12 ms·

System Shock

181 points by doppp 6y ago

beached_whale 6y ago
System Shock 2 was the first game to scare me.
- uncledave 6y ago
  Same here. This still scares me today https://youtu.be/5iZMD_eCpEo https://youtu.be/5iZMD_eCpEo
  - Koliakis 6y ago
    I still can't play SS1/SS2. It's nuts what's possible even with limited graphics.
    - 1000101 6y ago
      I've revisited SS2 several times (couldn't play it due to REALLY ENORMOUS stress level) and I was able to finish it some 10 years later. What an atmosphere. What a story. What an absolute gem...
- unixhero 6y ago
  Never finished it. Too scary! :)
  - EvanAnderson 6y ago
    I finished it, but I still think about the haunting sounds of the "Cyborg Assassin" characters sometimes. Their tendency to ambush made them particularly terrifying. Neato! I've got the GoG version installed on a PC on my network here. I just discovered that the ".CRF" files that contain the game resources are all ZIP files. Now I'm awash in System Shock 2 sounds.
- ttt0 6y ago
  Great soundtrack.
- throwanem 6y ago
  It was the first game I played that made full use of surround sound. Talk about scary...
- pkorzeniewski 6y ago
  I've played SS2 for the first time last year and there were parts that scared the shit out of me, I had to take breaks just to cool off - ambience in this game is absolutely amazing! Nowadays I rarely pick up new games let alone finish them, but SS2 hooked me so hard that for several days it was the only thing I could think about, something that hasn't happend to me in a long, long time.
  - dsego 6y ago
    I did the same a few years ago, played SS2 and then continued with the three Bioshock games. The first two Bioshock games have a truly amazing atmosphere as well. The third didn't really do it for me.
- shoo 6y ago
  A game with a truly fantastic atmosphere & great audio. May have been the first and best game to use audio logs to develop the plot & build the world. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf92cXs6fvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf92cXs6fvg Some other mechanics that helped the atmosphere and kept you on edge were that you could never permanently clear an area of monsters. Some new critters would respawn and prowl through decks you had cleared. You could usually hear them well before you saw them. Resources were also scarce, so wasting ammunition on enemies or subjecting your ranged weapons to unnecessary wear and tear was often a worse choice than avoiding them, or trying to sneak up behind them to bash them to death. The game was built atop the dark engine (Thief) so it had a surprisingly good model of enemy line of sight, sneaking was often viable to close distance or evade. To progress up the research tree required particular elements as inputs to complete research assignments, and the game would use this to send you on fetch quests to gather a jar full of rare elements from a chemical storage locker deep in a deck of the ship you'd hoped to never visit again. Late 90s australian game journalism - "after playing system shock 2, somehow the world will never look quite the same again": https://archive.org/details/PCPowerplay-042-1999-11/page/n129/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/PCPowerplay-042-1999-11/page/n12... (after all these years, when i self-checkout groceries at the supermarket, in my head i hear the words "thank you for choosing valuerep")
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    System Shock had audio logs too. But System Shock 2 used them really well.
    - PicassoCTs 6y ago
      There is something airy walking down these corridors, listening to the stories of your predecessors, wondering whether you would end up as such a audio-log. All these lifes.. a audiobook on its own - and they should have turned it into one. Warning. Spoilers ahead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIqqQEFOO3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIqqQEFOO3s
  - cbm-vic-20 6y ago
    The audio and the SHODAN voice work were done by people who were pretty well known in the Boston/Cambridge music scene.
- trashface 6y ago
  Join Us!!!
- tuzemec 6y ago
  There's still that sound in my head that the monkeys make when I'm in the dark... :|
coding123 6y ago
I remember System Shock. Definitely had no way to play it on my 386, but I remember going to my friend's house who had a 486 that it played somewhat decent on. The world of "true" 3D games before Voodoo 3dfx cards were released... Wing Commander Games, Ultima Underworld (1 and 2). Games that you could look up and down and not have the world skew like crazy. Fun times.
- loopz 6y ago
  Even easier to dl today and play with dosbox.
incomplete 6y ago
man, the early/mid 90s was such a revolutionary time for video games, and being in college and having a 486dx-33 gaming rig that i worked my ass off to procure most definitely contributed to my dropping out and never finishing my degree(s). :) system shock was such a great game. suspenseful, intricate, engrossing and just plain scary to immerse yourself into fully. in a few years span, we had this, doom, warcraft, xwing/tie fighter, wing commander 3, command and conquer, civilization 1 and 2, myst, alone in the dark (now THAT was a fucking scary game), descent, and so many more that sucked my time away. it was amazing to be present in the golden age of PC gaming, where the confluence of cheap x86 hardware, improving gfx tech, directx and peripheral support all came together so quickly. i recall fondly the 10base-2 network in my college house, and having friends bring over their computers for LAN parties. descent and warcraft were the best when played to the sounds of your enemies yelling in anguish from downstairs in the living room. :)
- ljm 6y ago
  I think you see it most in 'eurojank' games these days but I really love the ambition of older games that include really unusual or deep gameplay mechanics that you'd never see in a typical AAA title. Games like Gothic, Elex, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Two Worlds, Eye: Divine Cybermancy, basically most Deck13 titles... The late 90s and early 2000s were such a great time for PC games like that.
  - frabert 6y ago
    > Games like Gothic, Elex I really think that Piranha Bytes are the most interesting game studio with regards to RPGs right now. I think they have the best blend of weird mechanics + plot driven gameplay out there, despite their relatively limited resources.
  - selfhoster11 6y ago
    What are the 'eurojank' games you mentioned? Can you give some examples?
    - avianlyric 6y ago
magicalhippo 6y ago
The original, CD-ROM enhanced version of System Shock can be picked up at GOG[1]. First CD-ROM game I got, for my birthday, and wow did it blow me away. The atmosphere the game managed to create was just amazing. It was the first 3D POV game that I recall with effectively true 3D. Doom had "fake" 3D, you couldn't have two floors on top of each other, but in System Shock you could. It also had different stances and fairly realistic head movement (leaning would tilt the view too). There's a remake underway, from some of the original devs, also over at GOG[2]. [1]: https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_enhanced_edition https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_enhanced_edition [2]: https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock
- kingaillas 6y ago
  I was going to say the first 3D POV game with real 3D was Decent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game)) but according to wikipedia System Shock came out about 6 months earlier. I probably got System Shock afterwards and thus thought it released later. Both are great, had some huge fun playing both. Especially Decent after hours at work. I own both on GoG and should crank them up again.
  - rob74 6y ago
    I'm not an expert on 3D engines, but both System Shock and Descent (and the early Tomb Raider titles) also had a "limited" 3D technique which had sloping floors, but a map based on squares, which only allowed rectangular walls (unlike the Doom engine, which had non-rectangular walls, but no sloping floors).
    - smcl 6y ago
      I’ve not played System Shock but Doom’s walls are as rectangular as they get - straight up and down with a flat top and bottom (gaps are permitted for windows) Edit: ah do you mean the floors can be non-rectangular?
      - 6y ago
hertzrat 6y ago
> DOOM was not an influence on System Shock. We were trying something more difficult and nuanced, [although] we still had a lot of respect for the simplicity and focus of [the id] games I haven’t played system shock, but the classic doom still holds up as one of my favourite games of all time. I played a ton of it in 2020 using gzdoom: the level design and pacing is still almost unmatched all these years later.
- loopz 6y ago
  You can find it and play System Shock and its sequel Skynet using Dosbox. It was a clear breakthrough at the time, as was UUW2.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    Wikipedia says Skynet was a sequel to The Terminator: Future Shock.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Doom had levels that were built for first-person-shooting gameplay and the general feel. Otherwise they are almost random in their architecture. That was a great move. System Shock unfolds on a space station which has a consistent architecture, each level has a plot-defined purpose, a layout consistent with the purpose, and dovetails with levels above and below it. That was a great move, of a different nature. System Shock should not be lined up with Doom, but rather with Deus Ex and maybe Half-Life.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
Goddamn, I loved System Shock. But if you try to play it in modern times, it's just impossible. Someone, please make a mod where it uses standard WASD + mouse controls. Very few games set the imagination on fire the way System Shock did. I'm still not sure why. It was almost a standard-ish horror game. It was a combination of story, mechanics, and art, I think. The old-style graphics really added to the immersion (though you can't say this without seeming suspect).
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  There's already a mod for that and a GOG release with the fixes included
- Ralfp 6y ago
  What you are asking for is called "System Shock Enhanced Edition" and you can grab it on GoG. Runs on modern systems too.
- vaer-k 6y ago
  There is a reboot project here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock... There is a playable prealpha
  - lawnchair_larry 6y ago
    Looks like they are only about 4.5 years overdue
    - rob74 6y ago
      That's nothing compared to Duke Nukem Forever... and it looks like it's going to come out. real. soon. now! (not holding my breath though): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/3080200 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock...
    - nailer 6y ago
      I'm a backer, they update regularly and just released a demo you can play now.
john_moscow 6y ago
In case anyone else is nostalgic about System Shock 2, I can highly recommend checking out Prey [0]. It's a much more recent game designed by a different studio, but it's very much inspired by the old Looking Glass Studios' games and managed to re-create the atmosphere and gameplay of System Shock 2 very well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game)
- nine_k 6y ago
  Do they have Shodan? Without her, it's entirety different. Shodan is the best sci-fi villain of all time. (See also the inverted gravity scene closer to the end of System Shock II.)
  - throwanem 6y ago
    They don't, and it is. Prey is a good game, with some really neat techniques I've never seen anywhere else. I enjoyed it and I think it's worth playing. But there's nothing remotely resembling SHODAN, and in that way it's very much not the same. Closer to Bioshock, really.
    - PicassoCTs 6y ago
      "Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"
  - rob74 6y ago
    ...only rivaled (in a slightly parodical manner) by GLaDOS from the Portal series :)
  - ajxs 6y ago
    Truly that entire section of the game with inverted gravity is some of the best game design ever. The palpable frustration when you come across the inverted medbay really left an impression on me.
- 6y ago
barrkel 6y ago
Many of the same people listed also worked on Thief and Thief 2, still my favourite games of the genre - and probably favourite PC games period. The Thief story is much more structured, less driven by dropped notes - and there are no interactive conversations - but the cutscenes are fairly well done, the sound design amazing - the Brosius's work - and the character you play is very well drawn, a cynical reluctant antihero.
shadowofneptune 6y ago
You can find recordings online of two of the devs livestreaming the game. They got asked by a fan, 'what were some features you loved but ultimately had to cut out?' Response was along the lines of 'I mean, look around, do you think we cut anything out?' They definitely seemed to think of that as a failing on their part, but it's IMO a big part of why the game is still engaging nowadays.
andrewstuart 6y ago
Its time has passed, but System Shock 2 was one of the greatest gaming experiences for me .... played it for months and months. System Shock 1 could have been good - I don't know - its controls were unusable - they were before the time of the mouse being used for looking around.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwanem 6y ago
I'll take this opportunity to plug Shamus Young's Free Radical [1], a fan novelization-cum-quasi-reimagining of System Shock's story which I regard as being, in some respects, more faithful to the setting and characters than even the original creators were able to be. If, based on that, you're not sure whether or not you'll like it - just click the link and try Chapter 1. It's a fast, fun read and an excellent intro to the novel; at the very worst, you won't have spent too much time in vain. At best, you'll enjoy it as much as I do! (Or almost as much, maybe; at some point this year I intend to typeset, print, and bind it, so I can add it to my physical library as well as my electronic one. Considering the subject matter, doing that meticulous work to produce a physical copy strikes me as retro-cyberpunk in a way that's both appealing and apropos.) [1] https://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/ https://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/
- kemayo 6y ago
  There's a way to get a printed copy from Lulu that the author has mentioned: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2124 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2124
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Oh awesome, that'll save me a lot of work. Thanks! (Granted I might do that work anyway, because as I think I may have mentioned somewhere here not too long ago, I've been looking for an excuse to turn my old Pagemaker skills into new InDesign skills. But that just means I'll have a professionally made copy to give away, and a handmade one to keep.)
- acemarke 6y ago
  General upvote for everything Shamus writes, really. His primary venue is his "Twenty Sided" blog, where he writes long-form critiques and commentary on specific games and the gaming industry as a whole: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/ https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/ His "Mass Effect Retrospective" series is an epic (in both length and detail) deconstruction of the story, setting, and writing of each game in the Mass Effect series: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=508 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=508 He actually recently announced that he's going to be publishing that ME Retrospective in book format as well: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=52015 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=52015 and fwiw, he's got a Patreon (which I happily support for a few bucks a month, because I appreciate his writing): https://www.patreon.com/shamusyoung https://www.patreon.com/shamusyoung
mleonhard 6y ago
https://www.systemshock.com https://www.systemshock.com - An updated System Shock will be ready in 02021-07. https://www.playdosgames.com/online/system-shock/ https://www.playdosgames.com/online/system-shock/ - Play the original game in your browser. The emulator is buggy. Sound doesn't work in Safari. Sound works in Firefox but the game freezes. I suppose it would work better in local DOSBox.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
Still love the elevator music.

System Shock

181 points by doppp 6y ago

beached_whale 6y ago

System Shock 2 was the first game to scare me.

uncledave 6y ago
Same here. This still scares me today https://youtu.be/5iZMD_eCpEo https://youtu.be/5iZMD_eCpEo
- Koliakis 6y ago
  I still can't play SS1/SS2. It's nuts what's possible even with limited graphics.
  - 1000101 6y ago
    I've revisited SS2 several times (couldn't play it due to REALLY ENORMOUS stress level) and I was able to finish it some 10 years later. What an atmosphere. What a story. What an absolute gem...
unixhero 6y ago
Never finished it. Too scary! :)
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  I finished it, but I still think about the haunting sounds of the "Cyborg Assassin" characters sometimes. Their tendency to ambush made them particularly terrifying. Neato! I've got the GoG version installed on a PC on my network here. I just discovered that the ".CRF" files that contain the game resources are all ZIP files. Now I'm awash in System Shock 2 sounds.
ttt0 6y ago
Great soundtrack.
throwanem 6y ago
It was the first game I played that made full use of surround sound. Talk about scary...
pkorzeniewski 6y ago
I've played SS2 for the first time last year and there were parts that scared the shit out of me, I had to take breaks just to cool off - ambience in this game is absolutely amazing! Nowadays I rarely pick up new games let alone finish them, but SS2 hooked me so hard that for several days it was the only thing I could think about, something that hasn't happend to me in a long, long time.
- dsego 6y ago
  I did the same a few years ago, played SS2 and then continued with the three Bioshock games. The first two Bioshock games have a truly amazing atmosphere as well. The third didn't really do it for me.
shoo 6y ago
A game with a truly fantastic atmosphere & great audio. May have been the first and best game to use audio logs to develop the plot & build the world. e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf92cXs6fvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf92cXs6fvg Some other mechanics that helped the atmosphere and kept you on edge were that you could never permanently clear an area of monsters. Some new critters would respawn and prowl through decks you had cleared. You could usually hear them well before you saw them. Resources were also scarce, so wasting ammunition on enemies or subjecting your ranged weapons to unnecessary wear and tear was often a worse choice than avoiding them, or trying to sneak up behind them to bash them to death. The game was built atop the dark engine (Thief) so it had a surprisingly good model of enemy line of sight, sneaking was often viable to close distance or evade. To progress up the research tree required particular elements as inputs to complete research assignments, and the game would use this to send you on fetch quests to gather a jar full of rare elements from a chemical storage locker deep in a deck of the ship you'd hoped to never visit again. Late 90s australian game journalism - "after playing system shock 2, somehow the world will never look quite the same again": https://archive.org/details/PCPowerplay-042-1999-11/page/n129/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/PCPowerplay-042-1999-11/page/n12... (after all these years, when i self-checkout groceries at the supermarket, in my head i hear the words "thank you for choosing valuerep")
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  System Shock had audio logs too. But System Shock 2 used them really well.
  - PicassoCTs 6y ago
    There is something airy walking down these corridors, listening to the stories of your predecessors, wondering whether you would end up as such a audio-log. All these lifes.. a audiobook on its own - and they should have turned it into one. Warning. Spoilers ahead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIqqQEFOO3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIqqQEFOO3s
- cbm-vic-20 6y ago
  The audio and the SHODAN voice work were done by people who were pretty well known in the Boston/Cambridge music scene.
trashface 6y ago
Join Us!!!
tuzemec 6y ago
There's still that sound in my head that the monkeys make when I'm in the dark... :|

coding123 6y ago

I remember System Shock. Definitely had no way to play it on my 386, but I remember going to my friend's house who had a 486 that it played somewhat decent on. The world of "true" 3D games before Voodoo 3dfx cards were released... Wing Commander Games, Ultima Underworld (1 and 2). Games that you could look up and down and not have the world skew like crazy. Fun times.

loopz 6y ago
Even easier to dl today and play with dosbox.

incomplete 6y ago

man, the early/mid 90s was such a revolutionary time for video games, and being in college and having a 486dx-33 gaming rig that i worked my ass off to procure most definitely contributed to my dropping out and never finishing my degree(s). :) system shock was such a great game. suspenseful, intricate, engrossing and just plain scary to immerse yourself into fully. in a few years span, we had this, doom, warcraft, xwing/tie fighter, wing commander 3, command and conquer, civilization 1 and 2, myst, alone in the dark (now THAT was a fucking scary game), descent, and so many more that sucked my time away. it was amazing to be present in the golden age of PC gaming, where the confluence of cheap x86 hardware, improving gfx tech, directx and peripheral support all came together so quickly. i recall fondly the 10base-2 network in my college house, and having friends bring over their computers for LAN parties. descent and warcraft were the best when played to the sounds of your enemies yelling in anguish from downstairs in the living room. :)

ljm 6y ago
I think you see it most in 'eurojank' games these days but I really love the ambition of older games that include really unusual or deep gameplay mechanics that you'd never see in a typical AAA title. Games like Gothic, Elex, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Two Worlds, Eye: Divine Cybermancy, basically most Deck13 titles... The late 90s and early 2000s were such a great time for PC games like that.
- frabert 6y ago
  > Games like Gothic, Elex I really think that Piranha Bytes are the most interesting game studio with regards to RPGs right now. I think they have the best blend of weird mechanics + plot driven gameplay out there, despite their relatively limited resources.
- selfhoster11 6y ago
  What are the 'eurojank' games you mentioned? Can you give some examples?
  - avianlyric 6y ago

magicalhippo 6y ago

The original, CD-ROM enhanced version of System Shock can be picked up at GOG[1]. First CD-ROM game I got, for my birthday, and wow did it blow me away. The atmosphere the game managed to create was just amazing. It was the first 3D POV game that I recall with effectively true 3D. Doom had "fake" 3D, you couldn't have two floors on top of each other, but in System Shock you could. It also had different stances and fairly realistic head movement (leaning would tilt the view too). There's a remake underway, from some of the original devs, also over at GOG[2]. [1]: https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_enhanced_edition https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock_enhanced_edition [2]: https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock https://www.gog.com/game/system_shock

kingaillas 6y ago
I was going to say the first 3D POV game with real 3D was Decent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(1995_video_game)) but according to wikipedia System Shock came out about 6 months earlier. I probably got System Shock afterwards and thus thought it released later. Both are great, had some huge fun playing both. Especially Decent after hours at work. I own both on GoG and should crank them up again.
- rob74 6y ago
  I'm not an expert on 3D engines, but both System Shock and Descent (and the early Tomb Raider titles) also had a "limited" 3D technique which had sloping floors, but a map based on squares, which only allowed rectangular walls (unlike the Doom engine, which had non-rectangular walls, but no sloping floors).
  - smcl 6y ago
    I’ve not played System Shock but Doom’s walls are as rectangular as they get - straight up and down with a flat top and bottom (gaps are permitted for windows) Edit: ah do you mean the floors can be non-rectangular?
    - 6y ago

hertzrat 6y ago

> DOOM was not an influence on System Shock. We were trying something more difficult and nuanced, [although] we still had a lot of respect for the simplicity and focus of [the id] games I haven’t played system shock, but the classic doom still holds up as one of my favourite games of all time. I played a ton of it in 2020 using gzdoom: the level design and pacing is still almost unmatched all these years later.

loopz 6y ago
You can find it and play System Shock and its sequel Skynet using Dosbox. It was a clear breakthrough at the time, as was UUW2.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  Wikipedia says Skynet was a sequel to The Terminator: Future Shock.
nine_k 6y ago
Doom had levels that were built for first-person-shooting gameplay and the general feel. Otherwise they are almost random in their architecture. That was a great move. System Shock unfolds on a space station which has a consistent architecture, each level has a plot-defined purpose, a layout consistent with the purpose, and dovetails with levels above and below it. That was a great move, of a different nature. System Shock should not be lined up with Doom, but rather with Deus Ex and maybe Half-Life.

sillysaurusx 6y ago

Goddamn, I loved System Shock. But if you try to play it in modern times, it's just impossible. Someone, please make a mod where it uses standard WASD + mouse controls. Very few games set the imagination on fire the way System Shock did. I'm still not sure why. It was almost a standard-ish horror game. It was a combination of story, mechanics, and art, I think. The old-style graphics really added to the immersion (though you can't say this without seeming suspect).

paulryanrogers 6y ago
There's already a mod for that and a GOG release with the fixes included
Ralfp 6y ago
What you are asking for is called "System Shock Enhanced Edition" and you can grab it on GoG. Runs on modern systems too.
vaer-k 6y ago
There is a reboot project here https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/description https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock... There is a playable prealpha
- lawnchair_larry 6y ago
  Looks like they are only about 4.5 years overdue
  - rob74 6y ago
    That's nothing compared to Duke Nukem Forever... and it looks like it's going to come out. real. soon. now! (not holding my breath though): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock/posts/3080200 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598858095/system-shock...
  - nailer 6y ago
    I'm a backer, they update regularly and just released a demo you can play now.

john_moscow 6y ago

In case anyone else is nostalgic about System Shock 2, I can highly recommend checking out Prey [0]. It's a much more recent game designed by a different studio, but it's very much inspired by the old Looking Glass Studios' games and managed to re-create the atmosphere and gameplay of System Shock 2 very well. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2017_video_game)

nine_k 6y ago
Do they have Shodan? Without her, it's entirety different. Shodan is the best sci-fi villain of all time. (See also the inverted gravity scene closer to the end of System Shock II.)
- throwanem 6y ago
  They don't, and it is. Prey is a good game, with some really neat techniques I've never seen anywhere else. I enjoyed it and I think it's worth playing. But there's nothing remotely resembling SHODAN, and in that way it's very much not the same. Closer to Bioshock, really.
  - PicassoCTs 6y ago
    "Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"
- rob74 6y ago
  ...only rivaled (in a slightly parodical manner) by GLaDOS from the Portal series :)
- ajxs 6y ago
  Truly that entire section of the game with inverted gravity is some of the best game design ever. The palpable frustration when you come across the inverted medbay really left an impression on me.
6y ago

barrkel 6y ago

Many of the same people listed also worked on Thief and Thief 2, still my favourite games of the genre - and probably favourite PC games period. The Thief story is much more structured, less driven by dropped notes - and there are no interactive conversations - but the cutscenes are fairly well done, the sound design amazing - the Brosius's work - and the character you play is very well drawn, a cynical reluctant antihero.

shadowofneptune 6y ago

You can find recordings online of two of the devs livestreaming the game. They got asked by a fan, 'what were some features you loved but ultimately had to cut out?' Response was along the lines of 'I mean, look around, do you think we cut anything out?' They definitely seemed to think of that as a failing on their part, but it's IMO a big part of why the game is still engaging nowadays.

andrewstuart 6y ago

Its time has passed, but System Shock 2 was one of the greatest gaming experiences for me .... played it for months and months. System Shock 1 could have been good - I don't know - its controls were unusable - they were before the time of the mouse being used for looking around.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throwanem 6y ago

I'll take this opportunity to plug Shamus Young's Free Radical [1], a fan novelization-cum-quasi-reimagining of System Shock's story which I regard as being, in some respects, more faithful to the setting and characters than even the original creators were able to be. If, based on that, you're not sure whether or not you'll like it - just click the link and try Chapter 1. It's a fast, fun read and an excellent intro to the novel; at the very worst, you won't have spent too much time in vain. At best, you'll enjoy it as much as I do! (Or almost as much, maybe; at some point this year I intend to typeset, print, and bind it, so I can add it to my physical library as well as my electronic one. Considering the subject matter, doing that meticulous work to produce a physical copy strikes me as retro-cyberpunk in a way that's both appealing and apropos.) [1] https://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/ https://www.shamusyoung.com/shocked/

kemayo 6y ago
There's a way to get a printed copy from Lulu that the author has mentioned: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2124 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=2124
- throwanem 6y ago
  Oh awesome, that'll save me a lot of work. Thanks! (Granted I might do that work anyway, because as I think I may have mentioned somewhere here not too long ago, I've been looking for an excuse to turn my old Pagemaker skills into new InDesign skills. But that just means I'll have a professionally made copy to give away, and a handmade one to keep.)
acemarke 6y ago
General upvote for everything Shamus writes, really. His primary venue is his "Twenty Sided" blog, where he writes long-form critiques and commentary on specific games and the gaming industry as a whole: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/ https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/ His "Mass Effect Retrospective" series is an epic (in both length and detail) deconstruction of the story, setting, and writing of each game in the Mass Effect series: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=508 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?cat=508 He actually recently announced that he's going to be publishing that ME Retrospective in book format as well: https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=52015 https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=52015 and fwiw, he's got a Patreon (which I happily support for a few bucks a month, because I appreciate his writing): https://www.patreon.com/shamusyoung https://www.patreon.com/shamusyoung

mleonhard 6y ago

https://www.systemshock.com https://www.systemshock.com - An updated System Shock will be ready in 02021-07. https://www.playdosgames.com/online/system-shock/ https://www.playdosgames.com/online/system-shock/ - Play the original game in your browser. The emulator is buggy. Sound doesn't work in Safari. Sound works in Firefox but the game freezes. I suppose it would work better in local DOSBox.

KingOfCoders 6y ago

Still love the elevator music.