System Shock 2

Rating:
Summary: Immersive; a great sequel
Review: System Shock 2 follows many conventions of a role-playing game, with considerable first-person action involved. Like "Thief" (whose engine was used to create "System Shock 2"), the objective is not necessarily to kill everything in sight, but to achieve the required goals. You play a new recruit onboard a starship fighting against alien viruses and the ship's evil main computer. You start with some initial skills of your choice and are given chances to improve your skills as the games progresses. The goals you need to achieve range from mundane to complicated: locating crucial items, unlocking rooms, restore power to equipments, hacking into terminals, scouring dead astronauts' journals for clues, collecting chemicals from laboratories that enable you to research on technologies that help you combat your enemies, find tools that repair and maintain your weapons, and so on. My favorite puzzle is finding pieces of a secret code hidden among the numerous video screens on one of the levels.

Unfortunately, first-person combats are not as fun as they could be. Monsters respawn (shudder!). And, depending on the skills you acquired at the start of the game, you may not be skillful enough to combat efficiently at the beginning, and will be prone to dying over and over again and having to keep restoring your save games (which, on my Pentium II 400 with 96MB, takes over 1 minute per restore).

Also, the cyber-environment in System Shock, which many loved, is not in this game.

Rating:
Summary: If Elvis is legendary to music, LGS is legendary to games
Review: LGS stands for Looking Glass Studios. The company has closed down last May. It is sad to see an innovative company being shutdown because the games they make are innovative and intelligent.

System Shock 2 is one example. Co-developed with Irrational Games, which has its root with LGS, this game uses the famous Dark Engine used in games like Thief and Thief 2. This engine is one of its kind: 1. the physics is realistics (you throw a box up on a slope and you can see it sliding down slowly; you stack a few crates and pull away the lower ones and the rest drop and tumbles); 2. the AI is smart: each critters has eyes and ears and therefore react to sight and sound. Yeap, they can hear where you are. Unlike many games which cheat by letting the creatures knwo where you are, this game simulates the real thing. 3. Sound: I think I need not describe how incredible the sound effect, music and digitised speech this game produces. You can read from all the players reviews. It gives so much atmosphere that I shudder to think what the next version of the engine is going to be like. It's sad that the company has closed.

Rating:
Summary: The Most Scared I've Ever Been
Review: Never has this happened before! In the boots of the System Shock 2 hero, fighting for my life in the shadowy corridors of the starship Von Braun, I found myself trembling, hiding in a dark corner, whimpering as I listened to the evils surrounding me.

After one hour of this game, I get intensely involved. In two hours I'm jumpy and hyperventilating. Three hours, I go into cardiac arrest.

Meanwhile, the detailed story had me captivated--awed at the surprises I should have foreseen (given the excellent use of foreshadowing) but didn't. The role-playing elements are well done, and greatly enhance the intrigue. And the AI (borrowed from Thief) is the absolute best I've ever seen in a first-person shooter.

The settings are so realistic, its scary. No generic Quake corridors here. The kinds of environments you will visit are bathrooms, living quarters, sick bays, recreation rooms, shopping malls, kitchens, cafeterias, meat lockers, chapels, gardens and other types of everyday living spaces you would expect to find on a real starship. All this just adds to the sensation that you're really there.

I don't think I've ever played more than 2 or 3 games of this calibre in my lifetime, and certainly none so terrifying!

Rating:
Summary: Beware the Van Braun
Review: Ok, let me get this out of the way first. Whenever anybody comes up to me and asks what my favorite PC game was, I reply saying System Shock 2. I just can't say enough about how amazing it is. Look at other reviews for all the praise. I'm (unfortunately thanks mom) a person who sees flaws. The only flaw in this game is the difficulty. I just don't like how incredibly hard it is. I want to keep moving on and finding the next puzzles but then get stuck from some near impossible part. My advice, get the game, but beware, if you're not an experienced gamer then you will have a hard time enjoying it.

Rating:
Summary: Riveting Game
Review: System Shock 2 is the most riveting game that I have played in a long time. The plot design and mechanics remind me strongly of Half-life. Like Half-life; the visuals, the sounds and the plotting all emotionally attach the player to the game.

But where underneath Half-life sat a simple first person shooting game, underneath System Shock 2 is a complex character development system. As the game progresses, players must choose how to evolve their game persona. And how that persona is evolved directly affects the tactics and strategies that the player uses to make their way through the game.

System shock 2 is a compelling title. Engrossing and engaging, I recommend it strongly. (And I am disappointed that Looking Glass -- the developers -- have closed shop.)

Rating:
Summary: In space, there isn't any air to scream with
Review: A solidly good sequel to the classic original, 'System Shock 2' was one of the most engrossing games of 1999, and had me playing it well into the early hours. It's not quite as good as the original - or, for that matter, the same team's 'Thief: The Dark Project', but it's still very good. The good things are legion - it has the same scary atmosphere as the original, with you as the lone survivor of an unexpected catastrophe on board an unfamiliar space vessel. The interior is wrecked, bodies litter the floor, mutant zombie people are attacking you, and some areas of the ship have been overtaken by an icky fungus. The later sequences, in which you discover the nature of the problem, and team up with a strange ally, contain some of the most effective goes at telling a story in a computer game without resorting to having pages of text and / or dialogue. The game itself is much as the original - search everything in sight whilst shooting - and the 'Thief'-esque engine, whilst not pretty, can do stealth and AI at least as effectively as 'Half-Life'. The game has a great cool, crisp atmosphere to it, too.

The downsides? As I have said, it's not pretty. The whole 'character generation' system is almost completely pointless, and, as you play, you realise that firepower is infinitely more important than cunning. And the FMV sequences are simply terrible - the ending sequence, in particular, is totally out-of-place. Most abstract of all, the down-beat, grim tone gets to you after a while, but that's not really a fault of the game. Having your guns break over time seems a bit excessively realistic, too (alhough a patch fixes this), and the last quarter or so seems rushed. These are quibbles, though.

Still, I felt extremely sad when I realised that I had almost finished and, after spending three days finishing the thing (it took me 17 hours), I immediately played it again.

Rating:
Summary: Good single player, BUGGY multi-player
Review: Good plot line that rivals Half-Life's single player story line for fun and immersion. Tremendously engrossing with enough twists to keep you deeply involved for hours. The fun stops there however. My three friends and I had nothing but problems getting the multi-player to cooperate. We eventually gave up. The auto-save games become corrupt for no apparent reason and there were certain areas of the map that would crash our game when we got to them. It took 2 hours just to find the right tweaks that would get our SSII games to talk to each other properly. A top-notch single player game, but second rate when it comes to multi-player. (version played was retail ver. with latest patch as of 5/20/2000)

Rating:
Summary: Scary
Review: Let's just say this game is basically Terrifying! The sounds of the hybrids creeping up to you from behind and the 3D sounds are incredible. I actually had to quit playing this game for awhile because it was that scary. The game is a bit choppy at times but other than that, the graphics are fine but gameplay beyond intense. Play this at night and you will make sure the doors are locked. If you've ever seen Event Horizon, think of it as that but only you on the ship, no one else. A word of caution: when playing this game, listen to EVERYTHING and WATCH YOUR BACK. REALLY! And if you cherish a good night's sleep, play it with someone in the room or if you want to bring Halloween a little early in the house, play it alone with headphones on and in the dark and you'll know virtual fear in a whole new light.

Rating:
Summary: SS2 is a must have for any intelligent Gamer
Review: Although I never had the chance to partake in System Shock, when I downloaded the demo to this game off of @Home, I was instantly hooked. The Thief engine is cleverly disguised as an all new, horrific and terrific world. I share the terror and anxiety of my fellow gamers, and warn that this is no easy game, no game to be taken lightly, and not your standard FPS. I have played em all, and this is one of the best, GET THIS GAME!

Rating:
Summary: Possibly the greatest PC game of all time
Review: There are games that make their mark most recently Half Life but SS2 steals its crown for me. For any FPS or adventure fan/real time strategy this is a cut above the rest. The plot is amazing and left me half way through the game gasping (yes you know the bit). The progression of your character with various traits is a steop above half life. It may not have the shoot em up feel to it as HL but the thinking and realism is compelling. It took me about a week to complete but this was solid every evening - it did take over my social time wondering what will happen next - its THAT good. The Dark Engine is looking well but will probably look dated soon and the atmosphere created is untrue. The ability to build on certain strengths should be built into future games of thie genre. Its a new thing which works brilliantly. You could go back and complete it using a differnt trait and uncover skills you never before. The interface is cool as is the sounds. I cannot fault this game, every gamer should own this - If your reading this stop and buy it NOW. Looking Glass - You've given us an all time classic