This time of the year is always good for the game industry. It's the time when all the game developers that showed off their newest games in the most recent game conventions release those games to get a jump on the fall season. Plus, a lot of developers have had the whole year to build up hype for specific titles that they hope to release to a crowd of rabid, anxious fanboys.

The only problem is that every once in a while games with a lot of hype surrounding them tend to fall short of expectations. Lately, though, that hasn't really been a problem. The Xbox 360 has been out for almost two years now, with a slow and steady stream of great games flowing into its already huge library, while the Nintendo Wii and the PS3 are really starting to pick up steam.

This month we are going to look at a few games that either have a history of titles behind them or have built up a huge amount of anticipation within the game industry. This is the first batch of games to hit store shelves before the flood of titles that usually comes in around this time of year and I am happy to present them in this month's edition of Press Start!

BioShock has a lot of hype to live up to after more than a year of news, previews and some awesome-looking in-game footage. All BioShock images © 2kgames.

BioShock for the Xbox 360; Publisher: 2K Games; Developer: 2K Boston/2K Australia/Irrational Games; Release Date: August 21, 2007; ESRB Rating: M for mature; Genre: first-persion adventure; Players: 1; Support: N/A; Online: N/A

We Built This City On Rock And Roll
After more than a year of news, previews and some awesome-looking in-game footage, BioShock has finally seen the light of day. The hype that has surrounded this game has been nothing less than immeasurable, but can this beautiful-looking, very stylized game live up to its advance reputation?

BioShock's story is unlike any other. When you start a new game, you're looking through the eyes of an unnamed man comfortably sitting in a passenger plane. The plane starts shaking, the lights go out and soon that plane has crashed into the ocean below. Somehow you survive and swim your way up to a dark and spooky-looking stone structure. I'm sure there are some nice, friendly people there that can help you out!

As you step onto the stone island and walk through the ever-so-inviting, rusty steel doors, you find a steel pod that takes you deep under the ocean. You look out the window of this air-tight pod and see an unbelievably huge city built at the bottom of the ocean. Later you find out that this city is called Rapture and it was built by a man named Andrew Ryan to create a place of absolute freedom. He built this city to escape the restraints of the world and to allow the scientist, the artist and the laborer to live a life of absolute, uninterfered-with greatness.

Scientific breakthroughs have been made in Rapture, including gene manipulation. A chemical called ADAM gives people new powers, allows them to alter their strength, change how they look and more. Of course, by now you know something has gone wrong. People are addicted to ADAM and have gone insane. Mutated little girls called Little Sisters are like ADAM factories and everyone is after them. However, getting to these little girls requires getting through their guardians, the Big Daddies. Big Daddies are these huge guys in giant brass diving suits with giant drills for arms and they, unfortunately, aren't happy guys! As you venture through the ruins of Rapture your only friend is a man named Atlas who communicates to you by way of a two-way radio. So basically, you're boned unless you find a way out of this rotten city.