One of the first things to note, and probably one of the most important, is the way System Shock 2 handles its inventory system. Don’t do what I did my first time out and be stuck with a pistol you can’t use. You need one point into Standard weapon skills to use a pistol. As someone who’s first playthrough ended in the darkest bowels of the ship when they ran out of psychic energy and hadn’t invested in any backup weapons, I can say for certain that if you don’t choose your talents carefully, the game will make you suffer for it. These choices and the way you go about building up their strengths over the course of your mission, offer System Shock 2 a level of replayability that both heightens the experience and sharpens the terror. You can elect to be a marine with heavy weapon expertise and strength, a navy technician with hacking and computer savvy, or even a psychic black-ops trooper with the ability to augment the world with the power of his mind. Your character-building choices ultimately dictate your chances of survival, beginning with your basic training and four years (time-lapsed) on other military assignments to fine-hone your skills before you’re assigned to the Von Braun. The gameplay of System Shock 2 is an intriguing mix, with its base in a first-person shooter and roleplaying elements being added in the form of your character’s cybernetic upgrades. Remember, the unauthorized usage of firearms aboard the Von Braun is a class 3 infraction.” The cybernetic enhancements that you’ve been fitted with afford you one chance to put an end to this madness, once and for all. The rising action of System Shock 2 has you caught in a power struggle between The Many, a genetically-engineered race of revolting bio-organisms bent on consuming all life in the universe, and SHODAN, the malevolent and insane machine-goddess that created them, with the very fate of humanity hanging in the balance. As you proceed through the decks, however, your mission of locating survivors and finding a way to escape the doomed vessel gives way to a greater priority. The only voice you can trust belongs to Polito, a survivor holed up on one of the upper decks who wants to help you fight back against these creatures. The ship’s AI has been corrupted by an unknown source and even the Von Braun’s robot population is out to get you. You wake up from stasis to find its crew dead in some places and mutated in others, turning them into hideous alien hybrids that pursue you relentlessly through the bloodstained halls.
System Shock 2 opens on the Von Braun, a Tri-Optimum corporation research vessel sent on a mission of exploration in the unknown reaches of space. I take it this game isn’t going to be a lighthearted comedy romp… Right off the bat, we see a guy who hung himself.
Are you afraid? What is it you fear? Let’s find out as we take our first steps into the foreboding corridors and brace ourselves for the nightmare… And yet, despite the extraordinary success of its descendants, none of its many children has yet been able to match the true horror that System Shock 2 injects into your very veins. Its masterful execution of its atmosphere and groundbreaking plot gave birth to whole new conventions of terror, while its gameplay style became a model to be imitated by modern titles, such as Bioshock, Dead Space, and even Portal. System Shock 2 came out in 1999 to a low number of sales, but was hailed as a cult classic by those fortunate enough to play it, and now that it’s been unearthed on Steam, a whole new audience is rediscovering this once-lost treasure.
In the realm of horror games, there is a title that stands above and continues to terrify even to this day, looming like a baleful monolith over the entire industry. Genre: First-Person Shooter, Role-Playing, Survival Horror Developer(s): Irrational Games, Looking Glass Studios
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