Re-released on GoG and Steam earlier this year, everyone with half a brain should be picking this up so they can truly understand what the phrase ‘innovative genius’ really means.Īssigned to the crew of the Rickenbacker, a military escort for the Von Braun - a new faster than light ship on its maiden voyage, the expectation was this would be a nice cushy little detail looking after science pleps for the next couple of years. But anyone with a PC really has no excuse now. Sadly this means many modern gamers have only ever played a close approximation of the real deal a first-person shooter with RPG depth that’s exquisitely nerve-jangling throughout.

Even GLaDOS, the manically bonkers artificial intelligence from Portal, owes a passing nod to System Shock 2. Unless you were fortunate enough to pick up the game shortly after its 1999 release your only experience of cowering on the Von Braun from unrelenting terror would likely be via Dead Space (which borrows wholesale form System Shock 2’s plot and design) or Bioshock, it’s frequently referenced spiritual successor. Until recently System Shock 2 had been one of those titles stuck in infernal legal limbo. Of course, this is an easy mistake for younglings to make.

Snot-nosed kid: And where the plot is progressed through the random recordings left by the now dead crew? Snot-nosed kid: Where the crew landed on a planet only to bring something back with them, which has subsequently turned the crew into rampaging, deformed mutations of their former selves? Snot-nosed kid: Is the game set against the backdrop of a derelict spacecraft where everything is not as it seems? Snot-nosed kid: Do you feature weapon modifications and an inventory? Snot-nosed kid: Are you a survival horror?

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