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(Alternative title: Alexis will do anything to skive off rejigging cashflow projections.) M and Bioshock, the last great flowerings of German expressionism. A predator stalks a twilight city, driven by unrelenting internal demons to hunt down children. PERFORMANCE: M was produced in 1931 and will run on anything. Bioshock is a last-year's-game that will run well on an aging gaming rig. M WINS. M AHEAD. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Bioshock is stunning: New York in sepulchral aquarium light. M is stunning, but only in black and white. BIOSHOCK WINS. NECK AND NECK. AUDIO: M has a striking score and a memorable leitmotif. Bioshock likewise. M's soundtrack has the underwater quality of a last-but-three-generations production. Bioshock has like that Dolby thing. BIOSHOCK WINS. BIOSHOCK AHEAD. INNOVATION: M was only the tail-end of a epoch. It rides on that epoch's coat-tails. So does Bioshock, not least in its enthusiastic reinvention of specific shots from Murnau's Nosferatu. Bioshock is, moreover, a skinned XBox port of System Shock II. M WINS. NECK AND NECK. GAMEPLAY: The combat mechanics in M leave much to be desired. The resource management model is nonexistent. Bioshock is a giant box of toys, with upgradable plasmids and a myriad of combat tactics, but it gets repetitive. In M, when you die, you stay dead. In Bioshock, when you die, you resurrect painlessly. It lacks weight, my friend. M has more variety in gameplay than Bioshock's combat and hacking. Not compelling, though. BIOSHOCK WINS BY A HAIR. BIOSHOCK AHEAD. GERMANS: Bioshock contains exactly one German, quasi-war-criminal Dr Tenenbaum. M has hundreds. Literally, hundreds! M WINS. NECK AND NECK. SKIN: M is entirely unerotic throughout. Bioshock, leaving firmly aside the queasy presexuality of the Little Sisters, has Dr Tenenbaum, who smokes languidly and looks sort of pretty in the radio mugshot. She's quite lumpy in person but nevertheless represents a CLEAR WIN FOR BIOSHOCK. BIOSHOCK AHEAD. SHARKS: M is set in Berlin, and features no sharks. Bioshock also has no sharks, but its underwater setting makes their lack evident. A minor demerit: M WINS. NECK AND NECK. VALUE FOR MONEY: M has a running time of around 2 hours. Bioshock has over 20! BIOSHOCK IS THE CLEAR WINNER. BIOSHOCK AHEAD. THEMATIC DEPTH: M is about a child murderer. Bioshock is about a child murderer and also Objectivism. BIOSHOCK WINS. BIOSHOCK AHEAD TWO. FINAL SCORE: M 4, Bioshock 6. BIOSHOCK WINS: DECISIVELY. SCIENTIFICALLY.  

At the far end of the tunnel of human consciousness there is an invisible light. Peggle is the quest for that light. So is Kubrick's 2001, but 2001 has no unicorns.1. PERFORMANCE. Peggle will run on a cheap netbook. So will 2001, but it really needs a big screen to be effective. PEGGLE WINS. PEGGLE AHEAD.2. GRAPHICS: Peggle runs in 800x600 resolution with simple, cheerful, minimally animated 2D graphics. 2001 is a major motion picture directed by one of the greats of the 20th Century and photographed in Super Panavision 70 with marvellously undated best-of-breed in-camera special effects. 2001 WINS. NECK AND NECK.3. INNOVATION: Peggle's primary mechanic is based firmly on the pachinko machines of Japan, and the debt it owes to the power-ups of Arkanoid and its successors is obvious. 2001 was an unprecedented collaboration between a pre-eminent director and a pre-eminent science fiction novelist, using pioneering special effects to create a whole-sensory experience unequalled in any field of human endeavour. 2001 WINS. 2001 AHEAD.4. GAMEPLAY: Peggle's gameplay is classic PopCap, which is to say, shallow, yet deep, yet shallow. Kubrick's direction is classic Kubrick, which is to say, like, deep, but in places, like, extremely deep. 2001 rewards patience. Peggle's contempt for patience is legendary. Its core audience is a trained monkey in the grip of sugar psychosis. Therein lies its genius. PEGGLE WINS. NECK AND NECK.5. SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY. 2001 employed a NASA engineer as scientific consultant. The screenplay was co-written by  one of the grandfathers of hard SF. Minor inconsistencies aside, the accuracy is impressive and well-maintained. Peggle is rife with errors. Its physics model is inconsistent and exaggerated. Peggle Master Splork's 'Space Blast' has no basis in science. Claude the Lobster speaks English! With a French accent! 2001 WINS THOROUGHLY. 2001 AHEAD.6. MONOLITHS. 2001 employs three monoliths: one in the prehistoric African savannah, one unearthed on the moon, one in orbit around Jupiter.  For a film which trades so famously on the potent image of the black monolith, this is not generous. Peggle is crowded with monoliths: not only the standing stones and Egyptian monuments of the Academy but, by some readings, the rectangular variety of the pegs themselves. PEGGLE WINS. NECK AND NECK.7. MUSIC:  2001 famously uses music by Ligeti, Khatchataurian and two distinct Strausses to powerful effect. Peggle deploys the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth at each level's end, as well as a bouncy, serviceable original score. There's nothing wrong with that. But 2001 has the numbers. 2001 WINS. 2001 AHEAD!8. INTENSITY:  Kubrick said:"2001 is a nonverbal experience... I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophic content." There is no doubt he succeeded. 2001's space is a cathedral-exile for the soul. Ligeti's Requiem rises to unbearable crescendo while planets align and prehumans cower before the terror of the monolith. But all this is nothing before the Dionysiac frenzy of PEGGLE  EXTREME FEVER. PEGGLE WINS! NECK AND NECK!9. MORAL RIGOUR: 2001 lacks any real moral centre. The only drive is towards knowledge, self-awareness, sophistication. At the heart of the first act lies a crime of primeval murder in pursuit of that goal; at the heart of the second, the double murder of Poole and Bowman, ultimately to the same end. Unpromising. But Peggle, beneath its carefree motifs of unicorns and woodland creatures, is  a ruthless hymn to chaos, to greed, to the pursuit of the trivial at the expense of the eternal. Its spirit arises like cigarette smoke from pachinko parlours, those dens of infernal machinery which thrive on the misery of the degenerate gambler. 2001 is merely inhuman. Peggle is actively demonic! 2001 WINS. 2001 AHEAD!FINAL SCORE: 2001 5, PEGGLE 4. 2001 WINS: SCIENTIFICALLY.