System Shock 2

For me this has to be one of the greatest games ever made. It combines claustrophobic survival action, great storytelling and cyberpunk thematics, puzzle solving, solid character development system, and above all, just unparalleled atmosphere.

You really were blown away back then (and I'd say still today) the first time you rigged an alarm and a pack of mutant zombies made a rush for you in the narrow hallways, and a kick ass cyberpunk techno song began blasting through your speakers! Man this game was intense. You never knew when you were safe, when your gun would jam or when you would run out of bullets (ok - eventually you'd get better, but this game was at it's best with a high difficulty / high intensity playing mentality. And high music volume!).

The details of the story might not be that revolutionary, yes we have seen this before. The flesh versus machine, the theme of dehumanization. It's not in the story or the themes, it's in the delivery. We see gruesome images, we listen to audio logs that really spark emotions in us, that really seem to tell stories of their own, not just some quickly made up sidequest stuff like in so many other games. These contain real feeling. The player lives with the story, and ascends deeper and deeper to the final confrontation.

Bioshock, although hugely popular, was just a shallow copy of this game. Same story structure, weaker story themes, weaker characters (shodan vs .. who? I forgot the name of the villain in bioshock), much lamer music and surprisingly, a weaker, simplified character development coupled with simpler level design and tuned down puzzle difficulty.

"Neuromancer" meets "Alien" meets "Night of the Living Dead". You get to play a lone(?) survivor of some mysterious disaster, inside a big spaceship, somewhere in deep space. You have to work your way around the ship, trying to stay alive and find out what the hell is going on.

Like the original "System Shock" game, this game has elements of first person shooter games, but it is much mure than that. It has elements of adventure games and computer role playing games. There is a lot of interaction with the environment involved, like terminals & locks you can hack into, cyber-implants that enhance your skills, computer systems that have to be activated (or shut down), weapons that can be repaired and upgraded, etc. There is a complex storyline (with quite a few twists & surprises along the way) which unfolds itself by reading e-mail messages and logs you come across.

This game is absolutely brilliant; it just oozes atmosphere - in fact this has to be one of the scariest games I've ever played, and the high level of interaction with the environment makes for a very satisfying gaming experience. In this respect the game is somewhat similar to that other excellent FPS/RPG/adventure hybrid, Deus Ex.

One of the greatest games I've ever seen in my life. It had all of the best gaming elements in it. There was the strategic points where you had to decide what to do, like games like Star Craft. There was the Survival Horror factor, the Many for instense that reminded me, in many ways of the zombies from the Resident Evil Series. The there was the blatant hacking like the movie hackers and the attempted take over by the machines, reminisent of the Terminator movies.

All in all, this game takes all the key ingredients, stirs them together, and boils to a fine stew of the greatest game in history.

PLEASE, PLEASE, let there be a System Shock 3????!?!!

This game is simply the best game ever. End of story. Ok, not end of story... speaking of the story, it's really quite brilliant. It may seem like standard cheezy sci-fi stuff, but it's really a tale about extremes. The question the games poses, in my opinion... is which extreme is better... the strictly mechanical or the strictly biological? The answer the game poses is that a combination of the two is best. SHODAN represents the purely mechanical, The Many represent the purely biological.

Humanity represents the midway point, and the proof that humanity is going about it the right way lies in the fact that they created both the other two parties... (one by way of the other.) As well as the fact that humanity wins in the end. Or do we? Hope to see a System Shock 3 some day. (Please let this be one of those ironic comments people look back on and say "ha, look at that! we all know there was a System Shock 3 and it rocked! ho ho, he didn't even know there would be one then!) Please?

Plot, storyline, badguys you really really want to bash around the head with a spanner because they're so clearly evil? This game has it. Atmosphere in this game is second to none, only Thief (which uses the same engine and is by the same designers etc) comes close but Thief lacks all of the customisable skills etc that this game allows.

Weapons are around, but you'll have to balance your carry load with medic packs and necessary junk....or you can zap them with psychic powers. Puzzles are simple, but fraught with danger. The badguys menace and lurch....and an empty ship haunted by ghosts is all that remains.

Fantastic.