I encountered the first Cortex Reaver on the flight deck. I just blew it away from the safety of the hallway with my green plasma ball cannon. I keep running into new weapons so I had to toss a few. I headed down to the storage deck finding nothing really significant apart from a hazmat suit in the armory. Some areas I couldn’t access so I’m assuming I’ll be back later. I got the floor security down to 1% too. “Access blocked by SHODAN” The camera must be in one of the unreachable areas. I’ll be hitting the Crew Quarters/Executive suites next. I wonder what’s going on in Beta Grove.
Anyone finished this game with the time limit? How much time do you have?
And is it true that you could play the game without any enemies at all?
You get very, very little time - I don’t remember how much, but I can’t imagine many people doing it without the benefit of an earlier playthrough.
And you couldn’t get rid of the enemies, but if you turned them down to their lowest level, they died in one hit and never attacked you first. So you could just walk straight past, occasionally splattering one for fun if you felt like it, and SHODAN’s idea of a trap became sending a load of cyborgs to stand around scratching themselves while you smashed nodes.
IIRC the time limit was seven hours.
Ugh. I hated the 1% security. Keep posting your impressions. Makes me relive the experience.
Beta grove is rough. All of those damn groves were pretty freaky. Also did you get the Wing Commander mini-game yet? It’s surprisingly detailed.
Wow, that sounds great. No wonder I loved the first and loathed the second. Knowing that, I should replay the game.
The Wing Commander minigame in SS1 and the Ultima minigame in SS2 were definitely labors of love (Sean Barrett for the former, myself and Doug Church for the latter). I remember at the time we were quite proud that Sean had more ships in our Wing Commander knockoff at one time than the current actual Wing Commander game supported. :)
And yes, on minimum combat difficulty you can have no combat except for I think one or two mobs you have to kill for trigger reasons. This was the mode my wife played the game on all during playtesting.
“The Trilackeys won’t get very far without their anvils!”
Yeah, I think you had to kill Diego a couple of times, and SHODAN of course. I played it through after finishing it with everything switched down to 0, just for kicks.
Deck 6, the first two Groves, Alpha and Delta weren’t too bad but I noticed the respawn rate is significantly higher in the groves. To the point where you can’t clear it all out without something respawning. Made me not want to hang around for too long. This is double for Beta Grove due to the Bio-hazard. I literally just ran to the switch and was ready to leave but then I noticed a door blocked by SHODAN so I ended destroying all the cameras in the grove and see whats inside. (an Earthshaker, ammo and some jump-jet program guarded by three security bots) 2 medkits and energy batteries later I’m making a made dash to the elevator with my health failing. (my energy ran out so my envirosuit switched off resulting in imminent bio-toxic death) I ended up dying in the Beta Grove Lounge before I could reach for a bio-toxin recovery item. A second before and I would have died in the grove proper resulting in cyb0rg assimilation or worst, an electrified interrogation bench.
Fast forward to the crawl shaft, security nodes kaput, heavily guarded room at the end cleared. I pull the lever on the wall and one mean SOB appears. He insta-killed me the first, second, third time I blasted him from around the corner with the megaplasma cannon thing. He teleported or something. It looked like the same effect when I died(red static).
Retribution on Beta Grove will be swift! pulls Jettison master control -Error- damnit! Thinking it was a quick fix I headed down to maintenance. Got the Diagnostic Log, consulted the Relay Machine - “Broken Demodule Interface” Thanks for the Info! Found Relay 428 but it wasn’t frobbable. I managed to destroy enough cameras to open the Maintenance Office but the inner door requires a retina scan. I grab a severed head laying around thinking I’m super smart and clicked the retina scanner while holding the head. No dice. Beta Groves all expense paid space voyage will have to come another day.
BTW I hate Deck 3. Apart from the broken lighting, those range attacking goo piles respawn in swarms all too frequently.
awsome report. Hell YES I hate deck three those little basterds are quiet, hard to see, hard to hit, and spawn like rabbits! I usually just run through the halls into safe corners in that level. You’re doing really good with the repairing quest. Got to find a good retina. It helps to go over all the audio logs you’ve found if you’re lost. They’re very nicely ordered by subject. Sometimes completely random audio logs can be crucial in the future.
WHY, THIS IS SPOILER, NOR AM I OUT OF IT
The red static was Diego being rescued by Shodan. Heh, heh, heh.
It runs the game reasonably well for me, but dosbox itself in general runs too slowly for my taste
back in the days of the pentium 90 dos games in gerneal ran 2-5 times faster than they do now on my 3 gig CPU 1 gig RAM machine. Its enough to make playing a game as involved and difficult (at least thats what i fondly remember) to frustrating to play, for now.
If I can find a better way to run it (dynamic remapping of keys, speed and sound issues) I will. Too bad, because as I remember it it was one of the best games of all time, let alone the best FPS
Not sure why the DosBox hate – you definitely couldn’t run SS1 in a P90 at the higher rezzes (I know, I tried back them). As long as your rig can handle 13000 - 15000 cycles, DosBox will run SS1 just fine. And yes, your 3Ghz rig should handle those cycles OK (mine does).
I never even bothered with those goo piles until I had the laser rapier. Run, run, evade.
I’m simply not that good with the controls. I’ve been using the Laser Rapier and just charging the goo while taking blasts to the face. It’s dark and they’re semi-transparent which makes matters worse. Luckly I think most of them respawned in the cargo lift room. Unless they can open doors…
Ok the repair quest took much longer than it should have. False leads from audio logs led me astray. For instance, believing I still needed to access the Maintenance Office to fix the problem, I went over all the Deck 3 audio logs. Not 1 but 2 logs mentioned the viewing room on the executive level.
My brain at work: viewing = involves eyes + I need an eyeball to get past the retina scanner.
Also the logs mentioned a time estimate when the maintenance staff would be able to use the viewing room since it was initially only open to execs. The estimate was six months. Checking the log dates, they were approximately six months old. I was off to the viewing room: a skeleton, a headless corpse. Where is the head? I looked for a good while thinking it was jammed in a corner real well. Nothing. But the logs made a perfect case for something of relevant significance being in the viewing room, or at least hinted at it pretty well. That theory, while a sound one, wasn’t sticking. I went back to deck 3 on the brink of thinking no head would work and I needed to locate a tiny eyeball out of a group of pixels who knows where. I ended up just grabbing another head in frustration and it worked! And in the end the room just had stuff. I went back to Relay 428 and used common sense aka the Demodulator on it and ta-da. All too easy. Back on schedule.
Back on deck 6, Jettison master control switch flipped, SHODAN tries to talk me down with two security bots. Doesn’t work. When I’m right in front of the door to the Beta grove lounge SHODAN gets even more desperate. (STOP I WANT MY EXPERIMENTS TO CONTINUE) And releases some of the experiments, probably before they have reached optimal efficiency in a vain attempt to stop me. I mow them down like retarded puppies and pull the jettison lever without a second thought. SHODAN sure must be pissed. There’s a contingency plan according to the email from Rebbecca. The last I heard of her was on deck 1. SHODAN makes a timely intervention and finally infers to the fact that I’m a serious threat. I prep for the next objective by securing the appropriate explosives.
Have you found the Skorpion?
No System Shock experience would be complete without a link to The Hacker’s Guide to Sin. Naturally it contains spoilers, because the craziest antics require advance knowledge of SHODAN’s plans…
- Alan
Just did and right on time for level 2 security bots.
Deck 7 was a pain because I didn’t find the medical reviver until I had explored the rest of the deck already. I figured it was required in order to survive the part when SHODAN traps you in one of the antenna rooms after planting the explosive.
I think I just hit “the beginning of the end” point. Things are looking bad for miss SHODAN, and she has yet to use the infamous “L-L-Look at you hacker” line.
Don’t hold your breath - as I recall, she doesn’t actually say it in System Shock 1. It’s just the test line from the audio installer.