Troubled game publisher Take-Two's sagging share price has been given a welcome boost thanks to the recently released, and now, wildly successful game BioShock.

Reuters are reporting a 10 percent jump in Take-Two's share price following the almost universal critical praise being heaped upon it just a couple of days after the games release. In a widespread bout of unabashed warm-fuzzies rarely seen in the video game industry, reviewers and critics the world over are dishing out scores of 10/10 and 100% like there's no tomorrow.

This is great news for Take-Two who've been hammered lately by dodgy accounting practices scandals and the delay of the latest installment in their flagship Grand Theft Auto franchise. GTA IV has been delayed until 2008, a move that means the company misses out on reaping the financial benefits of releasing a new version of one of the worlds biggest selling games in time for the Christmas rush. BioShock looks like it'll sell hundreds of thousands of copies and fill the yawning gap in Take-Twos bank account nicely in the meantime.

In a cruelly ironic twist, BioShock is currently released only for Xbox 360 and PC, not Sony's PS3 console. The loss of GTA IV from the PS3's Christmas release schedule is likely to hurt Sony -- who were counting on GTA IV to help sell more PS3's -- more than anyone else.

BioShock, for those who may have been living under the virtual equivalent of a rock this past week, is a new action game set in a fantastical and secret underwater city built during World War II but falling rapidly into chaos as all manner of weird, creepy and deadly events take place. Your character has the misfortune of surviving a mid-ocean airliner crash and being plunged into the midst of it all. You must then not only try and figure out the mystery of what happened in this wonderfully atmospheric environment under the sea...but survive. We've played the demo on both Xbox 360 and PC and can't wait for the full thing to arrive.