That section, if I'm right in thinking where about you mean, is a radioactive trench (as it is referred to in the log files). Staying up above the floor and using the bridges is safe, but going down to the floor will result in radiation damage. The horrible crackling sound I imagine is meant to be like a Geiger counter. Thing is, I get similar sounds when those repair bots are around.

I just finished playing through it for the first time... Wow, I never expected so much from a game made in 1994. It was amazing... Made well before it's time I would say.

How they managed to fit so much into ~100MB is beyond me.

Maybe it is a glitch. I just thought it was suppose to sound like a Geiger counter as you said. Electronic hi-hats, painful on the ears lol.

I just finished the game. I had never played it before it released here, and now that I got to play it I was instantly hooked. The levels are massive and well-designed, and I think the game does backtracking in a good way. The gadgets were also great fun :P

About the music/sounds, there were some sounds that annoyed me (headset user). One example was when walking through a certain area in level 2. I'm not sure if it is just ambient sounds for the area, or if it was caused by nearby hoppers. Other than that, the music is pretty nice, and often fits the game very well. SHODANs voice-acting is also top notch.

The hoppers make kind of a "beep-and-whine" sound when they come online after noticing you, and if memory serves, several of the other types of 'bots and 'borgs make chittering/chattering/'boop-beep' sounds when they're near and active, too. (And, as darthspoodius [as I like to mentally pronounce it] said, when you're in a radioactive area, there's a clicking sound meant to simulate a Geiger counter ratcheting away, warning you to not stand around!)

I don't know what the music coming to a halt in cyberspace is about, though.

So for people new to SS1, does it make more sense to use the Classic version first or the Enhanced version?

Since nostalgia isn't an issue, then the general consensus seems to be that playing the E.E. is the better experience. However, fewer people seem to be having problems with the Classic Edition(s), so that's a solid backup plan. I never seriously minded the original control scheme, but I was never a DOOM freak back in the day, either, and never tried to play this game in that way; a lot of other people consider the old game unplayable (or nearly so) without some form of mouse-look implemented.

I seem to remember one of the modders or someone else "in the know" mentioning that saves from the Classic Edition are compatible with the Enhanced Edition -- but also saying that the reverse is not true -- so you could theoretically start with the C.E., then if the "awful" control scheme or low resolution gets to you, switch to the E.E. and continue the same playthrough. (You'll probably want to get someone else to confirm the thing about inter-version savegame compatibility before trying this, though, as I don't remember where I read that, and I could have gotten it wrong.)

I'm new to SS1. I played SS2 for some time when GOG released it, but when I figured that I had been really stupid leveling up and should start over the game, I decided to do that later and moved to other games. Later hasn't come, and now it's on hold until I complete SS1.

The words enhanced edition would normally make me more suspicious than excited (and remake turns me completely off). In this case it felt like a great idea, though, since if there's one aspect of old games that I really don't like it's awkward control schemes. I've been trying a bit of both versions now, classic with and without the mod, and the EE comes clearly on top. Looks nice at 1440x1080, too. I'm going to go with that.

The save files are at least somewhat compatible, I was moving mine from EE to classic to compare them. As others have noted above, it sounds odd on level 2 when hoppers are near. I tried this part with the OPL3 synth in dosbox and it sounds like it's supposed to be ominous low ambient rumblings, but with general midi it's far too pronounced and interferes with the music in a way that sounds like there's two songs playing at the same time. Hope that it isn't going to a common feature in the game.

Would you say you... night-dived into enhanced?

i tried classic first for an hour ... but it plays super clunky

enhanced is the same + modern movement

go for the enhanced and have fun ;) ... totally recommend the game ... its a blast to play ... but only @ enhanced version

I've read that there is a windowed mode with the enhanced version. Is that available in an Options menu, or is there some kind of command to activate it?

You need to edit the sshock.ini file in the installation folder, and the fullscreen vs windowed option is the very first thing you'll find.

So if it can run in a window, that means it doesn't use Glide, right?

>How about you people? Anyone playing the original System Shock for the first time now, with the Enhanced edition?

I just finished for the first time; I'm an old hand with SS2, and had noodled around a little with SS1, but it never worked well enough for me to get into. The Enhanced Edition was still a little painful, and it took me several hours to really settle into the controls, but the game ran well enough, right away, for me to stick with it.

It was a good game! For the era, it must have been absolutely freaking mindblowing, and I'm a little bummed that I missed it, way back when. This game didn't hand you things, you had to figure them out. (I think the 'head puzzle' would have been really difficult if I didn't have the hint book available.) It reminds me quite a bit of Ultima Underworld, that same unforgiving design. It was a world that was actively trying to kill you, and it was up to you to figure out how to survive. If it had been a tabletop game, I'd have thought the GM really enjoyed watching me die.

I think I still prefer 2, overall, because it has a better sense of atmosphere and pacing, particularly in the endgame. It does fear better than SS1 does, as well. SS2 is kinda scary, where SS1 mostly isn't. It's tough, but it's not really frightening.

I'm kind of torn between the level designs. SS2 felt more real, in the sense that it felt more like people might actually have used those spaces to live in, but I liked the weird complexity of the SS1 environment. It was very 'gamey', very much a product of the 'use every square inch of the level' design era, and it was ridiculously corridor-heavy -- way way way too much area devoted to moving around, as opposed to actually using. But it was fun to explore. Realism: low, fun level: high. SS2 had a lot more useful area per corridor, but exploring wasn't as much fun.

I also like the sense of taking control back from Shodan. You didn't really get that, in 2. You couldn't really ever make areas safe, but in 1, if you stuck to small areas of each level, you could clean them out and transit them easily. I enjoyed that sense of progress, the ability to more or less earn the right to go heal up safely. I went back to that level 1 healing station a LOT. Heh.

I had a problem at the end, where I couldn't win, but someone pointed me at turning on vsync, and that fixed me up. The end is a bit anticlimactic, too: SS2 did that a lot better. The end of SS2 is freaking *epic*, and SS1 is just sort of... okay, it's over now, you win. yay.

Still, on the whole, it's one of my better $10 purchases, and I'm definitely glad I bought it.