This is doubtless one of the best and most thoughtful first-person shooters that has ever been made. A vast improvement on the original (which was also ahead of its time), with very nice graphics and smooth game play, this is still a very enjoyable game today. This is quite a challenging game, even at on the easy setting, so be prepared to fight!
The interface is very original - this is not just a "shoot everything in sight and rush through the levels" style game.
The player has to complete increasingly taxing puzzles in order to progress through the game and there are many different ways your stats can be upgraded right from the start.
You are a soldier on a historic voyage into the unknown - the first faster-than-light space craft, travelling to distant star system Tau Ceti. You are in stasis for the journey, but when you wake up something has gone terribly wrong! Some kind of alien force has infiltrated the ship and has infected a large proportion of the crew. As the game progresses you learn more about what has happened and how you can fight it. The innovative voice logs and the ability to research some items is a nice touch. As I said,
you can progress in several different ways and can learn many different abilities to complete the game. Indeed, at the very start you must choose to be either in the navy, a marine or in the psionic army the OSA. You can't learn every skill or progress to the highest level in every ability, so the game can be repeated and played in a completely different way.
Many of the aspects of the game were revolutionary when it was first released and several features can be seen incorporated in later titles. Most notably is the link to Doom3, the much more recent and blood-thirsty title from ID software. The voice logs you find throughout Doom III (often to help in a task, such as a door activation code) are clearly taken from System Shock 2.
All in all this is an excellent game that I would recommend you play through if you haven't before. The graphics are very good, but this was released in 1999, so it should work in the highest settings on most PCs today. There are some issues with XP compatibility, but I got it to work ok on my machine. There is a patch available if you google it. Enjoy
