Like many PC gamers from the mid ’90s, I played through System Shock 2 and still hold it in the highest regard. It was one of the greatest gaming experiences I’ve ever had, and little to nothing is likely to ever top that. I always wanted to play System Shock, but never looked into the DOSBox and other tricks and things needed to run it. And honestly, I was a little bit afraid to play it only because I thought its controls and design, more so than its graphics, were going to be a major hurdle.
Thanks to Night Dive Studios, the same group that resurrected one of my other favorite old games (Strife), amongst many others, you can purchase their Enhanced Edition of System Shock that also includes the original, classic System Shock in both floppy disk and CD versions. While it’s definitely worth firing up the originals, you likely won’t stick with them for very long at all when compared to the Enhanced Edition. The originals have not aged well to be fair, and that’s especially true when comparing the graphics of the original with the Enhanced version. Even with the Enhanced Edition, you’re still talking about a game that’s twenty-one years old, so it’s not a great looking game in terms of raw technical prowess regardless. However, you can immediately tell a start difference between playing the original versus the Enhanced, just be ready to accept 1024×768 or 854×480 widescreen, that’s as high as the res gets.
Of course any “gamer” worth their salt won’t get hung up on old school or “bad” graphics anyway when the game underneath the age is great, and that’s precisely what you’ll get out of System Shock. Thankfully, the Enhanced Edition tackles more than just making it run proper on Windows (including Windows 10), and bumping up the resolution, other positives include bug fixes from the original game (specifics on these are unknown to me however), remappable keys via three control maps (original/custom/left-hand) and, a big one, mouselook support.
System Shock is a unique game in many respects, setting the table for future games in the “shock” series and others like Deus Ex. It’s also unique (at least to me) in its HUD and controls, which are pretty rigid, at least by modern standards, and have their own learning curve. After the opening cutscene (which also received a res-bump), players are dropped into the game and are shown a detailed HUD legend, and it’s a lot to take in right away.
Before getting more into that, I’ll set the stage for this futuristic cyberpunk horror game: it’s the year 2072, and your character is an expert hacker who has managed to, on the night of November 6th, hack into the Trioptimum corporate servers. Unfortunately, you’re caught, and rather than being punished, you’re offered a position with the company. The process involves getting a military implant embedded into your skull and it takes an induced coma of six months to recover from this. Damn thing is, when you awaken, Citadel Station, the starbase you’re on, has gone completely insane. Crew members are ripped to pieces in the hallway, the central server or AI named SHODAN has become not only sentient, but intent on giving mankind a good old fashion power cycle. She sees herself fit to be a god and intends to destroy everyone and restart. At her aid are all matter of cyborgs and teched out goons aboard the massive Citadel Station (it spans ten or more floors) that are programmed to do her bidding, which quickly translates to stopping you.
System Shock could have probably done really well as a Doom-esque run and gun FPS, but it’s far more deliberate in its pacing and well, gameplay in general. Emotions run thick in System Shock as you check out audio logs and emails that have valuable, palpable substance to them. Indeed, games with graphics this old and a semi-cheesy techno soundtrack can still provide a stellar atmosphere. Solving puzzles, handling firefights, managing your gadgets, etc., and generally exploring and fighting back against SHODAN (whose character is still one of the best gaming has ever seen) is potent and engaging stuff to be sure. The only real hurdle is getting used to the controls and the HUD.
The HUD can be simplified by pressing the button on the HUD to go to full screen, but you’ll lose a lot of information in doing so and you probably don’t want to do that for your first hour or so of play. Not being able to look up and down without clicking on the appropriate area in the HUD is also really strange and takes some getting used to. And, of note, you cannot invert the mouse look which might throw off some folks. Using the mouse is kind of cumbersome too in that you don’t quite have the freedom you might be expecting, you have to instead look horizontally and then click when the prompt shows the arrow indicating moving your view further in the direction you’re trying to look. Juggling inventory items is a little different than ordinary too, but all of this trouble (weak graphics, cumbersome controls) is well worth it. Moreover, you can save your progress in multiple slots at anytime, so encountering a few deaths isn’t a huge deal while you learn the ropes.
Let’s wrap up in the summary…
