System Shock® 2 (1999)

System Shock 2 is a decent game, but my problem is I just don't have the benefit of having played it before Bioshock. This is a Ken Levine and Irrational Games FPS space survival game where you are a soldier who awakes from Cryosleep without remembering much about your surroundings. You arrive out of your pod and you can see somethings gone wrong.. terribly wrong. Thankfully you have a mysterious voice to guide you, to help you get to safety. First, you'll need a wrench, then you'll need to get aquainted with your psionic skills, which you can upgrade to give you Tonic-type abilities. Fights can be difficult, so you do have Quantum Bio-Reconstruction Machines which will reconstruct you if you die in battle. You can also hack vending machines to get to locked off areas or reduce prices at vending machines.. or if you have a lock-pick (called Ice Pick), you can use them to hack for you. Yes it all sounds familiar. Its not "just like Bioshock", because well.. for one.. its in space, and there are some differences, but the similarities in situation, application and story progression are quite noticeable. So it's a good game, and in today's day and age, I've rated it a 3/5 - because it is good, it just feels like I've played it all before. Finally, the graphics are surprisingly bad for 1999. This was released in Aug 1999, the year Dreamcast launched.. I had/have a DC and the rudimentary construction of System Shock 2's character models and environments are very basic in comparison to graphics we saw in 1999. The odd angular heads of character models are particularly horriffic - in the opening cutscene, I wasn't sure if I was a human or a frightening alien - lol. - Thankfully there are ways to mod the game with some upgraded models and textures, if you want to test your patience and figure it out. Anyway, in conclusion, its a good game, but it's a very familiar game. If you have the benefit of nostalgia, great.. if you don't- you should enjoy it anyway. :)

If you got this game for free during the last Big Fall Sale like I did, stop reading this and go install it! This is a very well-made shooter that rewards you for playing smart, exploring carefully, and conserving resources. The ship is creepy, what with it's flickering lights, warnings written on the walls in blood, strange machinery working, and of course the sounds of enemies you can't see echoing down the corridors. The lean buttons are very useful because you never know what is around the corner, but you can be sure it probably isn't good! There are audio logs all over the ship that tell the story of what happened there through the perspective of several of the crew members, some of them contain important information to progress through the game but every single one is worth listening to and mostly well voice-acted. I do have a couple of small criticisms, though. Other than Standard Weapons, the other three weapon classes have more crappy weapons than good ones, and a first-time player wouldn't know that until they invested multiple ranks into those weapon skills to equip them and find out, but the other three classes do have at least one good weapon each so it's not a total waste. My other, similar, criticism is that some of the Tech skills also aren't worthwhile to make a major investment in. Repair can be entirely replaced by the auto-repair items you find scattered around as long as you Maintain your weapons before they break, and unless you want to use the Exotic weapons you can beat the game without putting a single point into Research because the game gives you an implant that will handle that for you. I think the best way I can summarize this game is that it's the game Bioshock copied but never quite lived up to. I got bored with Bioshock about halfway through, I didn't find anything boring here. Oh, in case you were wondering, the very best game I ever got for free was Baldur's Gate 2, and it might be getting demoted after more plays of SS2.

I just stopped by to say I played this game almost 15 years after it was released and I enjoyed. Yeah the graphics are not the best, but the atmosphere and the music is well done. I still really enjoyed this game even though it came out in 1999 and I played it for the first time about 5 years ago.

I'm not a fan of cyberpunk genre, and I didn't play SS and SS2 in 90-th. So I don't know how this games were perceived by people that time. But playing nowadays I can notice overloaded control interface that don't allow fast and effectively using weapons and special abilities. That's why gameplay are not good and playing this game not very pleasant. Although I want to notice very good level design, quite many interesting features and attention to details.

a classic, a game that gave me real shivers, the sounds alone can make you turn it off, worrying about what may be around the corner, you will never regret buying this game I promise you!!