My Favorite Game I Never Played – Until Now

This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #190. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.

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Here’s the Thing is where Rob dumps his random thoughts and strong opinions on all manner of nerdy subjects – from videogames and movies to board games and toys.

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It’s pretty safe to say that System Shock 2 has been a major influence in videogames in the decades since it first released in 1999…right? Outside of the more immediately quantifiable stuff, though, this is also a game that many have held in extremely high regard ever since they first played it for themselves. The same goes for me, really. But here’s the thing: While I’ve long considered System Shock 2 to be an important part of my own personal list of bests and favorites, I’d never actually played all that much of it.

I can’t be the only person who’s done something like this: Built up a particular game, usually an older classic, as a sort of monolithic force that I just knew was great and knew that I adored it, but also only ever played a couple of hours of it at most. This has to be a thing other people (not necessarily everyone else, but not no one else) have experienced before.

The fact that those first couple of hours provide a well-informed look at most of the game’s interwoven systems and mechanics certainly doesn’t hurt. Even without ever finding my way off the Med-Sci deck before, it was easy to see just how much of what System Shock 2 was doing had made its way into other games throughout the years. And how it helped to shape the immersive sim genre as a whole, obviously.

I’m pretty sure it was this combination of understanding its legacy through a brief amount of actual play, coupled with how creepy and compelling it was despite how much it had obviously aged, that made me so confident about calling it a favorite. It’s kinda tough to deny at that point, you know?

And believe me, I wanted to play System Shock 2. I wanted to be able to play through it from start to finish for literal decades. But it was never in the cards due to a combination of not having the time or focus when I still used a PC, and then not having a PC.

For a brief time, I could have played it on my MacBook, but there was always something else pulling my attention away. Which was no big deal because I owned it on Steam, so it was always going to be there. Haha. And then I got a new MacBook with an M1 processor and found out the hard way that an awful lot of games that did run on Mac would absolutely not run on a M1 Mac. Thanks for that, Apple.

Eventually I did find out about a “trick” to roll the Steam version back to a sort of beta build that did work on my M1 MacBook, but it didn’t run super well. And by that point I learned of Nightdive Studios’ upcoming remaster, so I opted to wait. After all, it had already been over 20 years, what’s another month or two (or year or three)?

But now System Shock 2 is finally out on a platform I can comfortably and easily play it on – in this case the Switch – so of course I bought it and of course I, at long last, was able to devote enough time and attention to give it a full playthrough.

None of the plot developments were a surprise thanks to a variety of discussions, videos and memes that have passed in front of my eyes over the years, but none of that mattered. I was finally in it. I was finally able to familiarize myself with the Von Braun and Rickenbacker in the same way I’d come to know Citadel Station (and the Spencer Mansion, and Rapture and so on).

Part of me was worried that years of buildup in my mind would result in disappointment, and I’ll admit there were a few points where the game’s age created some rough spots for me, but nope. By the end I was just as satisfied with System Shock 2 as I hoped I would be. I wanted to start a new game and try a new character build. I wanted to see if I had missed anything. The only reason I didn’t is because I wanted to go back and replay other immersive sims to see how they compared. Namely the Bioshock series and maybe Prey (2017).

Funny enough, most of them kind of don’t compare?

Not to say that Bioshock or Bioshock 2 are bad, or that Prey is lacking (I’m deliberately leaving out Bioshock Infinite because it really feels like it’s more shooter than immersive sim), but they just don’t transfix me like the System Shock duology.

Rapture is a very cool setting but I found myself wishing Irrational had leaned more heavily into unsettling horror elements and pushed the oppressive nature of being trapped in an underwater city further. To an extent I feel like some of this was improved in the sequel, but then they kinda tossed the more open map structure out the airlock so you couldn’t revisit locations after key plot progression points. Call me weird, but I actually like being able to backtrack to previous areas to either root out new goodies or because it’s necessary for progression.

Prey’s Talos I, on the other hand, is kind of a boring location for me in general by comparison. Sure, the original System Shock was also set on a space station, but Citadel is a much weirder, more vibrant and more memorable locale. And don’t even get me started on the Typhon. Outside of the mimics being able to disguise themselves as various objects (which eventually becomes more annoying than tense), I’ve always found them to be pretty boring.

Maybe I just prefer the more obvious sci-fi horror approach of the System Shocks, I dunno.

Point is, I was right about System Shock 2. To nobody’s surprise, I’m sure.

I expected a 20+ year old game that was ground breaking for its time and that’s what I got. But more than that, I also got a game that holds up well outside of that context. Even now, in 2025, certain parts of it continue to run circles around what came after. Except the Cyborg Assassins. I absolutely hate having to deal with those obnoxious things.

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Rob Rich is a guy who’s loved nerdy stuff since the 80s, from videogames to Anime to Godzilla to Power Rangers toys to Transformers, and has had the good fortune of being able to write about them all. He’s also editor for the Games section of Exploits! You can still find him on Bluesky and Mastodon.