System Shock is one of those games that literally changed things in the industry, and had an impact that is still being seen.

On the one hand, you had a change in how the story was told. Rather than limiting it to static cut-scenes of what's happening now, you got in-game messages that showed you how things WERE. You never showed up in time to intervene, just pick up the pieces and do damage control.

On the other hand, you had RPG-style inventory control and upgradeable abilities in a first-person shooter. Previously, the only upgrades you got in an FPS were new guns, and maybe an increase in ammo-capacity.

No one had done these sort of things before, and they changed the way people thought about action games. You can still see the effects, in titles like Dead Space.

Do a little searching around online; someone has packaged the CD-version of System Shock in an executable that incorporates DOSBox, and is small enough to be run directly from a USB thumb drive.

Excellent. Nothing to say.

Oh, I've missed this one and think I'm going to dig it out again today. I've played it on my old DOS box way back when and then more recently through DosBox. Not 100% sure if it works well, but I saw an "XP friendly" .exe for this somewhere. Amazing plot, perfectly paced action, all tied up with a bow! Can't get much better than this! I give it a 10 because System Shock deserves it...and we need to counterbalance that unthinking 5 out there.

The year is 2072. After a beauty sleep of 6 months you wake up in the medical suite in the Citadel space station, and after receiving a warm welcome from the station's AI, you are attacked by a crazy maintenance bot. When you see the first dead body you start to realize that things have gone very, very wrong.

System Shock is more, way more than just running in corridors and blasting monsters. It creates an environment, it creates fear, and I dare to say that it was one of the first games that managed to do it so damn well. The station around you is alive, breathing, humming. It's a character just as much as you and your antagonist. And what an wonderful antagonist it is!, She won't give a damn about you when you wake up, but play some more, and things will get personal.

Beyond the story and the environment, the gaming experience is amazing. There are just so many things to do and try in System Shock, so many things the developers added to this game - Cyberspace, minigames, e-mails from earth, the desperate audio logs of the station personnel... You'll get to know them and respect their desperate fight. In some cases you'll hear them die. While fighting your way through the station, you'll learn more and more about the last days of the station, and what exactly happened while you were in a healing coma.

Look at this game today, and it's amazing how many new elements it introduced and how many are still around. System Shock is an action, adventure and survival horror game, probably the first of its kind. I played Fallout 3 a couple of weeks ago and was amazed how many times I kept remembering System Shock while playing it. To end in HOTU fashion, "Two thumbs up, way up!"

Sposed to be a classic but I have never been able to get it to work on a machine yet. Makes ya ticked off at Microsoft cause this windows 3.1 era game does not work on anything. We pay how much for windows on each system and they don't run our old stuff. I spose I have some Memory lack since there were about 6 types then and this game asks for extra files also.