You’ll get a cold open with only a few text prompts to orient yourself to the environment. When you first start playing, System Shock will appropriately feel like a shock to your system. You are the last remaining obstacle in SHODAN’s plans, as you explore, shoot, and hack your way across a station of deadly enemies. After completing the job and taking the surgery, you wake up to learn SHODAN massacred Citadel Station’s staff and developed a cyborg army to invade Earth. In return, you’ll be rewarded with a military-grade neural interface, which requires surgery and a six-month healing coma to use. You play a hacker blackmailed into an illegal job – switching off the ethical constraints on SHODAN, Citadel Station’s artificial intelligence. System Shock takes place in the cyberpunk future of 2072. Night Dive Studios couldn’t improve on everything that made System Shock an awkward experience, but so much greatness still shines through that we can see how compelling it was. That’s why it’s fantastic that System Shock: Enhanced Edition is now available from GOG.com. System Shock has also been included on several “Best Games of All Time” lists, despite being almost unplayable on modern computers for over a decade. Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, and even Half-Life made story a key element in subsequent years, while Deus Ex was directly inspired by its mechanics. Even setting aside System Shock 2, the original kicked off an entire genre of story-based action games.
Here’s the thing – System Shock clearly holds an essential place in gaming history. Couple that with moderate sales and later graphical incompatibilities, and System Shock quickly became a forgotten classic on modern systems. Level layouts were confusing, and its learning curve was through the roof. It showcased clunky controls and a frustrating interface. Sure, this was a deeply immersive game, but it wasn’t flawless. Yet today, we mostly remember System Shock 2 and rarely discuss the original.
In short, System Shock is the kind of game id Software could have made if it stuck to Tom Hall’s original Doom design documents. It had the same pixelated 3D graphics, FPS combat, and a sci-fi setting, but also included a more detailed story and elaborate mechanics. But in 1994, it played far more like a thinking gamer’s Doom. System Shock is a name which makes us think of darkened hallways, inhuman cyborgs, and a little spiritual sequel called BioShock.
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