Retro Review: System Shock 2

System Shock 2. One of the best examples of a cult classic and "vindication through history" in video games. The game was a commercial failure at retail and barely made a dent in the grand scheme of things, and while it was critically praised none of the critics could have foreseen the influence that it would eventually have on shooters and RPGs alike and it was often compared unfavorably to Half-Life which came out the year before.

Since then System Shock 2 has been highly influential, setting elements that would be used in next year's Deus Ex, and its influence can be seen today with the crossing of shooters and RPGs that we see now with games like its spiritual successor Bioshock.

If you're not catching my drift, I'll simplify it for you. System Shock 2 is now considered one of the greatest games in history and a heavy contender for the greatest FPS of all time as well as one of the scariest games ever made. If you were to ask me what my all time favorite shooter is, I would name System Shock 2 in a heartbeat. If you consider yourself even a PARTIAL fan of shooters, you owe it to yourself to track this game down and play it. Why? Well, read on to find out.

STORY

The story starts off 42 years after the events of the original System Shock and you wake up from cryo-sleep onboard the ship, the Von Braun. A woman named Janice Polito contacts you and begins to guide you through the ship which has been taken over by an entity calling itself, The Many. Basically, think of the Borg from Star Trek, only instead of cybernetics, it's all organic and flesh. The ship's AI, Xerxes, is also aiding The Many, for unknown reasons (at the beginning at least) which means that you also have to contend with cybernetic enemies as well.

As you go through the story, you piece together what happened and how The Many took over and why Xerxes is working with them through audio logs that you find lying around the ship. Also some cybernetics implanted in you during your sleep allow you to pick up psychic signals which show up as ghostly images shedding further light on the story. All the while, Polito continues to contact you with new objectives designed to get you up to Operations so that you can meet with her face to face.

The story was one of the aspects of System Shock 2 that received strong critical acclaim and there are a few reasons it works so well. First, the audio logs provide excellent exposition and allow you to piece everything together in the horrifying backstory. This is enhanced by the great voice acting and absolutely terrifying scenarios that you hear on them while also allowing the game to keep its mystery. The Many are also a mysterious and frightening force that will keep you going to find out more about them.

But of course, the game also has what many consider to be one of the most shocking and probably the most horrifying twists in video game history. In terms of execution, I place it around the same level as the twist from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. In both games a great deal of foreshadowing is delivered but never enough to fully betray the twist and both twists completely change the way you look at the entire story, especially on replays.

There's just one problem and it's not with the game itself. This game is already ridiculously difficult to get running on PCs and while I got the cutscenes to run years back on my XP, I could not get them to run on my Vista. So if you can get them running, you'll have no problem. If not then there are really only three cutscenes needed: one is the introduction, the second takes place immediately after the tutorial, and the last is the ending. You can find them on YouTube and watch them when you get to those respective spots.

GAMEPLAY AND DESIGN

In terms of FPS/RPG gameplay, System Shock 2 is a near perfect hybrid of the two genres. Obviously, you have the shooter portion and it works just like you'd expect: point and shoot with the weapons or bash with melee weapons. You also get different ammo types to use as well, for example with the pistol you get standard bullets, armor-piercing rounds, and anti-personnel rounds.

Where the RPG elements come into play is how you customize your character. There are four different types of customization: Weapons, Tech, Psionic, and Stats. You use cyber modules that you find or are given for completing objectives throughout the game and they get progressively more expensive. All the different types of customization also have their own sub-types.

With weapons they are divided into standard, exotic, heavy, and energy. The further you level each of these up, the more weapons from each category you can use. For example, leveling up standard weapons will allow you to go from just using the pistol to using the shotgun and later assault rifle.

Tech is divided into hack, repair, modify, maintain, and research. Obviously hack allows you to crack open more difficult containers and computer systems, repair allows you to fix busted machinery, modify allows you to improve your weapons, maintain lets you keep your weapons in good repair, and research lets you research enemies to give you damage bonuses and weapons/armor that is otherwise unusable.

Hacking is probably the most vital skill in System Shock 2

Psionics allow you to grant yourself bonuses to stats or work like force powers. There are five tiers of them which you progressively level up to. The ones that don't increase stats allow you to do things like heal yourself, launch fireballs, shield yourself from radiation, or make your weapons less susceptible to degradation.

Finally there are stats which include strength, endurance, psionics, agility, and cyber-affinity. Strength affects damage with melee weapons and inventory space, endurance affects your HP and gives you greater environmental resistance, psionics affects the strength of your psi abilities and how many psi points you have, agility affects running and strafing speed and reduces damage you take from falling and kickback, and cyber-affinity makes it easier to hack, taking away nodes from hacking that could cause a critical failure and explosion if you trigger them.

It's best to figure out where you want to put your strengths into at the beginning. Spreading the wealth around too much will make the final acts of the game very difficult, though the hacking seems to be the most vital skill.

Throughout the game, you'll CONSTANTLY be scrounging for health packs and ammo in order to keep yourself alive and repair tools for your weapons and both of these add to the tension. Combat is discouraged as ammo will be used fast and your health can take a real beating. Weapons also degrade and they degrade FAST. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can be very annoying how quickly they degrade, on the other hand the tension and reluctance to use weapons shoots through the roof.

The levels are very well designed and go through different areas of the ship as well as a few other places. They all meet their objectives well and all add to the game's incredible atmosphere. Near the end of the game the designs start to get a little repetitive and there's a stage that's really reminiscent of the part in Halo 3 where you boarded the Flood-infested High Charity. But they don't stop the game from being a blast from beginning to end.

What is a drop of rain, compared to the storm? What is a thought, compared to the mind? Our unity is full of wonder which your tiny individualism cannot even conceive.

There's no multiplayer unless you have a patch which adds cooperative multiplayer but if you picked up System Shock 2 for multiplayer, you picked up the wrong game. The campaign is what and it's much better to play alone. The campaign will take new players about 15 hours and those who have played it before will go about 10-12. But there's so much replay value due to all the different classes and skill avenues you can go down.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Even back in 1999, System Shock 2 was not the most graphically impressive game ever released. It didn't look horrible but it didn't look great. However, this almost enhances it as it gives everything an abstract quality. The graphics also go a long way in establishing System Shock 2 as one of the most atmospheric games in history.

But what really establishes it as that is the sound. First the voice acting. Obviously the most well-known character in System Shock 2 is the insane AI, SHODAN. Her voice actress, Terri Brosius, does a phenomenal job at making her quite possibly the most intimidating and frightening AI in history with a cold malevolence that separates her from others.

The rest of the voice acting for the most part is strong as well with the voices in the audio logs doing a nice job of showing the fear in the characters' voices and making the backstory that you hear through them believable.

The music and sound design are also both amazing. Eric Brosius (yes Terri's husband) composed a phenomenal score that still gives chills today. I'm going to put some tracks from Youtube at the bottom of the review. As for the sound design, it goes a long way to increasing the atmosphere and the chittering sound of the spiders still scares the crap out of me.

HORROR

A special section here because I really need to emphasis how absolutely terrifying System Shock 2 is. Aided by the sound design, audio logs, creepy soundtrack, and dark environments, this game has atmosphere that rivals the original Alien, and no I'm not kidding.

Of course The Many are terrifying. As I described above, they're essentially the Borg from Star Trek only with flesh instead of cybernetics. You'll hear them speaking to you many times telling you about the tyrannies of individuality and the cries of the infected crew members attacking you while asking you to kill them doesn't help. And the spiders...oh dear god the spiders. I already have a huge fear of spiders but making them somewhat giant and nearly invisible so that you can only tell they're there through the chittering sounds they make, nightmare fuel to the extreme.

But of course the biggest source of nightmare fuel is the scariest artificial intelligence ever created, SHODAN herself. I'd put HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey and the Reapers from Mass Effect close behind but she has something those two lack, true malevolence and hatred. She doesn't speak in monotone but in an frighteningly emotive fashion. SHODAN is quite possibly the most terrifying villain ever put into video games.

Quite possibly the most terrifying villain in video game history.

CONCLUSION

If the point hasn't been adequately delivered, I LOVE THIS GAME! I love Bioshock and it's a great successor to this game, but if you were to ask me which one I would recommend, it's System Shock 2 no doubt. Gameplay-wise Bioshock was a bit on the shooter side whereas System Shock 2 is a near-perfect hybrid.

System Shock 2 is a terrifying game mixed with outstanding gameplay, an excellent storyline, some of the greatest sound design and atmosphere in video game history, an incredible soundtrack, etc. If I ever were to recommend a single FPS to someone, it would be System Shock 2.

And now for the pieces of soundtrack I promised.