System Shock

The Good
A famously good space-bound RPG, this was the follow-up to the same team's 'Ultima Underworld'. Boasting a proper 3D engine, years before 'Quake', this came out at the same time as 'Doom' and suffered commercially. Game-wise it's top-notch - it looks and sounds fantastic, and the quest on which you embark is deep enough to keep you playing for several weeks. It's probably the only game to capture the early-90s cyberpunk fascination effectively, and it has an amazingly intense atmosphere. It's hard, too, in a good way.

It's excellent in so many ways that it makes me unhappy, and is still great fun today.

The Bad
Allowing for the age, the only thing that marks the game down is the clumsy interface. Long before 'mouselooking', it requires you to co-ordinate your movements with both the keyboard and the mouse, and can be tricky to use in a hurry.

The Bottom Line
Excellent, nostalgic, hugely atmospheric space-bound sci-fi RPG.

The Good
Compelling plot, strong sense of an intelligent adversary (it doesn't just wait for you to come kill it, it sets traps and ambushes), separately adjustable difficulty for combat and puzzles. Convincing 3-D world with working cameras, variable gravity, real projectiles, movable objects. Wide variety of weapons. First game with a "cyberspace" for hacking. Some of the traps were so scary that I screamed out loud. WAY ahead of its time. System Shock doesn't just rule - it rules from orbit.

Note that some of the voice features of the game were not in the original release but were appeared in a later enhancement - these add a lot to the experience and you should make sure you have them. (The Mac port includes these.)

The Bad
The monsters are not really 3-D but just 2-D projections which vary with angle, so their motion is jerky and close up they look a little low-res. You get messages from other survivors, but there is no way to rescue any of them and they always have to die. The cyberspace is rather simple visually (kind of "wire frame"). A remake of the game with better graphics and rescuable AI NPCs would be awesome.

The Bottom Line
This is on many lists of top games of all time. It's STILL more worth playing than 99% of the games written a decade later. I found this much more enjoyable, for example, than Half Life or Half Life 2.

The Good
Warren Spector came to be known primarily because of Deus-Ex, an incredible game in its own right. However, Spector's been around for much longer than that, and has been involved in some of the greatest games ever created - System Shock being one of them.
System shock is a game alright, but stands in the spot light alone. No other hybrid has brought such perfection to the table, no other hybrid has brought gameplay to a level that even pales by comparison. System Shock is incredible right from the get-go: even the introduction sequence, with its great graphics and excellent soundtrack, gives me goosebumps every time I see it. An amazing presentation of an excellent story, which is implemented very well indeed.

By far the most spectacular thing about System Shock is its atmosphere. It doesn't take sudden Half-lifeesque explosions to creep you out; a simple e-mail by Shodan would suffice. The game induces severe claustrophobia, particularly when played late at night with high volume levels; exploring an empty space station, constantly wary of any cyborg ambushes... and Shodan's face taunting you on every monitor!

System Shock is probably the only cyberpunk adventure I've ever enjoyed (that includes books as well). The simple but effective story, the way it unfolds through e-mail messages you collect while exploring the station... the detailed surrounding: empty beverage cans and candy wrappers thrown about the place, blown lamps and panels... and of course, cyberspace itself, with all of the concepts contained therein. System Shock is magnificent.

The engine is quite good for it's time - not as crisp as Doom or as fast as Descent, but the highly detailed textures and gouraud shading all around make for an extremely convincing game world. The CD version supports high resolutions, and with a fast enough computer (a typical P166 can't handle even 640x400 well, be warned) the game looks simply beautiful. The game has a steep learning curve, but the controls are so good it's a matter of a couple of hours before one becomes fully fluent with them.

And finally, the soundtrack is one of the most important elements of the game. Though it's MIDI (which means you guys without wavetable cards are really missing out), it complements the level design so absolutely perfectly the game would be so... lesser without it.

The Bad
System Shock is impressively close to perfection: only two things bother me.

First, the ending sequence is a little disappointing. I was expecting a major cyberspace combat or chase with Shodan, but that didn't happen; neither was there a particularly impressive end animation (unlike the intro), the only impressive thing being the "neural net" System Shock logo.

The second is the game engine. It is beautiful, but it is by no means fast. In 1994, Doom was already a year old and 486s were becoming prevalent. But even at 320x200, the game does not run very well on a 486! At over 320x200, the game grinds even on a Pentium-class machine. I wish it was easier to make newer machines play older games, I bet this game would rock at 640x480 on an Athlon...

The Bottom Line
A game that beats Deus-Ex in some respects, kicked Half Life in the nads some five years before it was conceived, and gave most adventure games a serious run for their money in the storyline department. It still amazes me how little System Shock is known. Get it! Play it! I assure you, it's an experience of a lifetime.