Buy System Shock 2

The Good:
+ A Very haunting atmosphere. The graphics are dated however a few mods can make it better
+ The scariest game you will play.
+ Fantastic sound design
+ Great RPG mechanics. You can invest in different weapons, abilities, os psi abilities. Essentially you can play the game any way you want to
+ Great story and voice acting

The Bad:
- Graphics are a bit outdated obviously, mods do a decent job but if you love super amazing graphics, you won't find it here
-Some of the objectives have you running back and forth between the same areas. It feels like needless backtracking.
- Last few areas of the game are not fun


Overall:

This is a true classic and needs to be played by everyone. It's not perfect but its still one of the best first person RPG's out there. Its almost sad that Bioshock the spiritual successor to this game pales in comparison to certain aspects that this game delivers.

Four things to know:

1. You want this game. This game is great. All-time great.

2. You want to install visual mods that really make the game sparkle on modern displays. This mod pack packages up all of the best visual mods in one collection: http://neutralx2.com/2013/07/14/system-shock-2-mod-pack

These mods are as faithful to the original look as possible. They just make the game look like it should on today's high resolution displays.

3. Load the "standard FPS" control preset. It will save you a little remapping.

4. Turn off the music.

System Shock 2, 1990s gaming's swansong, can boast the honor of having written the book on complex hybrid FPS gameplay, open-ended skill progression, conceptual horror, sound design and environmental storytelling. Now that I think of it, that means it's pretty much written the book on everything in modern-day gaming.

Games still emulate it, either directly or indirectly, to this day; and more recently in the 2010s, there's now a strange sort of niche genre around it, which I nickname "Shocklike" games (for instance, when Bethesda rebooted Prey 2, they demanded up front that the game be designed as if it were "System Shock 3"). Even incompetent and ethically bankrupt publishers swear by it; that's got to mean something!

Oh, and you ought to play it. Not only does it still hold up remarkably well, but the experience it offers remains unparalleled in its quality, unique in its atmosphere and overall, really freaking great.

The more I play this the more Bioshock Infinite pales in comparison. This game offers so much build choices that I was overwelmed by all the different playstyles. Once I dive into the game, I was greeted by catchy techno soundtrack, spooky beef jerky hybrids, and hadouken monkeys. Forget the prod, stick with the wrench, wrench with the wrench.

Don't get Bioshock Infinite and its Season Pass, get System Shock 2 instead.

This game needs no introduction. It's regarded as one of the best games for PC ever made, as well as one of the best for its genre... and it is wholly deserving of all its praise. System Shock 2 is a game that defies any real review, to do so would to really spoil the experience. It needs to be played to understand why it is so good, and that is what playing it is: an experience.

The game is a rare example of design, gameplay, aesthetic, atmosphere, and presentation all working in near perfect harmony to deliver an engrossing experience that pulls you in and keeps you going until the final hours are passed. The RPG elements are almost completely free form, allowing you to build your character in almost any way you like focusing on what you want as you want it (though in the early game you'll do well to focus on your initial strengths as to not spread yourself too thin), and while initial enemy placement is pre-determined you'll find out that they respawn with alarming frequency in random numbers and placements to constantly keep you on your toes.

The game is not perfect, mind, and has some flaws. Most notable are the level designs for the final areas of the game don't seem quite as well designed as the rest of the game and some other small nitpicks, but these are minor gaffes in System Shock 2's excellent imageand are easily forgiven. If you like science fiction, survival horror, cyberpunk, body or eldritch horror, free form RPGs, first person shooters, adventure games, or any combination thereof of them, then System Shock 2 is well deserving of your attention. And hell, even if you don't like any of that stuff, it may be worth looking into just to try new things! You might just find yourself surprised.

♥♥♥♥ing unhitable monkeys that fire magic orbs at you and spawn kill you. Probably the best game experince I have ever had

"With only a few short years of evolution, they've been able to conquer this starship, mankind's mightiest creation. Where were we after forty years of evolution? What swamp were we swimming around in, single celled and mindless? What if SHODAN's creations are superior to us? What will they become in a million years, in ten million years? What's clear is that SHODAN shouldn't be allowed to play God. She's far too good at it." - Prefontaine

You know its a good game when it lets you play MineSweeper and fight off a horde of hybrids at the same time

I just beat the game for the first time and I was floored. This is truly one of the best gaming experiences availible. The RPG, FPS, and survival horror elements are blended spectacurarly. The gaming environment is immersive and the sounds and voice tracks are superb. My only complaint is some level design choices in the late game but overall the game is a diamond and should be at the top of your to-do list.

Better than BioShock, better than 1st Half-Life. Game is unbelievable. It looks juuust a bit dated but who cares when it's got such a deep gameplay. RPG elements, vast variety of weapons and skills, controls - all this makes SS2 a great fun to play. Atmosphere is where the game steals the show. You a fan of Sci-Fi horror? Then what the fyck are you waiting for, buy this game! You are aboard the spaceship, everyone is infected and controlled by an alien force and your a.s.s. must find out what's going on over here. This is bold definition of awesome. Plus I wanna shake composers' hands - music score blasts you the hell away. Weak points? Maybe some NPC models. That is all I can come up with. SystemShock 2 oozes value and you'll never regret paying money for this product.

1999.

Ken Levine, in co-develope with Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios, brought us one of the most expected sequel of the last century. System Shock 2. Mixing RPG, FPS, Survival Horror and Adventure.

After 30 years, TriOptimums went to bankruptcy and all the stock was bought by a Russian company named A. Korenchkin, who restored the company after a decade and its signing now weapon contracts with politicians and military organizationes.

Then 12 after the events in Citadel TriOptimum is restored, in fact is now testing a new FTL ship, called the Von Braun which is not alone. Another ship is following it, named Rickenbacker. Why? Simple, Rickenbacker does not have a FTL device, so it needs to be "attached" to the Von Braum for the trip.

5 months after and you´ll wake up in your cryo-tube inside the Von Braum to find out that something has happened there...


This is just an introduction about the plot, which is very interesting. Now lets move to the gameplay.


System Shock uses the Dark Engine (yep the same as Thief: Dark Project) but it is slightly different. It wasnt finished so the programmers were fixing bugs when encountered. BUT this only makes things better, because they were working closely with the engine code allowing them to "create" or "write" additional features. Thats why we said that the Dark Engine in SS2 is the Enhanced Dark Engine. In addition to this fact the DE (Dark Engine) was able to display a wide variety of colored lighting, thats why SS2 uses some tricks with lighting and sounds to create a perfect atmosphere of terror.
The worst part about the DE is the limit in the polygons (only 1024), but this can be fixed with some mods, besides if you´re not a Graphic ♥♥♥♥♥ you´ll deal with it.

As i said above, this game has consciousness about his best points, sound and lighting, but we are not talking about screamers. We are talking about subtle Terror full of hues, as the good terror-touch should be. Just an example, during the game, youll heard the enemies claiming this response "We are part of the many" this "many" is the "Hive" created by the enemies to defeat the human beings in the ships, now they know (and WE know) that you are alone, and they try to delve into that fact to psychically destroy you.


As for the RPG, SS2 keeps a good Skill-System that allows you to perform a wide variety of actions during the game, this is possible with the "Cyber-modules" given as rewards for searching or completing objectives. But this is a good CRPG system so you wont be able to upgrade EVERYTHING. Here it is why:

-First, it encourages you to replay the game. Every skill build will be different, each one will provide you something, and EVERYTHING can be a tool to achieve your goal, win the game.
-Secondly, and the most remarkable. It adds difficulty to the game. Difficulty its not a way to qualify a game. But it helps to define it, here in SS2 you wont be able to restore your Cybermodules, they are limited, valuable and its use will reward you, so be mindful of your purpose.
-Thirdly, motivation. Want to be the best Psico/Hacker/Soldier/etc..? Give your best. Dont expect to be the best being a passive-player, the more you risk the more you´ll achieve. Some room will have nanites (money) or another item that you need, and OF COURSE they´ll be enemies around, turrets or security robots, so break your mind, build up your tactic and try to overcome adversity in order to improve your character.

Apart from CRPG, Adventure and Horror the shooter part is so well oiled, i mean seriously you have an entire arsenal to use, every weapon has its own stats, effects and mechanics, so you can ALWAYS get another weapon, avoiding that bland part in every game when you only get 1 weapon for all things...Also the game includes a degradation and maintenance of the weapons and a variety of ammo.


Back in the day this game was relevant, nice scores, many awards, positives reviews...But only the time bring System Shock 2 to the summit, it has a lot of followers, a Cult Follower, an active community of modders since 1999... I know that i left a lot of things in the inkwell, but this game is that sort of game that must be played, not read.

Linux users, watch out for this. This game was not actually ported to Linux. Instead, Steam ships a build of wine and a wineprefix to run the game in.

It will launch in fullscreen and throw your resolution back to 640x480, but only the upper left corner of the main menu will be visible, so you cannot exit or change the resolution by conventional means.

It will crash xorg on exit.

Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.

I'll update this with my specific system info later, in case this is a problem specific to my version of xorg or something.

This game and Deus Ex set the cornerstone of the Cyberpunk genre, other similar games just pale in comparison.
Oh, and forget the "1999 mode" in BInfinite, this is the true 1999 mode you should play.

Pathetic creature of meat and bone. Do you really need me to convince you to play System Shock?

If so, never speak to me. Ever.

BUY IT NAWHWHWHWHWHW GLAHALHGLAHGALHGGLAH!~

System Shock 2 is truly the pinnacle of Sci-Fi horror. It combines complex, deep and challenging gameplay into one sweet result. The game feels overwhelming at first but once you get past the 2 or 3 hours mark you slowly start to understand how the game works. The game's complex level design makes exploring very satisfying, and very rewarding too. Audio logs contains usefull passwords and stuff, really easy to miss. So its really important to look everywhere before continuing on. Enemies spawn at random too, so you can come back to an earlier zone and there will still be hybrids roaming around. Kinda forces you to stay on your guard at all times.

The game features a pretty elaborate research system, too. If you pick up a strange item, you can research it and get damage bonus on certain enemies or even use the items as temporary upgrades on you. However there's a catch, you can't just research everything you want. You have to find special chemicals stored inside rooms in some levels. Not all levels share the same chemicals too, so you have to check in every room for the required chemicals. I thought that was pretty deep and well conceived. I thought there was too few items to reasearch too. theres maybe 10~ total.


The game features an evil AI called Shodan. Probably my favorite antagonist in any game ever. The developpers made sure to handle the characther with great care, every single of her quotes are all very memorable and devilishly creepy. The atmostphere in this game is perfect. Don't let the old graphics scare you away. The graphics adds a certain charm to the game, there is nothing quite like the atmosphere you can find in System Shock 2. I believe its atsmophere is what makes the game so special in its own way.


Hacking seems complicated at first, but it becomes pretty simple when you discover that you cant do anything about it and that your hacking stats does everything for you. Basicly, you just have to click the blue squares and hope something good happens! Its a good idea to upgrade every hacking skills though. The game actually requires you to hack something to make progress. So you cant run away from it.


All in all i think its a fantastic game and is worth everyone's attention. Its captivating gameplay and atmosphere is sure to make any hardcore rpg fans very satisfied!

Killed a monkey and got a bag of chips. 10/10

This will be a review for people who have never played the game.

Should you care about this game and why? It's over a decade old and you've got these people yammering on about how good it is, and now you might be wondering if you should bother with it or not.

This is the first time I've played this game and I have to say that there is some excellence to be found here and some annoyances, just like in any good game.

This is an FPS with RPG elements, with heavy emphasis on RPG. You'll want to research a bit about character creation before you start, or you could just have a go at it, if you don't mind maybe having to restart half way through.

The sound design in this game is what really makes it for me. I turned the music off as soon as I started. The atmospheric sounds really hit the spot. I played with 2.1 speakers (that's two speakers and a sub) and it really worked that sub. The character logs in the game are fully voiced. You can also replay the logs and you will probably have to because sometimes you'll be walking along, listening to a log and a scripted log will come up, playing the two simultaneously, which was kind of annoying.

You'll want to reconfigure the controls for a more modern set up. WSAD and all that good stuff. The game feels pretty natural after you get set up.

The gameplay, coupled with the forboding machinery and sound effects, is really tense. I found myself making extensive use of the leaning keys (Q and E) in order to peek around corners to see if I could get the drop on an enemy before they got one over on me.

The story, while not a direct sequel, does borrow heavily from System Shock 1. Having never played the first in the series, the story still works for me because they fill you in on the basics in the intro.

The level design is, for the most part, pretty good. I didn't have to wonder or wander too much in order to figure out where I was supposed to be and exploration was rewarding. Things start getting a little weird near the end and I have to say that, while at first, I felt the game was stretching out a bit for time, it ended up making me feel like the last two or three hours were a necessary trial. BTW, there's no waypoint markers, in case you were wondering, but then what's the point of exploring if you've always got an arrrow telling you where to go??

So, if you can deal with reconfiguring controls, dated graphics (there's a few texture resizing mods that are good), some old fashioned exploration without waypoints, and the last few hours feeling a little like a hail mary denouement, it is pretty good.

I don't have the rose-tinted glasses to tell you that it's a cornerstone of PC gaming or that everyone who has business calling themselves a gamer should have played it, but I would say that I might actually play it again someday and that's not something I say often.

A very complex game. It has a lot of RPG elements in it, and i wouldn't recommend it to people who doesn't have the patience for such things. With that out of the way, this game excels in most of the things it sets out to. Combat can feel wonky due to the stiff animations, but with character stats, backpack management, weapon management (including repairing jammed weapons, unloading guns before throwing them away, modifying and improving them. ), psionics (think plasmids from bioshock, but more difficult to use and a much broader range of abilities), research of foreign materials and navigation via maps and signs, you'll be too busy to be bothered.

Creepy atmosphere, creepy enemies and creepy political undertones. Groundbreaking game.


Edit: "Nah"
10/10

I played this after Bioshock but I like this one more. The graphics don't bother me too much, but then I am used to older games.

The story is fantastic and you can see a lot of moments that were added to Bioshock.


SHODAN is easily one of the best video game villains of all all time.

There are clunky aspects to the game, however, since the RPG stat-building elements are not well-balanced. Some stats have more worth than others. Even so, it can be fun to make a strange build for a greater challenge.

And speaking of challenge, I appreciated what I experienced in System Shock 2. It's very easy to die in this game, and you need to be conservative if you rely on ammo to kill most enemies because they do respawn.

It's my favorite game on Steam for a reason!