After being severely disappointed that I am presently unable to achievement whore in the System Shock remake due to technical difficulties, I decided to revisit the original, albeit with the un-enhanced control scheme this time. Oh boy, this is uh ... kinda not that fun. Especially on Combat 3. [Future Nilichi here: Skill Issue.]
Playing System Shock blind for the first time has a lot of value as a pure exploration and "pay-attention-to-every-piece-of-text" game. However now that I know where everything is, all that I'm left with for this 3,2,3,3 run is a lot of aggravation at obnoxious highly damaging and sometimes respawning hitscan enemies. I now see why this game only became a cult hit, it is actually physically painful to play in its unaltered DOS form. [FYI I actually had to reduce DOSBOX CPU cycle usage down to 40%, otherwise Shodan was invincible since her attack logic runs on a frame dependent timer.]
Anyway this has been a wonderful refresher on how Immersive Sim design principles can be implemented outside of an ARPG context. Believe it or not there are multiple solutions to many of the roadblocks ahead. I realized after I spent far too long on the first mastermind-wire-puzzle that I could have just used my sprinting velocity off of some ramped geometry to clear a pit. Though what I find more interesting is how ammunition management and player movement are handled. Your avatar can lean, crouch, and go prone. Which you're expected to make use of to minimize your hitbox to RNG your way through encounters. Firearms often accept multiple different types of ammunition, and loading is handled by physically moving the mouse around. You're still just clicking buttons in a UI, but this small change leads to a much greater sense of physicality for your actions.
Grenades, finnicky as they are, effectively require you to reach into your inventory and then manually toss them one at a time.
While System Shock doesn't have as many obviously abuseable player abilities that facilitate a higher degree of emergent problem solving as in its descendants, the base philosophy of providing the player with a toolset to forge their own path forwards is very much present here. The simulationist and immersion focused mindset that guided LGS are clear in how players are expected to piece together their objectives from scattered audio logs, loose pieces of paper, and the occasional email beamed into their cranium. Dropped items persist throughout level transitions and corpses linger. Actually come to think of it, with the way resource management is handled along with the pacing of combat, this is a Survival Horror game from before Survival Horror was called Survival Horror.
My main issues really are how clumsy it can feel to actually use the QWERTASDFGZXCVB movement bindings to direct the Hacker. Yes that is actually what they're using by default instead of WASD or ESDF. It's an extension of SZXC, with keys for turning, leaning, angling, and recentering the main view, along with height-stance control, all arranged to be within reach of the left hand. Honestly if I could look up and down with the mouse wheel it probably wouldn't even be that bad. I think you can actually rebind the keys in dosbox, but I'm here to suffer.
Second main issue, which is shared with Enhanced Edition, is how this is yet another game with an inverse difficulty curve ... kinda. The regeneration bays, they're unlockable vita chambers. Or rather vita chambers and all "checkpoints-that-respawn-you-with-all-defeated-and-damaged-enemies-persisting" descend from System Shock regen bays. Anyway this allows for the developers to expect you to deal with some incredibly dickish hitscan ambushes. I must have played SSEE on combat level 2 for my first run, because holy shit this is brutal. The Reactor is especially obnoxious. I can see how to trivialize it in hindsight by grabbing equipment around the station in a certain order, but there's a real chance that first time players will have an awful time down there. Now, I think this design is kinda interesting when you're trying to beat the 7hr time limit, and first time players can experience the novelty of being able to explore more of the station after bruteforcing the encounters with the regen bays online. However for people that already know the general layout of the game very well, I've found it rapidly devolves into frustrating tedium. There's also some weird hitbox jank that's a lot more noticeable to me now. Melee seems to be affected by how you angle your view, which is ... weird.
About audio in this version of System Shock; unless I'm mistaken, there have been less abrasive tones than in the Enhanced Edition. Something that really stands out to me with the mixing is that large mechanical doors and moving platforms feel too loud. I think the DOS version of the soundtrack sounds slightly nicer than in enhanced edition by default for some reason, but I'm not sure. The adaptive score can be rather harsh depending on how the MIDI messages are being interpreted but here they've been quite nice.
Anyway this game is fundamentally really cool and should be played by all hardcore PC addicts, but esoteric UX prevents making a general recommendation.
We don't talk about the autobomb maze.
Playing System Shock blind for the first time has a lot of value as a pure exploration and "pay-attention-to-every-piece-of-text" game. However now that I know where everything is, all that I'm left with for this 3,2,3,3 run is a lot of aggravation at obnoxious highly damaging and sometimes respawning hitscan enemies. I now see why this game only became a cult hit, it is actually physically painful to play in its unaltered DOS form. [FYI I actually had to reduce DOSBOX CPU cycle usage down to 40%, otherwise Shodan was invincible since her attack logic runs on a frame dependent timer.]
Anyway this has been a wonderful refresher on how Immersive Sim design principles can be implemented outside of an ARPG context. Believe it or not there are multiple solutions to many of the roadblocks ahead. I realized after I spent far too long on the first mastermind-wire-puzzle that I could have just used my sprinting velocity off of some ramped geometry to clear a pit. Though what I find more interesting is how ammunition management and player movement are handled. Your avatar can lean, crouch, and go prone. Which you're expected to make use of to minimize your hitbox to RNG your way through encounters. Firearms often accept multiple different types of ammunition, and loading is handled by physically moving the mouse around. You're still just clicking buttons in a UI, but this small change leads to a much greater sense of physicality for your actions.
Grenades, finnicky as they are, effectively require you to reach into your inventory and then manually toss them one at a time.
While System Shock doesn't have as many obviously abuseable player abilities that facilitate a higher degree of emergent problem solving as in its descendants, the base philosophy of providing the player with a toolset to forge their own path forwards is very much present here. The simulationist and immersion focused mindset that guided LGS are clear in how players are expected to piece together their objectives from scattered audio logs, loose pieces of paper, and the occasional email beamed into their cranium. Dropped items persist throughout level transitions and corpses linger. Actually come to think of it, with the way resource management is handled along with the pacing of combat, this is a Survival Horror game from before Survival Horror was called Survival Horror.
My main issues really are how clumsy it can feel to actually use the QWERTASDFGZXCVB movement bindings to direct the Hacker. Yes that is actually what they're using by default instead of WASD or ESDF. It's an extension of SZXC, with keys for turning, leaning, angling, and recentering the main view, along with height-stance control, all arranged to be within reach of the left hand. Honestly if I could look up and down with the mouse wheel it probably wouldn't even be that bad. I think you can actually rebind the keys in dosbox, but I'm here to suffer.
Second main issue, which is shared with Enhanced Edition, is how this is yet another game with an inverse difficulty curve ... kinda. The regeneration bays, they're unlockable vita chambers. Or rather vita chambers and all "checkpoints-that-respawn-you-with-all-defeated-and-damaged-enemies-persisting" descend from System Shock regen bays. Anyway this allows for the developers to expect you to deal with some incredibly dickish hitscan ambushes. I must have played SSEE on combat level 2 for my first run, because holy shit this is brutal. The Reactor is especially obnoxious. I can see how to trivialize it in hindsight by grabbing equipment around the station in a certain order, but there's a real chance that first time players will have an awful time down there. Now, I think this design is kinda interesting when you're trying to beat the 7hr time limit, and first time players can experience the novelty of being able to explore more of the station after bruteforcing the encounters with the regen bays online. However for people that already know the general layout of the game very well, I've found it rapidly devolves into frustrating tedium. There's also some weird hitbox jank that's a lot more noticeable to me now. Melee seems to be affected by how you angle your view, which is ... weird.
About audio in this version of System Shock; unless I'm mistaken, there have been less abrasive tones than in the Enhanced Edition. Something that really stands out to me with the mixing is that large mechanical doors and moving platforms feel too loud. I think the DOS version of the soundtrack sounds slightly nicer than in enhanced edition by default for some reason, but I'm not sure. The adaptive score can be rather harsh depending on how the MIDI messages are being interpreted but here they've been quite nice.
Anyway this game is fundamentally really cool and should be played by all hardcore PC addicts, but esoteric UX prevents making a general recommendation.
We don't talk about the autobomb maze.