Best Of

System Shock 2

System Shock 2 - games like this are why it's worth it to play games. No screenshots ahead, just a wall of text!

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So, SS2 is the spiritual predecessor to Bioshock, released back in 1999. It's a first-person techno-horror... er... kind of. Kind of the way you'd call Bioshock a first-person retro-sci-fi-horror.

...yeah, no, I guess that's probably how I'd explain it. Right, moving on.

I can't really gush enough over the Bioshock line of games, so it's only right that I jump into SS2... and boy, am I glad I did. In the current climate of juvenile video games, I tend to think that I look back at the 'classics' with rose-colored glasses... "were they not as sophisticated as I thought? Not as brilliant?" No, Dan, they were EXACTLY as sophisticated as you thought.

SS2's premise is is good and chilling. You're a UNN marine/navy/psiops who's just transferred to the Von Braun, humanity's biggest, baddest scientific starship... and you've got no memory. As you exit your stasis pod, you find quickly that things aren't alright - the ship is falling apart, strange alien-human creatures obsessed with their flesh and their oneness are roaming the halls, the ship's AI has gone rogue, and a mutiny has taken place. As you piece together the story from timely emails, audio logs, and well-decorated sets, you find that things are much, much worse than they appear.

SS2 uses the 'lol everyone keeps audio diaries' method of introducing you to its world, similar to the way the Bioshock series do. I LOVE this storytelling method (despite its unrealism) - no character sounds more human than when they're just a disembodied voice (contrast with a voice attached to a polygonal, awkwardly wiggling human-shaped model). Disembodied audio is so good for sparking the imagination - with only a snippet of background noise and inflection from the actor, you construct an entire scene. I'd have to say that these diaries were easily my favorite part of the game - that, and the dictated emails!

Everything talks to you. The aliens talk to you. The rogue AI talks to you. ANOTHER rogue AI (Shodan, the main antagonist from the previous game) talks to you - and boy do they talk. Commands, reprimands, explanations - bit by bit, you find out where everything came from and what they horrible things they have in store for you. All of them. The lot of them. Honestly, the bulk of the game's size is probably from audio alone!

It's a shame that SS2 had such a low budget, however - it shows in some of the supporting voice acting. Sure, Shodan's acting and vocal production is an absolute treat; sure, Captain Diego sounds like a real gruff son-of-a-bitch; sure, Prefontaine's audio up to and including his death recording is probably the spookiest in the game... but more than a few supporting voice actors hadn't read the script beforehand. Rosie from engineering might emphasize the wrong word, or talk about watching some new horror unfold with a perfect monotone. Lucy in the medbay is "surprised bullets do nothing, bullets, Jesus! uh... I hadn't even held a gun before this morning..." instead of being "surprised bullets do nothing. ...Bullets, Jesus, I hadn't even HELD a gun before this morning!" What's worse is that the writing was spot on, even for these small roles, but still got ripped to pieces. If only they'd been allowed to stay in the recording studio just a little bit longer! Thankfully, these poor acting jobs are few and far between - and most of the time I was so on my toes, I didn't notice.

There are other concerns. The last few levels are dull and uninspired - well, possibly inspired, but definitely not fleshed (pun!) out. Actually, no, QUITE inspired, and not at ALL fleshed out - the only saving grace was Prefontaine's audio diaries. Blame this on lack of budget - the last few levels feel like they should have been so much more, but The Many (the aliens) go out with a whimper, and Shodan's Reality is too short to matter. We're in her mind! Where are her memories? Where are the physics gimmicks? Oh! To think what this could have been with more money and more work. And that ENDING! It seemed so badly like they needed the game to end, but didn't know how. "Nah." NAH?! Give the player some choice! Make the final blow more than a bullet to the screen! Make the cybernetics fight to control the player! And for the love of god, don't break the Silent Protagonist!

Now, I know I complain a lot, so I want to make this caveat - those two preceding paragraphs aren't in anger or disappointment - that's me begging for the game to be made again, fleshed out. That's me settling for small flaws because the overall experience was... well... an experience. I WANT this game to be even more incredible. I WANT it redone, so it can sit beside the Half Life 2s and Bioshocks of the world as One of the Greatest Games of All Time. This has the potential, and delivers on more than a little of it - oh, what wonders we could work on this story with a bigger budget and today's technology! But enough wishing, on with the review.

SS2's formula mimicks Bioshock's formula (or rather, vice versa) to an absolute T. You never interact with another friendly character - they're behind glass, or dead by the time you find them. You gather money, buy things from vending machines (WELCOME TO THE CIRCUS OF VALUE), upgrade your weapons (and yourself), use psionic powers (think plasmids). Each clearly-defined level is a nonlinear labyrinth with different areas waiting to be unlocked, and once you've unlocked the whole thing, only then can you leave. You receive objectives from some bigger, meaner being using you as a puppet, pulling your strings. Corpses are placed near their items of demise. There's a 'research' function that allows you to learn the weaknesses of your foes. Enemies spawn randomly (making backtracking a real thrill). Enemies talk as they fight you - "I'm sorry," say the alien-possessed-humans. "Your flesh betrays you," they say, as they hunt for you. It's a formula, I guess, and it apparently hasn't changed at all with time.

Speaking of time, SS2 really shows its age in the graphics department. I actually couldn't get any screenshots because of a nice bug I was running into (namely: screenshotting just didn't work), but if you google a couple photos, you'll see what I mean. Whoa. We used to think that was the future? Another interesting place where SS2 shows its age is the controls - no WASD, keyboard keys to look up and down - waaaaaaow. I remember playing Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight with these controls, and not a mouse in sight.

Eh. Graphics be damned; the best judge of the game is how I felt while playing it:

• I couldn't put it down. I wound up awake at 3AM the first night.
• The story was so interesting that I found myself a million times wishing they'd go back and remake the game. Not just with better graphics - redesign the later levels, flesh out the ending, get the voice acting perfect - in short, polish it up to Bioshock standards.
• I found myself creeped out. Spooked. I ran to give my wife a hug when she came home after leaving me in the apartment alone to play.
• I was obsessed with finding every audio diary, just so I could have a little more story.

My recommendation: play it. You owe it to yourself, and to video games in general. You have to go back and see your legacy. This is where we're from as video gamers - the good, the minor bad, the mechanics that clunked, the mechanics that worked, the suspension of disbelief while staring at a six-polygon'd bad guy. This is what we need more of - games made by devs who love games, not devs who love money.

What are you waiting for?
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