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Hey, what's up guys? I'm Dafe Allen
and this is Ludi Antiqui.
Now this is the first episode of the show so the format might change over time,
but it's always going to be about old games.
This week I figured I would review my favorite game of all time,
a game that almost killed me:
System Shock 2.
Not surprisingly, System Shock 2 is the sequel to the 1994 shooter-adventure game
System Shock, by Looking Glass Studios.
It was developed by Looking Glass Studios and Irrational Games,
a startup company founded by three former Looking Glass employees,
Ken Levine probably the most famous these days, and published in 1999 by Electronic Arts
under the Looking Glass Studios label.
System Shock 2 starts forty-two years after the events of the first game.
The Von Braun, Earth's first faster-than-light starship,
has been built by the TriOptimum corporation and is set to take off on its maiden voyage.
You play a soldier who has joined the UNN's military force and after basic training
choose a branch of the armed forces, either the Marines (a gun specialization),
the Navy (a technical specialization), or the OSA (a psionic specialization).
This is the first of the role-playing elements that appear in the game
and allows you to adapt your character to your play style.
After making a few more choices you head off to the UNN Rickenbacker,
a smaller military ship piggybacking on the Von Braun,
and the game proper begins.
Waking suddenly from a healing coma with military-grade cybernetic implants
and a bad case of amnesia, you hear the voice of Chief Computer Engineer Dr. Janice Polito in your head,
telling you that something has gone terribly wrong with the ship
and that you need to make your way up to meet her on Deck Four.
Not surprisingly, things don't go exactly to plan.
The ship's AI, Xerxes, has gone rampant, blocking you at every turn,
your former crew members have been turned into apologetic zombies,
and you're beginning to see ghosts.
Things only go downhill from there.
As you fulfill objectives, Polito will give you Cybernetic Modules, basically skill points
that can be used upgrade your stats, powers, and abilities, allowing you to have
a unique experience every time you play,
though I always seem to end up being a psychic hacker-ninja no matter what I do.
While its story is compelling, what makes System Shock 2 such an amazing game
is that it's just dripping with atmosphere.
The emptiness of the ship is palpable; you feel fear at every corner,
scrounging through garbage cans for ammo,
your heart stopping at the sound of a security camera locking on to you,
ready to call down legions of enemies on your position.
Audio logs scattered throughout the ship tell the stories of other crew members
bit-by-bit; sometimes you'll come upon them only a few hours after they were recorded,
sometimes a few days, and sometimes even a few weeks.
Those who have played the BioShock games may find this all very familiar;
BioShock was developed by Irrational Games under the name 2K Boston as
a spiritual successor to the System Shock series and ended up incorporating many
elements from the games, especially from System Shock 2.
Even though the graphics were a little dated at release, there have been mods created
by the small but strong fan community to help address this issue.
The two most important ones are the Shock Texture Upgrade Project,
which greatly increases the resolution of most in-game textures,
and Rebirth, which ups the polygon count and texture resolution for most of the enemies,
though some interesting liberties have been taken,
especially with the Cyborg Midwives...eww.
Another mod worth checking out is Straylight's Anomalies, Discrepancies and outright Bugs mod,
which fixes various bugs, helps to flesh out a few ideas that Irrational
didn't have time to implement, and attempts to better balance the game.
This leads me to the one and only criticism that I have of System Shock 2:
the end development was a little rushed and as a result the last few levels are
unfortunately less polished than the rest of the game.
However, this is more of a nitpick as overall the game is fantastic
and it was only after multiple playthroughs that I really began to notice.
Now I mentioned earlier that System Shock 2 nearly killed me, so I guess I should
probably tell the story behind that.
Early one morning, not many days after I first got the game, I awoke with terrible stomach pains.
Unable to get back to sleep due to the intense pain, I decided to play System Shock 2 instead of,
you know, going to the hospital or something sensible like that.
I had just made it to the second level, the engineering floor in the belly of the ship,
which has some of the most memorable music in the game:
After a few more hours of playing through the pain, I finally smartened up and went to the
emergency room.
They sliced me open and ripped out my engorged, throbbing appendix just before it burst,
so I didn't die,
or really have any complications from the surgery.
However, any time I hear the music from the engineering level I get a weird shiver
down my spine and feel a little sick to my stomach. I guess the lesson to
be learned here is that your life is more important than videogames,
but of course that's absolutely ridiculous.
So is it worth hunting down a copy of System Shock 2? Yeah, absolutely.
System Shock 2 is so good that it nearly killed me.
These days it's very difficult to get your hands on a legitimate copy,
With hard versions being offered for outrageous prices on ebay
and legal digital copies not available due to the rights being stuck in some weird legal limbo.
If you do manage to snag a copy though,
the game is easy to get running on modern operating systems thanks to the tireless
efforts of the fan community. I've put links in the video description to everything
you need to get the game running
as well as to the mods that I've mentioned and to instructions on using them.
Check it out, you won't regret it!
If you've enjoyed this episode, watch some of my other gaming videos,
and don't forget to subscribe.