Although old (circa 1999), I caved into the pressure of everyone I know saying "OMGAH GET SS2 BEST GAME EVAR LOL!", and goddamn, it's the best SP game I've ever played, better than Deus Ex, than Half-Life, even Unreal.
The game is played through a FPS perspective, and it is a RPG/FPS hybrid, very similar to Deus Ex, but less combat oriented. The game starts you out as someone who is entering one of the 3 armed forces, the Marines (weapon skills), NAVY (Hacking/tech), and Psi-Ops (psionic powers). From there on, you serve for 3 years (which go by very quick-
) and choose one skill to advance for every year. Then, go begin your real game, serving on the Von Braun, which is humanities first faster-than-light ship, headed for Tau Ceti IV. Something happens, however, and you are brought out of staisis with no memory of anything prior, and the ship in very bad shape.
You start out being guided by a "Dr. Polito" who tells you what you need to do throughout most of the game. You upgrade your stats in game through bionode uplink stations, and you use collected bionodes to upgrade you skills. Bionodes are rare, however, so you use them wisely. Combat is not easy in this game, because ammunition is very scarce, weapons are scarcer (and require constant maintance, or they break.) and the enemies respawn. The respawn rate is usually quite low, however, so it that bad. Trip an alarm, however, or get spotted by a security camera, and you'll be swamped by enemies. The enemies are the best part of this game, I should note.
I have never played a scarier game, including AVP, and AVP2
The reason things have gone haywire is that on Tau Ceti, the exploration team got infested with some sort of alien parasite worm. Removing the worm kills the subject, but leaving it on... They seem to change. The end result is that almost the entire crew (those not gruesomly killed, as you see throughout each level) has either become horrificly mutated zombie-type things, who all share a sort of hive-mind, or worse.
The enemies are just increadibly frightening, although I think it's partly due to atmosphere. The sounds they make will chill you, the first time I ran into a cyborg-midwife, I almost needed a change of boxers. I heard an electrical whine, and footsteps, and a voice which said half-singingly "I'm going to tear out your spine". The rest of the enemies are equally well done, each with their own unique and frightening sounds.
Speaking of, sound is very important in System Shock 2. Enemies will hear you if you make a bit of noise, which is a bad thing. Combat is not typical FPS game combat, you can't run and gun because you won't have enough ammo for it. You'll have to think and act wisely. The sounds of all the things in the game are also done perfectly. All of the plot information you aquire in the game you get either through your emails from Dr. Polito and PDA audio logs you find from dead crewmembers. The plot of this game is quite epic, and is very enthrawling. I played this game for about 4 hours a day for 4 days until I beat it. A less dedicated (has a life) person will take much longer to beat it.
This game is HARD. I mean HARD like the goddamn hardest game I've ever played EVER. On easy, it was still insanely hard. I shudder to think what medium, hard, or impossible would put up.
Lastly, words can't really do this game justice- the atmosphere and interface has so many nuances it's impossible to cover them all. All I can say is, if you like FPS games, or RPG games, or like being scared out of your mind, (and you have a PC of some kind), go and get System Shock 2. I give it a 10/10.
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