System Shock® 2 (1999)

All of us have that list of games we've heard are really good and haven't gotten around to actually playing yet. System Shock 2 was on my list for a long time and I am really glad I took the time to experience such an influential masterpiece of a game. Now, take my review with a grain of salt since I played with some minor graphical overhaul mods. But even with worse texture quality, this game has one of the best atmospheres I've experienced. The Von Braun really feels like a ship where people lived their day to day lives ... which makes the horror aspects that much more imposing. If you are on the fence about buying this game, I promise you won't regret it. Besides, on sale this game is ULTRA cheap. Just do it.

I never played this Game as a kid, but always heard good things about it. After finally playing it, I have to say the game is as good as it's reputation. Of course it's a bit dated in terms of graphics and gunplay. That is to be expected. But I played this game and finished it after 17 hours of fun. As mentioned, I didn't play this as a child, so there is no nostalgia for me here. It is simply a great game that aged rather well.

I can recount my gaming history back to the days of meticulously typing code, line by line into a Commodore 64. The journey since then has included so many memorable experiences, from Thief to Dishonoured and Ultima to Skyrim, plus countless classics in between. Somehow I missed System Shock 2 and was beginning to think I would be destined to always wonder what might have been. Thankyou GOG I wonder no more. Not since I first played Doom have I been so jumpy playing a game. This game may be from another era and certainly looks dated in that sense but I somehow imagine that even "in the day" it did not need to rely on flashy graphics for a thrill. From the first encounter my imagination was running wild, where every change in music and every turn of a corridor scream caution. The audio tapes are every bit as atmospheric as the Bioshock clones a decade later but somehow I more connected to the story they tell. The ever invisible menace, be it real or imagined shows perfect clarity of design not seen in games these days. I have not yet completed the game so I look forward to what it might still throw at me but it certainly proves that good design, be that level, story, character (or an intangible atmospheric something??) go a long way towards making a classic game. My new copy of Far Cry 3 will be put on hold for some time, I may or may not return to that later, seems I have been system shocked.

I would imagine that the worst thing for any developer to go through would be to have their game ignored. Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games created a truly engrosing, atmospheric, and rewardingly challenging game when they developed SS2, but being sandwiched between the much more popular (at the time) Half-Life and Deus Ex, SS2 did not receive the attention or commercial success it deserved. As the years went on many people came around to recognizing the brilliance of this game, and for a game from the late 1990's it holds up incredibly well. For the 2 people out there who might not know SS2 laid the foundation for the Bioshock series, and in many ways SS2 surpasses the Bioshock games, particularly in challenge and RPG mechanics. It might seem odd, but SS2 is much more focused on building a character type and using different playstyles to navigate through the game. The player is forced to make meaningful and permanent decisions regarding which skills to invest cybernetic modules (aka: the game's version of experience points) into, which drastically alters the way that you will play the game on each playthrough. Attributes such as hacking, psionic abilities (i.e., sci-fi "magic spells"), physical strength, various weapon types (e.g., standard, energy, heavy, exotic), and miscellanious skills such as repair, maintenance, research, etc. must have cybernetic modules invested in them to increase their effectivness. This gives the game enormous reply value since a gun toating Marine will play through the game in drastically different ways than a OSA psionics expert for example. There's no getting around the fact that the look of the game has obviously aged, but I enjoy the graphics for the nostalgic factor alone since I grew up gaming primarily in the 1990's. So, if you're reading this and you're on the fence about purchaing this game, do it! It goes on sale relatively frequently, and it's more than worht your time if you enjoy challenging and atmospheric games,

Is it a good game? I think it is and i know now after playing it for the first time why people praise it. It has great atmosphere, feeling of isolation and dread is still pretty impressive even today, story told mostly trough recordings is interesting, there are cool rpg elements like hacking, repair, alien weapons, cyber magics (psi) and decent build variety. You can clearly see other games that came after SS2 drew inspiration from it (Im a big fan of Deus Ex myself) Is it a game everyone will enjoy? Depends. On what you may ask? I'll list some things that may change your mind if you want to play this game or not : Game suffers from balance issues (assault rifle better than most other stuff, psi being a trap for first time players forcing you to play with the basic wrench for a large portion of the game, some skills being almost mandatory to not gimp yourself in the long run etc.) There is quite a lot of backtracking. Enemies respawn way to often and your ranged weapons break way to quick. Enemies also like to suprise you at the start of a new map right after transition or when you are in your inventory (no pause for you mister) Game has a grid based inventory (you can expand it a bit by adding strength) . If you have low tolerance for swapping things in a and out or opening inventory all the time to use/combine items this can be a potential problem for you. There are key binds you can use for some of the items but you still have to check energy levels of your power armor or cyber implants inside the inventory screen. Some pars of the game can be a potential softlock if you go in blind and build wrong character. So to summarize. If you are a younger player, don't like to read build guides before starting a game or you just don't want to deal with the "oldschoolness" this classic is probably not for you. PS: The ending cinematic was so bad and out of place it made me spill my coffee from laughter.