The thing is about a classic is how it's timeless and never seems to age, System Shock 2 however doesn't have these qualities. Don't get me wrong it's a good game and even better for it's day but theres a problem that games like Half-Life came out before it and although slightly different games, Half-Life just showed System Shock 2 up. See I really like the story and the whole setting of the game, what makes the game though is Shodan, such a fantastic character and much better than Bioshock's version. The thing is that's all System Shock 2 has and even for it's day there were games that did everything else so much better and if it wasn't for Shodan I wouldn't have liked System Shock 2 as much as I did.
System Shock 2 has lots of annoying things like how the setting is really good and yet the levels are so boring and annoying like mazes. Constant back and forth and being lost spending hours working out what to do and even looking at a walkthrough still gives you a headache because the in game map is so crap and telling you where to go or whats what. The whole UI is just really crap and horrible to use, it takes ages to get used to it and you just wish'd they'd polished it up. I also found the default controls to be really poor and had to spend ages key mapping everything too. Other things I hated about System shock 2 were the poor character models, even for the time they wern't a patch on Half-Life and the combat was just crap with both guns and melee.
What I'd say to you now is watch videos of Shodan but please just stick to playign Bioshock because it's a much better game becuase they removed most of the frustrations of System Shock 2 as Bioshock is the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 so just really made a modern day version. The only fault I have with Bioshock is there is no Inventory which it could have done with but apart from that and no Shodan it's a much better game.
So overall I found System Shock 2 to be a frustrating experience which in the end was made worth it because of Shodan.
