Download System Shock

System Shock is one of those games that need no introduction. It's these PC games that everyone should play. However, in case you havent played or *gasp* never heard of it, here's a rundown.

The game takes place somewhere in a dark future. It starts off with an anonymous hacker, who just managed to hack into TriOptium company's network. However, before he can get anything out of it, the TriOptium security guards bust him. Instead of giving him a life sentence in some prison or putting a bullet in his head, Edward Diego, a TriOptium Executive, gives this hacker an opportunity: hack into Citadel Space Station's AI (called Shodan) and he will be released from all the charges and also get valuable military grade neural implants as a nice bonus. The hacker, of course, takes the offer and succesfully hacks Shodan. Diego keeps his promise and after they install the implants, the hacker (you, the player) enters a deep healing sleep.

The game starts off six months later. The player wakes up and finds out that the whole station has gone haywire. The AI Shodan, who has developed a god-like persona, has taken control of station and slaughtered all the humans aboard, leaving only mutans and his robotic servants to wander the hallways. As there's no one to control him, Shodan plans on unleashing the space stations weapons on planet earth. Its up to you to take out Shodan and get out of there alive.

In a nutshell, System Shock is a roleplaying game with puzzle solving and FPS elements. You wander around the station in first-person perspective, pick up tons of items, fight against mutants and monsters, solve puzzles and problems and fight against Shodan's evil plans.

There's lots of things to write about this game, but I dont really know where to begin. It's near-perfect. The only bad thing I have to say about this is the status screen which takes over half the screen (which thankfully can be made transparent). The music is also a little lackluster, but at least its not that horrible. Other than that, everything is excellent. The gameplay, the storyline, the longevity, fighting, puzzles....

If you havent played it, you must!

Start the game with CDSHOCK.exe, not SSHOCK.exe. This way you'll run the CD version, with the option to use a higher resolution (up to 640x480 instead of 320x200) and speech audio for emails and logs. You'll have to enable these in the options after starting a game.

The version available here is the CD-Rom version, not the floppy disk version. It contains all the necessary files to run the game.