System Shock® 2 (1999)

Easily one of the best games ever made, and still goes toe-to-toe with the modern greats. Buy it on sale, buy it full price, buy it five times - whatever. What I wouldn't give for a faithful reboot...

This is one of the greatest games ever made. Played the physical copy version when it released. Do yourself a favour and play this. SS1 and SS2 are on another level still to this day.

If you are a fan of immersive first person games like thief, deus ex, and arx fatalis then this is the game for you. I only played SS2 for the first time about 2 years ago and it quickly became one of my all time favorite games. The atmosphere and tension the game creates is unmatched, and the level of detail really makes you feel like you are in the game's world. A must play for any serious gamer.

title says everything

System Shock 2 starts amazingly. 5/5 for the first 15% of the game (before the player enters Hydroponics Deck). 2/5 after that. Issues: 1. Enemies respawn. It wouldn't be such an issue if not the next problem: 2. Backtracking in the worst possible way. "Go collect 5 keys hidden somewhere in this deck, insect. By the way, the deck is huge and full of boring corridors and similarly-looking rooms, pathetic human. Got the keys? Great, go back to the previous deck and find the specific place where you can use them, you, scum. Oh, and by the way, all the enemies have respawned, so you must kill them again, dirty meatbag". Do you think it becomes better later in the game? No, because the next issue is... 4. The same boring gameplay loop from the beginning to the end. "Find 5 pieces of code, kill 3 assassins, destroy all the eggs..." It becomes especially awful by the end, when you visit another place. 3. RPG elements. Half of your skills are useless. Repair? Not needed. Modify? Almost useless. Research? Either useless or absolutely necessary, if you want to obtain the strongest melee weapon in the game. I think if you need to raise the skill to use it only one time in the entire game, that's an example of a bad game design. Heavy weapon? Only useful for the grenade launcher. Exotic weapon? Only useful for one weapon. And some other skills are absolutely critical - Hack, for example. 4. PSI. Exactly the same reason as with the RPG elements. A ton of PSI powers (something like 50), but how many useful ones? 5 or something. That would be good if the game was easy, but it's hard, so you can't even use the powers for your own fun, or you'll find yourself in the nearest Quantum Bio-Reconstruction Chamber really soon. The UI for switching the powers is horrible - it's difficult to choose the right one during battle. But the first part, when the game is scary and mysterious, is really cool. Especially the cargo bays - exploding robots still come to me in my nightmares.