 PC game. PLUS! The one you didn't see yesterday: Ratchet & Clank as a Saturn title sequence. So here are all five retro-style intros in ONE video. And it's longer than the pre-roll now, honest.

The mad scientist has been an archetypal breed of character for years. Centuries, in fact. From Doctor Moreau to Doctor Giggles, the worlds of literature, television and film have been filled with scientists and surgeons who sport a Ph.D in crazy. Naturally, videogames are no different.

In memory of some of gaming's most mental scientists and demented quacks, we present this humble list. They're all geniuses, but they're all completely over the rainbow. Read on as we take you on a tour through gaming's maddest mad doctors...

Listening to pundits, parents, and politicians, you'd think that videogames were the worst plague ever visited upon humankind. They make us dumb. They make us violent. They make us perverted. They make us twitchy and impatient. They make us disconnected loners and social misfits.

Here's the antidote to such overblown criticism – seven games that will make you smarter. Next time someone's trying to tell you that your hobby is stupid, show them one of these and see if they can solve even a fraction of its brilliance...

We’ve all read countless “best franchise of all time” lists, and while they’re fun to write and then to argue about, there’s an inherent problem with the “all time” part – you have to consider the 30+ years of gaming history before you get to the modern generation. Heavy hitters like Zelda, Mario, Halo, Warcraft, Metal Gear and GTA are virtually guaranteed a place on the list, so how can there be much room left over for games of right now?

That’s why we’re ousting the old guard and choosing the best of the current generation. No decades-old legacies to consider, just the stuff that’s been dreamt up since 360/PS3/DS/Wii took control beginning in 2005. Our only criteria: you gotta be a NEW game that’s blossomed into a full-blown series and will likely carry on for years. And before we even start, sorry Red Dead – you either began with Red Dead Revolver (last gen) or are a fresh start with Redemption, meaning you’re not quite a “franchise” just yet...

I had today's game music all picked out, but then Irrational Games went and announced BioShock Infinite, so I quickly canceled the previous GMOTD and replaced it with one of the most stirring, chilling pieces of modern music - game or otherwise.

"Things grow inside you.
We’re part of you now, you think you hear them say.
You step away from the med bench. The diagnostics screen presents a revolting before and after. On the left side, the before side, you see yourself. What you were. Human.
And on the right side... what you are. What you’ve become. The only way you’ll survive. The only way you’ll-"

Thus begins the 2002 pitch document for Irrational Games' original vision for BioShock, the first 10 pages of which the company has just released on its blog. How different is it from the BioShock we eventually got? Quite a lot. There's a different protagonist, a different story, a different setting, extra gameplay mechanics, and although the splicing remains, it sounds absolurly bloody horrific. Want to know more about the BioShock you could have played? Read on.

We've fine-toothed through the first two games. Here's what we predict (and want) in the third.