The spiritual predecessor to the Bioshock franchise, System Shock 2, has finally made its way to Steam. First published in 1999, the cyberpunk title was one of the first games to successfully blend FPS and RPG elements as well as a hefty dash of survival horror.

The game is yet to receive any achievements on Steam, but does have full German-language audio, which is handy if that happens to be your particular tasche.

Before it was released on GOG.com in February it was the most requested game and at only $10 on Steam, it promises to be a popular title over there too. In fact, it is currently 30% off until May 18, making it only $7.99. So if you’re going to pick this one up, now seems like a good time!

James went back and played through the game again to see how it held up — see his thoughts here.

Source: PC Gamer

With the news that System Shock 2 was finally available on GOG.com, we sent veteran James Pinnell back aboard the Von Braun for another dance with death at the hands of one of PC’s gaming’s finest creations.

Big news for old-school PC masterpiece lovers today as GOG.com announces the upcoming re-release of System Shock 2 through their digital download service.

Going live in only four hours from now, GOG.com’s version of System Shock 2 will ship with the soundtrack, the original pitch document, maps of the Von Braun, an interview with Ken Levine, and more.

GOG.com’s Guillaume Rambourg conducted an extensive interview with RPS in which he and Stephen Kick from Night Dive Studios, who took care of the port, discuss the game’s importance and issues both legal and technical when bringing it across. Rambourg mentioned that user-made mods for System Shock 2 have been hugely important in helping them figure out what needed to be done to make the port work.

“There are a number of community-made efforts that help a lot with stability on newer systems; they’ve pointed the way for us, and the game runs pretty much flawlessly on Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8,” claims Gambourg. “Our most recent build has gone through all of our test team PCs without a hitch, and the game is definitely polished up and ready for its time in the limelight again.”

“After playing something as tense and thought-provoking as System Shock 2, I think “World War 2 FPS #37″ doesn’t feel quite as satisfying an endeavour,” he added. “I’d love it if this encouraged fans to ask for more robust gameplay from their developers!”

Source: RPS

Out of nowhere, unofficial patches for System Shock 2 and Thief 2 have popped up, on French gaming forum Ariane4ever. The patches bring the games forward literally a decade into the future, allowing them to be easily played on current hardware and upscaled to proper resolutions.

Uploaded by a mysterious user by the name of “Le Corbeau” — “The Raven” — the patches come in both a standalone form for people who already own the games, and in a demo form for those who want to see what the games will look like patched up to this standard. Nobody on the forum itself seems to know who the Raven is, he literally appeared out of nowhere, dropped a massive patch that fixes two classic games, and disappeared again into the night. What a hero.

You can download the patches from our own mirror: System Shock 2, and Thief 2 respectively. Remember you’ll need to be logged in to download files.

Source: Kotaku (Thanks, jambo)