have it on, since it consumes loads of
energy, which is essentially System
Shock’s mana). There are also buttons
for my various other cyber-abilities,
such as the Enviro-Shields
(protection from toxic bad-stuff ), a
weird quick-but-slidey movement
mode, a compass, and going full-
screen. What I love is that it feels like
I’m taking an active role in managing
my gear. All these features are
presented as plugins to my robot-
head. Get a better shield and it’ll be
called v2. Get the targeting system,
and the game will superimpose a
hitbox around enemies and indicate
the damage levels you’re causing
them. If it presented them as menu
options, they wouldn’t feel so special,
and I wouldn’t feel like a cool 1990s
cyberpunk hacker.
The way everything fits into
System Shock’s world is matched by
the way it tells its story. It only
features cutscenes at the start and
end of the game, instead leaning on
environmental storytelling. Its grisly
tableaus of a skull on the floor next to
a note about encounters with
homicidal mutants set the form, and
it might well also be the source of the
‘Dire Warning Written In Blood on
the Wall’ trope. The details of its
narrative about corporate
shenanigans, hacker criminals, and a
very bad AI play out through found
texts and audio logs, which the game
also pretty much pioneered. The
result is an experience in which you
feel like you’re a part of the world, a
place where your actions are the
result of your own choices.
But replaying System Shock has
also turned out to remind me of how
much Looking Glass had yet to learn.
The flip side of all that emergent
openness is a game that can beawfully obtuse if you’re not paying
attention. There’s aways a full
explanation of where you’re going
next, what you’re meant to do there
and why you want to do it, but to get
it, you have to sift through every
audio log and note, some of which
are found on easily-missed corpses,
and to remember where certain
rooms are when it’s time to backtrack
across the station and up and down
decks to get to the next objective.
What’s more, the environments
are pretty difficult to read. Things
like buttons and levers have a realPlay Ping against your own computer
brain (in the left display screen).Some cyberspace enemies are
faces. You shoot stars at them?DO DRUGS Chemical ‘patches’ come with interesting side-effects
BERSERK
Raises your melee
damage
Side-effect: Reverses
all the colors in the
scene to make everything
look awful.GENIUS
Shows next puzzle step
when you’re within three
steps of a solution
Side-effect: Reverses left
and right, because you’re
a drug-addled boffin.DETOX
Removes build-ups of
radiation and bio-
contamination
Side-effect: Also removes
all patch effects, because
it’s a straight-edge killjoy.SIGHT
Lets you see in the dark
for a while
Side-effect: Dims your
vision after using it,
because you’ve abused
your cyber-eyes.OLD GAMES, NEW PERSPECTIVES
REINSTALL
You can set the mission difficulty from not needing
keycards to imposing a strict seven-hour time limit.