It's kind of amusing that we had basically opposite reactions to those two games.

To be fair, though, I didn't find either game to be very scary. I felt that System Shock 2 had a more interesting world and plot, but not a scarier one really. I still think that System Shock 1 had the best atmosphere and came closest to being genuinely scary for me. Too bad it's got a horribly outdated control scheme that makes it really hard to get into. I heard there's a mouselook mod floating around somewhere though. If anyone reading this is the kind who can get past a steep learning curve and some control rebinding to really get into a game, System Shock 1 captivated me in a way that no game has for a very long time... I recommend trying it out.

Loved the look, liked the concept. But the PC version was virtually broken. The camera never worked properly and even after adjusting the mouse as suggested on numerous websites, the control was completely and utterly awful.

Weird, I never had any problems with the controls. There is mouse lag if you enable (or disable, forgot which) V-Sync, but turning it off (or on) fixes that.

I should also mention Homeworld (the whole series : 1/Cataclysm/2).

I really love a good space opera setting (I must have logged several hundred hours of flight in Freespace 1/2 and the various user campaigns) and the Homeworld universe seems really interesting. Overall, the games aged pretty well, and I'm having fun building a nice fleet and watching it move around in complex formations. But I just suck at combat. Really bad. I'm losing most of my ships in small skirmishes, and as I also suck at ressource management, I can't rebuild a decent fleet fast enough.
I still start Homeworld 2 from time to time, to play a custom game against the weakest possible A.I., but I've never managed to get past the first 4-5 missions of each campaign. Which is a shame since the scenario (especially in Homeworld 1) seems pretty good.

I feel like this with the Europa Universalis games. I like the scope, the fact that I have to make grand political-diplomatic-domestic-etc decisions and all, but the economy-development system (or rather, their slow pace) just cuts short my enjoyment of the game. I understand it's meant to be this, but I just can't get used to the fact that I have to wait a couple of months/years to accumulate enough money to build something and many years for a technology to be available.

civilization

Oh. I do like it a lot. One of the best games i played (Civ 2)
but...

I never loved the series. AC was different cake but Civ...
I have CivIV installed with all expansions. Played it twice a year ago... don't feel like touching it again. Had fun, starting it anew tough?

Just like adventure games. After you play through it once there is no much desire to play it again second time (at least for a while)

Tomb Raider: Anniversary. As of now Lara and I are taking a break.

I wanted to love it. I do enjoy playing and those types of games but it's way too long and I die so much. Right now it's at 19 hours played to complete 69% of the main game, that % doesn't have anything to do with if you've collected the hidden relics and artifacts. The game has two main problems. Levels absolutely massive and have tons of backtracking in every level. It takes forever to barely advance the game. That problem is further compounded when you end up dying a lot from cheap hits that send you off a cliff, Lara stupidly refusing to extend her hand out of jumps making her not grab the ledge and falling or odd control where the direction she swings in depends on the camera's orientation and not her body orientation. The timed platforming sections are harder because of this.

The actual tomb raiding is quite fun but the fun is countered with constant frustration. There's first figuring out what to do, having to do what you figured out taking longer than expected followed by that puzzle you solved being only 1/10th of the level in which that entire level only makes up 5% of the game. I used the likely 5-7 hours remaining in the game to start and beat Half-Life Ep. 2.

Why couldn't tomb raider be around Prince Of Persia's length? I guess you could say play Legend instead but then if I do that, I'm not really playing tomb raider them.

I loike my games to be 12 hours or less otherwise it just becomes a chore and very draining.