Developer: Looking Glass Studios / Irrational Games
Publisher: Night Dive Studios
Rrp: £6.59 (Gog.com), £6.99 (Steam), £6.99 (Humblebundle.com)
Released: 17th August 1999
Available on Steam, Gog.com, Humblebundle
Played Using: Mouse and Keyboard
Welcome to the first in my run of Christmas themed games! Throughout December I’ll be reviewing games that in some way relate to Christmas.
‘How can System Shock 2 could possibly fall into that category?’ You may ask. Well ordinarily it wouldn’t, the game itself has nothing to do with Christmas, winter, or any such thing like that. But to me it does. Once upon a time way back in the distant age off 1999 my parents bought this game for me as a surprise birthday present (which happens to be really close to Christmas). They didn’t expect their son to find the receipt for the game and then go looking for it. They didn’t hide it very well as I found it within ten minutes. Being a crafty child I managed to open the game box, install the game and apply a crack that allowed me to play without the CD and could put the game back.
By the time my birthday actually rolled around I had already completed the game four times, I remember having difficulty feigning surprise for them when I opened it. Y’know I think I may tell them I did that now, I mean that was 16 years ago now, pretty sure they can’t be mad.
Anyway that little story is my extremely loose justification for why this game deserves to be here.
System Shock 2 is a first person action RPG, and arguably one of the most influential titles in games history. You play a nameless character (who remains so throughout the game) who in the first moments of the game proper, has to escape from an area that’s about to become exposed to the vacuum of space. Of course, before you do that the tutorial and make a few choices about your character. After doing a quick tutorial (which I advise doing) you are asked to pick between one of three careers, the Marines, the Navy and the O.S.A. The career you choose determines your class although regardless of which class you choose you can still make use of everything the other classes use (with exception of the O. S. A’s special equipment).
Marines are combat orientated focusing primarily on weapons use, the Navy gives you a greater affinity with machines and hacking and the O. S. A is the only class that can use psychic abilities.
For the most part the class you choose determines your starting capabilities with weapons or hacking. For example, the Marine class is able to use a pistol much more effectively than the Navy class, at least at the start the Marine is, it’s all down to how you allocate your cyber modules.
Unlike most RPG’s you don’t improve your character by gaining experience, in this you have to use use cybernetic modules that you either receive as rewards for completing missions or find around the game to increase your stats and abilities at specific locations. Being a RPG you have an inventory screen which the game calls ‘Use Mode’, it’s on this screen that you get view your stats, swap out items and reread / relisten to logs that you’ve found throughout the game.
Most of the weapons you use will degrade over time, you can maintain them if you have the skill and tools to do so. Again your class will come into play here (unless you’ve dumped large amounts of cyber modules in the skill) along with your skill level and allow you to maintain them without too much issue.
System Shock 2 uses the Enhanced Dark Engine that was also used in Thief 2: The Metal Age. Because of this all the enemies pay attention to sound and can follow your footsteps. This might seem normal now but until the Thief games (and by extension System Shock 2) games just didn’t have this kind of functionality.
The variation of enemies is impressive and in some cases the very idea of them is just frightening, my particular favourite (and the one that terrifies me most) is the cyborg midwife… just trust me when you encounter them you’ll understand.
Lets talk about controls for a moment, this game works best with a keyboard and mouse, I doubt anyone will question that. But I want to give a warning to anyone who decides to pick this up, you will most likely want to rebind the controls. This game came out before using [W], [A], [S], [D] became standard practise as such the default keybindings are a bit strange.
Many parallels can be drawn between System Shock 2 and Bioshock and with good reason, System Shock 2 is the spiritual precursor to the Bioshock series. Unfortunately, one thing that didn’t parallel with Bioshock was the sales, it was sadly a commercial flop even though it was a critical success. Many critics site this game to be highly influential in future games being developed (and no not just the Bioshock series).
In a way this game is something of a time capsule, show casing some of the worst parts of game design from the nineties but also showing how things were evolving.
I’ll happily agree that the game hasn’t aged too well, although once you’re immersed in the game you barely notice it. Thankfully quite a few people have created mods that upgrade the graphics somewhat.
Trying to give a review of this game has been very hard for me, I’m someone who replays this game at least once every few years. I can say that this is one of the scariest experiences I’ve had, giving a constant feeling of dread and fear even when in a safe area, very few games have managed that for me.
If this appeals to you perhaps try;
The Bioshock Series
System Shock
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
