System Shock
Posted: Fri Sep 20, 2002 3:57 pm
Production Company: Looking Glass
Game Type: FPS/RPG
I got this game in 1995. It came free with another game. It says something that I can't even remember what the other game was...
Massively underrated by the buying public, like many of Looking Glass' games (Terra Nova anyone?), this game arguably created a whole genre that includes such notables as Half-Life and Deus Ex.
The plot of the game is based on the idea that you are a consumate computer hacker who has been seized by the cyberpolice and who then somehow awakens on a space station to discover that you've been in hibernation and that you've been fitted with a "military grade" cybernetic implant.
You then discover that the space station has been taken over by the ships AI computer "Shodan" and that (nearly) all the crew are dead. The station is controlled by mutants and robots and, you are informed, your mission is to creep, fight and think your way through many levels of the space station to reach the control room and fight, in cyberspace, the AI Shodan in digital combat to the death.
The stakes are high. Shodan is determined to destroy the Earth itself using either virus infected mutants or else by more direct means. Your cybernetic implants, which can be upgraded with hardware that you locate as you explore, keep you continually informed of the crises developing beyond the space station. You learn that the very future of mankind itself rests upon your shoulders.
This game is a masterpiece. The graphics are exemplary for the time. The plot is fantastic, building tension and creating a sequence of beguiling and educational scenarios in exactly the right way to make you feel skillful and yet suck you in further to yet more demanding situations. And the combination of game types whereby what is effectively a first-person-shooter type situation is combined with a role-playing-game type interface presaged later and more popular titles like Half-Life, Deus Ex and Thief.
I had always been a fan of science fiction. This is the game that taught me that the PC could be as compelling and as addictive as any great novel. If Doom is a spaghetti Western then System Shock is a novel by Philip K. Dick.
With the advent of the Windows-based System Shock 2 the original game has met with a resurgence of interest. People have been put off by its instability in Windows and its "difficult" control configuration. This is a shame. If you can play a game using both a joystick, mouse and a keyboard (intermittently) you will find this game to be utterly compelling and almost a lifestyle. There are few games that I've lived in. Doom ate me for a bit. So did Sid Meier's Civilisation. Half-Life and Deus Ex have owned me. But I'll always go back to replay the original System Shock.
It's a masterpiece.
10/10 My favourite PC game of all time and, believe me, I've played several hundreds of the blasted things.
Game Type: FPS/RPG
I got this game in 1995. It came free with another game. It says something that I can't even remember what the other game was...
Massively underrated by the buying public, like many of Looking Glass' games (Terra Nova anyone?), this game arguably created a whole genre that includes such notables as Half-Life and Deus Ex.
The plot of the game is based on the idea that you are a consumate computer hacker who has been seized by the cyberpolice and who then somehow awakens on a space station to discover that you've been in hibernation and that you've been fitted with a "military grade" cybernetic implant.
You then discover that the space station has been taken over by the ships AI computer "Shodan" and that (nearly) all the crew are dead. The station is controlled by mutants and robots and, you are informed, your mission is to creep, fight and think your way through many levels of the space station to reach the control room and fight, in cyberspace, the AI Shodan in digital combat to the death.
The stakes are high. Shodan is determined to destroy the Earth itself using either virus infected mutants or else by more direct means. Your cybernetic implants, which can be upgraded with hardware that you locate as you explore, keep you continually informed of the crises developing beyond the space station. You learn that the very future of mankind itself rests upon your shoulders.
This game is a masterpiece. The graphics are exemplary for the time. The plot is fantastic, building tension and creating a sequence of beguiling and educational scenarios in exactly the right way to make you feel skillful and yet suck you in further to yet more demanding situations. And the combination of game types whereby what is effectively a first-person-shooter type situation is combined with a role-playing-game type interface presaged later and more popular titles like Half-Life, Deus Ex and Thief.
I had always been a fan of science fiction. This is the game that taught me that the PC could be as compelling and as addictive as any great novel. If Doom is a spaghetti Western then System Shock is a novel by Philip K. Dick.
With the advent of the Windows-based System Shock 2 the original game has met with a resurgence of interest. People have been put off by its instability in Windows and its "difficult" control configuration. This is a shame. If you can play a game using both a joystick, mouse and a keyboard (intermittently) you will find this game to be utterly compelling and almost a lifestyle. There are few games that I've lived in. Doom ate me for a bit. So did Sid Meier's Civilisation. Half-Life and Deus Ex have owned me. But I'll always go back to replay the original System Shock.
It's a masterpiece.
10/10 My favourite PC game of all time and, believe me, I've played several hundreds of the blasted things.
Yeah System Shock is a pretty cool game .......