System Shock/YMMV

"Keiron Gillen: Yeah, you filthy bitch, talk dirty to me. Meat? Bone? Panting? Sweating? Even "running through my corridors"�. Listen to the theatrical voluptuousness of the performance. We don't have to draw many diagrams to stress what she's actually talking about."
 * Awesome Ego: SHODAN. She's heartless with a god-complex, but all her monologues are so well done that her bragging becomes a blast to listen to.
 * Complete Monster: SHODAN.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: Heaps. Intro. Medical. Security. Cyberspace. MedSci 1. Engineering. Command.
 * Ear Worm: That monkey chatter. Brrrrrrr.
 * Quite literally in the case of the . This is the collective psychic resonance that describe as
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: SHODAN. Hands down. In fact, almost the rest of the cast seem to be practically forgettable.
 * Even Better Sequel: The second game improves and expands on the first in just about everyway and is definitely much more terrifying. System Shock 2 is also the game that made SHODAN one of the most memorable and frightening villains in gaming history.
 * Evil Is Cool: It's hard not to like System Shock for SHODAN. There's a reason she has become one of the most memorable videogame villains in history.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Well, when SHODAN is compared to the dominatrix...
 * Fandom Rivalry: With the Marathon series, at least on the "Who is a cooler crazy AI" front. Also with its own Spiritual Successor BioShock (series).
 * Foe Yay: When SHODAN calls you "a pathetic creature of meat and bone" who is "panting and sweating as you run through [her] corridors", there isn't much room for interpretation.


 * Even the box says: "She doesn't need to use her body to get what she wants… she's got yours."
 * Genius Bonus: The "randomly" flickering squares in cyberspace in System Shock 1? Actually running Conway's Game of Life.
 * Goddamn Bats:
 * The psychic monkeys eventually become nothing more than a minor irritation.
 * Annelid swarms. You can't kill them, all you can do is run away and wait for them to die off. Annelid worms also count, being small and hard to hit with a wrench.
 * The Viral Proliferator and the Annelid Launcher are the only two weapons that can actually kill the Annelid swarm, but they degrade ridiculously fast after each shot, so you must carefully manage the use of both of these weapons. For the Viral Proliferator, set the weapon to Annelid mode, and simultaneously fire and hold down the fire button to hit the swarm. It takes about 2-4 held shots to kill a swarm. It isn't worth using the Launcher, however, as it takes about 8 shots to kill a swarm, wasting the use of an already fragile late-game weapon.
 * Auto-bombs. Small, hard to hit, fast, silent.
 * Turrets. What's most annoying about them is that they are almost always around a corner, so you're almost guaranteed to get blindsided by them before you can react.
 * Hell Is That Noise: Every sound that is not caused by you or constant background machinery is this, especially in the sequel.
 * Hilarious in Hindsight: One of Korenchkin's logs says that he has found "the boarders of rapture." Hmmm...
 * It Was His Sled: A lot of what made System Shock 2 such a shocking and swerving game became common gaming knowledge pretty quickly. Also,.
 * Magnificent Bastard: SHODAN,.
 * Most Annoying Sound: The laser rapier, a weapon that many players will use as their primary melee one as soon as it becomes available, makes annoying droning noises whenever it's selected, even if it's not being swung.
 * Most Wonderful Sound: "Research Complete". Yeah! Now you monsters die 25% faster!
 * The sound of any successful technical operation, especially when that leering ICE node you took a chance on played along.
 * Paranoia Fuel: The monkeys, which chatter eerily at you before proceeding to pound you with psychic powers. The cameras, which are everywhere, hard to spot, and will call down every enemy in the level to kill you if you set one off. But mainly, it's the fact that you hear all the enemies before you see them, so if you hear almost any noise you start looking around nervously. Oh, and the original has invisible mutants, which don't make any noise until they attack, so you can be scared of the silence too.
 * The invisible mutants don't make any noise while attacking you!
 * At one point on a given deck, you find audio logs including  You expect to be up to your armpits in  but you only find.
 * Sacred Cow / Defensive Fans: Try saying anything negative about this game. Come on. I dare you.
 * Sequel Displacement: Gamers are more familiar with the sequel than the original (even the "look at you, hacker" quote is known thanks to being featured in the intro of the sequel).
 * The "Look at you, Hacker" quote is actually not used in the original game. It was specifically recorded for sound-testing purposes on the installation program.
 * Uncanny Valley: SHODAN's design looks to be a deliberate use of this.
 * Vindicated by History: While System Shock 2 received good reviews when it came out it was still a commercial failure and many critics still failed to see how important it was to game industry. It wasn't until years later that gamers discovered it, its influence became known, and it's now considered to be one of the greatest games in history.
 * Only if you even know System Shock 2 exists.
 * Not to mention, you'd be surprised to see who the publisher was...Yep, that's right. It was apparently even their idea to make it into System Shock 2.