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Dear System Shock...
langfor6
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Why are you so freaking hard?!
I decided I wanted to play through the System Shock series because of Bioshock's success. I'll also be taking down Fallout 1 and 2 soon and the original Half-Life, but I suppose that is for another thread.
I am on the verge of restarting and setting the combat to the lowest difficulty. I don't know if it's the archaic controls or if I'm just bad at this game, but I'm up on the sixth level trying to open up the maintenance doors on the first level, and everything is killing me. It wasn't so bad early because I was able to change the cyborg conversion chambers over, but now I can't seem to get to that point in any level and I'm out of medpacks and first aid kits.
Seriously, people of 1994, how did anyone complete this game? I think I can take about five hits before I die when I'm at full life.
I decided I wanted to play through the System Shock series because of Bioshock's success. I'll also be taking down Fallout 1 and 2 soon and the original Half-Life, but I suppose that is for another thread.
I am on the verge of restarting and setting the combat to the lowest difficulty. I don't know if it's the archaic controls or if I'm just bad at this game, but I'm up on the sixth level trying to open up the maintenance doors on the first level, and everything is killing me. It wasn't so bad early because I was able to change the cyborg conversion chambers over, but now I can't seem to get to that point in any level and I'm out of medpacks and first aid kits.
Seriously, people of 1994, how did anyone complete this game? I think I can take about five hits before I die when I'm at full life.
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I never used the conversion chambers if I could help it, but that does require saving after every fight; it makes ammo easier to manage as well.
I really think I'm just going to play through this on combat level 0. I'm really just in it for the plot, and saving after every battle is getting on my nerves. Is System Shock 2 as difficult?
Oh! If you ever get stuck in SS1 browse through your stims. You can take down most bosses / hard enemies using those.
I need to play System Shock again.
Look here you elitist bastard.
Too many years of WoW have gotten me hooked on WASD. I turn when I want to strafe. In a game as unforgiving as this one, that pretty much means death.
My level zero combat run is going pretty well. I caught up to where I was in a few hours. Everything dies in one shot and nothing attacks.
I think I should have set the combat level to one.
The lack of mouselook is probably the worst offense in the game's controls. Sure you can play the game with the poor control scheme presented and even get through all of it, but that doesn't make it anything but a barrier to enjoying the game to its fullest. I'd say the interface is worse than the controls, but both hinder the game quite a bit. Thankfully, this isn't 1994 anymore and we don't have to put up with stuff like that to play a game with an engrossing story.
I grew up with Arena and Daggerfall. Mouselook was a goddamn LUXURY. I'm used to not using mouselook.
I like the interface. I may be backwards, but it has a certain charm. I love it, and I would not trade it away. Yes, it is a bit clunky, and yes, it has been surpassed, but for 1994, it was pretty good due to the sheer number of movement options. Hell, it has MANTLING, which has been replicated in very few FPS's since.
It is incredibly pointless to hoard ammunition in SS1. You might not have an infinite supply of the specialty ammunition for your newest gun, but other than that... yeah. Even on the hardest difficulty it gives you clips out the ears. When your main gun runs out you switch to an alternate and then before you know it you're stocked up for the first one again. There's one "boss" monster in the whole game, and it's possible to get past that with the laser rapier (plus maybe a drug or two).
I can't really remember any of the combat being too difficult. If things get hairy you can hang around a power station and go to town with shields up and your energy gun at full blast until you're stocked up. Other than that it was just use the biggest gun you have, except around the levels with invisible mutants where you can get by with the laser rapier. Don't use the bouncy energy weapon that's supposed to be experimental and badass, because it sucks. Don't use the riot gun on a first playthrough. If you can make it to level 7 you'll find the Skorpion, the best gun in the game.
It's not mouselook, but it doesn't need to be.
Having multi-function windows was a great idea, and one that's hard to pull off without a pointer.
The thing which I dislike about mouselook is that I have to have my gun pointed at exactly what I'm looking at (and conversely, I have to look at what I point my gun at). Mouselook is fine and all, but having your arms tied to your eyes will always be weird until you are acclimated to it.
That it has walk/run/lean/crouch/prone/jump/grab onto ledge/fly and running causes you to lean into turns was and still is amazing. How many years was it before another game NOT MADE BY LOOKING GLASS had even a fraction of those features?
You'll find that the weak pistol is handy to have around so that you don't have to waste your better ammo on destroying cameras and the weak enemies that tend not to drop much of anything. The low-power energy weapons can be used for this purpose, as well, but you'll find that as time goes on that weak pistol ammo is worth less than your energy bar. The weak pistol is pretty weak, though... the big security droids take what, more than one magazine of the teflon rounds to put down?
Grenades are fun because having a slider for priming the grenade is cool.
The riot gun is good for laughs, but I don't think I've ever killed anything with it.
There's one story enemy that stands in a short hallway and doesn't attack until you walk near him. Of course, there's only one way for him to approach you, and that's through that short hallway.
So you can flood that hallway with timed bombs and mines and whatever other explosive goodies you have on hand, then get his attention, and then watch as he goes boom just as he begins to approach you.
Or you can do it like a man, and fight him with your laser rapier while skating.
What are these shields you speak of?
I've accepted that I pretty much blow at combat. Most of the time I'm dead before I knew there was something there killing me.
You can find pieces of equipment that allow you to activate shields. Shields significantly reduce the amount of damage you get dealt (more with higher version numbers), but have a constant energy drain while they are on... and if I remember right they drain more when you get hit. Shields + energy weapons = hope you have some batteries on you.
Shields...there are shields...
I'm not sure if I should thank you or break something.
Replacementdocs recently got the System Shock manual on it. You can grab a copy from there if you'd like something a little more in-depth than the quick reference card. I was reading through it, and it actually suggests you lean around corners to fight so that you're not just exposed.
After reading this thread, I'm determined to play through this game on normal difficulty settings. I've been treating combat more run-and-gun than I should, so now I'm just going to take it slow, save a lot, and peek around corners to shoot the bad guys. Wish me luck people. I'm scared.
Remedy: Use and drop.
Drop: Drag from inventory window to main view window.
Also, there wasn't mouse look? I coulda sworn that there was. Like pressing MB2 or moving the crosshairs to the edge or something.
I can't remember my settings when I beat the game. I think combat-1, Puzzle-3, and the other options at 2. But then again, I also had a guide.
Also, SS1 trained me to use WASD. Before that game I always used the arrow keys, even for games like Quake 1 and 2.
You actually can unload weapons. If you click on the weapon tab, you'll see a green arrow next to the ammo indicator. Double click on it to unload the weapon.
Oh well. Still beat it in (according the in-game clock) 3 hours, plus. Not counting retries and reloads.
Edit: Never mind, I missed a passageway in cyberspace containing the code.
Made it to the reactor level and the game started crashing, corrupting save files, and a whole host of other problems, which leads me to believe that SHODAN has infected my PC.
Unfortunately, being from 2072 it's going to be 64 years before my AV software even has a chance of picking it up, so I guess it will be easier to defeat it on my own. Right now I'm saving in different slots, and backing up saves after a successful night of progress to another directory.
Also, after many deaths I'm becoming fairly adept at the interface, but it was by no means an easy learning curve.
2008, 2012, 2014 D&D "Rare With No Sauce" League Fantasy Football Champion!
I think you'll have to pony up the cash for SS2 though. You might want to look into getting them running on XP and decide if it's worth the effort (assuming that is what you are running).
The controls in the cyberspace sections are really, really not.
?
What was wrong with them?
EDIT: It's not really a big deal because Cyberspace=/=Fleshspace. They are completely different. Of course it'll be different moving in one than the other.
And there's also the fact that you just got your happy new military grade neural implant, so you would experience disorientation as your body adjusts to moving an avatar in Cyberspace.
Also, Railgun is the best weapon ever made. The only weapon that kills you more often than anyone else. ;-)
I love this game. When we used to play this way back when, my father and I found that using the joystick was pretty much the best way to deal with cyberspace, though not really that good in the meat world.
Dammit, now I'm going to have to dig this up and play again. I loved SS2, but I still think SS1 is the better game both in atmosphere and story.
This and Ultima Underworld were amazing games for their time, silly controls and all.