By rights I probably shouldn’t include System Shock 2 in this list because I’m not even half way through it. Despite being released in ‘99, it bypassed me totally. What can I say? 1999 was a good year in gaming and I had a lot of other stuff to get through. Anyway, the world was going to end and playing this game didn’t quite make the Top 20 list of things I need to do before I die. I’ve had it for a while now but I’ve never been able to get it to run properly under Windows XP until this year, with a last concerted effort, I did so.

Since then I’ve spent most of my time wondering why I didn’t do this a long time ago. What prompted me to get it installed was the release of Bioshock which is designed by many members of the same team that developed Shock 2 and which has been universally described as a “spiritual successor” to the game in so far as it doesn’t take place in the same universe but has similar game mechanics and elements. I haven’t played Bioshock as my PC won’t handle it but from watching some of the movies of it, it’s stunning and is on my wishlist for when I get a bigger, better, faster and harder rig. But enough about something that isn’t System Shock 2 and more about why this game has made it onto the list.

Even though I’ve yet to finish this game, I’ve been absolutely blown away by the opening few levels. The story takes place on a spaceship and you appear to be one of only two survivors after an encounter with, well, something mysterious. Actually, it’s not just that you’re a survivor but you’re a soldier who’s awoken in a medical recovery tube after having been given cybernetic implants. Not that you know why nor what happened. That’s the story that drives you.

The spaceship you’re on has been fully modelled down to every last detail. It’s not just a couple of corrdiors and a suggestion of the size and scale of a ship with a lot of rooms that are there for the sake of having rooms - the entire layout has been mapped out, planned and considered. Every room, every nook and cranny has a function or is something that you’d realistically expect to find on a made up spaceship. That’s one of the first things that you notice - the environment you’re in is functional and feels real (well, as real as a futuristic spaceship orbiting an alien planet can feel). You start out in the medical area and move through the ship until you get to the living quarters (complete with rooms, recreation lounge and even digital paintings on the wall which you can change the image on) and science area. It’s wonderfully complete, down to the potted plants and personal effects littering the place.

But the enviroment is secondary compared to the atmosphere of the game. This is scary stuff, survivalist horror told from a first person perspective. The game induces paranoia and makes you jump more times than an ADHD afflicted jack-in-the-box. As soon as you get into the first populated area - populated by wrench and shotgun wielding zombies that is - your pants are increasingly likely to get soiled. Before you even see said zombies, you can hear them but rather than moan, they talk to you in a low, insidious, growling voice, telling you about their new flesh and, more disturbingly, telling you to run or saying “I’m sorry” before shooting at you. Don’t even get me started on the cybernetic midwives - half robot, half human female monstrosities that attack you while kindly telling you that “Babies need fresh meat.”

And then there are the monkeys - oh good, the monkeys! Aggressive monkeys with exposed brains, freshly escaped from the ships vivisection labs, endowed with pyschic abilities fill the ships corridors with their screeches and howls.

System Shock 2 is primarily a first person shooter but it has a considerable amount of role-playing elements thrown in too. The game opens with you joining a recruitment centre where you get a tutorial about the various aspects of the game and then are asked which “career path” you’d like to take. This determines your base level of skills and you can further refine these skills based on your choice of three “years” of duty missions which add bonuses to skills such as firearms, hacking, pyschic powers (it’s not just the monkeys that potentially have this ability) and so on. Throughout the game you are able to upgrade these skills which will, for example, let you hack computers, doors and automated gun turrets or improve your aim and damage output as well as be able to fire new weapons. Also unlike most traditional FPS games, you’ve got an inventory system which allows you to only carry so much. Weapons can degrade and break and ammo is scarce so you can’t just shoot everything that moves.

Tension in the game is built up by the ongoing discovery of dead bodies (some murdered, some suicides, some just plain unlucky) and the discovery of personal diaries and notes in the form of emails and audio logs. These flesh out the background of the world you’re in and give you an idea of what life was like before whatever took place while also building up a picture of the events that transpired. Even though you’re alone, you feel like you are in what was once a richly populated world and that makes the feeling of the game that much more emotive.

I haven’t finished System Shock 2 yet because I want to give it my full attention. It regularly makes the best ever games lists of most gaming magazines and websites and anyone who has played it always speaks highly of it. Even just from what I’ve played so far, I can recognise that it is a phenomenal game that has already enthralled and entranced me as well as made me crap myself. I’m looking forward to finishing this journey.