System Shock

The Good
GAMEPLAY: Deep, complex, comfortable, interesting level design, very morbid atmosphere. Tons of variety in guns, grenades, etc. If you could think Doom or Quake but with about ten times more ideas added, much much more depth and an actual storyline, a mystery, with adventure game item collection involved. [5/5]

GRAPHICS: For their time (1994, just after Doom) out of this world. About Duke Nukem 3D level, but with a more 'there' feel, but not as sharp. Tons of variety in colours, textures, etc. Very creepy, cold and hard electronic feel. Surreal. [5/5]

AUDIO: The voiceovers are somewhere from OK to quite amateurish, and this goes two ways -- realistic and cheesy. The soundtrack is very melodic and catchy, dark and moody. I love it, I think it's one of the better game soundtracks ever. [3.5/5]

PLOTLINE: Ah yes. As games go this is intelligent and sophisticated. Essentially you wake up in hell, or something close to it, and have to find out what's going on. Which turns out to be the AI you hacked earlier has gone psycho and has killed everyone on board your space station. Except you, because you're not supposed to be there. Thus, you must slay it. Hey, it works for a game! [4.5/5]

The Bad
SHODAN (the beserk A.I.) has a realistic voice (the sort you get when you ring the bank and the computer speaks back) but some real crappy dialogue.

The Bottom Line
A mix of FPS and adventure genres, dripping with a cold, hard atmosphere. Cyber-horror is all I can call it -- your haunted house is a haunted spaceship and your zombies are cyborgs. You solve a mystery and blast anything in your way with some truly mean, nasty weapons. A very dark, cold and morbid mood prevails the entire way. [4.5/5]

TRY THIS GAME IF YOU CAN -- IT'S GREAT! [http://www.the-underdogs.org] should have it -- you need DOS, or Win95/98/ME. For WinXP I'd suggest you get a copy of Virtual PC from Microsoft and install Win98 on it, then run the game through that. Trust me, it's worth your time!