System Shock® 2 (1999)

One of the best games ever made. Like Blade Runner amongst the films despite prises from reviewers and players originally sold below expectations. It was too "weird" and "unusual" for its era. With time became (absolutely deserved) a cult classic. Mix of FPS, RPG and survival horror with an excellent story. Great settings and level design. Incredible climate. Only flaw is a bit unbalanced weapon system, but this is not affecting the whole gameplay. This is an experience you will never forget...

System Shock 2 is simply one of the best games ever made on PC! Would you please buy the game - Insect! P.S.: As of 2018, even supports ultra wide resolutions nowadays thanks to the game support!

Recently, I've been craving a replay of Arkane's 2017 ode to System Shock 2 - Prey. I adore the freeform exploration and tense atmosphere of that modern masterwork, so I thought I'd go back to the granddaddy. It's a game that has languished in my library for a while as I've made two previous, unsuccessful attempts to get through it, frustrated by the awkwardness of the combat. I've finally played through it. It is brilliant. If there is one main frustration with SS2, it is in how restrictive it feels compared to immersive sims that are inspired by it. Where I can bypass entire areas through ingenuity (or stubborness) in Prey, Dishonored, and Deus Ex, here, you slot into a role - hacker, melee, guns - and spec your character deep into that role. The game doesn't reward creative thinking in the same way some of its projenitors support and though it's certainly a deeper RPG than its direct successor - Bioshock - it shares more DNA with Bioshock than it does with the creative sandboxes of other immersive sims. That's hardly missed when the creativity in level design, storytelling, and atmosphere impress so many years on. It's not hard to see what a tremendous impact this game had on narrative and level design (and the nexus of the two) post its release in 1999. The audio here, as in Bioshock, is top-notch. The etherized harmonious voices of The Many are as unnerving as the infamous digitized scorn of SHODAN. Both serve as wonderful antagonists and both spawn two of the most memorable levels of the entire game (even if traversing these levels is far more annoying than any of the levels that precede them). One frustration: if you do slot into melee, BE SURE TO UPGRADE HACKING BEFORE THE END. It's impossible to complete the final boss without it. It's frustrating that this isn't communicated somewhere else, since the game is so flexible in how it approaches skillgating elsewhere. All in all SS2 isn't as refined as Bioshock, but it is just as memorable.

This game is one of my favorites of all time. Its a little clunky but system shock 2, along with deus ex, were the founding baselines for the rps genre as a whole. As the title states, my uncle was a release engineer for looking glass studios and is credited in the games credits. He's also listed as the Installer Programmer on the moby games page for this game. I remember him telling me countless stories about the development of this game, and how bad crunch time was. Irrational games was founded by three employees from looking glass studios. They decided to form their own company, but they were on such good terms with their former employers, they ended up being able to use some of the Looking Glass Studios office space. As the development for system shock 2 grew, more and more cubicals were filled by irrational employees, and less by looking glass. Soon his cubical was surrounded by employees from irrational. He still keeps in contact with the developers to this day, and the system shock remake/reboot is also being made by many of the same guys. Looking forward to it all.

This is a 10 stars out of 5 stars kind of game. This game rules. This game rules so hard, me and 3 friends spent 1 AND A HALF YEARS of our lives getting this game to work -- using fan patches -- until we finally beat it on 4-player co-op. Through our blood, sweat, and tears, and a troubleshooting-to-playtime ratio of, oh, 6 hours to every 2... WE WERE VICTORIOUS. So why does this game get fewer stars from me? Imagine our elation, after so much agony, when this release finally saw the light of day! Heck, imagine our joy when the mysterious "newdark" patch hit SS2 forums last year, boasting incredible improvements in almost every area of graphics, performance, sound, various bugs... But HERE'S THE CATCH: NEWDARK PATCH BROKE 4-PLAYER CO-OP. AND 4-PLAYER CO-OP DOES NOT WORK IN THIS RELEASE EITHER. (Search for the post "4-player Multiplayer" in the System Shock dot org forums for more details.) Now imagine our disappointment. Still an excellent game -- all four of us have still bought the GOG release, and I don't think our money was poorly spent -- but 4-player co-op is sooooo much fun, and sooooo broken. As in, broken in a way that worked before (albeit poorly) before the "newdark" and re-release fixes were applied. Do you not yearn to be free of the tyranny of the individual? Vote this review as "helpful" if you think 4-player co-op should be restored! Remember Citadel! REMEMBER 4-PLAYER CO-OP! DEATH TO SHODAN!