Title: System Shock 2

Format: PC, Steam

Released: August, 1999

2114. Experimental starship, the Von Braun. Flickering lights. Echoing silence. Desolate corridors, empty but for the bloodstains. A former crewmate rounds the corner, neck swollen and contorted by an alien parasite, swiping metal piping into your face whilst gargling the words: “Kill me.”

System Shock 2 is the scariest game I have ever played. I was fourteen when it came out, which certainly put me in an impressionable position when it came to horror. This was slap-bang in the middle of the film/sleepover era, which despite flirting with many genres, was most at home with horror. We’d often rent a terrible action film to laugh at the dialogue, or a dreadful martial arts number to check out the bad-ass moves – and to laugh at the dialogue – but for me it was always horror that worked best. We’d all be camped out downstairs, often in a rural Essex farmhouse conversion – which was a brilliant setting for scares in itself – and after pizza and videogames, we’d bust out the sleeping bags, gather round the TV, and fire up a scary film. Read the rest of this entry »