System Shock 2 Reviews

Making a combat-heavy game on the Dark Engine with Thief's AI is an objectively poor idea. It's not only the backtracking, weird input delay when switching weapons (which you will be doing constantly in battle to conserve resources), boring environments, nor the clumsy AI. But it is mostly the AI. Enemies always get stuck in absurdly-contrived, long combat animations like in Thief 1 and 2. Because the animations are taken straight from Thief, enemies hold shotguns like clubs, so trying to identify threats requires you to take damage, because enemies never miss. Cool, huh? Then when they drop the shotgun it immediately jams. Immersive! Also, they are either psychic, running exactly to your location out of nowhere, or are completely blind and never hear you jumping down right behind them. I grew up playing awkward DOS games with unresponsive, floaty melee weapons, but even I can't recommend this. No, YouTube essayists, this hasn't aged like a fine wine. As much as I love Warren Spector and Terri Brosius, this was unbearably janky even by 1999 standards. Play Deus Ex instead.

I waited far too long to play this one and I'm happy i got around to it, i was able to set up a controller layout that works decently well and its been fantastic :D

A masterpiece game! 10 / 10 "Sometimes it hurts terribly and sometimes it is.. marvelous" - A. Korenchkin

ohhhh how i have missed this game. i've completed ss2 numerous times using different builds/focuses: [url=http://www.shtupmod.net/newbies_guide.html]a spoiler-free guide for anyone who is looking to play for the first time/general guide for beginners[/url] modded it to hell and back: [url=https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=4447.0]really worth checking it out, i do advise on having your first playthrough be completely modless.[/url] completed it on vanilla and while i like to believe that this is one of those games i have exhausted in its entirety, i just keep coming back. i randomly decided to pick it up today and i am so geeked lol. the art design holds up incredibly well (dark engine, the same engine used for thief games. i can't help but compare ss1 and 2 from a design perspective, however coding deflection and obfuscation directly into the engine became a much more common practice years later, which would explain why they look so vastly different). the sound design is my second favorite. the story is mostly told through brilliantly written audio logs, and in comparison to ss1 (i have briefly mentioned this in my other review), the sound is not as uncanny and obnoxious. you actually feel like you are on this starship. the music is insane. as you enter the second starship deck and slowly approach the elevator, the hardest dark techno track you will hear that day just drops down on you. you owe yourself the experience of playing this game at least once in your lifetime.

Good story and challenging game play and SHODAN rules as a villain on top over Frank Fontaine from Bioshock

Good immersive sim. Bit dated in some aspects - feels like there is a little too much backtracking necessary and some mission objectives can be confusing. Its also quite easy to miss a critical location and end up getting lost and not knowing how to proceed. The heavy resource management in the early-mid game is crucial so using your wrench is important. This creates not exactly the most satisfying combat for a large portion of the game. Regardless atmosphere is good, the main villain is good. Possibly drags on a little too long but was a fun game.

I came into this game after playing the first through the enhanced edition, for the first game I was sucked in by the world, music, enemy variety, story, gameplay and progression(there is a reason its considered one of the best it really does do nearly everything right). And to follow that up with this it is just disappointing, going in order of what I liked about the first game, The world while much more detailed felt less alive or like it was made to be in a video game, I think this is due to enemy spawns where in the first game I could believe more mutants or cyborgs were being deployed by SHODAN around the station here, It just feels like how it is which is just they spawn in and go to where you are, very immersion breaking along with the placement of turrets like sure there could be a lore reason to have turrets but realistically I cannot believe a science ship even docked with a military one with the purpose of exploring the galaxy would have this level of security. Citadel station was at least a research station developing both civilian and military products. The last thing I will say in the world is if the game was going for a horror theme as many people talk about and the game is even taged as, then they have failed horribly this shit is not scary and is not helped by the music, I am asking people who thought this was horrifying do you guys find zombies holding shotguns like swords to be scary?. Because I find that to be poor game design. The music in the first was unique and this is obviously subjective but the music in the first gave the world a feel along with the low quality graphics, here its just generic techno trash I can find thousands of on youtube, or it follows the poor horror direction not helping it, but I will say the horror tracks for this game are high quality just misplaced in this game. The one area where I think they did horror perfectly but then screwed it up the very end, is the Many. The voice lines, what they are saying, the emotions within them and the story behind the Many, I thought was unique and dripped atmosphere but unfortunately they did not end the game there, by ending the game with a final SHODAN confrontation it diminished the impact of the Many and makes it feels like the secondary villain when it should have been the primary. The first System Shock opened with you after waking up in the medical ward with complete freedom, here you are required for every game to go through a gamey immersion breaking training to build a character, that serves a poor progression system, without looking up a guide you can legitimately make it very hard for you to win without looking anything up other then the manual by wasting points on upgrades. This RPG like progression only hurts immersion and replayability, when compared with the first game. You could just pick up any weapon so long as you had the space, the problem came with ammo and energy usage. This allows for fluid and reactive gameplay based on what you have, how much ammo and energy you have and how you want to handle a situation depending on the enemies. Here within the first 5 minutes of gameplay you are making choices that will forever lock you into a gameplay style. Overall while the first game felt like an immersive world with complete player freedom. Here System Shock 2 from the first moments of the game reminds me that I am playing a game and only offers these moments when I am listing to the voice of the Many, the only good horror aspect of this game. If you are looking for a good horror game go play something else, and if you are looking for an immersive sim to play then just go play ss1, deus ex, bioshock or e.y.e.

Wish I could play this for the first time again. An absolute masterpiece in immersive storytelling and horror. Gameplay holds up to this day, and the low polygonal visuals, to be honest, make the game a lot scarier. Soundtrack carries a lot of the game's atmosphere - accurately instilling the feeling of loneliness in space, as well as alone against an unknown entity that is lurking in every corner of the ship you're stuck in. The characters and enemies are really well written - very similar to Bioshock 1 (made by the same devs later on) Only issue I have with the game is the final section, (unfortunately drawing inspiration from the original Half-Life's Xen world) which is a chore to go through and sort of ruins the climax the game builds up for most of the game.

At long last I finally finished my first run of system shock 2. Admittedly I was disappointed by how short the final final fight was, but the entire game makes up for it in spades :) This game is a timeless classic and I loved every second I spent in it :) Also, regardless of whether or not you have arachnophobia, by the time you get through the battle against the many? You will be fearing for your life whenever you hear skittering noises in every other game.

I originally played this game in highschool but would learn it was formative to how i would approach my love life as i only date evil women with a god complex. want me to go shoot some alien hive mind that you created from your fuck up 42 years prior at your previous place of employment? yes babygirl i gotchu. 10/10 game.