System Shock

It's a fresh new coat of paint and just the right amount of controls simplification, while being absolutely uncompromising in its commitment to faithfully recreate the original. Level design is pretty much identical which is a very very good thing. One of the very few remakes where you could justifiably tell somebody that they're totally fine to skip the original! Night Dive may have taken a long time to get this one out, but they really hit it out of the park.

I'm about 90% done with my first playthrough as I write this, and I have to say I'm going to be doing more than one. I first discovered a deep love for this genre after playing Prey 2016, as that game was inspired by this one, I thought I had nothing to lose by giving it a shot. I haven't been disappointed. There is a bit of a trial and error grind to a lot of the game, but if you're anything like me and you carefully walk around corridors checking every nook and cranny for loot or enemies, then you'll likely only find one or two instances where you have to revisit audio logs or an area to get the full scope of what is expected of you. The game looks great, has a variety of weapons, upgrades, and a good crafting system for collecting resources. It's definitely a love-letter to an older time in game design, when there was less hand holding and you would often just be stuck in an area until you brute forced your way to the solution. The puzzles are pretty challenging, but can get a little tiresome after a while. Bugs were practically non existent, but the funny rag dolls the enemies do when you re-enter an area did make a door inaccessible to me for a time.

System Shock is a game that refuses to hold your hand, it's constantly confusing you with its labyrinthine level layouts, vague objectives and even worse to top it all off several key points of the game like codes are randomized. And yet I absolutely love it, all of those things are usually the opposite of what modern games do, they tend to hold your hand tell you exactly where to go so you're never lost and always just following a trail that's set for you and while that's fine and dandy its been SO LONG since a game has really forced me to sit down and actually observe the world that its setting me in. It forces you to immerse yourself in the world it has placed down for you and is always reminding you that you are COMPLETELY on your own against a pseudo-god AI that has lost all empathy, hell bent on destroying the human race. It plays very well in its favor by making you actually read over the logs you get, piece things together, make you realize "THAT'S what those stray explosives in the storage were for!" In a market completely saturated with games that refuse to let you do things on your own and refuse to let you get lost its nice to actually experience that feeling again in a way that doesn't make me want to turn the game off and never boot it up again. Overall the game is fantastic, combat is admittedly simple but still very engaging while the puzzles can really make you think and engage with them. My only complaint is that on the flip side of things being very loose with guidance it can be pretty tedious having to look through logs constantly and backtrack to specific areas in the hopes that its correct. Still though, amazing game!

It's a very good game, in the same vein as Prey and Bioshock, but it's not for someone who depends on questmarkers showing where to go next. If you're fine with listeting to audio logs and ingame messages to find out where to go next like the old days, this game fits you.

As someone who never played the original but greatly enjoyed some of the spiritual successors (Bioshock, Prey), exploring System Shock's space station was a fun and atmospheric experience. Be warned though, the remake sticks to the design principles of the original and does not have similar degree of hand-holding as modern games. Instead of a quest log or mission objective pointers, you're expected to listen to audio logs to figure out what to do. If interpret that as a positive or a negative is up to you.

So far. It's a pretty good recreation of the OG. I MAY ACTUALLY BEAT THIS ONE. DEVA DID AN INCREDIBLE JOB.

A very atmospheric and at times intense game, with a really nice visual look and a haunting soundtrack.

i vaporized everything and developed a mental condition called Pyromania, needless to say my system was shocked 10/10