System Shock

Ten Years After interesting but ultimately useless fact for you: The System Shock series holds the record for the highest average score within these hallowed pages, a pretty heavyweight 95 per cent for both the 1994 original and the 1999 sequel, a score that trounces Quake 1, 2 and 3's mean of 93.5 per cent into the ground. A fine record to hold I reckon, and one that probably won't stand for much longer if Deus Ex 2 has its way.

The spiritual sci-fi successor to Origin's own and much-missed Ultima Underworld series, System Shock had you playing a hacker, caught and press ganged into purging a distant station of its security systems, only to awake from months of induced sleep (necessary after some hefty cybernetic implant surgery) to find everyone either dead or mutated. The aim was to survive, while saving mankind and destroying the nefarious entity of Shadon, the self-aware security system behind all the hoo-hah.

Aside from being absolutely gorgeous to look at (even in a now unthinkable 320x200 resolution), System Shock melded the concepts of first-person shooter and role-playing game with near perfection. The story fell apart towards the end, as is always the case, and it required some serious hardware to run (8Mb RAM no less), but in terms of atmosphere and tension it remained the PC's finest game for years.

Unfortunately, Looking Glass Studios - who of course oversaw the sequel as well as the original - are no more and System Shock 3 remains alive only as a faint hope.