Somewhat shamefully, when I first played Irrational Games' 1999 classic System Shock 2, I didn't complete it. That was common for me during that era--it was when I was starting to think critically about games, but before I had really gotten into them as a "primary" hobby, and I rarely dedicated enough time to absorb the full experience. (Coincidentally, Thief, which shares a number of developers with Shock 2, was one of the most important games in the development of my thinking about the medium, along with its contemporary Half-Life.)

A few weeks ago, as BioShock 2 approached, I decided to rectify this particular partially-incomplete part of my repertoire. Yesterday, after about 15 total hours of play, I finished System Shock 2. It took a bit of fiddling, but I was able to get it up and running on a 64-bit Windows 7 machine. I eschewed mods for this playthrough; maybe I'll swap in altered textures and mechanics during a future excursion.

I'm sure just about anything I have to say about the game has already been said, it being a decade after its release, but it made enough of an impression on me that I'm going to say some things anyway. The first section is about design, and is spoiler-free, but if you haven't played through the game (and you should), don't read the latter parts, because they've got a lot of spoilers.