He was so evil, though, that killing him was indeed satisfying. And I’ll accept revenge as the polar opposite of frustration on the emotional scale of gaming.

……..In BioShock, one fundamental game mechanic is these weird little genetically enhanced girls that you can either kill (by draining their life energy) or rescue (by converting them back into regular little girls). Both actions act as a power-up for you, but you get more for killing them – so it’s an act of self-sacrifice of sorts to rescue them. (Well, actually it turns out not to be – a central game character periodically leaves you gifts for rescuing the girls that makes up the difference – but never mind; you don’t find that out until later.) And you get a pretty emotionally satisfying set animation of them thanking you with big puppy dog eyes when you rescue them. By contrast, if you choose to kill them, they lay there empty and silent – it’s pretty disturbing.

At the end of the game the final cut scenes kick in, and actually remain in first person. As throughout the game you still see only your hands with a very visible and recognizable tattoo. If you chose to save the little girls throughout, you learn that they escaped with you and took care of you for the rest of your life. You see your aged hands, many years later, with the now-adult girls’ hands resting on top of yours, seeing you off into the great beyond. It’s a brief ending but it packs quite a wallop emotionally -or it did for me, anyway.