Depending on how many of my posts you’ve read, or if you’ve spoken to me about games at all, you may have gleaned a very specific fact about me: my brain is fundamentally broken. While any normal person would be able to sit down and play a game, just one game, once, and be done, I have an inability to do that. Instead, I look at the game, read up on it, research the franchise, and then decide to play all of the games in said franchise. I’m doing it right now with Hideo Kojima games, I’m sort of doing it right now with Final Fantasy games, and I’m doing it again with System Shock.
System Shock is weird, though, because in theory there are only two games. That seems like a pretty open-and-shut case, right? Well, it’s not that simple. You see, after System Shock 2, the rights entered into a weird limbo and, from its ashes, arose spiritual successor after spiritual successor. The most obvious of these follow-ups is BioShock, since Ken Levine and friends worked on both, but games like Prey, Dead Space, and Deus Ex have all cited the System Shock series as jumping-off points for their franchises.
I have not played Prey, Dead Space, or Deus Ex, but they’re all gathering dust in my backlog. I never played them because I never played System Shock 2. I never played System Shock 2 because I never played System Shock. And I never played System Shock because it is really goddamn old.
But 2020 is the Year of the Backlog.
I’ve now completed System Shock, System Shock 2, and BioShock, and I’m ready to talk about them. Doing that is hard, though. These three titles were released over a span of thirteen years, which is a veritable lifetime when it comes to the video game industry. In order to compare these games, I need a metaphor. And I need to torture that metaphor.
I present to you: the Shock games as steak dinners.
In short: System Shock is an esoteric steak burger that you’d get at your favorite hole-in-the-wall place downtown. System Shock 2 is a perfectly cooked filet mignon from a top-notch artisanal steakhouse. BioShock is a surf-and-turf purchased in a chain like Outback. Let’s begin.
System Shock is hard to get into. Really, really, really hard. One may look at a screenshot from the game and surmise the controls, but they would be wrong. Absolutely, embarrassingly friggin’ wrong. Every single convenience of modern gameplay must have been invented shortly after the release of this game, because System Shock is impenetrably dense.
See that gun on the ground? You want to look down at it, right? And pick it up? So you pull back on the mouse and your character will look down, so the gun is in the center of the screen, yeah?
Ha ha, fuck you, idiot!
What you should do is take your mouse to the TOP of the screen and drag the little eye icon to the lower position. Now walk forward and grab the gun. Oh, you pressed W? You moron! WASD doesn’t work here! Instead it’s ASDX! Fucking duuuuuh!
I spent my first hour of the game bumbling around one room. I was opening up different versions of the game on Steam, I was checking online to make sure I hadn’t somehow broken my laptop. There was a constant buzzing in my ear of in-game alerts, asking me to engage with the world around me, but I had to ignore them while I Googled how to engage with them in the first place. It was like being asked to solve a Rubik’s cube while someone threw more Rubik’s cubes you.
By the end of the night, I had figured it out. And by the end of the next day, I was in love. System Shock presented me with intricate mazes and secret corridors. The bizarre enemies roaming the hallways stood in my way, but the security cameras and malevolent AI on computer monitors were my real foes. I was unlocking doorways and activating elevators. I was ejecting pods and sealing away monsters. I was discovering recordings of long dead employers of TriOptimum who had slowly fallen victim to Shodan, the evil supercomputer.
System Shock had an absolutely alien user interface…the controls were seemingly designed by Shodan herself. It lacked a clear quest log…instead of check list, I needed to re-open my email and listen to an audio file telling me of my next goal. The building I was exploring was an explosion of color and chaos, eased only by a mini-map in the bottom-left corner of my screen.
The game is a relic of the past and conquering it made me feel like a masterful time traveler. As I adapted to the demands of the keyboard, as I learned to interpret the visuals, as I learned to fight robots and zombies, I became the main character. I was a hacker for hire, and this game was my mission.
System Shock isn’t all bad. In fact, I’d say very little of it is “bad.” It’s mostly just outdated. However the game’s intricate map design creates a first-person Metroidvania experience (something I famously love) and the soundtrack is one of my all-time favorites (the vinyl sits on my shelf)!
I finished System Shock with an immense feeling of satisfaction and achievement. I didn’t just power through the outdated interface, I learned to use it. I let it feed into experience and, as a result, had a gameplay experience that was one of the year’s best. But I can’t recommend it to everyone. Not everyone likes backtracking through well-trodden corridors, some people can’t process visuals that are pixelated and blurry, and explaining that the UI is a bug but you can pretend is a feature isn’t exactly an easy sell.
This is why System Shock is an esoteric steak burger. This weirdo chef at his tiny little restaurant decided to make some strange aioli and smear it on a halved pretzel, toss on a steak burger made from beef that surely isn’t Grade A, and smother the whole thing with a condiment that was previously unknown to man.
It’s not your average burger. Gordon Ramsay would probably hate it. When it was put in front of me, I had to study it from a few different angles to figure out how I’d even pick it up. But boy, those ingredients come together in a way that is very distinctly me. It doesn’t have to be the best dinner out there, but I love it for all its eccentricities and oddities. I understand why you may not like it. But for me, it hits the spot.
Five years later, in 1999, System Shock 2 graced our computers. In many ways, this game feels like it’s just the first one, but made by actual human beings. It feels like a real video game. Your mouse actually controls where you look! You can use the mouse wheel to cycle between weapons! You can open up a quest log on a PDA! The ship you explore looks like an actual place where people would live and work and sleep and poop!
Navigating the Von Braun feels so effortless that I didn’t even really think about it. Walking feels right, looking around feels right, and pulling out a gun to shoot enemies feels right. At a core level, the mechanics feel fundamentally correct.
What makes System Shock 2 different, however, is its emphasis on emergent gameplay. While its predecessor was a merger of action RPGs and survival horror, the game felt very linear in what the player was asked to accomplish. Here, however, we are presented with choices right off the bat. During our training, we’re shown the difference between technical prowess, psionic capabilities, and good old-fashion guns. We dabble in each and then make a decision as to which path we want to take.
Then, over the course of the game, we earn kits that let us level up our stats. We can continue to push our psionic powers, generating magical shields and using the force to summon objects. Or, as tech wizards, we can hack our way through the ship, disabling cameras and turrets to keep our presence unknown. Alternatively, you can shoot everything you see and leave the Von Braun as you found it…in shambles.
There is a rock-paper-scissors aspect to the whole affair that feels perfectly weighted. For example, enemies are only sensitive to certain weaponry; anti-personnel bullets are useless against walking security mechs. Ammo is incredibly scarce, so there is a balancing act that goes into using firearms. You can never go in guns blazing, as every room is a puzzle to be solved. You are just solving it with as few bullets as possible.
Likewise, techs can disable cameras and turrets, sure, but not forever. Timers will reset after a few minutes, so it’s important to study your surroundings and sneak around with purpose. One wrong step and you could find yourself cornered, waiting in fear as the cameras turn back on and trigger the alarm.
Psionic attacks drain your energy bar at the bottom of the screen, so burning through your psi meter will leave you a sitting duck with no abilities at your disposal, lest you have an extra hypo in your inventory.
While it looks and plays (somewhat) like a first-person shooter, the game is far more nuanced than your run-of-the-mill shoot ‘em up. You must learn the ship. You must study your inventory. You must know your limits. You must have a plan.
What struck me about System Shock 2 is the confidence on display. It is incredibly sure handed. It gives you the tools to succeed, pushes you through the door, and trusts that you can make your way to the finish line. There are no distractions here, just pure, straightforward fun. So assured in its design, the game has trimmed any and all fat involved. It’s a lean, mean, gameplay machine.
This is why System Shock 2 is a perfectly cooked filet mignon. The chef has been doing this for ages. He knows that the beef speaks for itself. A little salt, a little pepper, maybe some garlic…that’s it. No complex sauces or frilly toppings. The filet, seared to perfection and oozing with flavor, doesn’t need anything else.
The chef understands the balancing act that goes into making filet mignon: the heat from the pan, the thickness of the cut, how long to allow the meat to rest before plating, the seasoning, all of it. Preparing a perfect filet mignon means understanding how to juggle these aspects. When it’s done right, it can be exactly what you want. It’s unsurprising; you know exactly what you’re getting every time. But I’ll be damned if I’ll ever turn down such an expertly prepared cut of beef.
Which bring us to BioShock. Released eight years later in 2007, this game has been referred to as “the thinking man’s shooter” by people that are not me. Incredibly smooth gameplay, beautiful artwork, and a noteworthy story all coalesce into one of the best-selling games of its time.
BioShock clearly borrows elements from System Shock 2. “Shooting guns” in ubiquitous enough that we can skip over that, and hacking has popped up it horribly misunderstood head frequently enough, but it’s the plasmids that set BioShock apart from its contemporaries while linking it inextricably to its predecessor.
The ability to shoot ice from your hands to freeze enemies, or electrify water and paralyze them, or ignite oil to burn them…that is the core mechanic of BioShock that sticks out to me the most. This is where most emergent gameplay comes from in the game, since gunplay is standard and hacking is minimal. There is a puzzle-box element to BioShock’s level design and it’s primarily built around plasmids. These functions are incredibly fun to mess around with. From hypnotizing enemies or making them a target for a bunch of killer bugs, the unique set of skills the player has makes the game feel varied and diverse.
What BioShock brings to the table that both System Shocks do not is a front-and-center story. When talking to friends and strangers, plot twists and “Would you kindlys” make their way into the conversation fairly quickly. The setting, too, is linked to the story as we explore an Ayn Randian society in ruin. Our story examines free will, objectivism, charity, and responsibility.
And I chose the word “examines” for a reason. BioShock engages with these concepts, but doesn’t really offer any profound analysis. It’s clear that there are ideas bubbling beneath the surface, but I remember walking away feeling a little disappointed that the game failed to make a salient point on objectivism or Ayn Rand or, uh, anything really.
BioShock had that slight odor of “play it safe,” the smell you get when a big studio pours a ton of money into a project. So much money, in fact, that the studio is then afraid of saying anything that could jeopardize earning that money back in sales. Middling plots and muddled morals are all too common in triple-A games (and movies and comics and television shows).
This corporate hand-holding didn’t make itself known in just the story, either. Unavoidable waypoints and giant guiding arrows dance across the screen, making sure the player never gets lost in the city of Rapture. No, the game isn’t completely on rails, but it’s also pretty hard to get lost. One may question why “not getting lost” is a bad thing, but it speaks more broadly to the lack of trust that permeates games where players cannot simply be left to their own devices. It is certainly enjoyable and offers a lot of fun, but it is very much a corporate product.
This is why BioShock is a surf-and-turf purchased in a chain like Outback. Restaurants like this strive for consistency. They strive for uniformity. They strive for mass appeal. When you enter an Outback Steakhouse, or walk into a Texas Roadhouse, or are dragged kicking and screaming into an Applebee’s, you are not doing so because you want some bold, inventive dinner. You’re doing it because you know it’s a safe bet.
After all, Outback isn’t bad. I can’t complain about this surf and turf. The steak is medium rare and the lobster is pretty good for twenty-five bucks. There is nothing deeply wrong with this dinner. But am I going to text my friends and tell them they HAVE to come here and try the surf and turf? No, I’m not. The meal gave me what I asked for, was exactly what I expected, met every threshold of acceptability, but will exit my mind as soon as I exit the restaurant.
So do I have a favorite among these? Like those dinners, it depends on my mood. I’ll play System Shock when I’m in the mood to play something that feels very specifically “me.” I’ll play System Shock 2 when I want to imbibe that bold, uncompromising experience. And I’ll play BioShock, or any of its sequels, when I want a sure thing; a game that won’t challenge me in any meaningful way, but will have that safe guarantee of being “good.”
Also, BioShock is a surf and turf because the game takes place underwater and that’s where lobsters live.
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