I DID NOT take advantage of the January video game drought to do something productive with my life.

I decided instead to revisit 2007’s Bioshock, a first-person survival horror and one of the best video games ever made.

It was rereleased last September in a collection with its excellent sequels Bioshock 2 (2010) and Bioshock Infinite (2013).

A decade on, Bioshock’s graphical and gameplay design still hold up to today’s gaming standards.

Set in 1960, it opens with silent protagonist Jack on a redeye flight back home to see his parents. Moments into the opening scene, the plane plunges into the Atlantic Ocean, killing everyone onboard except Jack.

Flailing among the burning wreckage, the player swims towards a lighthouse poking up from the deep fathoms below.

Inside the lighthouse there’s a bathysphere which plunges down into the sea and we get our first glimpse of the game’s unique setting, the underwater city of Rapture.

Early on the game appears to be a fairly standard survival-horror affair, albeit one set in an underwater city.

But what sets Bioshock apart from the great games of its time and many from today is how it interweaves political philosophy into its story and how its gameplay deals with dire moral decisions.

Created and ruled by Andrew Ryan, a US business magnate, Rapture was founded on Ayn Rand’s objectivist philosophy of radical self-interest, small government and absolute free markets.

Rapture began as an anarcho-capitalist utopia, attracting workers and some of the world’s greatest scientific, business and artistic minds to work and create in complete freedom from the surface world’s codes of morality, government taxation, censorship and regulation.

But Ryan’s devotion to Rand’s toxic ideology meant inequality quickly spiralled out of control.

In the meantime, Rapture’s scientists have discovered the new genetic substance Adam, which allowed them to splice the human genome into anything they want.

Using the poor as test subjects, they figure out how to unlock supernatural abilities like telekinesis, pyromancy, invisibility or teleportation.

The problem with these powers — “plasmids” — is that to use them requires a constant supply of the highly addictive Adam, whose side-effects range from insanity to death.

But, of course, in Rapture nothing must hold back the invisible hand of the free market.

And so, Adam and the plasmids are sold by Ryan’s greatest business rival.

By the time Jack arrives, Rapture has fallen into complete chaos.

The only survivors are the demented addicts — “splicers” who’ll kill anyone to get their next fix — a scattering of sane survivors and Ryan and a few members of his capitalist cabal.

Scattered about Bioshock’s levels are the Little Sisters — orphaned girls, mutated and brainwashed into finding residue Adam from the corpses of the dead.

Each Little Sister is guarded by a hulking “Big Daddy” cyborg. Decked out in ’30s-style diving suits and equipped with an enormous drill and a cannon, they fly into a murderous rage should anyone get too close to their ward.

Levelling up and gaining the use of the awesome plasmids in Bioshock requires players to either rescue the girls, which nets a small amount of Adam, or harvest them, for which the reward is a large amount of the substance.

The Little Sisters will not survive the latter process which, thankfully is only hinted at with a faded screen, diabolical music and the player’s searing sense of guilt.

Guiding Jack through Rapture over a squeaky radio is Atlas, an Irish immigrant and rebel leader against Ryan’s rule.

The interactions between the player, Atlas, Ryan and the Little Sisters ends up toying with the nature of gaming and free will itself. To say any more would ruin one of video gaming’s most mind-blowing plot twists. To paraphrase Atlas, would you kindly see it for yourself?