8. System Shock 2 (1999) – PC
You awake on a derelict spacecraft, seemingly alone, with cybernetic implants on your face. Your memory is gone. You don’t know where you are or what you are supposed to do. Then BOOM, the ship begins to lose air pressure and you must run for your life.
System Shock 2 was the first game to truly scare the shit out of me. It’s one of those games that constantly wins those best games that no one played prizes. It came out at the same time as the original Half-Life, and had a slightly deeper interface which may have limited its accessibility. For those who found System Shock 2, however, a truly gripping and terrifying experience awaited.
You spend the majority of the game trying to figure out what happened to you and the ship you now find yourself on. The game is a first-person shooter, but it does add minimal RPG elements to liven things up. There is a handy inventory system, weapons degrade, everything is upgradeable, and the game opens with a training mission that allows you to customize your character’s attributes. There are 3 main classes to play with: you can be a soldier, specializing in weapons and combat, an engineer, with a knack for disabling alarms and hacking computer terminals, or you can acquire psionic powers, such as telepathy or manipulation of electricity. This allows you to play the game however you want, or to combine the attributes in creative ways.
The Von Braun is the haunted house of spacecrafts. You see the ghosts of dead crew members, a side-effect of your cybernetic implants, and you can retrieve audio logs of the crew members which help you to piece together the mystery. You are, however, not entirely alone on the Von Braun. Dr Janice Polito is trapped on deck 4, and is communicating with you via headset, guiding you through the enormous ship on your way to meet her and escape. Then there are The Many. There has been an outbreak of the infectious- genetic variety on board, causing all surviving crew members to become grossly mutated killing machines. They appear to have a hive-mindset, communicating with each other telepathically. What really creeps me out are some of the words they speak as you carefully approach their location. They will moan, “You’re song is not ours”, or “Is there another?” saturated with painful agony. Their calls don’t quite make sense, but have profoundly disturbing implications.
System Shock 2 also has one of the greatest shock-twists in videogames. Those who have played this game’s spiritual successor, Bioshock, can probably guess what it is, or vice versa. The final revelation is also pretty horrifying, for it alludes to some dark and dire circumstances, seemingly insurmountable. But don’t give up. Some of the best moments await when you finally leave the Von Braun to explore some pretty crazy locations in the last act.
You awake on a derelict spacecraft, seemingly alone, with cybernetic implants on your face. Your memory is gone. You don’t know where you are or what you are supposed to do. Then BOOM, the ship begins to lose air pressure and you must run for your life.
System Shock 2 was the first game to truly scare the shit out of me. It’s one of those games that constantly wins those best games that no one played prizes. It came out at the same time as the original Half-Life, and had a slightly deeper interface which may have limited its accessibility. For those who found System Shock 2, however, a truly gripping and terrifying experience awaited.
You spend the majority of the game trying to figure out what happened to you and the ship you now find yourself on. The game is a first-person shooter, but it does add minimal RPG elements to liven things up. There is a handy inventory system, weapons degrade, everything is upgradeable, and the game opens with a training mission that allows you to customize your character’s attributes. There are 3 main classes to play with: you can be a soldier, specializing in weapons and combat, an engineer, with a knack for disabling alarms and hacking computer terminals, or you can acquire psionic powers, such as telepathy or manipulation of electricity. This allows you to play the game however you want, or to combine the attributes in creative ways.
The Von Braun is the haunted house of spacecrafts. You see the ghosts of dead crew members, a side-effect of your cybernetic implants, and you can retrieve audio logs of the crew members which help you to piece together the mystery. You are, however, not entirely alone on the Von Braun. Dr Janice Polito is trapped on deck 4, and is communicating with you via headset, guiding you through the enormous ship on your way to meet her and escape. Then there are The Many. There has been an outbreak of the infectious- genetic variety on board, causing all surviving crew members to become grossly mutated killing machines. They appear to have a hive-mindset, communicating with each other telepathically. What really creeps me out are some of the words they speak as you carefully approach their location. They will moan, “You’re song is not ours”, or “Is there another?” saturated with painful agony. Their calls don’t quite make sense, but have profoundly disturbing implications.
System Shock 2 also has one of the greatest shock-twists in videogames. Those who have played this game’s spiritual successor, Bioshock, can probably guess what it is, or vice versa. The final revelation is also pretty horrifying, for it alludes to some dark and dire circumstances, seemingly insurmountable. But don’t give up. Some of the best moments await when you finally leave the Von Braun to explore some pretty crazy locations in the last act.
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