Grombolar: Old schoolers with poopy notebooks dare to differ, some of us want simplicity without any new features/graphical changes & such... Everything is updated, improved & so forth, it's not even funny when they only work on super-duper-über-winz0r -computers, making everything "BETTER".
Sadly yet another pass for me. Thought it was the whole point of GOG making games work as simply as easily in the first place?
STEAMy. :(
cogadh: And that's exactly what NewDark does, it makes things simply work. Without it, the game is almost impossible to run on any modern OS or hardware, even low spec hardware. It doesn't actually change anything about the game's content, it's still the same System Shock 2 that came out in 1999, complete with 1999-era graphics. It does increase the abilities of the game's engine, such as allowing to run it at higher screen resolutions and allowing modders to add higher polycount models, but it is otherwise the same exact game. Besides, those minimum specs are less than what a computer would have had 8-10 years ago. If your machine is lower than that, the problem is not GOG, the problem is you need to upgrade badly. Frankly I find it hard to believe that you are still running a machine with a less than 1.8GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and a DirectX 9 compatible video card/chipset.
I'd agree about ancient hardware and the need for an upgrade, but you're not quite right about the PCs from 8-10 years ago. 1GB of RAM was about the minimum in 2005 I do recall, but maybe that was just my potato desktop compared to the majority. Considering 2GB minimums were only stressed by the time of Windows Vista, you're looking at something that was arguably along the better equipped end of budget/mainstream computing.
I'm also curious if this will run on a N450 Atom netbook. All signs point to no. Not surprising, since Deus Ex runs a little sluggish on this thing. It's still a valid concern for people with netbooks (We're talking roughly 1.6Ghz clocked Atoms, 1GB of DDR2, Win XP/7 Starter. These things are much less capable at gaming than you'd hope for. They run Infinity Engine games, old school adventure games and the sort, but that's about it sadly. Something like idTech 3, Unreal 1, or 720p YouTube is stretching it--HD playback actually makes this thing come to a halt).
And the expectation that SysShock 2 should simply run on ancient hardware is not unfounded. But you are right, there are other variables, chiefly New Dark. Not a proper analogy at all, but I see it as almost emulating the original game, or updating the API to run DX9 (long may it live) instead of antiquated DX6; that should account for increases in hardware requirements. Still, as someone else pointed out here, 512MB GPU seems a bit...excessive.
