System Shock FAQ

Q: What the hell is this game?
A: System Shock is System Shock 2’s big sister, and in my opinion the better game. Released just a year after Doom, System Shock blows that game out of the water in terms of engine ability. Coded by a bunch of kids and old men from MIT, System Shock has real 3D environments, a stupidly large palette of colors, and a very complex physics engine, all of which is insane considering it’s from 1994 and was made to not use dedicated graphics hardware.

Q: How do I play this game?
A: Night Dive Studios recently picked up the license the System Shock franchise, which was in limbo for eons. Because of that, the game is harder to find but I’m sure if you look hard enough (Google “System Shock Portable”), you’ll turn something up. Otherwise, just wait until this game gets on gog.com or Steam. Just don’t use mouselook mod as it drastically changes how the game is played and is for scrubs.

Q: Why are you bumping into walls so much?
A: Turning is very slow in this game. You go so fast with the Turbo Motion System on that you basically have slam against a wall when taking a corner. The controls are also adapted from a flight simulator (seriously) so it’s awkward just taking a hallway at decent pace, let alone with the roller skates on.

Q: Why is everything dying so quickly?
A: Because the weapons in this game are either useless joke weapons, decent, or overpowered as hell. I pick up the good ones. The Pistol (with Teflon rounds) is viable up until the end of the game, Sparq is basically a free ammo pistol, grenades deal a ton of damage and have a huge radius, the Laser Rapier oneshots most things in the game, the Flechette is a general-use kill stuff gun, and the Magpulse deals ludicrous damage to cyborgs and robots at the expense of being completely useless against mutants. Keep in mind that I don’t even pick up the two best weapons in the game because they’re too far out of the way (a ricocheting BFG and a fully-automatic rifle that tears through everything)

Q: Why do you sometimes stop moving completely?
A: I have to write down a random digit that’s generated every time you start a new game file. It is 6 (actually 5) numbers long and I don’t want to forget any of it.