System Shock 2
Whew, now that was a good ride! Finished the game not five minutes ago (it's now 17:45, September 9th 2000), so impressions are pretty fresh ...
Forget the wide open vistas of Unreal, the mile-wide cliffs and vast courtyards. System Shock 2 is about tight corridors and cramped rooms. The whole game takes place on the Von Braun, humanity's first starship capable of faster-than-light travel. You are a soldier from one of three branches of the Unified National Nominate stationed on the Rickenbacker, a destroyer escorting the Von Braun. I don't spoil anything by saying that when the game begins something's gone wrong, very wrong with the ship and the people on board. What'd you expect from something constructed by TriOptimum? Nothing special perhaps, unless you've played the first System Shock. Then you begin to see the dangers associated with that name ...
Anyway, corridors and rooms it is, but you won't miss the wider views of the world. In fact you probably won't miss the world as a whole very much, System Shock 2 gets your attention and pretty much keeps it for as long as it sees fit. You sneak through corridors, all senses alert for any sign of enemies, weapon in hand and constantly worried about ammunition running out. Might sound like a pretty standard first person shooter experience, but there's so much more to this game it doesn't feel too much like a shooter at all.
For starters, there's the character development. Yes, that's right, development. The first part of the game takes place four years before the real story starts and is essentially a tutorial and character generation turned into gameplay. You arrive by tram to the recruitment office where you get a taste of the abilities and advantages of each UNN branch: the Navy, the Marines and the OSA. Marines are simple soldiers, the Navy is more technically oriented and the OSA specializes in the use of psychic abilities. After picking a branch, you go through three tours of duty giving you various skills and ability improvements. The fourth tour of duty is aboard the Rickenbacker, and that's where the game begins ...
To develop your character's skills in-game, which is essential to get anywhere at all, you must find cyber modules. These can be used to purchase upgrades at upgrade units scattered about the levels. Specializing is important too, there are more abilities available than you have any chance to learn during the course of the game. This should greatly improve replay value, as playing with a different character and focusing on different skills should provide very different ways around problems. At least, so I hope. I played as a Navy character and went for hacking and other technical skills, as well as some weapon skills of course. After playing through the game with that focus, I find it hard to get how one could go through the game without those abilities. I hope, and believe, that's a sign you have to play diffrent with different characters, and not that there's only one best way to play.
This game really shows how important well made characters are, even if you never really interact with them. Not to mention good voice acting, you'll never forget the voice of Shodan ... First time I heard her menacing voice in the intro I thought audio was stuttering, but it doesn't take long before you start to like the effects. It really is an infinite electronic being talking to you, one who sees you as the most inferior of beings and uses you as it sees fit. The other voices in the game are good too, Xerxes is nice in his own way, but no-one can really compete with Shodan. And you thought EVA of C&C had a nice voice. Well, Shodan is EVA gone bad, really bad, and that's a big improvement. She'd stomp CABAL to dust too ...
But there's more! System Shock 2 is chock full of little details to like. For example, how well-designed the interface is, how many options you have available, that chips, juice and other stuff increases your healt a bit, while alcoholic beverages give a pretty good health boost at the cost of psi points. Like how you can hack into vending machines to lower prices or get new items, like ... I seem positive? It makes me wish Half-Life was as good ...
But don't I dislike anything about this game? Well, I really got annoyed when I once neglected to do a proper save for too long and had to replay a chunk of the game when I re-loaded ... And my fifteen saves consume 270 megabytes of space. Couldn't get the 3d sound acceleration to work perfectly either, some sounds had their beginnings cut off. And sometimes I was really frustrated when the game seemed to spawn too many random enemies and throw at me. But these aren't really proper complaints, I can't really think of anything right now to improve this game's formula or gameplay. I just want a sequel ...
