The best thing about System Shock is the story. It must be understood that most of the backstory is well hidden through chatlogs, ghostly visits, and even how certain rooms are set up (Positions of dead bodies, even the positions of items). Very much like how Valve used imagery to convey certain messages, but this blog has nothing to do with that.

Anyways, the story begins with you, a bright eyed rosy cheeked recruit who must chose what class he must join. You have three choices, basic stuff actually, weapons based skills, tech based skills, and psi skills. Later you wake up from a coma to preform your duty, on an deserted (but not quite empty) space vessel. The enemies are are combination of creatures, some hybrids, others tech based, and giant spiders. Just like any environment, you get variation (No swamp levels, thank the makers), all of them blended in with a nightmarish cyberpunk setting.

After your character wakes up, he is immediately in danger. The first weapon you start off with is a wrench, but if you go with psi training, you will get the orb of knowing (Not the actual name, but the great thing about system shock is that it has a touch of fantasy setting). Your only friend is a woman trapped in the administrative setting of the ship. The beginning of the game revolves around you trying to reach her, and fixing a couple of problems along the way. That easy? Don't be foolish, these types of games are never easy. Which reminds me, this game is bloody hard, even on the "EASY" difficulty. Your only social link friend in reality is dead, and for the last 10 hours of gameplay (Ahem, my first ten hours), she wasn't the one talking to you. Rather it was the A.I. construct, Shodan. Like in Bioshock, except the scene was more "Shit your pants" resolution rather than the insightful whoops we experienced. So for the rest of the game, you are her/his/its pawn.

By that point, it is a confusing fetch game. FIrst time I played, I had no clue on where to go because it was extremely confusing. So now for gameplay mechanics, because there is a ton of take into account. There are guns, a ton of guns. Some of which you can never actually use because you need to improve your stats. System Shock 2 is an RPG, and a tough one. Anyways, you can get guns, and the will break. A lot actually, and you will need to repair them. Which in itself is a task. If your gun can be used, you need to stock up on ammo, but oh no, ammo is extremely scarce. Plus you can only hold so much stuff, some of which is research material you can use to do more damage to enemies. To actually do research, you need chemicals, which are placed all over the freaking ship. Now you can think that a bit of backtracking is fine, but the research is also a stat. The choice is tough, because unlike Deus Ex, you do need to know how to use weapons, as well as repair.

Anyways, all this to say, this game is damn good.