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The Best

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: May 14, 2001
Author: Amazon User

This game is by far, the best game I have ever played. In my opinion, it is what games are meant to be strived for...perfection...

I am insulted, on the other hand, by some of the reviews below. Those people claiming it a poor game should go away and play their quake and their Unreal tournament. Nothing is wrong with these games, in fact, I really enjoy Unreal Tournament. The fact of the matter is UT and System Shock 2 are completely different, even though they share FPS similarities. Shock2 is not about graphics...its about immersion. Using the Thief the dark projects dark engine, I was completely immersed in Shock2, more so than any other game I've played. Its about Depth, Gameplay, plot, level and progression. Not about high frames per second and polygon counts. Leave that stuff at the door, Shock2 isn't about it...and one must have more IQ than a fish to play this game.

Scary good fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: October 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

My favorite thing about SSII is that it tells a coherent story that makes sense. Every action you take in SSII is motivated by a desire to accomplish a clearly-stated objective. Goals are not assigned arbitrarily, either, and are extremely well-explained by the superb voice acting. When you accomplish a mission, you are rewarded with access to more areas of the ship and new missions to accomplish.

Another great aspect of this game is the way it flows. There are no levels, other than levels/decks within the ship you are trying to escape from, and accomplishing certain objectives means traversing multiple decks.

There are times when this game is extremely scary. It's designed to frighten you, and at times it accomplishes this goal very well. The music is mostly techno, but it's scary techno. That might not make sense to you, but trust me, it can be very intimidating at times.

If you haven't played the original System Shock read up on its plot before you play this game. The background information you gain will help you out a lot.

Overall, this is on my top ten all-time.

The Most Intelligent Game Ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 31, 2001
Author: Amazon User

System Shock 2 is no doubt the most intelligent game of all time. The superior atmosphere of the game cannot be rivalled, I was sucked in from the first moment I laid foot on the Van Braun. The darkness and terror are painfully real and intellectually woven into one giant tapestry of pulsating nightmare.
The surreal aspects of it, defined by the amazing music and sci fi visuals are beyond comparison. The graphics are 1998, but age happens to all games. What's different here is that all the other elements of the game are so perfected and unique in their originallity that this one is going to be playable long after the year 2040.
The length is notable. All the while struggling to obtain the upper hand over the opposing forces and breaking away from the puppeteer, while making devestatingly hard choices that effect the way you opperate. I wish this game never had an ending.
Logs of Achievement:

.Level design: Each deck is totally realistic and makes sense.

.Music: Incredible.

.Sound: The sound is absolutely amazing. Very realistic in futuristic artistry. Very believable.

.Gameplay: Thrilling, Terrifying and full of hard choices which matter.

System Shock 2 has everything going for it, Quite possibly the best game evr made.

PLAY THIS GAME AT MIDNIGHT WITH THE LIGHTS OFF ALONE

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: January 22, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I reccommend you PLAY THIS GAME AT MIDNIGHT, ALONE, WITH THELIGHTS OFF. From the eerie droning of the ship's engines, to thechilling taunts and calls from the muscle-bound Hybrids and hand maidens, this game will make you think twice about leaving the doors unlocked. I have played so many horror games, and yet this game is the only one where I truly felt *ALONE*. No one can help you. This and the incredible gameplay mixed with roleplay make this one of my top 10 games.

And now the bad stuff. About the only bad thing that I can think of is that towards the end, the programmers seemed to forget that in order to FIRE my weapons, I need AMMO. If you can find a way to hold on to your ammo, this game is just for the roleplayer - FPS player in you!

Even better than the first one!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 19, 1999
Author: Amazon User

This is not for 'shooter-fans', no quake, unreal, etc. This is NOT a no-brain shooter! This is an RPG, with shooting elements. This is a thinking person's shooter, where EVERY bullet counts. One does NOT spray the enemy, one waits for the correct shot. You need to know what kind of character you want to achieve, because the upgrades are sharp (& expensive!). Don't touch this if you don't like thinking.

Oh, the atmosphere! ARGH, the economics!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 18 / 37
Date: July 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have played through both the original System Shock and System Shock 2 to completion. Having done so, I have to say that SS2 is one of the most over-rated games in history, and every time it shows up on some game magazine's "overlooked works of genius" page or the like, I want to scream.

First, let me get it out of the way: Yes, the story is very good (and I was particularly struck by the plot twist that introduces your ultimate enemy.) Yes, the sound design is good. Yes, the atmosphere is great- very spooky, very isolating.

But it's one thing to feel that your enemies hate you, and another entirely to feel that the _game_ hates you.

There are a dozen little ways this comes off, like that you can HURT yourself by running into things, and make it WORSE by increasing your agility stat and thus your speed. I do believe that's a first for First-Person-Shooters, and _please_, for the love of God, let it be the last. There's the fact that you can be shot a dozen times by an enemy, and when you finally kill him, mysteriously discover the weapon he was firing on you was not only devoid of ammunition, but broken to boot. There's that the game's system explicitly _expects_ you to die repeatedly (if you have enough money you get restored to life at a sort of save-point, more on that later.) There's a sequence that has you running back and forth trying to find a series of numbers for a passcode, one number per location, and all the while, the monsters keep up their infinite respawn while you're about your busy-work. (What would have been the problem with your so-called benefactor putting the entire code in one location?...)

But ultimately, it comes down to economics. The designers were so terribly afraid that the player would, at some time, have an EXCESS of something, that they overcompensated the other way.

The money of the game is called nanites, and ultimately, they're used for everything. Die and get restored to life? Cough up some nanites. Want to open a locked box? Cough up some nanites... Oh, and by the way, all that box contains is slightly fewer nanites than it cost you to try. (Why did someone put a security lock on the equivalent of a nickel? One of those great mysteries, I guess.) Out of ammo? Go to the vending machine, and cough up some more nanites. Or you could hack the machine- for yet more nanites- and then it would give you LOWER PRICES!

I don't know about you, but when I hack something like a vending machine, I expect to get something for free. I guess I'm silly that way.

And even if you have ammo, your gun might just break, given the uniquely corrosive qualities of the atmosphere on the ship. But don't worry, you can buy a repair tool- for a few nanites! (Though repairing a weapon degrades its quality, and makes it more likely to break down in the future. Thanks, guys.)

Poisoned? Your fate is sealed, unless you buy an antidote. More nanites! Or you can buy a recycling tool, and discover that what it gives you for recycling most items wouldn't buy you a lousy soft drink.

Maybe you're a psionic, using the awesome, infinite powers of the human mind as your weapon? Great- but restoring your psychic energies means buying a psi-restoring potion. More nanites! For all the talk in the manual about making psionics more than "just another gun", this particular aspect succeeds in making them _exactly_ that, and a gun much like the others that is going to fire twice and then need to be switched out for something that still has ammo.

And isn't broken.

And you have the skill to use.

After a few rounds of "BANG BANG click click BANG BANG BANG click ZAP ZAP ZAP click click " you realize that what's making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up isn't terror, it's IRRITATION.

A simple equation: Infinite, respawing enemies + Finite resources = game that hates you. Is it really so much to ask that a foe that's been shooting you have ammunition on them? Especially if you're going to have to face an unlimited supply of them?

There's a moment in most games of both the RPG and FPS genre near the end where you feel that you are _ready_. You're bad. You've got the best weapons, a full stock of ammunition, the best spells, or whatever- you've learned the tactics you need to take on foes over many hours of play, and you know that what's coming up is going to be hard and it's going to take ingenuity and everything you've got. But it's going to be fun and you have what you need to make it possible, and you're ready.

In System Shock 2, that moment never comes. The designers were too afraid of the player having an excess, and as a result, you never have _enough_. Not even at the end. You've been nickeled and dimed through the whole game by poison, by the unending tide of zombies, by busy-work, by hacking or lockpicking things that turned out not to be worth the sacrifices, by taking damage in places you didn't expect, by reloading and repairing weapons that break down at a fantastic rate... And ultimately, that's not scary. It's frustrating. It's irritating. It's wearying. But it's not scary.

And yes, I finished the game. No, I felt no compulsion to play through it again as a different type of character.

There's other little things, like that they replaced the ungainly but interesting pseudo-VR hacking of the original System Shock with a guessing game somewhere in complexity between tic-tac-toe and minesweeper. Or that the only thing your character actually says for the entire game deflates the tension of a climactic moment for the sake of a dumb joke. Or that the bad guys seem to offer you the opportunity to ally with them, but the designers never considered making that opportunity a real one...

I've said more than enough. Pick up the original Deus Ex if you like games of the genre; let this "sleeper hit" continue sleeping.

P.S. At least two of the _positive_ reviewers have blithely stated something along the lines of "Well, yes, it's so hard you have to use cheat codes to complete it, but..." Do you guys really expect so little of game designers that you're willing to forgive this kind of grotesque mis-design in pacing and difficulty? Are you so desperate for games with an actual storyline that you're willing to ignore enormous flaws?

System Shock II

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 10
Date: December 01, 2000
Author: Amazon User

System Shock II is a first person shooter ...RPG by Looking glass studio's, It is somewhat like an RPG half life or a science friction thief. It has great storyline, Much better than stories in scifi movies, Very deep and detailed RPG gameplay and it is very creepy. SS2 is much bigger than the first system shock, Just like the first game it does not give us the complete story line, We have to figure it out from the e-mails and the logs we find through out the starship. The story line is that you play a soldier assigned to the Von Braun a faster than light starship, Something bizzare happens but you dont know what as you have amnesia, When you wakeup you find out that all of your crew members are dead and you are all alone. System Shock II's gameplay is much similar to the first system shock but it has a much better interface and controls. The sound effect's are simply superb it feels like you're really hearing something's happening, They really add up to the creepy atmosphere. SS2 is built on the dark engine used to create Thief, The engine was ok for the medieval thief game but very bad here, The graphics are ok but the art direction is very bad and the weapon effects are very silly, They should have used the Quake II engine. In some places the gameplay is very difficult even on the easy difficulty dont even think of playing in the impossible difficulty, There is even a warning in the document. The Zombies would shoot you with their shotguns causing you a lot of damage but when you search them after they are killed they would just have a broken shotgun, The zombies also respawn a lot. Another problem is the voice acting, They are great but the charecters keep on talking nonsence all the time and they get very annoying, And nowhere in the game must you eavesdrop on the hybrids to solve a puzzle ect, LG's other game Thief II has the same problem. Despite these problems System Shock II is a great game and surely the best RPG game i have ever played, If you like RPG games get System Shock II it is really great, Buy Deus Ex along you will love it too.

Why isn't this game more popular than Quake3?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: January 28, 2000
Author: Amazon User

I have read all the reviews and played the game my self only to ask my self, why is such a perfect game on the bottom shelf of my computer game's store and why is there more Quake fans? I have only truely liked 2 games in my life: Mechwarrior2 and System Shock 2. (hey both are 2s) They are both very cool and immersing. I don't need to say all the stuff above that has been repeated many times. It is scary, mad, fun ...

So somebody tell me why this game isn't as popular and famous as quake? @#?$% jf_aidan_pryde@hotmail.com

Creepy as hell

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 21, 2000
Author: Amazon User

The Good: - Great graphics - Great gameplay - As someone said in an earlier review: the thinking person's game.

The Bad: - Creepy. I thought I was getting something close to "Alien"..instead, it's closer to "Event Horizon"

This is a fantastic game. It draws you in through its graphics, sound, overall production values, and the way it requires you to use your brain. Once you're hooked in, it then REALLY pulls out the creepy stuff.

Awesome.

Absolutely excellent!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 04, 2000
Author: Amazon User

Whoa! This game is far better than anything else I've played within last year at least. Normally I play flightsims and WW II strategy games only, but this is a must. 100x better than any Quake III, Unreal Tournament, even better than Half-Life . It's a pure horror and creepiest experience ever. I only hope that my hair won't go white within next couple of weeks....

Recommend to everyone with a good PC and a strong heart.

Run on PII400/128MB, Prophet3D DDR 32MB video, SB AWE64 sound, Win98SE /a better soundcard would be probably a plus here, and I might buy one, if just for this game only; it's that good!/

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