The sinister, claustrophobic environment of a deserted spaceship...the eerie cries of the undead and unknown alien species... an artificial intelligence with dreams of godhood...and you, thrown into the middle of it all as the last chance to save humanity. System shock 2 has to be one of the most unsettling and genuinely scary games to have been released in the last ten years. Taking the basic concept of Resident Evil, cross-pollinating it with the setting of Aliens and playing it through the format of an RPG, this forerunner to games like Deus Ex is considered a genre classic.
You play the role of an employee on board the starship Von Braun, heading for the Tau Ceti system. But when the game starts, something has gone horribly wrong. You have amnesia, the crew is dead or dying, and the remaining survivors are being hunted by an unknown entity through the ship. It's up to you, being guided by a member of the crew via radio links, to take back the ship and get to the bottom of the mystery.
The game allows you to customize your skills and abilities, ranging from psionic powers that can hack computers and cast fireballs, to engineering skills allowing you to modify weapons and items that you find as you progress. The ship itself comprises six huge decks, ranging from medical and
engineering through to recreation (it even has a shopping mall- on a spaceship!). The story drives you forward through this environment, with the use of sound dynamically portraying the tense, eerie atmosphere.
The twist that comes about halfway through the game cannot be revealed here, but it's definitely not one you expect, and alters the purpose of your mission-now you not only have to survive, you have to put an end to the alien threat at your door...
Considering the developers (irrational games) are about to complete the "spiritual successor" to SS2, called Bioshock, now has never been a better time to check this game out for you. There are even patches to enhance some of the texture resolutions and in game models to a more modern standard, as the game itself is quite old now. Despite this, it hasn't dated and still gets regularly voted into top 100 games lists today.
