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The release date for BioShock Infinite is fast approaching, and to make sure everyone knows it and is super pumped about it, the creators of the game just dropped a shiny new trailer. Besides the obvious goal of showing how beautiful this game is, the Lamb of Columbia trailer also seems to ask the question, "What would Belle from Beauty and the Beast do if she got super powers?"

The latest trailer for BioShock Infinite takes its cues from those history filmstrips you probably saw a lot of in second grade. The one exception: this one plays out the way those would if you attended second grade in some sort of fever dream. As far as I'm concerned, this game just keeps looking cooler and cooler. Frankly, it's been kind of a while since I saw promotional stuff like this for a game and said "Yeah, I want to see that world," and Infinite is really doing it for me on that front. I'm still reserving judgment until I see whether or not the gameplay can keep pace with what looks to be a pretty cool premise replete with all the headscrewing detail and grey area morality players have come to expect from the series, but if it does I'll officially be super-excited for this. Check the new trailer out below and let us know what you think.

I think it goes without saying that everything is better with a theme song. Comedy or drama, parable or parody, people just like it better when you explain things to them with a little ditty. BioShock didn't have a theme song, sadly, and was thus incomplete. Luckily, gaming enthusiast musician brentalfloss did us all a favor and wrote one. If you like BioShock, and songs that reference things that you already know and love, then you're gonna love it. If not, well, you're probably still going to like it. Also, it should go without saying, but, SPOILERS.

If you ever wanted to see what BioShock's Big Daddy looked like in the form of an anthropomorphic potato, Ginger Troll has taken up the charge with this Big Daddy Mr. Potato Head. It even lights up, so check out more pictures after the break.

Whether you thought BioShock was an amazing piece of digital entertainment or an overhyped, tedious first-person shooter with an unsatisfying ending, the underwater city in which the story takes place, Rapture, is gorgeous, even almost four years after the game's release. LEGO fanatic Imagine feels this way about Rapture as well, and built a very pretty representation of Rapture in LEGO. Head on past the break to see the gorgeous LEGO recreation of the gorgeous city. Double the gorgeous.

During a panel at PAX this weekend, GameInformer revealed the three variant covers that will grace their next issue. They are all beautifully done period pieces focused on Bioshock Infinite characters and elements like the Murder of Crows, The Handyman, skyhooks, the heroine Elizabeth, and the creature known only as Him.

Get prepared to hear this a lot about BioShock Infinite, the just-announced BioShock sequel: It's in the sky. (Guess that Project Icarus codename meant something.) We thought we were wonderfully clever when we heard that the game wouldn't take place in the underwater city of Rapture like BioShock and BioShock 2 but rather in "an immense city in the sky" called Columbia, and immediately came up with: "LOL, they should call it Skyoshock." Then, alas, we took to Twitter and discovered that many other people shared our humorous turn of phrase, as well as "Flyoshock."

So: BioShock Infinite is in the sky. Glad we got that out of the way. What else do we know about it?

Today's games are great, but they just don't carry the same immeasurable nostalgic value as, say, Chrono Trigger, Link's Awakening, or even Number Crunchers. Now Stockholm-based pixel artist Junkboy has hypothesized for Swedish magazine Level what it might have looked like had contemporary games—Arkham Asylum, Bioshock, Guitar Hero, Little Big Planet, Red Dead Redemption, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Soul Calibur, and more—existed in the golden age of 8- and 16-bit gaming. Of course, several of these games indeed had low-bit predecessors! Compare the full series of "demake" images to their modern originals, after the jump.

Video game trailers face the challenge of having to accomplish two tasks in a manner that film trailers don't. For a movie, the trailer need only prove that there will be a compelling passive experience. The game trailer, as I see it, needs to give insight into the passive experience, the things you can't truly control like the setting, plot, and characters of the game, but also the active experience, the things you'll be able to do if you buy the game, be it shoot cool weapons, fly, or any other epic activity.

We've gotten to a point in gaming, though, where innovation in terms of gameplay has slowed down. Everyone in the industry is equally capable of putting epic combat features into their games. Also, there are just so many games constantly being made that truly original ideas are few and far between (though existent). So if you want to stand out these days, it takes a lot more than just a specific gameplay element. The passive experience must be what distinguishes a game from its rivals. Look at successes like BioShock and Final Fantasy. Neither offers anything truly unprecedented in active gameplay, but the stories for each are for the most part unmatched.

Because of this, gaming trailers must take a turn toward the theatrical. The best modern game trailers, like the Deus Ex 3 trailer released today, are those that focus almost entirely on the passive, which is answering the question "Sure I'll do lots of cool things, but where, when, and most importantly why will I do them?" We all expect cool weapons and abilities from modern action games. What I never expected to see was such an expansive and captivating setting displayed in full detail in a mere 3+ minute trailer: (Watch it full screen. Trust me.)

Oh, what's that... what's that thing where they're in a underwater city?  And it's all dystopian, with enormous mechanical guards?  Like, there's this billionaire capitalist who's starting a new civilization based on his rules, and he doesn't want anyone interfering with it?  But then the heroes come in and stop him with help from Mr. Freeze? Oh right.  It's an episode of Batman: The Animated Series and it's called "Deep Freeze." Compare to the synopsis for the original BioShock, courtesy of Wikipedia:

BioShock is set during 1960, in Rapture, a fictional underwater dystopian city. The history of Rapture is learned by the player through audio recordings as he explores the city. Rapture was envisioned by the Randian business magnate Andrew Ryan, who wanted to create a laissez-faire state to escape increasingly oppressive political, economic, and religious authority on land. ... By New Year's Eve of 1959, "[Ryan's] paranoia had reached such a level he was hanging dozens of people, mostly innocent, in Rapture's main square."