[JemyM]

System Shock
Before Dead Space, before Bioshock, there was System Shock. I believe most who are familiar with the name played System Shock 2, but I just finished System Shock 1 that started it all 1994. The question is as always, is this a title best kept in ignorant nostalgia, or is it a gem that still shines bright?

Story
You are an unnamed hacker who manages to tap into a spacestation database, but you are caught and transported into space where a Diego offers you a job. Make changes to the stations AI, remove all ethical restrictions, and you will get a shiny interface. Well, said and done, and the surgery send you into a 6 month coma. Meantime, the AI reconsider her priorities. As you wake up all hell is loose on the ship, already within the medical facility where you wake up you encounter the first mutants. You must now struggle yourself to find out what have happened to everyone aboard, where on this spacestation is Edward Diego and who/what is Shodan anyway?

Engine: Graphics & Sound
System Shock is a 3d game from 1994. For those not familiar with this era, this is one year after the original DOOM. First I have to let you know that I do not particulary enjoy 3d graphics from back then. It's often so limited that you can barely distinguish what you are supposed to see on screen. System Shock put a lot of use of textures to solve this, almost every map have a unique look to it and you can almost be able to track the level without using the minimap. Monsters are in 2d, but that doesn't help much. Most of the monsters to me were little but globs of pixels. There are a lot of monsters, but I found it difficult to care for the difference.

The music spans from catchy to annoying, sometimes clips used in the music can be confused for nearby monsters, and often you hear sounds that sound just like garbled noise. But then there's the "logs". Throughout the station you will find numerous logs from employees on the station. These logs are excellently voice acted and they help to build up the story. These logs is actually one of the best aspects of the game as they add both mystery and emotion to the story, while containing hints on what you must do to carry on. Whenever you find something you cannot open, a keypad that you lack the code for, you go back to listen to all logs and and you might get a clue. There's also incoming e-mails that pop up as you make progress, sometimes sent from Shodan herself just to taunt you.

Gameplay
By the screenshots one would guess SS is a form of first-person shooter, but it doesn't follow convential shooters. Instead of turning and shooting, you aim is free, controlled with the cursor, while you move with the keyboard. That means you can shoot something in the upper left corner without actually turning. The keymap is ancient and doesn't follow the conventional WASD setup, which can be a serious frustration. Even towards the end of the game I was still leaning instead of turning, just because lean is where turn should be.

Beyond that, SS have a lot of inventory management. You have two bars to keep track on, your health and your energy. Energy is used for shields as well as your other equipment such as your headlight or your levitating boots. Your special items can be upgraded throughout the game, finding a better map system that displays monsters, a better shield that protects more damage etc. You will find healthpacks and batteries, but you have a limited inventory so you might want to store excess ones somewhere. You will also find plenty of boosters, grenades and plenty of unique weapons. If you decide to play this game, don't do what I did; hoard ammo. There's plenty of ammo around, especially if you loot all kills. At the end of the game I could finish the entire last level using the best weapon in the game since I had so much ammo for it. I had that because I had been saving ammo as much as possible, trying to use the SPARQ that consumes restoreable energy rather than ammo, or the pistol that is extremely weak. But even if you do not use weak weapons, SS is an extremely difficult game. You have shields, but they consume your limited energybar really quickly so you are likely to have it turned off most of the time. But without shields, walking into a new area often end you up dead before even seeing what hit you.

Besides the regular game, there's also a cyberspace mode in which you enter a weird 3d-world, shooting floating demons, collecting rotating boxes with software updates etc. The purpose of cyberspace is that you can go in there to unlock doors that are locked in ther real world. You are essentially "hacking" into the system.

Final Verdict
System Shock is a 15 year old game, and as a such it looks absolutely terrible by todays standard. That would be fine, if it didn't also make the game confusing to play. It's also a really hardcore game and you are likely to see the game over animation almost one time each room you enter. I promised myself I should finish the game once, just to find out what it was about, but SS really craves for a remake or engine enhancement (I ran with a 1280x1024 hack). Beneath the ugliness there's a real cool story and plenty of innovative ideas that I haven't seen in later games. Having said that, I can't really recommend SS to anyone, beyond those who really want to find out what the original was about.