When I was gathering facts
for this review (other than playing the game of course), I almost
couldn’t believe my eyes when I discovered that System Shock
was released in 1994. At that time, the killer game was id Software’s
DOOM, technically brilliant yet totally mindless (yes, I played
it but I was never a real DOOM addict, I thought it was lacking
inventiveness and flair). 2D point and click adventures were perhaps
at their height with popular releases like King’s Quest VII
or Myst.

System
Shock was very different. Superficially it resembled DOOM
with its first person view, but that’s where the similarities ended.
System Shock is a game with lots of puzzles and quests, some
RPG elements and bits of a story too. The lineage of System Shock
can be clearly traced to older games developed by Looking Glass Technologies
and published by Origin – the excellent Ultima Underworld I
and II. And there were followers too – to name a few, System
Shock 2 (naturally) or Deus Ex. The brain behind Deus
Ex was Warren Spector who was the producer of System Shock
so there’s a link between those games. Warren Spector also participated
in the design of System Shock, although – just like with most
games – the design of System Shock was a teamwork and it is
not possible to name a single person as an “author” of the
game. In this particular case the design team was led by Doug Church.

The game starts with a
lengthy (for 1994 anyway) animated intro sequence. Sometime in 21st
century, an unnamed hacker intrudes into the computer system of TriOptimum
Corporation. But he’s not careful enough and soon the TriOptimum goons
break down the door of his apartment and apprehend him. But then the
hacker is brought in front of a TriOptimum executive Edward Diego
and given a choice: he can suffer the punishment for unauthorized
network access or he can hack into certain computer system for Diego
and if successful, be awarded a neuro graft interface for his services.

Not
really having much of a choice, the hacker breaks into the AI of Citadel
Station, TriOptimum Corp’s space station orbiting Jupiter. This time
the intrusion is successful, no traces are left and the hacker is
implanted the promised neural interface. After the operation he has
to go into six months long healing coma.

That ends the introduction.
Your next task as a player is to set up the game options and this
part is very interesting. You can adjust the toughness of enemies,
difficulty of puzzles and complexity of the story. System Shock
can go from almost pure 3D shooter with bad monsters and linear progress
to near adventure game with feeble opponents that are there just for
show and many quests requiring lots of running around the space station.
I think this variability ensured that System Shock was popular
with many kinds of players. I naturally played the version with not
too dangerous monsters and most complex quests and toughest puzzles.

The game starts when the
hacker – now controlled by you – comes out of his half year sleep.
You find yourself on the hospital level of Citadel Station. Unfortunately
for you, something has gone horribly wrong. Servant robots are attacking
you and the station seems to be overrun by strange mutants. Security
systems have gone haywire and have apparently killed all the station
personnel.

Fortunately
some of the ex-staff members have disks with logs on their persons.
From these logs you can gradually piece together what happened on
Citadel Station in the past weeks and days. Apparently the computer
AI, Shodan, has gone mad and completely took over the station. Not
just that, Shodan is planning to use the station’s powerful mining
laser to attack Earth. Because you might be the last living person
on the station, you have to stop Shodan at all costs. Nothing too
unusual for adventure gamers – saving the world is practically our
daily bread after all. Sometimes you have to wonder if it’s worth
all the effort.

To fight your way through
the station – or, on the easiest difficulty level, to waltz through
the station – you can choose from a variety of weapons. You start
armed with just a simple but effective lead pipe and soon find a dart
gun, laser blaster or a military pistol. As you progress towards the
upper levels of Citadel Station, you find more powerful weapons –
pistols, submachine guns, energy weapons and automatic rifles. But
of course your enemies will be more powerful too. Fortunately most
of them carry some ammunition so there is little danger of running
out of bullets.

And
your new cyber interface comes in handy too. Scattered around the
station you find a number of cybernetic gadgets, from simple ones
like a compass to really useful things like jump-jet boots or almost
impenetrable energy shield. But all these gizmos draw some power –
in addition to health you also have battery level. When the juice
runs out, all these thingamajigs will stop working – as well as all
your energy weapons. Luckily there are power charging stations aboard
Citadel and you can also carry several extra batteries for emergency
recharging. Still, you have to be careful about your energy consumption.
Because of this, I found the energy weapons less useful than the classic
guns and rifles.

The interface of System
Shock is fairly complex. It is a true 3D game which means that
you can look up and down. Hence it is necessary to control the game
with both hands, one hand on the mouse for directing the pointer and
the other hand on keyboard or joystick for walking around. Nowadays
it’s not unusual but it was in 1994 – when I first played System Shock
sometime in early 1995, it took me quite a while to get used to the
controls.

The level layout is mostly
2D and some levels are rather large and complex. Fortunately your
cyber interface includes an automap which is extremely handy. Without
it I’d certainly get totally lost. The automap even allows you to
make notes in it to mark important places. Enhanced versions of your
cybernetic mapping unit include even a scanner/radar that will show
you enemies on the map before they see you – very useful.

Speaking
of enemies, there are several classes of them. There are mutants (purely
biological), robots (purely mechanical) and cyborgs (mixed). Different
weapons have different effects on them, for instance hollow point
bullets or tranquilizer darts are very efficient against mutants but
nearly useless against robots. On the other hand, EMP grenades will
take out robots easily but have zero effect on mutants. Fortunately
you can carry seven weapons at once (plus seven types of grenades,
bombs and mines) so it’s easy to choose the right one for every occasion.

Apart from the “real” environment
of Citadel Station, you must also make few trips to the cyberspace
which can be accessed from cyber jacks located in several offices.
The cyberspace is fully 3D with wireframe “space” – sort of spacious
halls interconnected with long tunnels. In cyberspace you have to
fight cybernetic guards and collect various data, for instance combat
software or data fragments containing access codes. The movement cyberspace
is a little confusing because there is no up and down – no gravity
you know…

The
storyline of System Shock is more complex than one would expect
from something that looks like a first person shooter. At first your
objective seems quite simple – but Shodan is a worthy opponent whenever
you thwart its efforts to take over the Earth, it finds some other
and entirely unexpected means to threaten this little planet. Which
of course means more fun for you! More quests to fulfill, more dead
enemies, that kind of thing.

The art in the game is
about what you’d expect in 1994. The game runs in 320×200 resolution
with 256 colors which does look rather blocky on today’s big monitors.
But of course System Shock didn’t require even a Pentium or
a 3D card. There are digitized sound effects and synthesized music
– the game supports most sound cards of that time, including SB AWE32.
The sounds and music aren’t quite as great as in some Sierra games
but certainly not bad. I believe Origin later released a CD version
of the game that supported SVGA resolutions and had more sound effects
but I only played the original floppy version (you remember floppies
don’t you?).

System Shock is
a fun game. It is not an adventure game but it contains enough adventure
elements to be attractive to fans of that genre. On the other hand
at first sight it looks like an action shooter so action gamers might
mistakenly play a game that requires more than just eye-hand coordination.
The graphics look pixely nowadays but it wouldn’t be fair to compare
System Shock with games that require hundred times more horsepower
(if only they were hundred times better!). It has distinct atmosphere
(when the cyborgs jump at you from the dark it’s really scary!) and
the gameplay is very immersive, it is really hard to stop playing
once you started. Given all that, I decided to award System Shock
a nice and clean A. It is one of the games that will not be forgotten
anytime soon.
 

Final Grade: A

System
Requirements:
IBM or 100% compatible 486 or better
DOS 5.0
VGA compatible card
4 MB RAM