I'm a bit late to the whole thing but I've just finished System Shock for the first time...

I'm a bit late to the whole thing but I've just finished System Shock for the first time. It's one of the few series I never got to play and since I was bored I figured it was the perfect time.
Lately I was stuck in a kind of torpor playing recent games with its share of shit so I tried to snap out of it. I replayed through Max Payne and got my hands on System Shock.

I absolutely loved it, it had its shortcomings mainly the UI but the game is more than 20 years old so it was almost to be expected considering all it tries to do. I could barely do anything when I started playing but slowly I got used to the controls and I started putting together the pieces of what I was supposed to do. It's one of the things that I really loved actually, even if the later goals are roughly spelled out to you via mails, the procedure for blowing up the laser could only be found in the audio logs a scientist left here and there. I guess System Shock was one of the first games that featured audio logs and even if I find that trend of putting audio logs in every game to be complete shit I didn't mind that much in SS because most of them always had some sort of useful info on the level which was very useful considering how big they are.
I knew almost nothing about the game going in and I was very pleasently surprised, big levels that you need to learn to navigate, exploration rewarded with soft upgrades/new weapons… It's pretty refreshing playing a game and not feeling like the devs assume you're a drooling retard. From mid game the bodycount starts rising pretty quickly, especially after I got my hands on the Rapier and bots started dropping pistol/smg ammo consistently. That coupled with respawn chambers made the game pretty easy, I did play the Enhanced Edition though so maybe the game was designed with the fact that you'd be having a hard time moving around in mind ?
I was a bit let down by the final level and the fight with Shodan, only a handful of elite robots guarding the cyberjack and once you're in the cyberspace Shodan is just an ice cone standing there doing nothing. I assume the screen getting greyed out was a time limit but it's still an easy and anti-climactic fight.

I'm not going to dive straight ahead in System Shock 2 but what am I in for compared to SS1 ?

...

Compared to SS1, SS2 doesn't have as complex levels and features an RPG system which lets you build a tank, tech, or psychic character. It's rather unbalanced with psychic characters becoming way OP later on and Exotic weaponry being mostly useless. While the level design on its own is still great, it tends to fall apart later on due to budget constraints.

I see. And what about how the game plays in general ? Bodies kept piling up in SS1 once I got decent weapons, is SS2 slower placed or is it roughly the same thing in that regard ?


You should try it again. Beggining can be a bit rough depending on your tolerance to bad UIs but after you're used to the controls it gets better very quickly.

Does it run well on dos? ANy way to run it without dosbox (something like zdoom)?

Nah, it's the same thing. You start off weak and everything is spooky, until you level up, get some guns, and kill everything by the boatloads. It's not as challenging later on too.

Pirate the enhanced version, it runs without dos. Cashes less too and supports higher resolutions.

Enhanced edition also comes with the mouselook mod if the aiming/camera puts you off.

thanks, it's just that dos doom doesnt run really well

That's because Doom on DOS was framelocked.

Just wanted to hop in to say I've just played System Shock 2 for the first time this week and really enjoyed it.

With all the graphics mods and community patches available it looks amazing for a 1999 game, and I don't think I've run across a single bug or glitch (minus a couple of crashes).

The only thing I didn't like was that I would often find myself spending literally hours running around the station with no idea of where to go next, sometimes even when paying attention to the messages Janice and Shodan send you, it isn't clear where you should go next.

Thinking of replaying it sometime with a psychic character this time around. I've played a navy character, and with maxed str + agl + energy weapons, after finding the laser rapier I pretty much became Raiden in Jack The Ripper mode - the only thing missing was being able to do Zandatsu combos when I fought the security and assassin robots, and the Rumblers (these bastards still gave me trouble in close combat because even when they had their backs on me, their attacks would still inflict damage if I was close enough to use the rapier - bug perhaps?). Fucking awesome.

I was also surprised on how much Dead Space (mainly the first one) seems to borrow and take inspiration from it - more so than Bioshock which was already to be expected, of course.

Sadly I could never get into SS1 - not even back in the 1990s, nor today. The interface and controls are just too clunky and cluttered for me.

I've been wondering about something. Deus Ex, Thief and System Shock are all classic first person RPG games, famous for their player choice and great gameplay. How far back does that go? Was System Shock the first one? What other, newer games do that (is EYE Divine Cybermancy actually good or just a meme?)

EYE is actually good

System Shock was based on the engine used in Ultima Underworld, which let you have significant influence over the ecology and politics of the denizens of the Stygian Abyss

Strife: Quest for the Sigil has somewhat similar gameplay. Forgotten classic with a lot of twists and turns, great worldbuilding too

Trust No One.

With the mouselook mod, totally playable.
Fantastic game ahead of it's time.

Too bad the source was lost for Strife, otherwise its still a fine port.

I should really get back on it

I thought is was reverse-engineered, based on the source code of Doom and then filling in the gaps by reverse-engineering the difference between Doom and Strife.

I completely forgot about that game, I wanted to get it but it slipped my mind. Should I pirate the original version or the one published by NightDive ?

I also just finished SS1 and had the same experience. Incredible game but the ending I didn't even know I was fighting Shodan when it suddenly just ended and the cutscene played and despite taunting you the entire game she apparently had nothing to say during the last level.

I also got stuck thinking the retinal scan door was essential to progress and it took me a while to figure out how to open it and when I did I realized it was't essential and what I was looking for was just outside.

Pirate the original, run it with gzdoom.

I just started using heads in the level randomly until I got the right one but yeah there wasn't a lot of information on where the guy died in the audiolog.
Every time I get back to cross off an old game from my must-play list I have a really good time but I also get a bit depressed that games like these are probably going to be one in a decade nowadays. I think the last game I thoroughly enjoyed like that was NeoScavenger and that's basically the autistic effort of a single man.


Thanks

System Shock is really an exceptional game, I played it years ago after SS2 and it ended up having a profound effect on me. In many ways I don't think it's been exceeded even today.
It's very rare that I get truly captivated by a role playing game, but SS was one of those for me. I did play with the mouselook mod, but the interface was was of those things that really drew me in, dragging clips around to reload and opening map displays just had the right feeling, even if they were essentially menus.

The game was also a technical triumph, it was the the first game to feature fully 3D environments (as opposed to 2.5D). A lot of the graphical effects were also achieved through huge hacks, transparency, if I remember correctly, could only be accomplished with a specific shade of red. There's a 10 hour developer commentary stream out there to celebrate the 20th anniversary that goes into a lot of these details. (They also talk about the version control system being a physical sock that you had to have on your desk if you wanted to touch the master source code)

The only part that absolutely doesn't hold up at all is cyberspace, but fortunately those segments are mercifully brief. I'm sure it looked impressive in 1994.

Did you even play it or are you so fucking dumb you think any game in which you have an inventory is a role playing game?

It's a game where you play a role, more-so than most modern RPGs. All the player's interaction with the game is built around the idea that they're a cybernetically enhanced hacker surviving on a space-station, which does a lot to draw a user into the experience. I was about to use the term RPG, but thought I should avoid the acronym as it has different connotations.
Though SS does have an equipment and upgrade based progression system, and people occasionally refer to STALKER as an RPG because of those same aspects.

I too enjoy the role-playing game Call of Duty where you play the role of a burger solider and kill terrorists. The game is build around the use of two guns, this draws me into the experience of being a burger solider because they would be too fat to carry more weapons than that over any great distance.

It's not a role playing game you numpty.

Weapons that break after 4 shots and a certain decks that are too linear for the infinite respawns to make sense.

A cleaner UI, for one. It's a game that demands you stick with a certain play style, or else you'll be like and be shit. Still, I love the shit out of it. Has the best sound design I've heard in a game ever, by which I mean it's great at spooking the hell out of you.

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