Not to sound like a Pretentious Gamer Man, but I really love how deliberately obtuse this is, especially in comparison to how the later Shock games would streamline both level design and game systems. Not to mention the fact that it's just gorgeous to look at while sitting at a total of 8 gigs(!), which just goes to show how lucky we are to have such a high-gloss remake of a game like this. Firmly believe that if Baldur's Gate III hadn't come out and (deservedly) taken over the world last year, you'd have a lot more people coming out of the woodwork to talk about this one.

I give up. I tried to like this game as I thought it would be right up my alley but no, I've wasted enough time in Cyberspace already, I'm done.

Sometimes life ain't fair :D I was looking forward to playing this, I really was. For years now, decades at this point, this game (well, technically the 1994 original), was on my backlog as one of the greats. You know these kinds of games everyone keeps gushing about when you bring up the "good ol' days". For me, it's in the same bracket as Deus Ex or Thief - old and somewhat clunky immersive sims that have a lot of jank and a lot of charm. I love these games...well I usually do.

Let me say that the game starts off really strong. You're thrust into this dark cyberpunk world that has a really distinct visual style. Within the first seconds of the game, I was hooked by the aesthetic. It's kinda hard to explain how the game looks, at least it is to me. System Shock looks like a modern game, it has very detailed models for enemies, weapons, and environments. Same goes for the visual effects - lightnings, explosions, fire, everything looks very elaborate and just as you would expect in a modern, AA game made with Unreal Engine 4.
However, and I know this sounds like it doesn't make any sense at all, System Shock also looks like a retro game at the same time. How did they achieve that? Well, it's mostly due to brilliant texture work. Textures in this game have this very particular pixel-style quality to them. By that, I don't mean that there is some PSX filter laid on top with the intention to evoke some retro CRT vibes as some Indie horror games like to do these days. No, the devs behind the System Shock remake somehow figured out how to design textures, that fit into a modern looking game while still keeping true to the visual style of the 1994 original. It's hard to put into words for me but it really works well. To me, System Shock looks like a mix between Blade Runner and Alien - retrofuturism the way I like it. You got your neon lights, your shitty explotative conglomerates that couldn't care less about ethics as long as they can squeeze every last buck out of their corporation, hacking, cyborgs, and of course, a sentient AI with a god complex.

That brings us to another aspect of the game I really liked - Shodan. The omniscient AI in charge of the space station where System Shock takes place is still a great antagonist, even 30 years after the orginal released. Shodan creeped me out. You interact with her in two ways. Shodan either shows up on various screens scattered around the space station. Here, she teases, challenges, and insults you and tries to discourage you from progressing further. After all, resistance is futile when facing a god, isn't it? You learn more about how Shodan perceives herself by picking up and listening to her audio logs. Here, she explains how she came into contact with various religious concepts by scanning the earth's databases and realizing that she fits the description of a god rather well. I'm not going to go into detail too much about what Shodan has planned to do in her new role as a divine being. Just know that she is scary af which is further emphasized by the brilliant voice acting.

So far, everything I said sounds pretty awesome. And it is - the premise of the game, the setting and the atmosphere are impeccable. The first few hours of the game were amazing. I was exploring the devastated space station, looking for items, weapons and, well...my objective really. See, that's something I have never seen done like this in any other game. System Shock doesn't really have a main quest. Sure, you know that there's an AI that has gone rogue and needs to be stopped - by you. But how you're going to achieve this is not clearly stated in some kind of quest log or whatever. There's no marker on the map for the next step or a text on your HUD telling you what to do next. Instead, you collect a bunch of audio logs left behind by the crew members of the station where they lay out what one could do in the super unlikely case that Shodan would have to be stopped. Pretty early in the game, you can basically access every level of the station. It's now up to you to figure out where to go and what to do. I know this sounds frustrating and it kinda is but somehow, deep down, I can't express enough how much I respect the devs for doing that. That's the kind of stuff I play janky retro PC games for as nowadays, no one would dare to do something like that.

But, and this really is one of the major reasons why I decided to put this game down for now, the level design can be really awful at times. So, as I said, you have to make your way through the station without really having any clear direction. This inevitably leads to backtracking. You may find yourself finding an audio log explaining how to find a specific code in a location you've already been before that you need to enter in another location that you've also been before. That stuff happens all the time. And, frankly, that would be alright if traversing the levels was fun. However, to me, it got old really fast. For some reason, the devs decided to let enemies respawn again and again and again. You'll fight the same guys over and over again. You never truly feel like you have completed anything. I'm sure this is intentional. The game doesn't want you to feel safe, it wants you to always be on the edge, always looking out for enemies or one of Shodan's schemes. I think that could work if the level design wasn't as confusing as it is which makes traversing it an incomprehensible, chaotic mess. To quote one of the OGs of video game reviews: "What were they THINKING????" The game even makes fun of this. There's an audio log that explains why the structure of the space station is such a complete mess. Again, I'm not going to give too much away but when I found out about this reason, I chuckled but it was an angry chuckle...the angriest chuckle :D See, it's the kinda thing were a piece of media wants to make fun of something by replicating that very thing. Sure, you made your point but you also contributed towards that problem by reproducing it yourself. Not a fan of that.

So, frustrating level design is one thing, and one I could probably come to terms with but unfortunately, there is another gameplay element that killed the game for me. If you played System Shock, you probably know what I'm talking about. Yeah, the god damn cyberspace levels. Every now and again, the game requires you to enter cyberspace - a completely separated part of the game where you take control of a digital space ship shooting your way through a Matrix-like 3D space where everything tries to kill you. At first I thought this was a nice distraction from the main game - a fun little challenge that helps keeping things fresh when you got tired of exploring the space station.

I was wrong. Cyperspace sucks.

First of all, I got physically sick moving around in that open 3D space. Upon entering any room in cyberspace, I immediately lost track of any direction. Often times, there are multiple ways leading to multiple sections of the level that you can take. More than once did I get lost and kept flying to the same locations over and over again. There was one level where my dumbass brain would make me fly straight out of the entrance again just because I couldn't compute where the hell I was and where I was supposed to be going :D Now, maybe that's a me-problem. But man, just look at any screenshot from cyberspace and tell me that it doesn't look super samey to you.
On top of that, once you die in Cyberspace, you're thrown out and have to redo the entire thing again. There are no checkpoints (at least I didn't figure out how to enable them if there were any) which means that sometimes, minutes of hard-earned progress is just lost. As I said, that really killed the game for me in the end. I was at a Cyberspace station in the reactor level and after like 5 tries I gave up. Shodan - you win. Congratulations, destroy earth or whatever, be my guest. I'm out.

So, being so frustrated in the end, why would I give this game a somewhat high rating? Well, I mean ... bro ... it's basically still a game from 1994 at its core. The remake is super faithful to the original. And, for the time, this game must have been mind-blowing. Yes, it's as obtuse as they come. The game doesn't hold your hand and it doesn't care if you wander around aimlessly for hours. It wants you to be sucked into this cyberpunk horror atmosphere and it succeeds at that. However, for me, I would have preferred some hand-holding. I wouldn't mind not having to face the same waves of enemies again and again. I would have loved to have a feeling of accomplishment, of having "conquered" a section of the station, of really making tangible progress. This game doesn't make me feel that, but that's ok. Definitely give System Shock a shot if you're at all interested in old immersive sims with a sci-fi twist to them. It might not be the game for me, but it might give you a unique experience that is pretty much impossible to find in modern games.

Looking Glass Studios were the originator of a new design philosophy in gaming, that still sees ripples in games like Dead Space, Bioshock and Dishonored.

What we have here is the original System Shock, pulled out of it's clunky PC era veneer, and given a new paint job. It does turn into a mix of old and new. The layout and story mimick the original well, but it feels more in line with Bioshock to play. Even though the controls can still be arcacic at times.

Maybe the closest comparison is Resident Evil 2 Remake. It has the same setting and story as the original, but so much of the moment to moment gameplay has changed to almost be unrecognizable. A museum piece for the modern era.

The exploration and cheesy but awesome 80s sci-fi story is where this game shines. The flat, outdated cover shooter gunplay and constant ambushes that sap all the joy out of the game is where it faltered.

Highly enjoyed essentially walking around the pages of "Neuromancer". Early stages have a great balance of atmospheric space horror, metroidvania puzzle-solving and immersion. The design on the space station is a cyberpunk masterclass, SHODAN and her many robotic and bionic aberrations are excellent antagonists.

The deeper the game goes, the more some of the most tedious elements take over. Every shootout has one dimension - you have to lean from cover so that the stupid enemy ai shoots into the wall, while you shoot into them. If you happened to be leaning from a wrong angle, well, bad for you, because you're going to be shooting the wall and eat all the bullets instead.

Despite having many survival horror tendencies, the game doesn't offer you any alternatives to shootouts. Stealth is non-existent, the enemies always automatically know you're there. Running past them is mostly not an option - they've got perfect aim and hit like a truck.

Perhaps the worst idea in the game - and it gets used a lot - is ambushes. Every level has at least a couple, and often more, encounters where you just open a door or get off the elevator and immediately get blasted by a pack of enemies. Other times you will be just suddenly attacked from the back or from the air by motherfuckers who are somehow silent like ninjas despite being a mutated sack of flash or a bucket of bolts.

When this happens in a Souls game, it's funny, because you expect to die a lot. You take your slapstick death, pick up your souls, and do better next time. In a survival horror scenario with limited resources, it's pure sadism. Your rare and precious health items get wasted like nobody's business in situations that you have zero chance of preventing. I have never abused save scumming as much as I did in this game, and boy does it get old fast.

The final straw for me was Beta Grove. The combination of time constraint, constant ambushes, and exploration boiled down to just running in circles looking for switches was one of the least fun experiences I've had with videogames.

I'm a huge fan of everything this franchise inspired - from the more actiony version in Prey to pure exploration in SOMA - and this version had a lot of that DNA going for it. However, the gameplay eventually just got too tedious for me to bother finishing the game, even though the story was so captivating.

haha... wouldn't it be funny if there was an option to just surrender so you'd turn into a cyborg and get to call shodan mommy all day?..haha

Vraiment sympa... au début. J'ai vraiment adoré au début, la sensation d'être perdu, l'atmosphère oppressante et les ennemis qui représentent de vraies menaces, tout avait bien commencé.

Malheureusement, plus on avance dans le jeu, plus on se rends compte qu'on évolue pas, on est tout le temps dans la merde, les objectifs sont littéralement juste cachés, je demande pas à ce qu'on me prenne la main comme dans GoW: Ragnarok mais j'aimerais AU MOINS savoir quoi faire.

Les combats sont pas si mauvais mais on n'évolue pas, malgré les composants qu'on peut récupérer etc... ça change pas grand chose, il faut toujours une dizaine de balle pour tuer un ennemi qui te tue en 3 coup, bref, c'est pas du tout satisfaisant.

Peut être qu'avec des mises à jour le jeu deviendra plus accessible, on espère en tout cas.

I never had the chance to experience the original, so this is my first time coming to this title and I have to say that there's a lot that's impressive about the cohesive world design and maps that truly came to later define Immersive Sims. I think I agree with the take that this is more of a dungeon crawl than an Immersive Sim. It's also a solid story with memorable beats. Cyberspace and a couple of the levels still kinda suck in that way some 90s games did of being too obtuse and poorly paced and I'd have liked to see that stuff simply streamlined out but maybe that would have pissed off the fans.

Still, much better than I expected it to be and I'd recommend just setting cyberspace to 1 so you can get through that as quickly as possible.

Another game I started off really weird with. I played this on launch, really excited to see a reimagining of what would end up inspiring games like PREY and Bioshock and... man was I disappointed. It wasn't... bad per se, but it felt way too cryptic for its own good and relied too much on being faithful to the original for the sake of the fans. A great thing if you are indeed a fan of the original, but not a good thing if you are a newcomer.

After playing SS2 and falling in love with that game so much to the point where it quickly became an all-time favorite for me, I was interested in revisiting this game again, and the recent patch felt like the best opportunity. Does it click fully for me now?

Yes and no. I appreciate and respect this game a lot more now then I did prior, especially as a remake, but I still largely prefer SS2 and I really feel that you should play that game first if you're at all interested in this franchise. That's a game I think anyone can pick up and enjoy. If you liked SS2 already and want something more challenging to pick at your brain or are incredibly familiar with the original, then this game is for you.

One thing I'll immediately say is PLAY ON MISSION DIFFICULTY 1 IF YOU AREN'T FAMILIAR WITH THIS GAME IN ANY CAPACITY. And if anyone complains at you for doing this, fuck them. This is the big thing that really made me want to revisit this game, since mission skill 1 is supposed to give you waypoints to your objectives on your map and they supposedly didn't work on launch for some reason. And I think save for some of the bugs and jankiness that exist as of writing, this is a great way for people to play this game at first. It's not to say this game is unnavigable outside of it, this game does a good job telling you what to do so long as you listen to audio logs and emails (and the game just gives you the waypoints, no objective list, you still need to put the pieces together to figure out just HOW to do it which I enjoy), but what you have to memorize is way more then in SS2 (a game that actually KEEPS TRACK of your objectives on any skill), and there's no way to take notes in-game save for the steam overlay if you play on there. That and the later half of this game really likes to force you to backtrack to previous floors just to grab one specific item or memorize something for later. At least Abe's head is on the same floor as the door you need to unlock, but if I didn't know I had to memorize the CPU node terminal numbers on my first playthrough to get the self-destruct code, I would've HATED having to go back to write them down again. My only real issue with the waypoints is that sometimes they won't disappear after you did what was tagged in that area which can cause a bit of confusion on what to do next if your brain forgets what you have to do next. As an example, the objective marker on the Cyberspace computer that unlocked the doors to the antennae on engineering didn't clear up even after I destroyed all the locks, which made me second guess myself for a bit since I remember on my first playthrough I forgot one and had to go back to destroy the last one. Again, not a bad thing, and for all I know this'll get fixed soon, but it happened pretty often and it bugged me.

Another thing I'll say off the bat is I really didn't give the combat as much praise as I probably should've back then. Sure, anything is better then the OG's combat, but this game's gunplay is REALLY satisfying. Headshots are meaty and satisfying and slicing a dude with a laser rapier in half and seeing all the blood splash out never gets old. I really appreciated this game's focus on survival period this time around, compared to how frustrated I felt on my first run. When I got into that mindset of vaporizing worthless items for scrap, keeping the ones that were more valuable to recycle later, and playing liberally with ammo and using all my resources everything really clicked with me. At the very least I just wish there was an auto-vaporize function for items that have no as-is recycle value, since it meant after a certain point I focused more on the items that I KNEW had a decent payout, being electronics and broken weapons.

The cyberspace sections aren't bad either imo. I turned them to difficulty 1 on my first playthrough since I remember really hating them in the demo, but idk they were a nice pacebreaker. They aren't exactly complex, but they're fun and simplistic for what they are.

I think timing was what really set this game back for me when it first came out. Comparing this again to something like the RE1 remake, at least RE had so many other games before it that proved to be good starter points. System Shock hasn't had a game since 1999, so in turn more people are inclined to make this their starting point, when it's easily the second least approachable in the series next to the OG, and leading to unfair comparisons (Me wishing this game played more like BioShock 1 was a bad take looking back, since that series plays nothing alike to this one, even compared to SS2). Again, if you want to play this game, either play 2 first or be familiar with the OG, and set that difficulty to 1. Overall a fun time and a great remake, but WILL be make or break for people if you aren't accustomed to this game's specific style of design.

The 1.2 update is a fucking disgrace. Nightdive delayed the release of the update by several months to coincide with some console bullshit, and it turns out the PC version of 1.2 wasn't even fit to be shipped as evidenced by the fact that the game is now even buggier than before. They stated this update was done MONTHS ago. I guess all those months weren't long enough to do any QA.
All previous saves are now broken. Dropping the default melee pipe can allegedly crash the game. HUD opacity is broken. Key rebinding access is still only partially provided. All GOG achievements are broken. Access to the builds required to revert to a previous version in GOG Galaxy has been REMOVED for some unknowable reason. Cutscene subtitles disregard user configuration. And to top it all off I've heard that the revamped Shodan fight which was terrible at release is now somehow even worse. I wouldn't be surprised if the random crashes that drove me to give up my last 3,3,3,3 run are still in the game.
Great fucking work Nightdive. Both Steam and GOG forums are full of threads complaining about bugs.
- - - - -
I want to love the remake but it's riddled with so many small irritations, both technical and tonal, and coupled with Nightdive's scummy behavior in the years leading up to the release that my view of the project is repeatedly soured. The remake is so frustratingly close to being excellent.
- - -
Yeah the new Shodan fight is fucking terrible.
Bugs I ran into in this playthrough:
Vaporize All hotkey vaporizes scrap.
Z-fighting on elevators during transitions.
Enemy giblets frequently display graphical errors.
HUD Opacity cannot be configured.
Cutscene subtitles cannot be disabled.
Map markers cannot be placed.
Camera map icons sometimes persist on the minimap after camera destruction.
Damage sound effect from getting hit by a plant mutant's attack persisted until I reloaded from the title screen.
The Executive level railgun disappeared as I picked it up. The interstitial animation played out, but there was no visible model of the weapon. The railgun was nowhere to be found thereafter. Eventually I was able to acquire one of the later instances of a railgun, but this still isn't something that should have happened.

Improvements:
The level 7 trap finally kills the player after all this time.
That's it. That's the only improvement after a year.
You know what, since all achievements are currently bugged, I'm not even going to suffer through the 1.2 Shodan fight. They had a year to implement a healthbar and post boss monologue autosave. Yet somehow failed to realize how crucial such features are. For reference, the current 1.2 final boss is a long enemy gauntlet where you only have access to one shitty weapon at a time and cannot see your healthbar. There are no checkpoints. There are no health pickups. It is long. It is boring. There is an unskippable boss intro. I'm not willing to waste any more of my time on this shit that is somehow worse than the 1994 Shodan encounter. I'm marking this as done.

Impressive that this game exists, and manages to make the original game fairly accessible while feeling as though it remains faithful and representative of the original. As a result of that however, a lot of the frustrating aspects of the original remain. If you aren't using a walkthrough, you'll find yourself backtracking a lot, and digging through audio-logs trying to work out your next objective is, this wouldn't be so bad but the UI for the audio-logs is particularly unintuitive. It also shares the curse of many other immersive sims in that it falls apart at the end and the final 30 mins or so are very forgettable. Still, in terms of what Nightdive did with the remaster I have few complaints.

20/03/2024 - Por enquanto, jogando. Inicialmente achei um pouco travado. Ritmo bem mais lento que um Deus EX, por exemplo (que é a minha referência de Immersive Sim). Mas é um jogo de 199x, então, dá pra relevar. No começo achei bem díficil, talvez frustrante, até. Isso porque você começa com uma arma de curta distância (um cano) e em algum momento você encontrará inimigos com armas de raio, que atiram á distância e isso será um problema até você conseguir sua arma, também. Fora isso, o que eu posso dizer por ora é, a narrativa é excelente - e é isso que o jogo se propõe a fazer. Tudo é contato através de audiologs ou fragmentos de textos - como na maioria desses jogos. E a história em si é muito boa. É muito legal imaginar que há cerca de 25 anos, alguém teve uma ideia de futuro que cada vez mais vai se tornando possível. A temática é muito bacana, mas fica repetitiva rápido, portanto, apesar de estar numa estação espacial, poderia ser mais diverso como era é em Prey, mas de novo, pra um jogo de 25 anos, tá liberado. No mais, é um ótimo jogo.

(Winner of the "Re-Bastard Award" for Best Remake/Remaster of 2023, speech below)

Oh, what a road this has been. Let's make a quick rundown of the game's trajectory, shall we? The game's rights were stuck in a weird limbo, owned by an insurance company after the dissolution of Looking Glass Studios. Night Dive scooped them up and tested the market with re-releases, and that gave them the confidence they needed to try for something more.

After their relatively successful kickstarter campaign, the game needed to be completely rewritten to move from unity to unreal, which forced them into a hiatus and requiring more funds. But after 8 years of uncertainty, it was finally our chance to re-unite

The game just feels like what a remake should be, taking the original game, improving on its technical limitations and adding its own spin to the gameplay and aesthetics.
The devs clearly cared about recapturing what people enjoyed about the original, but wanted to take it further than they could have 29 years ago. Using the laser rapier has never felt so good! Ah, but you get my point. That said, regarding the "all remakes are bad" crowd. Let's see how far you'll nominate the original in next year's /vr/ award

GENRE DEFINING. A TOUR DE FORCE. A LOVE LE-

In 1994 brutal cyberpunk horror game System Shock set the stage for the fps action adventure genre that would dominate video games until MOBAslop fortnite forever games were invented (I assume) in the mid/late 2000s. Her 2023 remake is a faithful reimagination poised to capture the hearts of modern gamers.

You are a voiceless protagonist of dubious moral standing known only as the Hacker. Waking up on an enormous high tech sprawling satellite known as Citadel Station orbiting Saturn, you set out with wrongs to right, computers to hack, and hearts to break mutants to shoot.

As you blast, hack, and puzzle your way through Citadel Station, you learn more about the events leading to your fateful stay through audio logs, radio transmissions, and macabre environmental storytelling. System Shock's story excels in its simplicity - you must stop SHODAN, the rogue artificial intelligence that has been conducting inhumane and civilisation-threatening experiments on those living in Citadel Station.

SHODAN is the ever-present, ever-watchful mommy matriarch to Citadel's mutants and mechanical monsters. Goading and impeding the Hacker where she can, she believes herself the deity of Citadel, summoned into existence by the perverse will of her former handlers (this is true to what happens in real life when you make AI art). Not only is SHODAN always watching, she's one of the only characters that will directly communicate with the protagonist. Her ruthless, humourless malevolence lends itself beautifully to the already oppressive atmosphere of System Shock.

This title competes with its contemporaries regarding gameplay, but remaining true to the original it retained aspects that a modern gamer may find a little rough around the edges. Backtracking was a mainstay in many older FPS games that fell out of favour with newer titles, and System Shock has it in droves. I don't have a problem with tasteful backtracking à la Half Life or Bioshock, but I often found it grating having to scour through doors and tunnels to find that code I didn't write down. The game's cyberspace sequences also took a toll on my patience, though thankfully these were few and far between.

The game is visually impressive and I have a soft spot for the retro pixelated textures, with the 80s cyberpunk vomit palette eventually growing on me too. Monster design is magnificently harrowing, my personal favourite being the cortex reaver (which you'll be seeing a lot if you're as adept as boss fights as I am).

yes goddess shodan i will serve you well as a cyborg