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Number 09 - System Shock 2

There's a ghost in the shell and it's out to get you player

Looking Glass games/Irrational games, 1999

System Shock 2 is tough. You wake up on a ship with a wrench as your only reliable ally and then have to prevent the destruction of that ship and escape. It turns out this a pretty tall order, because that the security systems are playing up, areas of the ship are highly radioactive and other bits of it are just giving up the ghost and falling off into space. The sort of day that would give Captain Scarlet an ulcer is made all the more unpleasant because the ship’s crew have been, for the most part, zombified or horribly slaughtered.

The difficulty of System Shock 2 comes from almost every aspect of the game design. In addition to the toughness of the core adventure itself, the game drips with menacing atmosphere and devious problems. Second the combat side to the game is not only difficult, it’s positively traumatising. Lumbering zombies apologise for trying to cave in your skull and plead for death, horrible creatures that were once laboratory monkeys hop out of the shadows and of course you’ve got turrets and sentry robots to chew through as well, and all that with desperately little ammunition.

This YouTube video of the game’s opening moments shows the game expertly conjures a pressured, paranoid atmosphere right from the start.



Bioshock, System Shock 2's soon to be released spiritual successor, looks like it will be just as creepy.



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