System Shock 2 (PC) - Full Playthrough incl. Easter Egg
4This version of the game is heavily modded and the original looks nowhere near as good as this. Modding guide here: https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=4447.0
After I played the original System Shock with classic engine graphics (not the remaster and not the remake), the sequel was high on my backlog. The original was a masterpiece! An oppressive dungeon crawler with great world building and I loved the graphics! There's something beautiful about old software rendering with low res textures.
System Shock 2 is from a different era of gaming though. The graphics remind me of Quake 2 and it therefore feels much more like an FPS than a survival game, RPG or immersive sim. Everything is now very well lit too! The graphics have aged very, very badly, but there are many mods that add high res textures and models. These look great for sure and I especially love the space texture! It still looks sterile though. And the AI is really dumb... The music also doesn't fit very well so I turned it off. With only the ambient sounds make the game feel more tense in my opinion.
But how does it play? It's fine. It's ok, but not great. You have an omniscient radio buddy that guides you and the game feels very linear. There are large areas with many corridors, but there is a kind of flow that leads you through everything. The weapons are weird too. There is little actual diversity. I find the plot is really mid too. And don't get me started on the last stretch of the game...
I don't know how the tech, gameplay and plot would have come across in 1999, but I also didn't play the first game until a year ago and that one was phenomenal. Maybe it just didn't age well. System Shock 2 paved the way for Dead Space, though, so just for that it's a classic and this spiritual sequel was, again, a masterpiece in immersive world building.
00:00 - Start
00:06 - Intro 1: Prelude
02:46 - Tutorial
04:40 - Character Creation
08:10 - Intro 2: Deployment to the Von Braun
10:40 - Deck 2: MedSci (Game Start)
1:04:12 - Deck 1: Engineering
2:18:15 - Deck 3: Hydroponics
3:24:44 - Deck 4: Operations
4:47:58 - Deck 5: Recreation
6:17:21 - Deck 6: Command
7:43:12 - Rickenbacker A
8:24:23 - Rickenbacker B
8:36:46 - Rickenbacker C
8:46:09 - Body of The Many
9:11:35 - The Many Brain Boss
9:14:49 - Shodan Cyberspace
9:25:33 - Shodan
9:26:16 - Ending
9:29:15 - Credits