Some of you may think It's funny how I write review of a 1999 game in 2014, but this game is so interesting it keeps pushing me to say "I gotta write a review on this!". Some of you may not know this game, or you do, but somehow you don't have the urge to play it. Quite frankly I didn't know this game exist until recently, when I had too much free time and searching over the internet for a decent horror game to play, and System Shock 2 came out on top. The game had many awards back in the day for its story and influential gameplay mechanism, story, and sound design, but despite the awards it seems not many people actually bought a copy. The game was developed by Irrational Games, well-known for Bioshock series, and since Bioshock is a spiritual successor of SH 2, you'll find many similarities.
System Shock 2 takes place in a spaceship Von Braun and The Rickenbacker which attached to each other, and both are a huge place to explore. You play as a soldier whom awaken with an amnesia from a cryo-tube after sleeping for 5 months. You've woken up and witnessing the ship had already become a mess. Dead bodies everywhere, blood splatters over the floor and wall, you spend the rest wondering what has happened to the ship. You'll be contacted by a survivor name Dr. Janice Polito who tell him to meet up with her in Deck 4. Along the way the player will encounter some infected crew members and a hostile defense AI named Xerxes. Most of the game's story and backstory are told using audio log left by the late crew members or by ghostly apparitions, in the same manner as Bioshock does. The developer did a good job of making every room you stepped on has it's own disturbing vibe, and you won't feel save. Not ever.
You'll be given an objective telling you what to do and you're on your own. There is no arrow or waypoint to guide you. You have to depend largely on your path-finding skills. As I said, the Von Braun is huge, you'll easily get lost if you don't know where you're going. Some people may find this annoying and they may give up fast, but I find this interesting, it gives me the freedom of explorations I need. After all you don't need to many things telling you what to do since it will disturbs the horror vibe the game has. The ship is divided into decks. A deck is also separated by several areas via bulkheads, hence the loading screen. Sometimes you may need codes or keycards to open up doors, and the game kindly didn't tell you where to find it, and you have to search for dead bodies after dead bodies, cabinets to cabinets.
System Shock 2 is a survival-horror game with an RPG touch. That being said, you have to conserve ammo and provisions to stay on your feet, don't just shoot every enemies you see, conserve your ammo for some tougher adversaries, not only that, your firearms get broken easily too. I myself play the majority of the game using Wrench as my weapon, I only uses guns to destroy security cameras or turrets. Security cameras in this game are your biggest enemies, when it spots you, it'll give you some time to run and hide, but if it does manage to sound the alarm, you'll fight several waves of infected. You've been warned. The difficulty is unforgiving at times, this keeps the game from dull moments. Even the "easy" difficulty felt hard.
The RPG elements are that you can level up and modifies your character through cybernetic modules scattered throughout the game. You can increase his strength, dexterity, endurance, and any other attributes. You can also power up your character skills, like hacking, maintenance, etc. Some weapon are unavailable to use until you powered up certain attributes. For example you can't use shotgun unless you add some points on Strength and Standard attributes. You can't wear strong armor unless you increase your "Heavy" attributes and so on. The game also features something called Psi. It is something that enhance you to have superhuman abilities, like run faster, jump higher, Shoot fireball and stuff. The enemies you encountered sometimes leave their organ behind, you can do a research on them to increase damage on the related enemies. This will give you a chance to customize your character anyway you want, and after you finish the game, you'll just itchy to come back to Von Braun with a different set of skills.
Well, this game is a horror to the core. That being said the places you ventured in are creepy. Moody and dark sci-fi corridors with dead bodies with terrifying expressions keeps you on edge. The enemies you'll encounter isn't scripted, you may or may not meet enemies on certain areas. You need to keep your ears and trigger finger ready. This one time I'm sure I've killed all the enemies in the area, so I opened up my inventory to sorted out some stuff, when suddenly a zombie creeps up behind me with a scary groan and sorrowful "kill me~" voice, ready to maul me with a wrench. Sometimes you also have to deal with defense robots which is pretty annoying without proper equipment.
If you're looking for a challenging game to be played over and over, then System Shock 2 will be your best bet. It's complexity and customizable character will make you wanted to approach the game a different way on each playthrough. The game has got it's second chance on Steam, if you're interested, you can get one over there. If you're the type who can't stand on a classic video game graphics, there's also a mod that modifies the graphic so it looks better and HD quality.
Written By: Adri Adityo Wisnu
Twitter: @anakbabehgue