Rightly or wrongly, I assumed that I’d be able to use guns even if I wasn’t a Marine, and OSA seemed pretty fiddly, so I’ve opted to join the Navy. Still, I’ve had to choose between one of three disciplines - Marines (armed to the teeth), Navy (hack-tastic), and OSA (psionic powers). You'll need more than Vanish to get that out of the sheets. There are the customary training sections which are as clunky as you might expect, the hilarious weapon-changing animations which look like someone practicing gun puppetry, and the rooms with people in which have no discernible entrance. The design is clean, familiar, and….very early millennium. And when the game environment loaded, I was genuinely relieved. Yet, I have to remind myself that I absolutely loved Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2, which came out three years earlier than System Shock 2. It’s like when you look back at games like Wolfenstein 3D and wonder how on earth you managed to navigate the map. When the game loaded and a windowed, pixel-heavy cutscene kicked off, I had to fight off every instinct to shut it down. I’ll admit it: I’ve been spoiled by modern graphics. If Deus Ex remains as playable today as it was in 2000, then surely this 1999 forerunner is still worth booting up? I really hope so.
Even so, it remained one of those iconic games that grew mouldy in my Steam library. It’s staggering to think that it’s almost twenty years old now, but the impact it had on the FPS genre is such that the likes of Deus Ex owe a huge debt to it - despite it being a huge commercial failure.
Only the very best games will stand up to scrutiny today.īefore BioShock (which I loved) and BioShock Infinite (which was OK, but not a patch on the first), Irrational Games developed a futuristic horror named System Shock 2.
Brutal Backlog is a semi-regular feature where the JDR team plough through some of the unplayed games on their shelves (both digital and physical), disregarding their age or the technical limitations of their era.
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