Ha I'm playing some funny games (in a manner of speaking) lately. After finishing the NWN2 OC finally, I needed some futuristic gaming to balance that. SO I tried some games I picked up off of ebay UK, Neuro Hunter and Paradise Cracked. I am playing both on and off while trying to finish Arx Fatalis finally as well.
I shoulod write up reviews fo both of these games, but heres some quick info snippets:
Neuro Hunter: Inspired by System Shock 1&2 and Deus Ex. It has stealth, stealing, lockpicking,crafting, and a virtualworld hacking . The game has several adjustable stats that can be increased: Constitutiuon, Intuition, Design, Programming, Stealing, and Weaponry. Intuition is the Characters ability to sense foes, the better the score the farther away he(The PC is a guy, preset can't change him) can sense them. Design is your crafting skill. Programming is used to steal cybernetic programs from NPCs, as well as how good your Virtual avatar is in the Virtual hacking game.
The gameplay is similar to SS and Deus Ex, you mainly sneak and fight your way through levels on a mining colony using hacking and lockpicking to access additional and/or secret areas and information/data. You can buy, find, or steal resources, and many of which you can craft yourself when accumulating enough components. There is also dialogue though usually ony two options, rarely three.
The game lacks in comparison to Deus Ex in that there to few hackable defenses or robots, and very little secret passages and alternate routes to an objective like in Deus Ex. They should have worked on making more of these alternate solution paths. The plot is influenced by System Shock, but unlike that game there are many NPCs to interact with, but nothing really extraordinary either. I would tend to call it a poor man's Deus Ex, not as good as the first, but overall better then Deus Ex 2.
Paradise Cracked: A Russian turn based cyberpunk CRPG. This is a game that takes place fully in turn based mode, even when walking around the map, it is basically in turn based combat mode non-stop (even though most of the game is in non-combat). This makes the game very slow to play as you move each party member one by one, and then have to wait a few seconds for the computer to take its turns moving the NPCs, every turn. It does go slow, and it is probably only playable for most while watching TV or reading while the PC takes its turns.
THe story is adequate cyberpunk noir, though the translation is poor, about on the level of Hard to be a God. The cyberpunk world, atmosphere, gadgets, and turn based combat is what makes the game worthwhile.
I would reccomend both of these games to fans of cyberpunk, or SS/Deus Ex if they have played all the mods and older cyperpunk games and need a fix. If you are not necessarily a cyberpunk fan, I'd still recommend trying Neuro Hunter if you can get it cheap, but Paradise Cracked only if your a turn based fanatic.