General Overview

Be afraid

"So how?", you might be asking yourself. "Does it throw monsters at you suddenly and with blistering speed? Does death leap out at you from every corner, with plasma gun in one hand and scythe in the other?!"

Hardly. Don't get me wrong - you will see baddies, and fight quite a bit. But the game is more oriented around puzzles than combat, while the fear stems far more from atmosphere than the threat of sudden death.

Told you not to get used to live people

At least he gave me a wrench

It's not run and gun

You see, in System Shock 2, like in the original, things move slowly. If you complained about Quake II being slow, you haven't seen anything yet. At the run setting, your character in SS2 moves about as fast as the Quake marine sneaking around so as not to make footsteps. Your jumps are agonizingly slow and small. Your attacks will come at a deliberate pace - at its fastest, the wrench attack in SS2 was about 2/3 the speed of a Half-Life crowbar swing.

See woman run

See why woman run

Swinging at shadows

You would not believe how much urgency that puts in a combat situation. While you're hacking away at some lock, and something comes up behind you and takes a cheap shot, you panic, bang the mouse on its pad to turn around, and start clicking like a man possessed. All for naught. "Whoosh" ... "bang" ... "whoosh" ... "ugh". Well, it's not that bad, but trust me, you'll be wishing that you could swing that wrench a lot faster.

See why she doesn't run/scream anymore

Not much conversation is there?

Need something bigger!

The gun is a bit better with rate of fire (and obviously range!), but the damage seems smaller. For you Half-Lifers who still hit the reload button in every game they play, that's a good habit. Keep it up - it will come in handy for System Shock 2. There is also a laser pistol, that is a bit stronger, but needs to be recharged... and its refire rate leaves a bit to be desired (think of the Quake II blaster.)