The Re:Retro Top 100 Games Of All Time, No. 69: System Addict

Ah, System Shock 2. The game that launched a thousand reminiscences – but not from me, because I never played it in my life. Unfortunately it’s a bit too close to the Link Debacle to wave it aside, so let’s delve into it and see if we can work out what made it such a classic of its time without resorting to (ugh) touching it or experiencing it in any way. Here’s some gameplay donated by the hard-gaming boys at YouTube…

So far, so Doom/Quake/What-Have-You. (I would pay good money for an FPS called What-Have-You 2: And Like That.) But there’s more to System Shock 2 than roaming yet another base where people are really careless about leaving ammunition and medical supplies just lying around – before you even pick up a gun, you have to have chosen your character class and gone through three tours of behind-the-scenes military duty, picking up skills as you go, a lot like in the Megatraveller game. (As I remember, the only decent part of that game was the character creation – the combat was absolutely hellish and unnecessary.)

So suddenly, we’ve got a Doom-a-like with an RPG system added on – a system that allows for psychic superpowers. If you grafted that onto an MMORPG, you’d essentially have City Of Heroes and most likely a dozen other successful online games right there. You could also make a case for it preceeding the horror-themed games that enjoyed mega-popularity in the 21st century.

And the icing on the cake – your character gets a little GameBoy style doohickey, presumably to use as an interface for saving, loading and like that. On this doohickey you can, if you wish, play another RPG. I’m sure there are people buying this game just so they can find a quiet corner in the death zone and level up their character in Overland Zero. We haven’t seen this kind of meta-genius since Commander Keen.

I’d quite like to play this game now. Is it still on sale?