Description
2072; orbiting Saturn aboard TriOptimum Corporation's Citadel space station. You awaken from a six-month healing coma with a broken memory and a newly-installed cybernetic interface to discover that most of the other occupants of the station are dead... or worse. The station's self-sufficient AI, SHODAN (Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network) has assumed total control and seems hell-bent on destroying all human life. TriOptimum believes you are Citadel's last hope. Can you save yourself and smash SHODAN's evil plans?
System Shock incorporates first-person shooter and adventure gameplay styles, with role-playing elements thrown in. To complete the game, you'll have to explore the ten levels of Citadel, solving puzzles, fighting enemies and fulfilling objectives.
On your way, you'll encounter numerous enemies - robots, cyborgs and mutants, all of which can be fought back with a variety of weapons. Some of the weapons use ammo, while other have infinite ammo and instead draw on your electric energy. Some weapons are more effective on certain foes - e.g. the dart gun only works on organic enemies, while the magpulse is best used against robots. Once killed, the enemies can be searched for ammo and other items. You can also find items in crates, cabinets, corpses or just lying around on the ground.
Apart from weapons and ammo, you'll find patches (such as medical patches, which replenish your health; berserk patches, which temporarily increase your strength but cause hallucinations; detox patches, which remove the harmful effects of radiation and biohazard; etc.), grenades of various kinds (EMP grenades work great on robots, gas grenades are good for mutants, land mines can be used to set traps, etc.), battery packs for replenishing electricity, first aid kits for restoring health, and others.
Thanks to your implant, you can install various pieces of hardware into your body, such as a booster which makes you go faster, or a head lantern to bright up dark areas. As you progress in the game, you'll find higher versions of existing hardware, which are more effective and useful. However, most hardware uses up your electric energy while it's active.
At some places in the game, you have to find a wall-mounted "cyberjack" to go into cyberspace in order to find data that will help you, remotely open doors or unlock sealed areas, or give yourself clearance to access off-limits areas. Cyberspace is represented as a 3-D wireframe place, where you fly around freely in three dimensions, shoot hostile cyber-guards with phasers, and collect files represented as colorful cubes.
The story of the game is mostly told through e-mail messages you receive, and electronic diaries (logs) left by various characters (as well as SHODAN herself), which are scattered around the space station.
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
The Press Says
| High Score |
Jan, 1995 |
5 out of 5 |
100 |
| Abandonia |
Mar 06, 2009 |
5 out of 5 |
100 |
| Pelit |
Jul, 1994 |
97 out of 100 |
97 |
| PC Gamer |
Jan, 1995 |
96 out of 100 |
96 |
| MikroBitti |
Nov, 1994 |
93 out of 100 |
93 |
| PC Games (Germany) |
Oct, 1994 |
90 out of 100 |
90 |
| PC Player (Germany) |
Oct, 1994 |
89 out of 100 |
89 |
| Power Play |
Nov, 1994 |
87 out of 100 |
87 |
| Adventure Classic Gaming |
Sep 25, 1998 |
4 out of 5 |
80 |
| GameCola.net |
Nov, 2008 |
7 out of 10 |
70 |
Forums
Trivia
The CD version of this amazing game contains the most amazing easter egg I have ever found. In the game you can collect games for your cyberwear (leading to a wonderful meta gaming moment as your in-game character hides in some dark corner from Shodan's minions while playing a game instead of trying to rescue the stations doomed inhabitants. So you can be in the game, feeling bad about taking some time off to play a game in the game...)
Anyway, somewhere in cyberspace, I no longer remember exactly where, there is a section with black walls which makes it very hard to tell where you are against the black background. If you run up against those walls you can find an opening into a black walled passageway which will eventually lead you to a software node protected by some very powerful ICE. Defeat the ICE, claim the software and you will find a game, a fairly involved parody of
Wing Commander (which was co-produced by
Warren Spector).
You can fly around in 3d shooting down enemy ships which come in various flavors, there's a plot and even mission briefings - the first several of which include still pictures acted out by the System Shock development team (I assume). I spent quite some time hiding in corners trying to finish this game but I never did, it's got lots of missions and gets quite repetitive, it is an early 90's PDA game after all.
I'm always amazed no one mentions this egg when talking about System Shock...
