Log 1: My first date on the Von Braun

It's been a long week!

I started System Shock, it's damn hard. In a large number of ways it reminds me of when I first started playing Deus Ex (that was in 2003 I believe) and it was the first time I'd played a game with guns where I wasn't supposed to shoot everyone.

My previous experiences with FPS were games like Goldeneye and Doom2 where when people ran up to you you shot them; they were bad. Unless it was an express mission objective, everything was an enemy. In Deus Ex when I shot the first guy (Agent Denton's brother) it came to light that he was invulnerable and equipped with a plasma gun.

I stopped playing after that.

Eventually I went back to is, thought it through and worked out that maybe guns a'blazing wasn't the way forward and what resulted was a change in my perception; maybe I could beat this game by thinking it through.

Can you tell I hadn't played too many PC games by this stage of my life?

Back to System Shock 2; I've had to reconsider how I play the game twice.

The first time I tried it I chose a psi-guy. I figured, well I've played Bioshock I can handle this.

I couldn't, for a number of reasons.

The user interface (UI for those less in the know) is multi tiered and clunky. I don't hesitate to say that in some ways I'm spoiled by what we have now and have had recently, games where the UI is so streamlined as to be a part of the experience. I admit it's hard to be immersed when you're tabbing into your inventory every 2 minutes.

Changing between psionic abilities is tedious, requiring about 4 or 5 interface related clicks to change between them, and then channelling and releasing the ability to use it. This would be fine if the game were slow paced and I could afford the time to plan my play. But the game doesn't stop when you go into your inventory, the monsters keep coming.

This coupled with a small health pool, an unfamiliar bearing on my environment and learning everything else in the interface (data logs, skills, stats, inventory management, objectives) made me feel a little overwhelmed. My choice: try the game specialising in guns.

I rerolled a Marine; put points into endurance and guns and set out to explore the Von Braun once more.

...and there'll be a post on this on Sunday!