System Shock 2

"Fear is your enemy"

“Gotta be careful. Gotta stay sharp, gotta stay sharp. Damn it Simon, calm down. You’re fine, it’s all clear, it’s all...what was that? Behind me! (Turns sharply) In the shadows! (Fires three rounds into the darkness) False alarm. Come on, hey, wonder if that body has some bullets on it. No, just a bottle of wine. Ah well, second best I guess. I’ll keep looking...behind me! (turns, see enemy, fires once, twice, misses both shots, steadies aim, pulls trigger again, gun jams). Oh great, time for the wrench. Forget it, I’ll just run away and hide instead. Leggit!”
This is the atmosphere System Shock 2 creates from the beginning; the sense of menace, of danger, of impending reasons to panic is largely maintained throughout. Ammo is sparse, and more than this, you really don’t want to attack the enemies in this game with a wrench. They are frightening enough when you’ve got a gun in your hands.
System Shock 2 is an unusual game, to say the least. It mixes Role Playing Games and First Person Shooters. Plot is a key element. You really can’t run in guns a blazing. At the time it came out it was compared to Half-Life, yet in retrospect it bares a lot of comparison with the later Deus Ex. After System Shock 2 came out, and basically didn’t sell well, it co-creaters Looking Glass Studios went out of business. It’s no coincidence that some of the people that worked there went to Ion Storm and helped produce Deus Ex.

Menu + Options - 5
It’s clear, fits with the feel of the game. Has all the options you’d expect, nothing more nothing less.
Load times are appalling, you will be sitting around for a long time. Save times aren’t great either.

Plot - 10
The game opens slowly, deliberately, then jumps into the action. The World of Trioptimum and a corporately heartless and cold future is lovingly re-created and updated from the illustrious original, System Shock, incidentally a critical favourite which few people bought, and became something of an underground title. The plot is clever, genuinely unpredictable at times and complex. I remember how many times I’ve heard that Half Life has a great plot. For me it was hardly an original premise, which is fine, but basically you see the G-man every now and again, overhear the odd conversation, and that’s it, from beginning to end. System Shock 2 has a wealth of characters who can communicate beyond the grave if necessary through audio logs they have left behind. I’ll admit, although these are brilliant, why the hell did the crew leave hundreds of them scattered all over the floor? You can follow the stories of these characters without being able to affect their fates, which is fairly chilling in itself. You aren’t left to imagine all the details, you can fill them in your mind slowly by picking up all the audio logs and listening to different sides of the story. Funny thing is, just like in real life, what actually happened is still fairly unclear, because everyone tells it a bit differently.

Sound - 10
If there is one thing that sets this game apart from any other ever made, it has got to be the sound. It is a case study in how using sound effectively can make a game far more immersive, interesting and atmospheric. The sound of the computer panels, humming quietly, the sound of air filters, of dripping liquids from broken pipes. The music is used as in half life, for short bursts, which work effectively in this sort of atmosphere, they don’t detract from the rest of the sound, they just complement it from time to time.
Vitally for a game that relies so much on plot, the voice acting is absolutely top class, despite it being the members of the actual production team who did all the voices. Who says programmers can’t do anything else eh? It’s kinda scary if you look in the manual, some of them have very versatile voices too, they did parts that sound like they were done by people who had never met.
The enemies are, in a manner of speaking, brought to life by the sounds they make. Zombie like enemies mutter to themselves, with weird, deranged, inhuman voices. And if they see you, they scream, might be something like “die!!!”, or it could be something like “run!!”. They might mutter to themselves “what happened to me?”, I think I’m may even have heard them scream “kill me!”. Just the standard zombies are so frightening, in sounds more than looks, that they really do make you scared to death of close combat, and create a real feeling of paranoia, you do NOT want these guys to rush up behind you with a crowbar. One of the larger enemies later on makes a thudding noise as it runs, if its on a floor above you, you can hear it running....thud, thud, thus. You will panic and fire precious rounds at empty passageways. You hear voices ion your head, you receive voice emails. As sound is vital to know when an enemy might be coming round the corner, receiving a voice mail creates its own sense of panic, you might not hear them coming above the voice mail...

Graphics - 7
This game is not a new one, and I am reviewing it some time after it came out. Graphics, especially in the FPS genre, are most likely to age badly. To an extend this is true of System Shock 2. The graphics were better, darker than Half Life. The graphical detail is high, the world you are in is believable for the most part, it looks right. The overall feeling of the time and setting is put across well by the graphics. Enemy models are fairly detailed, and frightening like they should be. Cut scenes are sparse but well made. Compared to the sheen of more games like Medal of Honour or Jedi Knight II, the graphics do look a bit dated, but not to a major extent.

Gameplay - 8
System Shock 2 has all the peripherals either excellent - plot, sound, atmosphere, setting, or solid enough - graphics, menus and options, but this is what really matters. As I mentioned earlier, the FPS/RPG mix was innovative when it was made, and still is fairly uncommon, Deus Ex being a rare example. Using the Dark engine used for Thief 2, and combining it with roleplay elements from another Looking Glass legend, the Ultima series, was ambitious, risky and original. Does it work? Mostly. They got all the advantages of the dark engine, they got the detail of the interaction between the player and his environment. They got the highly intelligent enemy AI which is very impressive even today. The whole engine was geared around enemies that could pick up on sounds, sights, anything unusual, and the need for stealth and outwitting them. The engine was well suited to incorporating RPG elements, it’s versatile. With the advantages, they also got the disadvantages of the engine. You aren’t going to get twenty enemies rushing at you ala Half Life, it’s more likely to be one or two in a corridor. The enemies are very tough, and you are far more vulnerable in this game than most FPS games, so two enemies can often be a big challenge, but you can miss the really big shoot outs. Talking of Half Life’s really big shoot outs, you won’t get a two way shoot out, there just aren’t any friendly NPCs to help out. They kind of made it work for the game, it adds to the sense of loneliness, isolation, paranoia, but it’s a bit limiting in a way as well. Fighting with others adds a dimension to games like Half Life which is frankly missing here.
The weapons, well, the weapons are a bit of a let down. There are 13 I think, which isn’t too bad for an FPS. But only about 6 of them are any real use. Worse still, you don’t get a real feeling of synergy when you fire them, and they aren’t that exciting to use. The assault rifle for example just doesn’t give you a rush of adrenaline when you open up on a load of enemies with it. And the terse limits on ammo mean you’re not going to be able to open up with it anyway, you’ll probably just fire off 2 or 3 bullets and pick off the one or two enemies that face you.
Mind you, there is a flip side to the flip side. It may not be guns a blazing time very often, but the fear and sense of tension makes up for this in adrenaline terms, and you know you aren’t holding some super gun that can cut down everything you might meet. You know you are holding some gun that may well be in poor condition, and may jam or break with the next bullet. You may only have 3 bullets left before it’s wrench time. You can really use Metal Gear Solid esque stealth tactics, hiding behind tables, round corners, attacking enemies with close combat weapons, taking them out before they have a chance to react, then stealing any ammo they were carrying.
The RPG element largely works, but it also has it’s downsides. It does greatly add to the depth of the game. You can pick 3 main career choices from the beginning - Marines, Navy or OSA (Psionic Black Ops). There are 4 main areas to invest cyber modules (a bit like RPG experience points, you pick them up as you go round the game, or for completing objectives) Stats, things like strength and endurance; Weapons, affects the damage you do with the 4 different weapons classes, you also have to have a certain level to use each weapon; Psi, a whole load of attributes and skills you can get which use psionic abilities of the character; Tech, skills like Hack, Modify, Research and Maintenance. There are three main approaches to the game, in keeping with the three careers you can choose at the beginning, blast your way through (marines), use tech skills and stealth (navy) or use psionics in a big way (OSA). There are however many more different specialisations you could choose, you could be a total tough guy (stats and weapons), or a gun toting maniac who can also effectively interact (no, not shoot) with the technology-heavy world around him. You could be a psionics warrior who is also damn good with heavy weapons. This sounds utterly amazing. It is really good, but not anywhere near as good as it could have been. Although you CAN choose to do a lot of different things, almost all of them aren’t worth bothering about, The balancing of the different abilities, different character routes you can go down is very poor. Skills like repair are basically a waste of time, as I’ve already said most of the weapon classes are pointless and ineffective (its a sci-fi game, but the best gun by a mile is the assault rifle), most of the psionics skills are fairly difficult to use well. There are really two main ways to go through the game in truth, either stack all your cyber modules into standard weapons and tech skills, or go it the psionics route. The psionics route is much harder, you are very weak at the beginning of the game. In the end the actual careers you choose at the beginning only add a few skills too, so it doesn’t really matter which you choose that much. The idea was brilliant, if it had been done properly I think this game could have been an all time classic, but I don’t think it quite gets that far.

Conclusion:
It’s a wonderful game, with frustrating flaws that move it from a possible contender for the best game ever made title to the status of a classic. It was ambitious, which we maybe don’t see enough of these days, and original, which we definitely don’t see enough of. It was brave too. It didn’t fail, but it didn’t succeed like it wanted to, it didn’t achieve it’s full potential. Despite the flaws, it is still the most involving game I’ve ever played, and definitely the scariest. It is a great injustice that this game sold less copies than some far, far paler First Person Shooters have, but at least it got the critical acclaim it richly deserves.

Breakdown:
Menu + Options - 5
Save + Load times - Very poor - bring a book
Menu system - Good - detailed, clear
Options - Average - All the standard stuff
Plot - 10
Setting - Exceptional - Great re-creation of a plausible corporate future
Plot Depth - Exceptional - deep and detailed
Plot Events - Exceptional - twists and turns, not pedantic, not silly
Sounds - 10
Background sounds - Exceptional - believable, atmospheric
Music - Good - decent occasional tunes that capture the atmosphere nicely
Voice Acting - Exceptional - must have been actors before they got into games
Graphics - 7
Game world - Excellent - a believable and detailed graphical world
Models - Good - Enemies look scary as well as sound it
Gameplay - 8
Guns - Very Poor - dull and mostly useless
Combat - Good - varied, requires stealth and skill but no gun blazing
Physics Engine - Exceptional - very realistic, the bullets whiz just right
Gameplay Depth - Excellent - its got more ways to play than most other FPS games
Balancing - Very Poor - Great RPG idea, terrible balancing
Controls - Exceptional - Lean left, right, down, mantle, climb, very detailed
Immersion - Exceptional - It really does make you jump, and often

Overall - 9 (Classic)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/02, Updated 09/04/02