Have you ever heard of System Shock 2? Well, some not only consider it one of the greatest survival horror games of all-time, but a top 10 title ever alongside legendary works like Final Fantasy VII and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

But it's been 18 years since it came out, so it's largely been forgotten about in favor of games that have remained in the vernacular of gamers, such as Half-Life and Metal Gear Solid.

Also See: Check Out This System Shock Remake Trailer

Yet, seemingly out of the blue, its development team at Nightdive Studios has published a new update. Yes, there is some emphasis on fixing issues the game had, but there are also some welcomed quality of life improvements, such as resolution support and WASD controls. Ultimately, it makes hopping into the game much more intuitive than before.

The patch notes are as follows:

Hello Hackers,

It's been a while, but a new update for System Shock 2 is now available. It contains the following fixes, improvements and modernisations:

The EXE has been renamed from Shock2.exe to SS2.exe to avoid old Windows compatibilities being applied on game launch. You will need to restart Steam for the launcher to point to the new executable,
Fixed the problem with battery not fully charging items sometimes,
Partially fixed the problem with Pyro field glow effect never going away after saving and loading while active,
The Recycler will no longer recycle equipped implants, preventing issues,
Fixed many miscellaneous problems on doors, lights, and eggs,
Fixed many upside down or badly rotated objects,
Fixed many cases of rogue props on objects,
Fixed quite a few cases of script duplication,
Fixed a few extreme cases of objects floating off walls and floor,
Fixed the almost completely broken 'Find Delacroix' quest,
Fixed a couple of quests that were starting up or completing in a slightly buggy way
Fixed all the broken piles of worms in the last few levels,
Some tweaks to various existing setups to make them work smoother (explore the DML files if interested in details),
Disruption grenades now actually deadly as per their description,
Rick turrets now corpse normally,
Grenade Hybrids now launch grenades from their hands instead of their abdomens,
The starting controls now use WASD,
The default music volume level has been lowered slightly,
Enhanced Precision disabled by default as having it enabled was causing issues with Steam Overlay and Windows 10,
The default resolution when starting the game is now 800x600,
The in-game UI is now set at a fixed resolution, and will scale better at high (1920x1080 and above) resolutions. If you wish to disable this change, open cam_ext.cfg in NotePad, and add a semicolon to the beginning of the line 'd3d_disp_scaled_2d_overlay 800 600'

Many thanks to "Le Corbeau" for providing the 2.46 patch, and to the community for many of the fixes provided here.

This patch is only for the Windows version of the game right now. Mac and Linux will receive the update soon.

Daniel
Steam Manager, Nightdive Studios

Set in a cyberpunk universe, System Shock 2 mixes role-playing elements with survival horror to deliver a unique blend that can't really be compared to anything else. If you want to try it out, it's only $9.99 on Steam.