The first time I played System Shock was in 2015, after having already played the mountains of later, more technologically advanced games that took influence from it. All I really knew about it was the generic common summary: "the controls are awful, it's really dated and clunky, it's interesting to see where all these better games came from but you don't really need to play this." When I first booted it up, the control scheme and interface felt like the control panel for a goddamn Apollo spacecraft, and having to actually click on the HUD with the mouse cursor to perform essential functions like reloading, healing, and throwing grenades seemed like absolute madness. But I kept at it, and after a quick detour through the first two levels of Ultima Underworld to get used to even less player-friendly controls, I eventually got the hang of it. By the time I finished it, 17 hours later, after playing almost non-stop, I suddenly realized that I'd never be able to play the greatest PC game of all time, for the _first_ time, ever again. Then I went and finished it two more times that same week, first on Hard mode with the Enhanced Edition controls, then again on Hard mode with the game's original no-mouselook DOS control scheme. You know how many times I've done three playthroughs of a game in the same _week?_ Just once. System Shock is _fucking incredible,_ and it held up so well for me that I don't think it really even needs a modern remake; people just need to stop being lazy and take 20 or 30 minutes to get past the initial learning curve. The payoff is absolutely worth it.
I loved the music in this game. Sometimes I just listen to the soundtrack! I know, it may just be the nostalgia factor. But as a long time electronic and industrial music fan, it just hits all the right notes for me.
I have only played SS2, but I agree. "The Polito form is dead, insect. Are you afraid? What is it you fear? The end of your trivial existence?" Best villain intro ever. Works every time, to this day.
When I was in 3rd grade I bought the CD version of System Shock. The death scene gave me nightmares and it took me a couple years to pick the game up again. Great game.
System Shock 2 is one of my most favorite immersive sims today. I always wanted to play System Shock 1 but it’s controls always were a discouragement. I’m glad it fixed now and I have a reason to finally try this game out!
I finished the game with the classic controls. You actually get used to it but it never becomes as responsive and fast as modern controls. However you begin to realise why they gave you a "look behind your back" hardware, and intricate lean system and the bullet time drugs. It's there to help compensate for the sluggish controls and generally the game is balanced around careful game play you need to play in the old school controls. One advantage of the old controls is that precision aiming is slightly easier and accessing inventory is less annoying
@@MGMan37 That was only a minor issue. Reloading a weapon mid firefight is the new controls become a problem. You need to switch off mouselook to reload.
It's a shame the System Shock remaster is in development hell, with progress being so slow that it's hard to see any. Hopefully they'll release it within this decade.
Couldn't agree more. Some aren't as lucky as Half life and Oblivion it seems. Sad really; this game working as both an adventure and horror would have arguably stood toe to toe with those Masterpieces! I'd say the 'easiest' engine to work on it with is the Unreal4 one but no one seems to have the time to spare for it.
It's being handled by Nightdive who definitely has a track record of shipping products though most are modern ports of classic games with an impressive attention to detail and thoughtful enhancements as options.
I also played System Shock for the first time only a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. System Shock 2 was great as well, but not as much as the first one. I could never get into Bioshock though. I did complete the first one, but never wanted to play the sequels. I guess it's because the immersive sim elements are kept to a minimum in that game and exploration is barely a thing. Prey felt a lot more like a spiritual successor to System Shock than Bioshock ever did.
Bioshock Infinite adopts a more Arena shooter style and was all the better for it, I feel. The pretense of being a deep immersive sim is dropped and it plays like a turn of the century Halo with a Sony style story.
@@LicoriceLain Sounds like a better approach. I don't mind fun shooters with a decent story. The first Bioshock didn't click for me, even though it had some good elements. I might try Infinite one day though. Edit: typo
Man... Prey often times feels so undervalued in public opinion. It is such a masterpiece for it's genre and easily beats it's older influences like system shock. Leveldesign, atmosphere and freedom of playstyle was absolutely top notch. Sometimes I wonder if the downfall of that game was it's branding as 'Prey'. Maybe it would have been way more successful if it would have a 'shock' title. Psychoshock, spaceshock, whatever, something that connects it's more to it's genre and wouldn't have disgruntled all the prey fans that were (rightfully) still salty about Prey 2's cancellation. I think anyone who liked any 'shock' game should totally play prey. I bet almost everyone who has some love for that sub-genre will love that game.
Prey 2017 is one of my favorite games ever. It was done a disservice by being attached to that IP - it meant that the excellent Prey 2006 never got the true sequel it deserved, and Prey 2017 was ignored by those who didn't realize it was an immersive sim. It should have been called "Xenoshock" or "Neuroshock" or something like that. Much better Shock game than Bio.
Jeeze, has it really been 25 YEARS since I played this game?!?! Wow. This was the game that drove my first really high end video card and CPU upgrade. The user interface and the game engine were light years ahead of Doom. It did "immersive" big time. I would play in a darkened room with headphones on, and the first time my little girl came in and tapped me one the shoulder and said "Daddy?" I nearly jumped out of my skin! :D
Something to note about KEX engine, it was developed off Doom64 EX which is reverse engineered PC port of Doom 64, based on Doom3D engine, a PC port of Linux Doom, a Doom Engine source port for Linux. Kaiser, you magnificent bastard!
Welcome back to Citadel Station. You are currently on the Medical suites located on the first level. We hope you have a pleasant stay on Citadel Station. "Employee 2-4601, listen carefully!"
I finished SS2 and must say, it's pretty much perfectly playable and really good, up to modern standards. So I guess I should pick up that remaster or whatnot and finish it. Again. :) SS2 is much easier to digest to the point that I finished the game as a kid - without english knowledge at the time. SS1? Hell no :) But tempted to fix that.
@@Kokuyous3ki the enhanced edition is Very playable, it's great. Especially before the upcoming remake of it, i think it's best to play it now. :). Pretty much all keybinds can be changed and mouse look is easy to toggle, it made things tons easier than the DOS original.
Ofcourse, just gotta get used to the bindings and flow of things. I love the music in the dos original, the soundblaster, really like it but thats a matter of taste i guess. I finished Lands of Lore 2 earlier this year. Those bindings were a nightmare to set-up, luckily almost everything was customizable but you basically had to try every key to see what it does. A mouselook mode for combat and exploring like any other fps, then a second point & click mode for interracting with buttons or opening doors or chests. But i figured it out! Then forgot just recently what bindings i should use when doing LOL3. XD
Played the game when i was young, went through it multiple times, even on harder difficulties. One of the most memorable and interesting concepts i have ever found in video games, even considering how rough the controls where at the time. Played SS2 a couple times also. Waiting for the remake with high expectations and i'm sure i won't be dissapointed :)
As an absoulte die hard System Shock fan, i award you for the golden System Shock video review. You really have my 100% approvement! Thank you! SS1 - A Game that still awaits to find its master. The remake demos makes me very optimistic. Those guys really are worth to own the rights of System Shock. I love you Night Dive Studios. And I still hope Tencent + Warren Spector doing a real leap with SS3.
Wow! I respect you for not only going back and playing old as shit games but also going in depth and explaining their systems. Love it and can't wait to see what you play next my friend!
lol. I played System Shock (classic) back in the day. I think I even have the original box somewhere. It was a real treat back then. This and Ultima Underworld 2 were my most memorable games from Looking Glass.
Well done on a great overview of one of the classics. My 2 disagreements with your commentary though .. System Shock didn't have "audio" logs .. they were just written text. Only later when the CD version came out did they add audio. Secondly, OMG cyberspace was the best damn thing about the game. It was like nothing else ever. Ok so these days it maybe oldschool but when playing it the first time, cyberspace was just killer.
You know what would be hilarious? They release a sequel to Infinite, except about an hour or 2 into the game, Elizabeth morphs into SHODAN and you realize all the Bioshock games were a VR simulation to keep your brain occupied Matrix style and that you actually got cyborged. Could even make the Elizabeth escort parts some kind of a subconscious reaction to you "protecting" SHODAN. No studio these days would have the balls to try something like that, but it's fun to imagine.
I don't think voice acting is at all bad in this game, I find it really good, it makes me feel it's real. Professional voice acting is good but sometimes it sounds like professional voice acting instead of real, like in God of War, which doesn't sound believable.
To be fair, the distinction is that particular games like God of War are meant to be more theatrical, especially the earlier trilogy, while System shock was meant to take place in a sci-fi setting that was slightly more "grounded" and connected to our reality. Slightly.
About the audio logs, I would agree with Razorfist on how better they did their job compared to the remake demo: In the original they're concise and to the point, where as the voice actors for the remake wont shut up until they get their Oscars. On the other hand it bothered me to no end that the text and the audio on these logs never matched.
I picked this up in 2019 and was surprised how playable it was, it became one of my favourites. Yeah sure the movement takes a bit of getting used to and using grenades was often more trouble than it was worth but for a game originally designed for DOS its enhanced edition made it quite accessible and very enjoyable. I wouldn't exactly call SS1 an ImSim, more an FPS metroidvania but for paving the way for SS2 it deserves no less love.
Run h-h-hacker! Great video man and giving this classic the moment in the spotlight it deserves. I remember playing it and the sequel back in the day and man it was so ground breaking at the time. It's one of those games that quietly broke molds and introduced things that are still in games today but never quite got credit for it. This, SS2 and Daggerfall all had a big influence on the industry. Things that we take for granted today like leaning, being able to mantle, climbing up any surface, skills improving with use, and enemies that made your jiggly bits crawl up inside your body. For me SS and SS2 really broke the FPS trend by adding such awesome mechanics to interface so that you really got that feeling of playing the character. I'm glad to see it's getting a long needed reboot AND.....that the new team is sticking to the original and not "reimagining" it. I'd love to see someone do the same with SS2 and Daggerfall.
System Shock Steam Page: store.steampowered.com/app/41... Come join the Kirk.Collects Discord: discord.gg/XqQC8HQEwt Please follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/kirkcollects Please follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/kirkcollects System Shock Enhanced Edition was developed by Looking Glass Technologies and Nightdive Studios. It is currently available for PC through Steam and GOG. Timecodes: 00:00 Intro 1:22 What is System Shock? What was Looking Glass Studios? 2:15 What's an Immersive Sim? 5:34 The impact of System Shock 9:00 Meet the Hacker 10:13 System Shock gameplay - The HUD and controls 13:59 System Shock Enhanced - Nightdive Studios 15:15 Welcome to Citadel Station 18:49 Presentation 21:46 Cybernetic Abilities 24:19 Hacking - The puzzles 25:38 Cyberspace 26:24 Combat 31:57 Vita chamber 1.0 33:24 Narrative - Morally compromised 36:06 Audio logs 41:11 SHODAN 48:50 Conclusion
I bought the 3.5 inch disc version. I bought the CD-ROM expanded version. I bought the Steam version. I kickstarted the remake. I love this game like no other.
I didn't have the pleasure of playing this game until around my 30th or so year of living on this earth, but I enjoyed this classic very much. The version I had played was the enhanced version, which I was very grateful for so I could enjoy better key layouts. I still like this game quite a bit, though the sprites are not quite as sharp as I would like in comparison to some other FPS games around the time, and the cyberspace sections, though intriguing to me, we're definitely a bit of a hassle at times. This was a very fun review that covered the game quite nicely, and I'm glad I watched it! Thank you for this review!
"Welcome to Looking Glass, everyone there was amazing." It's just like, the reason we don't have nice things isn't because people aren't making them; you can get all the best people together and make the best shit ever and it still takes two decades for people to actually notice... By then they aren't working together anymore.
Such a great game that Im old enough to remember it and played it to death both 1 and 2 and Im very much looking foward to the remake that NightDrive Studios are doing, lets hope they do it justice
Im sure Nightdive are doing and have done a great job on it. Their Blood, Quake, Turok semi-remasters are awesome same with System Shock:DE. Im gonna play their other remasters in time. To me Nightdive has become a staple of consistent quality. But this huge SS reboot is intriguing, pretty sure its their biggest project to date, literally rebuilding the game with modern graphics.
They made a Raytraced Minecraft and Quake 2 RTX, damn I think System Shock 1 fully raytraced would look amazing. All those light up panels and computers, and it would work well on the areas in Research + Maintenance where you have to turn the lighting on / find the lantern
Really happy to see more love for System Shock 1! I find it still holds up extremely well to this day in a lot of ways, and even more so with the enhanced edition. Such a well put together and paced game.
Took me close to 17 years to beat this game...I missed ONE E-Mail and never got past level 6. LOL. And this game helped me learn english a lot. Played this with a dictionary in one hand...so, "even harder mode". Back in the day, the control scheme was not that unusual, as you had a proper package with manual and most often a keyboard layout card, some of which even coulf fit on top of certain keyboards. I still have my System Shock box somewhere.
I am playing the remake right now on our Series X and loving it! I just cleared the medical floor and am about to go to the next level. I missed this game in 1994 and was so happy Night Dive brought it back. Now that the game has been released across so many platforms it is selling good enough for the sequel remake. I played that back in 1999...and it was incredible. Addendum- The old OS joke is now dead and gone. The System Shock Remake features buttery smooth player movement and gunplay that isn't just serviceable its functional.
I've never played the system shock games, but I have a lot of respect for the developers making this genre. It lead to quite a few of my favourite games, such as Dishonored, and Prey, Bioshock. *edit* Holy shit, and Deus ex, I don't know how I forgot that!
24:08 I love how when you took the berzerk patch I immediately thought "Huh, so it just turns the game into Cruelty Squad" and only a few seconds later you said it yourself. Great minds think alike! ;P
Speaking of early immersive sims, do you know Corporation, aka Cyber-Cop? It has many design similarities to System Shock - a cyberpunk FPS with bits of RPG, hacking, and stealth - but it came out in **1990.**
46:19 Ho, hello Giger version of Medusa! I mean, for real, i am sure there is highly inspiraiton from Medusa and the Gorgons from the old greek art in that artwork of Giger
I used to be so obsessed with System Shock when I was a kid. EVERYONE I knew had to know about it. Aw, I like playing with the classic controls and no mouse-look. But I use the numpad for all keyboard-related inputs.
I missed this back in the day because it required a high-end PC (Pentium I recommended while I had modest 386), always wanted to come back and play it bat gave up due to the issues you mentioned in video. So glad remake is on the way
As a hard core SS1 fan, BioShock never really catched me. Ok! The water FX were cool at that time. But this Art-Deco romantizising is strongly related to the US. Internationally its nothing more than a curiosity. Nothing big. Its just missed the heavy weight CyberPunk resembles. Today there is a myriad of *-punk classifications. so this one my be called "Deco-Punk" ? I dont care. IMHO: Nothing can beat real CyberPunk . Although i appreciate the effort that went into BioShock 3, while its no game for me. What came closest to SS1+2 so far ist Arcane's Prey. But as usual, the best games are not recognized by the masses. Its was always a pity to sell sophistication in game design does not trigger the brain of the average consumer.
one thing (of multiple, but this specifically) that irked me is how you mentioned that the death system in this game makes death meaningless, but that's because it's not revolving around death, but the hardest setting. On the hardest difficulty, the player has 7 hours to beat the game before they get an instant game over, and while they might get revived, they would have to backtrack to where they started, thus wasting precious time. While I think they could've improved it with minor tweaks (the player losses time when they get revived, as it takes time for the Cyborgs to drag your body to the reconstruction device, and maybe have the timer be multiple timers as all of SHODAN's actions in the game are seperate rather than be part of 1 singular timer). SS2 also tried to have it be a negative, as you lose nanites when you die, but it's less tense as the player can replenish them in multiple ways.
Totally fair point. I’ll give higher difficulties and alternate modes a focus in the future with these types of games. Thank you for the comment Pepper!
One really early immersive sim I think is cool, is The Terminator. A DOS game from 1990. It loosely follows the films plot, either as Terminator or Kyle to kill/protect Sarah. You run around a huge L.A. stealing cars, manual and automatic, buying or stealing from shops, killing people, running from cops, robbing banks or cash registers, using medical items or hospitals to heal, finding weapons or not....even buying/stealing useless items like toothpaste or tampons.....It has a lot of immersive sim qualities.
System Shock remains one of my absolute favorite games of all time, even more than 25 years later. The controls were a little hard to get into, but man, once you got into the game.. you were IN... It had it's storytelling problems with some of the aspects (Mining laser shooting earth from the Staturn orbit? yeah ok I'll let that one slide), and the end of the game was anticlimactic, but the game was also restrained by the technology of it's time. But everything else? My god, what a game, what a legacy. Also the music, it is so unique, so different, so dissonant at times, but so absolutely fitting. Also, the game was published by Origin Systems WAY before they were bought by Electronic Arts.
I don't know, I thought the ending was great. After everything you went through, it felt fitting. Much better of an ending than 2 final act which is just painful.
I swear by the weapon menu and how the reloading works with the mouse, it made combat feel more tense and interesting, like how in MGS Revolver Ocelot loves the thrill of reloading
FFS okay youtube algorithm I get it, you really want me to play System Shock Enhanced Edition. TBH Ive always meant to try these games as they birthed my fav genre. I remember in 2001 my dad built a brand new pentium 4 pc and the gpu came bundled with the original Deus Ex. My life was changed from that moment onward. Oh and btw instant sub. Really great channel!
honestly i was shocked by how little subs you have. first i was recommended this video by the algorithm, started watching and loving the production quality i honestly thought your like 500k subs and growing BUT damn son you are underrated i hope you grow like a mad lad.
When I was a kid, I could speak not a single word english and therefore was not very good at this game. Later, when I was older, I beat the game. I have since adored this unique franchise and its influence on the created genre. I hope the System Shock remake will be released at the now announced point in time and people will like it more than back in the day. It certainly will have a lot of coverage, either for good or for bad. If I remember correctly, the devs once stated that a successful SS1 Remake would warrant a remake of SS2 as well. And THAT is something I would really love to see.
The cyberspace was always terrible and the ultimate showdown was a letdown. I'm one of the lucky ones with fingers long enough to handle the original SS1 controls. Fingers dancing on the keyboard was the hacker-iest thing ever in the 90s and it fit my personal experience perfectly.
This is a great vid, even shedding new light for someone who has studied this game pretty closely. I was rather intrigued by your decision to save any mention of Shodan for the end of the vid, considering she's just as much of an introduction to the world as Rebecca Lansing is and she got mentioned right away. Though I honestly think the name "immersive sim" is pretentious. The Shock metafranchise are FPS games first and foremost. System Shock 1 and the Bioshock games are straight FPS on the rocks, System Shock 2 is an Action RPG. This is less a dig at you Kirk, than a different priority in games: in my eyes the first and _only_ way to make a game immersive boils down to one word: Quality. I will always be more immersed inside a 2D platformer done right, than any first-person RPG stealth simulation game done badly. This of course leads me back to System Shock 1, because its quality is pretty self-evident. It wouldn't have stood the test of time if it didn't have quality where it counts. LookingGlass didn't just decide they could call their game "immersive" (like Ubisoft with the word "iconic"), they EARNED it
System Shock inspired Immersive Sims but it's closer to a tightly directed survival horror experience than it is a full blown sandbox. If you made a sliding scale of Immersive Sims with one end being strong atmosphere and tight game design, and the other end being freedom and player expression: System Shock would be at the former end along with Thief because of it's atmosphere. Something like Prey is on the complete opposite end. Much more freedom in gameplay but lacking in atmosphere with huge environments with even lighting instead of the tight corridors and terrifying soundscapes of System Shock and Thief.
It's worth noting that you can add your own waypoints using the full map, and they actually show up in the actual game world as triangular prisms. This feature is : 1. Ahead of it's time. 2. A fucking life saver to mark paths you still need to explore.
It is not ahead of its time when other devs like Bethesda do not want to add the writing on your map feature 😂. The game is a I am not an imm sim but I have its elements.
Nightdive studios still owns the IP and rights. Tencent have the publishing right for System Shock 3 (which will eventually run out if they don't release it).
Even though I was fan of sci-fi I still liked their previous game (Ultima Underworld) more. There was something charming in old games before some standards were set in the stone...
Gotta love when these old classics supposedly influenced a lot of modern games, but when you actually play them you see just how more complex and nuanced they are and how modern game design is exactly the opposite of what these classics where. Mass produced soulless and simplistic to the point i can just sleepwalk through the whole game.
Aye, played this on a 486 DX2 66 system, the controls were a pain but got easier as I played. It was up and way down in certain areas as in frame rate, But I really wanted to play it at the time and didn't care how crappy system was or about framerate. framerate was not good but still playable experience. Even with it graphics SS1 is still a very immersive experience, especially with the lights off, place to yourself and no noise from the outside. (and keep the music on) Now I love that there are more younger and older gamers playing this classic before the Remake and really enjoying it.
This game is older than I am and is by far one of the biggest gems in FPS Immersive sims, hell even gaming in General, part of me prefers it over SS2, NDS is really fumbling the the remake tho
Love your take on ImmerSims, but what do you think (mayhaps in a video?) separates them from Open World Games or RPGs, or is this one of those "it depends" type things?
I would love for the remake to finally come out. I wish they would communicate a bit more with us. From the way things have been going, 2021 will pass and the we’ll get a shitty dev update promising something further down the line. Rinse and repeat. Excellent video though, I’m subbed .
I am diggin' what I'm seein'. 1:32 - I am unfamiliar with this "Electronic Arts". I expect many great and non-evil things coming from them in the future.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 we played text based versions on mainframes in the 70s at my mum's work, but I think it took the advent of micro computers to make them, before that it was seriously niche. For us, it was my brother and 2 friends, we were the entire scene in our area until around 1979 ✌️.
![ILLSLICK - KILLSHOT REMIX [FULL VERSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RIK8RrqIAzE/mqdefault.jpg)
The first time I played System Shock was in 2015, after having already played the mountains of later, more technologically advanced games that took influence from it. All I really knew about it was the generic common summary: "the controls are awful, it's really dated and clunky, it's interesting to see where all these better games came from but you don't really need to play this." When I first booted it up, the control scheme and interface felt like the control panel for a goddamn Apollo spacecraft, and having to actually click on the HUD with the mouse cursor to perform essential functions like reloading, healing, and throwing grenades seemed like absolute madness. But I kept at it, and after a quick detour through the first two levels of Ultima Underworld to get used to even less player-friendly controls, I eventually got the hang of it.
By the time I finished it, 17 hours later, after playing almost non-stop, I suddenly realized that I'd never be able to play the greatest PC game of all time, for the _first_ time, ever again. Then I went and finished it two more times that same week, first on Hard mode with the Enhanced Edition controls, then again on Hard mode with the game's original no-mouselook DOS control scheme. You know how many times I've done three playthroughs of a game in the same _week?_ Just once. System Shock is _fucking incredible,_ and it held up so well for me that I don't think it really even needs a modern remake; people just need to stop being lazy and take 20 or 30 minutes to get past the initial learning curve. The payoff is absolutely worth it.
I loved the music in this game. Sometimes I just listen to the soundtrack! I know, it may just be the nostalgia factor. But as a long time electronic and industrial music fan, it just hits all the right notes for me.
Good sound design and writing is having a villain who, 27 years on, still gives me chills when I hear her voice lines
I have only played SS2, but I agree.
"The Polito form is dead, insect. Are you afraid? What is it you fear? The end of your trivial existence?"
Best villain intro ever. Works every time, to this day.
As creepy as shodan was, she had the logic of a cartoon villain despite being a reality warping super AI.
@@nikushim6665 that is true about any gaming villain, otherwise the player wouldn't be able to beat them ;)
@@MidnightSt "L-lll-look at you h-hhackkerr..."
SS2 sounds haunted me on a deep, deep level as a young teen...
When I was in 3rd grade I bought the CD version of System Shock. The death scene gave me nightmares and it took me a couple years to pick the game up again. Great game.
It really is disturbing
System Shock 2 is one of my most favorite immersive sims today. I always wanted to play System Shock 1 but it’s controls always were a discouragement. I’m glad it fixed now and I have a reason to finally try this game out!
I finished the game with the classic controls. You actually get used to it but it never becomes as responsive and fast as modern controls. However you begin to realise why they gave you a "look behind your back" hardware, and intricate lean system and the bullet time drugs. It's there to help compensate for the sluggish controls and generally the game is balanced around careful game play you need to play in the old school controls.
One advantage of the old controls is that precision aiming is slightly easier and accessing inventory is less annoying
Enhanced Edition lets you instantly place items in your inventory with middle click, which makes the inventory management far less tedious
@@MGMan37 That was only a minor issue. Reloading a weapon mid firefight is the new controls become a problem. You need to switch off mouselook to reload.
It's a shame the System Shock remaster is in development hell, with progress being so slow that it's hard to see any. Hopefully they'll release it within this decade.
indeed, hope to be still alive when and IF it will be released
Couldn't agree more. Some aren't as lucky as Half life and Oblivion it seems.
Sad really; this game working as both an adventure and horror would have arguably stood toe to toe with those Masterpieces! I'd say the 'easiest' engine to work on it with is the Unreal4 one but no one seems to have the time to spare for it.
It's being handled by Nightdive who definitely has a track record of shipping products though most are modern ports of classic games with an impressive attention to detail and thoughtful enhancements as options.
Remake* also, it's literally almost finished. Patience. Patience.
they just showed off gameplay and revealed the release date. it's happening, and it's gonna be awsome
this man is SEVERELY underrated!
also Kirk, a 51 minute video? you spoil us
Well you're an audience worth spoiling 😁
Kinda gives me civvie 11 vibes :D
Just made some popcorn, this couldn't have come at a better time!
oooo popcorn sounds good
I also played System Shock for the first time only a few years ago and I really enjoyed it. System Shock 2 was great as well, but not as much as the first one. I could never get into Bioshock though. I did complete the first one, but never wanted to play the sequels. I guess it's because the immersive sim elements are kept to a minimum in that game and exploration is barely a thing. Prey felt a lot more like a spiritual successor to System Shock than Bioshock ever did.
Bioshock Infinite adopts a more Arena shooter style and was all the better for it, I feel. The pretense of being a deep immersive sim is dropped and it plays like a turn of the century Halo with a Sony style story.
@@LicoriceLain Sounds like a better approach. I don't mind fun shooters with a decent story. The first Bioshock didn't click for me, even though it had some good elements. I might try Infinite one day though.
Edit: typo
@@klodek14 It starts slow, but gets wild toward the end (like Witcher 3).
Man... Prey often times feels so undervalued in public opinion. It is such a masterpiece for it's genre and easily beats it's older influences like system shock. Leveldesign, atmosphere and freedom of playstyle was absolutely top notch.
Sometimes I wonder if the downfall of that game was it's branding as 'Prey'. Maybe it would have been way more successful if it would have a 'shock' title. Psychoshock, spaceshock, whatever, something that connects it's more to it's genre and wouldn't have disgruntled all the prey fans that were (rightfully) still salty about Prey 2's cancellation.
I think anyone who liked any 'shock' game should totally play prey. I bet almost everyone who has some love for that sub-genre will love that game.
Prey 2017 is one of my favorite games ever. It was done a disservice by being attached to that IP - it meant that the excellent Prey 2006 never got the true sequel it deserved, and Prey 2017 was ignored by those who didn't realize it was an immersive sim. It should have been called "Xenoshock" or "Neuroshock" or something like that. Much better Shock game than Bio.
Jeeze, has it really been 25 YEARS since I played this game?!?! Wow. This was the game that drove my first really high end video card and CPU upgrade. The user interface and the game engine were light years ahead of Doom. It did "immersive" big time. I would play in a darkened room with headphones on, and the first time my little girl came in and tapped me one the shoulder and said "Daddy?" I nearly jumped out of my skin! :D
Something to note about KEX engine, it was developed off Doom64 EX which is reverse engineered PC port of Doom 64, based on Doom3D engine, a PC port of Linux Doom, a Doom Engine source port for Linux. Kaiser, you magnificent bastard!
Welcome back to Citadel Station. You are currently on the Medical suites located on the first level.
We hope you have a pleasant stay on Citadel Station.
"Employee 2-4601, listen carefully!"
Must be hard to imagine how mind blowing this game was when it first came out if you started at Half Like 2 era or later.
As someone who's never touched System Shock but loves immersive-sims, I'm hella excited for the remake/imagining.
I finished SS2 and must say, it's pretty much perfectly playable and really good, up to modern standards. So I guess I should pick up that remaster or whatnot and finish it. Again. :)
SS2 is much easier to digest to the point that I finished the game as a kid - without english knowledge at the time. SS1? Hell no :) But tempted to fix that.
That remake is very faithful to the original :-)
Like 95%+ faithful .
@@Kokuyous3ki the enhanced edition is Very playable, it's great. Especially before the upcoming remake of it, i think it's best to play it now. :).
Pretty much all keybinds can be changed and mouse look is easy to toggle, it made things tons easier than the DOS original.
the original game is pretty easy to get into, at least it was for me.
Ofcourse, just gotta get used to the bindings and flow of things. I love the music in the dos original, the soundblaster, really like it but thats a matter of taste i guess.
I finished Lands of Lore 2 earlier this year.
Those bindings were a nightmare to set-up, luckily almost everything was customizable but you basically had to try every key to see what it does.
A mouselook mode for combat and exploring like any other fps, then a second point & click mode for interracting with buttons or opening doors or chests.
But i figured it out! Then forgot just recently what bindings i should use when doing LOL3. XD
Played the game when i was young, went through it multiple times, even on harder difficulties. One of the most memorable and interesting concepts i have ever found in video games, even considering how rough the controls where at the time. Played SS2 a couple times also. Waiting for the remake with high expectations and i'm sure i won't be dissapointed :)
As an absoulte die hard System Shock fan, i award you for the golden System Shock video review. You really have my 100% approvement! Thank you!
SS1 - A Game that still awaits to find its master. The remake demos makes me very optimistic. Those guys really are worth to own the rights of System Shock. I love you Night Dive Studios. And I still hope Tencent + Warren Spector doing a real leap with SS3.
Wow! I respect you for not only going back and playing old as shit games but also going in depth and explaining their systems. Love it and can't wait to see what you play next my friend!
fifty one whole minutes of kirk content to inject straight into my veins
cheers king
lol. I played System Shock (classic) back in the day. I think I even have the original box somewhere. It was a real treat back then. This and Ultima Underworld 2 were my most memorable games from Looking Glass.
Well done on a great overview of one of the classics. My 2 disagreements with your commentary though .. System Shock didn't have "audio" logs .. they were just written text. Only later when the CD version came out did they add audio. Secondly, OMG cyberspace was the best damn thing about the game. It was like nothing else ever. Ok so these days it maybe oldschool but when playing it the first time, cyberspace was just killer.
You know what would be hilarious? They release a sequel to Infinite, except about an hour or 2 into the game, Elizabeth morphs into SHODAN and you realize all the Bioshock games were a VR simulation to keep your brain occupied Matrix style and that you actually got cyborged. Could even make the Elizabeth escort parts some kind of a subconscious reaction to you "protecting" SHODAN. No studio these days would have the balls to try something like that, but it's fun to imagine.
I don't think voice acting is at all bad in this game, I find it really good, it makes me feel it's real. Professional voice acting is good but sometimes it sounds like professional voice acting instead of real, like in God of War, which doesn't sound believable.
To be fair, the distinction is that particular games like God of War are meant to be more theatrical, especially the earlier trilogy, while System shock was meant to take place in a sci-fi setting that was slightly more "grounded" and connected to our reality.
Slightly.
@@linkeffect82 You're right, and that's more or less why I think System Shock's voices are ok.
About the audio logs, I would agree with Razorfist on how better they did their job compared to the remake demo: In the original they're concise and to the point, where as the voice actors for the remake wont shut up until they get their Oscars.
On the other hand it bothered me to no end that the text and the audio on these logs never matched.
Kirk's Halloween icon is me waiting for the remake of System Shock
😂 Same here man
@@KIRKCOLLECTS I'd be stoked if they release the remake on November 6th, hopefully not 2072.
This aged like milk in direct sunlight on a hot summer day.
I picked this up in 2019 and was surprised how playable it was, it became one of my favourites. Yeah sure the movement takes a bit of getting used to and using grenades was often more trouble than it was worth but for a game originally designed for DOS its enhanced edition made it quite accessible and very enjoyable. I wouldn't exactly call SS1 an ImSim, more an FPS metroidvania but for paving the way for SS2 it deserves no less love.
Survival horror?
Run h-h-hacker!
Great video man and giving this classic the moment in the spotlight it deserves. I remember playing it and the sequel back in the day and man it was so ground breaking at the time. It's one of those games that quietly broke molds and introduced things that are still in games today but never quite got credit for it. This, SS2 and Daggerfall all had a big influence on the industry. Things that we take for granted today like leaning, being able to mantle, climbing up any surface, skills improving with use, and enemies that made your jiggly bits crawl up inside your body. For me SS and SS2 really broke the FPS trend by adding such awesome mechanics to interface so that you really got that feeling of playing the character.
I'm glad to see it's getting a long needed reboot AND.....that the new team is sticking to the original and not "reimagining" it. I'd love to see someone do the same with SS2 and Daggerfall.
I love solving the puzzles in System Shock .
they're pretty fun, honestly.
System Shock Steam Page: store.steampowered.com/app/41...
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System Shock Enhanced Edition was developed by Looking Glass Technologies and Nightdive Studios. It is currently available for PC through Steam and GOG.
Timecodes:
00:00 Intro
1:22 What is System Shock? What was Looking Glass Studios?
2:15 What's an Immersive Sim?
5:34 The impact of System Shock
9:00 Meet the Hacker
10:13 System Shock gameplay - The HUD and controls
13:59 System Shock Enhanced - Nightdive Studios
15:15 Welcome to Citadel Station
18:49 Presentation
21:46 Cybernetic Abilities
24:19 Hacking - The puzzles
25:38 Cyberspace
26:24 Combat
31:57 Vita chamber 1.0
33:24 Narrative - Morally compromised
36:06 Audio logs
41:11 SHODAN
48:50 Conclusion
@Brupcat Use the links in the description. For some reason the links in comments doesn't work.
Great retrospective on this amazing game. It is one of the formative gaming memories of my life. I lived in this world for months back in the day...
I bought the 3.5 inch disc version. I bought the CD-ROM expanded version. I bought the Steam version. I kickstarted the remake. I love this game like no other.
I didn't have the pleasure of playing this game until around my 30th or so year of living on this earth, but I enjoyed this classic very much.
The version I had played was the enhanced version, which I was very grateful for so I could enjoy better key layouts.
I still like this game quite a bit, though the sprites are not quite as sharp as I would like in comparison to some other FPS games around the time, and the cyberspace sections, though intriguing to me, we're definitely a bit of a hassle at times.
This was a very fun review that covered the game quite nicely, and I'm glad I watched it!
Thank you for this review!
"Welcome to Looking Glass, everyone there was amazing."
It's just like, the reason we don't have nice things isn't because people aren't making them; you can get all the best people together and make the best shit ever and it still takes two decades for people to actually notice... By then they aren't working together anymore.
I'm only 30 seconds in but you get my thumbs up for use of the AWESOME system shock main theme
This is what I call an incredible video, it should be presented in school as a cultural documentary.
At least, in my dream XD
Such a great game that Im old enough to remember it and played it to death both 1 and 2 and Im very much looking foward to the remake that NightDrive Studios are doing, lets hope they do it justice
Im sure Nightdive are doing and have done a great job on it.
Their Blood, Quake, Turok semi-remasters are awesome same with System Shock:DE.
Im gonna play their other remasters in time. To me Nightdive has become a staple of consistent quality.
But this huge SS reboot is intriguing, pretty sure its their biggest project to date, literally rebuilding the game with modern graphics.
They made a Raytraced Minecraft and Quake 2 RTX, damn I think System Shock 1 fully raytraced would look amazing. All those light up panels and computers, and it would work well on the areas in Research + Maintenance where you have to turn the lighting on / find the lantern
Really happy to see more love for System Shock 1! I find it still holds up extremely well to this day in a lot of ways, and even more so with the enhanced edition. Such a well put together and paced game.
Took me close to 17 years to beat this game...I missed ONE E-Mail and never got past level 6. LOL.
And this game helped me learn english a lot. Played this with a dictionary in one hand...so, "even harder mode".
Back in the day, the control scheme was not that unusual, as you had a proper package with manual and most often a keyboard layout card, some of which even coulf fit on top of certain keyboards. I still have my System Shock box somewhere.
I am playing the remake right now on our Series X and loving it! I just cleared the medical floor and am about to go to the next level. I missed this game in 1994 and was so happy Night Dive brought it back. Now that the game has been released across so many platforms it is selling good enough for the sequel remake. I played that back in 1999...and it was incredible.
Addendum- The old OS joke is now dead and gone. The System Shock Remake features buttery smooth player movement and gunplay that isn't just serviceable its functional.
I've never played the system shock games, but I have a lot of respect for the developers making this genre. It lead to quite a few of my favourite games, such as Dishonored, and Prey, Bioshock.
*edit* Holy shit, and Deus ex, I don't know how I forgot that!
24:08 I love how when you took the berzerk patch I immediately thought "Huh, so it just turns the game into Cruelty Squad" and only a few seconds later you said it yourself. Great minds think alike! ;P
Speaking of early immersive sims, do you know Corporation, aka Cyber-Cop? It has many design similarities to System Shock - a cyberpunk FPS with bits of RPG, hacking, and stealth - but it came out in **1990.**
46:19 Ho, hello Giger version of Medusa! I mean, for real, i am sure there is highly inspiraiton from Medusa and the Gorgons from the old greek art in that artwork of Giger
Let me just say this right now you are underrated af.
That's the stereotypical thing to say these days, get a real personality.
@@prezidenttrump5171 shit man you got me thinking.
I used to be so obsessed with System Shock when I was a kid. EVERYONE I knew had to know about it.
Aw, I like playing with the classic controls and no mouse-look. But I use the numpad for all keyboard-related inputs.
I missed this back in the day because it required a high-end PC (Pentium I recommended while I had modest 386), always wanted to come back and play it bat gave up due to the issues you mentioned in video. So glad remake is on the way
Here's a neat little tidbit: Bioshock's antagonist is an homage to the game's philosophical inspiration: Ayn Rand = And Ryn = Andrew Ryan
As a hard core SS1 fan, BioShock never really catched me. Ok! The water FX were cool at that time. But this Art-Deco romantizising is strongly related to the US. Internationally its nothing more than a curiosity. Nothing big. Its just missed the heavy weight CyberPunk resembles. Today there is a myriad of *-punk classifications. so this one my be called "Deco-Punk" ? I dont care.
IMHO: Nothing can beat real CyberPunk . Although i appreciate the effort that went into BioShock 3, while its no game for me.
What came closest to SS1+2 so far ist Arcane's Prey. But as usual, the best games are not recognized by the masses. Its was always a pity to sell sophistication in game design does not trigger the brain of the average consumer.
one thing (of multiple, but this specifically) that irked me is how you mentioned that the death system in this game makes death meaningless, but that's because it's not revolving around death, but the hardest setting. On the hardest difficulty, the player has 7 hours to beat the game before they get an instant game over, and while they might get revived, they would have to backtrack to where they started, thus wasting precious time. While I think they could've improved it with minor tweaks (the player losses time when they get revived, as it takes time for the Cyborgs to drag your body to the reconstruction device, and maybe have the timer be multiple timers as all of SHODAN's actions in the game are seperate rather than be part of 1 singular timer). SS2 also tried to have it be a negative, as you lose nanites when you die, but it's less tense as the player can replenish them in multiple ways.
Totally fair point. I’ll give higher difficulties and alternate modes a focus in the future with these types of games. Thank you for the comment Pepper!
If your first run in an immersive sim shows your personality then i wonder what call me Kevins personality is like.
One really early immersive sim I think is cool, is The Terminator. A DOS game from 1990. It loosely follows the films plot, either as Terminator or Kyle to kill/protect Sarah. You run around a huge L.A. stealing cars, manual and automatic, buying or stealing from shops, killing people, running from cops, robbing banks or cash registers, using medical items or hospitals to heal, finding weapons or not....even buying/stealing useless items like toothpaste or tampons.....It has a lot of immersive sim qualities.
This man is why my quarantine has been great putting me on games
System Shock remains one of my absolute favorite games of all time, even more than 25 years later. The controls were a little hard to get into, but man, once you got into the game.. you were IN... It had it's storytelling problems with some of the aspects (Mining laser shooting earth from the Staturn orbit? yeah ok I'll let that one slide), and the end of the game was anticlimactic, but the game was also restrained by the technology of it's time. But everything else? My god, what a game, what a legacy. Also the music, it is so unique, so different, so dissonant at times, but so absolutely fitting. Also, the game was published by Origin Systems WAY before they were bought by Electronic Arts.
I don't know, I thought the ending was great. After everything you went through, it felt fitting. Much better of an ending than 2 final act which is just painful.
Awesome dude I’m stoked for the long format
I swear by the weapon menu and how the reloading works with the mouse, it made combat feel more tense and interesting, like how in MGS Revolver Ocelot loves the thrill of reloading
doing a lot of stuff in SS1 with the mouse feels satisfying.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 it's not really hard and more about learning the ropes. It's as hard as the player can get used to it.
Oh wow. A video about one of my favorite games that released on my birthday. Cool.
the very first release was 320x240 and had no audio in the logs, it was just text....it was on a disk not a cd.
46:20 "Brings to mind the paintings of HR Giger."
Me: Bro! Bro...
Video: *pronounces "Giger" correctly*
Me: FINALLY,
Damn, almost an hour long video. But I guess you can never have too much of a good thing.
FFS okay youtube algorithm I get it, you really want me to play System Shock Enhanced Edition.
TBH Ive always meant to try these games as they birthed my fav genre. I remember in 2001 my dad built a brand new pentium 4 pc and the gpu came bundled with the original Deus Ex.
My life was changed from that moment onward.
Oh and btw instant sub. Really great channel!
honestly i was shocked by how little subs you have. first i was recommended this video by the algorithm, started watching and loving the production quality i honestly thought your like 500k subs and growing BUT damn son you are underrated i hope you grow like a mad lad.
When I was a kid, I could speak not a single word english and therefore was not very good at this game. Later, when I was older, I beat the game. I have since adored this unique franchise and its influence on the created genre. I hope the System Shock remake will be released at the now announced point in time and people will like it more than back in the day. It certainly will have a lot of coverage, either for good or for bad. If I remember correctly, the devs once stated that a successful SS1 Remake would warrant a remake of SS2 as well. And THAT is something I would really love to see.
I still dream of being in this game .... great video!
THIS CHANNEL PURE GOLD❤❤❤
I'm a simple man. I see any TH-camr who knows who Kikoskia is, I subscribe.
Still play ss2 from time to time, its an amazing game, the closest one i was able to find is prey and its dlc, great game too.
The cyberspace was always terrible and the ultimate showdown was a letdown.
I'm one of the lucky ones with fingers long enough to handle the original SS1 controls. Fingers dancing on the keyboard was the hacker-iest thing ever in the 90s and it fit my personal experience perfectly.
"Today is the 6th day of November."
Me: *looks at clock* You're absolutely right!
This is a great vid, even shedding new light for someone who has studied this game pretty closely. I was rather intrigued by your decision to save any mention of Shodan for the end of the vid, considering she's just as much of an introduction to the world as Rebecca Lansing is and she got mentioned right away.
Though I honestly think the name "immersive sim" is pretentious. The Shock metafranchise are FPS games first and foremost. System Shock 1 and the Bioshock games are straight FPS on the rocks, System Shock 2 is an Action RPG. This is less a dig at you Kirk, than a different priority in games: in my eyes the first and _only_ way to make a game immersive boils down to one word: Quality. I will always be more immersed inside a 2D platformer done right, than any first-person RPG stealth simulation game done badly.
This of course leads me back to System Shock 1, because its quality is pretty self-evident. It wouldn't have stood the test of time if it didn't have quality where it counts. LookingGlass didn't just decide they could call their game "immersive" (like Ubisoft with the word "iconic"), they EARNED it
Immersive sim makes as much Sense as Metroidvania, Soulslike or boomershooter. It describes a certain type of game and game design decisions.
System Shock inspired Immersive Sims but it's closer to a tightly directed survival horror experience than it is a full blown sandbox.
If you made a sliding scale of Immersive Sims with one end being strong atmosphere and tight game design, and the other end being freedom and player expression: System Shock would be at the former end along with Thief because of it's atmosphere.
Something like Prey is on the complete opposite end. Much more freedom in gameplay but lacking in atmosphere with huge environments with even lighting instead of the tight corridors and terrifying soundscapes of System Shock and Thief.
This guy have the clearest voice ever! Clear as heck even at 3.00x.
It's worth noting that you can add your own waypoints using the full map, and they actually show up in the actual game world as triangular prisms. This feature is :
1. Ahead of it's time.
2. A fucking life saver to mark paths you still need to explore.
And not only waypoints, but comments as well. They did that in Ultima Underworld as well, ofc.
@@VilleHalonen YES.
It is not ahead of its time when other devs like Bethesda do not want to add the writing on your map feature 😂. The game is a I am not an imm sim but I have its elements.
Just noticed it in my game list on steam. Fun surprise,,i owned ss one and two.
You absolutely have to do the sequel. Great video!
Oh, you mentionated "Fallen Aces", apparently that game is not available yet.
Very nice video. It's a shame System Shock 3 got acquired by Tencent. I can't imagine that going well.
Nightdive studios still owns the IP and rights. Tencent have the publishing right for System Shock 3 (which will eventually run out if they don't release it).
14:30 There was a mouse look mod released for free from the fan community.
Even though I was fan of sci-fi I still liked their previous game (Ultima Underworld) more.
There was something charming in old games before some standards were set in the stone...
Bravo, sir! A most excellent review
Gotta love when these old classics supposedly influenced a lot of modern games, but when you actually play them you see just how more complex and nuanced they are and how modern game design is exactly the opposite of what these classics where. Mass produced soulless and simplistic to the point i can just sleepwalk through the whole game.
Aye, played this on a 486 DX2 66 system, the controls were a pain but got easier as I played.
It was up and way down in certain areas as in frame rate, But I really wanted to play it at the time and didn't care how crappy system was or about framerate.
framerate was not good but still playable experience. Even with it graphics SS1 is still a very immersive experience, especially with the lights off, place to yourself and no noise from the outside. (and keep the music on)
Now I love that there are more younger and older gamers playing this classic before the Remake and really enjoying it.
This game is older than I am and is by far one of the biggest gems in FPS Immersive sims, hell even gaming in General, part of me
prefers it over SS2, NDS is really fumbling the the remake tho
The audio logs sound like they were done by Matt Stone and Trey Parker
some of the vocal samples in the game made me think of this, You should review the game Recoil, you should play it if you havent. Just subbed.
Excellent review!
34:45 Well the game does say - "Old habits die hard".
I've been looking forward to this :)
Love your take on ImmerSims, but what do you think (mayhaps in a video?) separates them from Open World Games or RPGs, or is this one of those "it depends" type things?
I would love for the remake to finally come out. I wish they would communicate a bit more with us. From the way things have been going, 2021 will pass and the we’ll get a shitty dev update promising something further down the line. Rinse and repeat. Excellent video though, I’m subbed .
I still remember the music of this game.
Finally got some time to watch this video and wow, here before 100k that's all I have to say
Is it an accident, that Rebecca Lansing's portrait for com-chatter looks like an even softer John Romero?
I don't know why, but the 2 button reload felt more satisfying to me than single button reload
It's clever, actually, because you have to whip out two hands to do it, which reminds one of the movements required in an actual weapon reload.
Subscribed. I remember being scared of this game as a child :) Sweet times. Any chance of doing Dungeon Keeper review as well ?
its really sad that System Shock 3 was recently confirmed to be dead
Also known as the 451 genre
A great review for a great game, Well done.
I am diggin' what I'm seein'.
1:32 - I am unfamiliar with this "Electronic Arts". I expect many great and non-evil things coming from them in the future.
Well... money and power corrupts weak minds ;-)
Cool video, thank you. I would only point out that Wizardry predates Ultima.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 we played text based versions on mainframes in the 70s at my mum's work, but I think it took the advent of micro computers to make them, before that it was seriously niche. For us, it was my brother and 2 friends, we were the entire scene in our area until around 1979 ✌️.