System Shock 2 Review - Not Dead Yet

Not Dead Yet is a series of reviews of retro games deemed important enough to play before you die. Obviously we can’t play all of them but we can at least check them out to see how well they’ve held up

What they say about it

System Shock 2 pushes a lot of the player’s buttons, not least in the suffocating sense of isolation it imposes. You awaken on the abandoned ship with no friends and no hope, surrounded by ghouls and a trigger-happy automated security system….The result is a highly influential FPS horror game - unrelenting, unforgiving, and unforgettable.

What we say about it

Going into the System Shock 2 experience, I knew it there would be some similarities between it and the BioShock series, given that the latter is universally referred to as the spiritual successor to the former. What I didn’t realize is that it also fundamentally established the foundation for countless RPG-FPS games that followed.

The RPG elements are immediately apparent. You assume the role of the lone soldier remaining on the Von Braun starship. Before things get really bad, really quick, you’re given the option to choose what type of soldier you are. If you want to be the traditional run and gun soldier, your ability to use guns come much easier. If hacking is more your speed, you can re-purpose a lot of the ship’s built-in security to work for you instead of against you. Those of you that want to explore the sci-fi side of things can choose to become a psychic, using the power of telekinesis over traditional weaponry. These are 3 very distinct builds with very different options.

What sets System Shock 2 apart is the ability to upgrade yourself through various modules you have available to you. In more traditional RPG experiences, if you choose a pre-defined role, you’re often stuck with only upgrading skills relevant to that specific role. You’re not limited by your role here. If you want to build more towards a hybrid role of hacker-psychic, you can dump your points into skills from both disciplines. Of course, this makes you less potent in your abilities so there are consequences to improper planning. I found this out the hard way during my playthrough.

About three hours in, I found myself in a real tough spot. Health and psionic items were scarce. Enemies were increasing in number. They were respawning randomly and I wanted to abandon my hybrid build for something a bit more reliable. I had barely enough points to wield a pistol efficiently and my telekinetic blast was doing next to no damage on certain enemies. I had bigger and better weapons on me but I didn’t have enough points to use them. Luckily, it wasn’t too late to pivot the build and salvage the situation but without that explicit knowledge ahead of time, players can definitely self-sabotage very early. Still, I didn’t feel like this detracted from the overall experience. It was frustrating for sure, but the atmosphere and story were compelling enough to keep pushing.

Isolation is a common theme in the Shock games and this captures the feel of space isolation perfectly. Low hums drone in the background, with nothing interrupting it except your feet clanging off the mesh grates underneath. While strolling down one corridor, you might hear an air-locked door buzz open in the distance. Is it a mindless mutant coming or going? It could be neither. Instead, it might be a reprogrammed protocol droid. You’ll hear the whirring of its robotic footsteps coming towards you, asking “Can I help you?”, right before it self-destructs right next to you. Everything is designed to heighten your terror and drive your need for isolation as you fight to escape the Many.

One of the other key atmosphere builders are the audio logs left behind by the personnel of the Von Braun ship. You’ll start to get a sense of how things went very wrong and how the Many infiltrated their ranks. Veterans of the newer Shock games are all too familiar with audio logs as a story-building mechanic and it was just as effective even back then. My one complaint when it comes to the audio logs is that there will definitely be key bits of information given from them and if you aren’t actively paying attention, you might miss out on vital information to complete an objective. Digging back through those earlier logs can be cumbersome without any real way of identifying what’s in each specific recording.

With all the atmosphere building the game does, it pays off in a big way. Those who have played the newer Shock games are very familiar with sudden shifts and big reveals in the narrative. System Shock 2 is no exception to that trend because it originated it. For me, the reveal in this game ends up paying off and being much more memorable than those it inspired. Yes, this is including the big “Would You Kindly” moment in BioShock.

Should you play this game before you die?

Absolutely. While some aspects of the game haven’t aged gracefully (some minor control quibbles and inventory management aside), System Shock 2 is a key title in the RPG-FPS lineage and its influences are still felt to this day. Top notch atmosphere building, pivotal reveals, and challenging gameplay converge to make one of the most important titles in gaming history. You owe it to yourself to experience this.