24.10. 2005

Look at you hacker: A pathetic creature of meat and bones, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

GOAT - Greatest of all time

And now to something completely different: Fragdieb and some of his friends (www.agitpopblog.org, www.thwidra.de) compiled lists of their favourite computer games. Oh god, memories... All of the games are without a doubt true classics and most, if not all of my personal favourites have already been praised by someone else: Colin McRae Rally 2 (Fragdieb), Deus Ex (aggitpop), to name a few.

All of them? Naaaa, not really. Deus Ex for me is the "game of all modern games". But there is some other piece of work by Warren Spector. And Robert Fermier. And Doug Church. A piece of work, no art, that forever changed my understanding of what the ultimate computer game should be like. No it's not Underworld, I don't really care about fantasy settings. But it's pretty warm, only a bit later than 1991. Underworld II? Nope, you can't read, can you? Last hint: 1994. Doom? Gssshhh, I don't know how many hours I enjoyed playing the multiplayer of Doom. But I didn't mention the name Carmack, did I?

So what am I talking about here? System Shock of course!

I will never forget the evening I played this game for the first time. I was at a friend of mine and we played the game together: Kai was handling the mouse and I was sitting at the keyboard. It simply blew me away. At that time I only had a C64 myself but I was used to 3d first person graphics from playing Doom at Kais PC. But System Shock was so much more! This was not only a first person view of pixels to shoot at - this was the most natural and convincing environment I had ever seen in a computer game (and this held true until the arrival of Deus Ex in the year 2000). When I came home that very evening, I was depressed. My C64 had lost all of it's appeal.
Some time later I got my first PC. The day after that, I bought my own copy of System Shock (the original 9 3,5" floppy disks version). Later, I picked up a budget version of the enhanced CD edition - to this day, System Shock is the only game I own twice.

But what exactly makes System Shock, this first person role playing adventure shooter, so very special? Well, the setting comes to mind. As I said earlier, I'm not really a fantasy buff. So starring as a hacker, aboard a space station in the year 2072 - huh, I like that.
And the Citadel space station is so very convincing: It consists of 10 levels, connected by elevators. Of course the position of the elevators matches exactly between the various levels (something that the 1999 sequel got a bit wrong). Every level serves a different, convincing purpose, there is a medical station, a nuclear reactor to produce energy, a flight deck, below the flight deck a huge storage area. Eco pods, small areas with real plants, providing a natural place for the crews recreation. And you are free to explore all this at your own will.

Well actually you are not. And this is perhaps the thing about System Shock I like the most: The very consistent game design. There are two major limitations in this game: There is no free, branching story line - in fact the story is absolutely linear. And at that time (and still today), computer games were / are unable to provide convincing npcs and a way to communicate with them. Consequence: There are no npcs and there is no dialog. What a dumb game, heh?

No, it works perfectly. The linear story line is hidden by your freedom to explore the space station at your own will. Hmm, not at your own will, at the designers will, which you doesn't notice and that's the point.
There are no npcs as you're the only survivor of Shodans, the space stations main computer and your own creation, slaughter. But the dead crew members left a whole bunch of audio logs, which tell you, the player, what happened aboard Citadel. And so the story slowly unfolds...

And then there is interactivity. And immersion. Citadel station is a persistent world. When you come back to a familiar place later in the game, everything will be as you left it. Don't have enough space in your inventory to keep your almighty laser rapier? Well, leave it here, pick it up again later. But trust an old, experienced Shocker: Never, ever, give away your laser rapier!
There are plenty of other weapons, normal guns which are effectiv against biological targets, energy weapons which badly harm robots but nothing else. Drugs. Medical healing drugs, as well as brain stimulating ones, which help you to solve the various puzzles you'll come across but, as a side effect, will also... no, you have to find out about this yourself.
And there is cyberspace. Mini games to play. And last but not least, elevator music.

This text is actually way too short and I doubt it does justice to the greatest game of all time. But I don't want to give away too much from the actual story and gameplay, as I hope some people will jump at the chance to play it for themselves. Yes, it's eleven years old. The graphics are dated. The controls (which can't be reconfigured) are a bit clumsy.

But it still provides a gameplay experience that no other game of the last decade can provide. The sequel, System Shock 2, comes close but System Shock is still way ahead of it.
Deus Ex might be a fair match. But as much as I like it, System Shock simply was there first. And in my opinion, you should always appreciate where things are coming from.

Graphics last for six months - gameplay lasts forever. Time to play this gem once again.

Links

Search ebay for a copy of System Shock
How to Run System Shock 1 on Windows 2000/XP FAQ v 1.0
Forever through the looking glass [Very nice Post-Mortem on LGS at 3dactionplanet.com]
Reasons for the Fall: A Post-Mortem On Looking Glass Studios

FAQ

Isn't all this a bit too subjective?

Yes.

What the fuck is a laser rapier?

This energised lance projects a monofilament thread that is suspended in a contained energy field. Upon contact, the thread slices through organic and synthetic materials, permanently disabling most creatures and robots. The rapier is usually carried only by senior security officers and military commanders.
Light sabers are for dimwits.

What about Anachronox / Arx Fatalis / U.F.O. - Enemy unknown / The need for speed / Half Life?

Good question. Most of my precious computer game boxes are at my parents home, so i can't take pictures of them. But I could start to write about the games and add the pictures later. Maybe.
We'll have to wait and see.

The system has been shocked but remember to salt the fries!