One of the very few remakes id recommend over the original for newcomers
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, andhearts 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-watchfulmommy 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
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
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
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
SS2 EE When?
Meh. can't get into it. I liked System Shock 2 though
Adorei como eles preservaram o estilo retro no remake, desde do level design, visual, iluminação e estética. Contudo, não gostei do level design confuso e labiríntico, nem a ausência de um quest log ou algo do tipo que te sinaliza o próximo passo, tudo fica repetitivo, confuso, maçante e chato conforme tudo progride.
It's NOT the same game. You will be doing kind of the same puzzles, going through the same areas, but it is a different game.
A more modern approach to the 1994 classic, definitely worth playing.
A more modern approach to the 1994 classic, definitely worth playing.
As someone who considers himself a huge fan of "immersive sims" (about as blurgh of a genre name as IDM or boomer shooter), the original System Shock - the daddy of the genre - has been a humongous blind spot in my gaming experience. I knew pretty much all there is to it thanks to decades of reading PC gaming magazines, online retrospectives and trivia banks, but... well, I missed the boat back in 1994 and the UI was an outdated challenge even back then, let alone now. I filed it away as one of those things I'd crack when I got in a really retro mood but, predictably, the day never came.
And now we've got the remake! The developers NightDive (who have carved a niche in bringing back 90s PC shooters to the modern day) have approached the act of presenting System Shock to the modern audiences in the exact right way. The central experience is nearly identical, to the extent that you can use walkthroughs for the original game and they're pretty much 90% correct for the remake as well (and don't expect the game to hold your hand in telling where to go, those apocalyptic audio logs aren't there just for worldbuilding). There are however tweaks where it's been deemed helpful - balance changes, additions to both the enemy and armory repertoires, some new audio logs explaining little gaps in the original (and foreshadowing System Shock 2) and minor gameplay additions. The big change is obviously how the game plays, in that it now behaves like you'd expect a first person game to do in the 2020s and that makes for both a smooth and incredibly immersive experience. I also love the little touch in how the updated graphics have a touch of old-school scruff into the textures, turning the visuals into a fascinating hybrid of the 1990s and 2020s - once I got accustomed to it, I fell in love with it and I think it adds a lot to the game's incredibly tight atmosphere.
And... that's all there is to it, in a good way. System Shock wasn't the first of the immersive sim family tree (and I really would love Ultima Underworld to receive a similar remake), but it's the one that codified the ethos of the genre - (0)451 and all. Because the remake is kept so faithful, there's no unique twists to the core formula and it's bound to be incredibly familiar to everyone who's played games like this in the past; if anything, for veterans of the genre who've experienced its growth it might not even feel that much of an immersive sim as System Shock stays a little more on rails and how it gives the player the freedom to proceed in their own way is a lot more micro level. But it speaks a volume to the legendary strengths of the original game that you don't need anything else. The experience of surviving through the Citadel station, scrounging for ammo while outsmarting its rampant AI and eventually beginning to gain an upper hand - it's incredibly gripping and it doesn't need anything else. The relative simplicity of System Shock is one of its great strengths because it allows it to focus on the feel of the experience.
System Shock is a great example of what remakes ought to be: taking great games whose strengths have been damaged by time and technology moving on, brushing them up and bringing them closer to modern day sensibilities in presentation and gameplay but understanding and retaining what made them so special in the first place and not touching that.
(a small minus however that whilst you can customise nearly all controls and a number of gameplay elements, the quickslot inventory has been left oddly rigid: you can't choose which way scrolling the mouse wheel moves the inventory up and down, nor can you rebind the keys for the quickslot inventory. As a non-WASDer who apparently scrolls his mousewheel to a non-standard direction, I was a lot slower than I should have with my inventory management)
And now we've got the remake! The developers NightDive (who have carved a niche in bringing back 90s PC shooters to the modern day) have approached the act of presenting System Shock to the modern audiences in the exact right way. The central experience is nearly identical, to the extent that you can use walkthroughs for the original game and they're pretty much 90% correct for the remake as well (and don't expect the game to hold your hand in telling where to go, those apocalyptic audio logs aren't there just for worldbuilding). There are however tweaks where it's been deemed helpful - balance changes, additions to both the enemy and armory repertoires, some new audio logs explaining little gaps in the original (and foreshadowing System Shock 2) and minor gameplay additions. The big change is obviously how the game plays, in that it now behaves like you'd expect a first person game to do in the 2020s and that makes for both a smooth and incredibly immersive experience. I also love the little touch in how the updated graphics have a touch of old-school scruff into the textures, turning the visuals into a fascinating hybrid of the 1990s and 2020s - once I got accustomed to it, I fell in love with it and I think it adds a lot to the game's incredibly tight atmosphere.
And... that's all there is to it, in a good way. System Shock wasn't the first of the immersive sim family tree (and I really would love Ultima Underworld to receive a similar remake), but it's the one that codified the ethos of the genre - (0)451 and all. Because the remake is kept so faithful, there's no unique twists to the core formula and it's bound to be incredibly familiar to everyone who's played games like this in the past; if anything, for veterans of the genre who've experienced its growth it might not even feel that much of an immersive sim as System Shock stays a little more on rails and how it gives the player the freedom to proceed in their own way is a lot more micro level. But it speaks a volume to the legendary strengths of the original game that you don't need anything else. The experience of surviving through the Citadel station, scrounging for ammo while outsmarting its rampant AI and eventually beginning to gain an upper hand - it's incredibly gripping and it doesn't need anything else. The relative simplicity of System Shock is one of its great strengths because it allows it to focus on the feel of the experience.
System Shock is a great example of what remakes ought to be: taking great games whose strengths have been damaged by time and technology moving on, brushing them up and bringing them closer to modern day sensibilities in presentation and gameplay but understanding and retaining what made them so special in the first place and not touching that.
(a small minus however that whilst you can customise nearly all controls and a number of gameplay elements, the quickslot inventory has been left oddly rigid: you can't choose which way scrolling the mouse wheel moves the inventory up and down, nor can you rebind the keys for the quickslot inventory. As a non-WASDer who apparently scrolls his mousewheel to a non-standard direction, I was a lot slower than I should have with my inventory management)
System Shock ist so wunderschön gnadenlos darin, wie es einen in diese feindliche Umgebung wirft und man als namenloser Hacker alleine gegen die AI SHODAN kämpfen muss. Ebene für Ebene. Raum für Raum. Die Sprachmemos der Besatzung und SHODAN und E-Mails, die man unterwegs findet, schaffen es gemeinsam mit der Space Station selbst die Geschichte unterschwellig voran zu treiben und ihr Gewicht zu verleihen, die Kämpfe sind hart aber nie unfair und vor allem das Hacken hat es mir angetan.
gorgeous game. ive never played the original but i can tell that this is a very faithful remake because some the game design is definitely very outdated. but i still had a great time with this. got a bit stuck in that stupid biohazard part but whatever.
Really incredible game, I played the first level of this remake at least 4 times between all of the demos over the years and now that I can play the full thing I can gladly say it lives up to that it lives up to my expectations at least. My biggest problem with this game is cyberspace. I know it was the part people hated the most about the original and I don't think they did enough to improve it here, its just a mediocre little shooter. Everything else though is incredible outside of the ending. I love Shodan she's an incredible antagonist.
its absolutely insane to me that this exists at all. it shouldnt exist but nightdive fucking did! one of the best remakes to exist, period. a perfect combination of 90s mechanics with modern day gameplay standards that make a challenging, but rewarding experience. what's disappointing is that the ending was underwhelming (which doesn't begin to describe it) but researching a bit, they are planning to rework the ending to be more inline with the rest of the remake. when it release, i will no doubt be playing again.
magic scraps for tri-credits
unfortunate! game looks ugly as balls just go play the original
Really good but the ending sucks balls
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did because I enjoy the immersive sim genre (though I'd say System Shock isn't the most accurate representation of the genre) and all of the well-known games that were inspired by the original System Shock to this day.
Unfortunately, System Shock has something that regularly makes me fall off of similar games, which is a big reliance on quick-saving and reloading. Enemies that kill you with a few shots, health items being very scarce compared to how easily and how much damage you take, multiple areas that you just aren't supposed to be at yet (keyword 'radiation') that will empty your health items before you eventually realize that you shouldn't have been here in the first place and more. It's something that makes me hesitant to say I'd recommend it to everyone, and I think that's more than acceptable among gamers. It's a niche game made for a certain audience who will love it, popularized and refined in games like Bioshock, Prey, Deus Ex, heck even Dead Space and more. And even beyond that, System Shock has done things that I have not previously seen in the 100 other games I had previously played as this retro challenge I'm doing (see bottom of the review), especially in terms of its storytelling, which has caught on in the years to come.
Yet, despite the fact that I can acknowledge and respect what this game has accomplished at its time, it unfortunately never managed to grab me. Both because of the first issue I mentioned, but also because of some other issues. For one thing, the progression in this game truly shows its age. That's a good thing for those who want the remake to be faithful to the original. But to start the game and have a general idea that you're meant to stop SHODAN, but other than that rather aimlessly walk through 9 or so separate areas to just progress further and further to the end, didn't feel all that engaging. It can't be helped that in each area, you look for keycards to unlock progression, a pretty common thing back in the day, and do the same few puzzles and shoot the same few enemies throughout. Enemies that either felt too weak or too overpowered to me. Another thing is the recycling system in the game. To get currency, you grab junk items and vaporize them in your inventory, which turns them into scrap to recycle for the currency. That becomes pretty tedious after a while, and it's not as optional as I anticipated it being because items will be very useful in this game (healing items in particular) and you get very little currency outside of recycling.
The storytelling is pretty good to this day, as it's told through voice recordings for the most part, which gives you an idea of how it was for the people working at the space station this game is set in while SHODAN went rogue. Some of the voice acting is less good than most of it, but I enjoy this style of storytelling and that's true for this game too. The atmosphere grabbed me as well, and the threat of SHODAN was portrayed really well throughout.
Unfortunately, as a package, the gameplay loop itself did not grab me as much as I would have hoped. There is a demo for the game on Steam, so I'd urge you to try it and decide based on that whether you want to buy the full game. It has its many fans, but it's worth mentioning that the game is definitely not for everyone. And I'd definitely say that has more to do with the taste of the player then with the quality of the game, though the game does have its flaws.
(This is the 101st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Unfortunately, System Shock has something that regularly makes me fall off of similar games, which is a big reliance on quick-saving and reloading. Enemies that kill you with a few shots, health items being very scarce compared to how easily and how much damage you take, multiple areas that you just aren't supposed to be at yet (keyword 'radiation') that will empty your health items before you eventually realize that you shouldn't have been here in the first place and more. It's something that makes me hesitant to say I'd recommend it to everyone, and I think that's more than acceptable among gamers. It's a niche game made for a certain audience who will love it, popularized and refined in games like Bioshock, Prey, Deus Ex, heck even Dead Space and more. And even beyond that, System Shock has done things that I have not previously seen in the 100 other games I had previously played as this retro challenge I'm doing (see bottom of the review), especially in terms of its storytelling, which has caught on in the years to come.
Yet, despite the fact that I can acknowledge and respect what this game has accomplished at its time, it unfortunately never managed to grab me. Both because of the first issue I mentioned, but also because of some other issues. For one thing, the progression in this game truly shows its age. That's a good thing for those who want the remake to be faithful to the original. But to start the game and have a general idea that you're meant to stop SHODAN, but other than that rather aimlessly walk through 9 or so separate areas to just progress further and further to the end, didn't feel all that engaging. It can't be helped that in each area, you look for keycards to unlock progression, a pretty common thing back in the day, and do the same few puzzles and shoot the same few enemies throughout. Enemies that either felt too weak or too overpowered to me. Another thing is the recycling system in the game. To get currency, you grab junk items and vaporize them in your inventory, which turns them into scrap to recycle for the currency. That becomes pretty tedious after a while, and it's not as optional as I anticipated it being because items will be very useful in this game (healing items in particular) and you get very little currency outside of recycling.
The storytelling is pretty good to this day, as it's told through voice recordings for the most part, which gives you an idea of how it was for the people working at the space station this game is set in while SHODAN went rogue. Some of the voice acting is less good than most of it, but I enjoy this style of storytelling and that's true for this game too. The atmosphere grabbed me as well, and the threat of SHODAN was portrayed really well throughout.
Unfortunately, as a package, the gameplay loop itself did not grab me as much as I would have hoped. There is a demo for the game on Steam, so I'd urge you to try it and decide based on that whether you want to buy the full game. It has its many fans, but it's worth mentioning that the game is definitely not for everyone. And I'd definitely say that has more to do with the taste of the player then with the quality of the game, though the game does have its flaws.
(This is the 101st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I love this remake
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.
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.
unfortunately got released in a year with so many good games and it went under the radar of pretty much everyone. So good though
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
An update of a classic I had never played. If you're looking for an "immersive sim" I would go elsewhere. This game is more similar to a metroidvania than Deus Ex, however if you're looking for a solid single player shooter, I highly recommend.
This review contains spoilers
Sometimes I do quick reviews on here, sometimes joke reviews, and sometimes more detailed reviews.
I had a review typed up about System Shock's design, atmosphere, and influence, as well as some minor gripes, and some praises for Night Dive's approach at remaking it.
And then I accidentally closed the tab and I don't feel like rewriting it.
The hopelessness of technology failing me in this way is even better than the ending to System Shock, which isn't a very sci fi ending. But hey, maybe sometimes, you gotta win some.
I had a review typed up about System Shock's design, atmosphere, and influence, as well as some minor gripes, and some praises for Night Dive's approach at remaking it.
And then I accidentally closed the tab and I don't feel like rewriting it.
The hopelessness of technology failing me in this way is even better than the ending to System Shock, which isn't a very sci fi ending. But hey, maybe sometimes, you gotta win some.
she remake my system till I shock [EXTREMELY LOUD SHODAN EMAIL]
Extremely enjoyable remake of a classic game that was cumbersome to play even back in the day but now feels like a modern title. It was great to play a game where you had to figure out what to do on your own and not be lead around by a quest marker. That said, there is some annoying backtracking and a final battle that would probably be better as a cutscene. Overall, a wonderful single player experience from the past brought back to life.
Find someone who loves you as much as this game loves placing enemies right in front of doors so they shoot you as soon as you walk in the room.
Scawwy.
I think they did a lot right as well as a lot wrong with the visuals unfortunately.
I think they did a lot right as well as a lot wrong with the visuals unfortunately.
There is plenty of amazing stuff here, brought down by an ending that sucks ass and just a bit too many enemies.
I like the aesthetic (it's a bit overbearing, and the retro textures aren't for everyone) the music is pretty cool and the atmosphere is great. The voice acting is cool and Shodan is a genuinely great presence. I wish they made darker areas where I had to use the various flashlights and night vision abilities though. I loved exploring, but the backtracking for the super long code wasn't that much fun, now that I know about the code it feels obvious but yeah. Having to remember codes like this game forces you to is a great throwback and it makes the worldbuilding so much better. Also, the animations are so unbearably long and killed me more than once- really annoying.
A great time, quite challenging and very save/load heavy, but a great time still.
I like the aesthetic (it's a bit overbearing, and the retro textures aren't for everyone) the music is pretty cool and the atmosphere is great. The voice acting is cool and Shodan is a genuinely great presence. I wish they made darker areas where I had to use the various flashlights and night vision abilities though. I loved exploring, but the backtracking for the super long code wasn't that much fun, now that I know about the code it feels obvious but yeah. Having to remember codes like this game forces you to is a great throwback and it makes the worldbuilding so much better. Also, the animations are so unbearably long and killed me more than once- really annoying.
A great time, quite challenging and very save/load heavy, but a great time still.
wanted to enjoy this way more than i did but lost interest by executive
Nothing immerses me more in immersive first-person games than having to witness an immersive DOOM 2016 first-person animation each time I pick up an audiolog, sadly they didn't go all the way and implement laborious canned animations for picking up every individual item like in the beloved immersive first-person game THIEF 2014. The maintenance level was the dark spooky area in the OG, so naturally the brilliant minds at [REDACTED] made sure that it was the most well-lit place in the game while the rest of this authentic Prey remake looked like Doom 3. You can't write notes on the map because that's lost technology (just like free-aiming or going prone) and we need to have platform parity for the sake of the five people who backed the kickstarter of a remake of a PC game to play it on their Xbox One back in 2016.
I guess most people who were expecting this were caught off guard by how well-made and faithful to the original this is.
I appreciate the effort, but I can't shake the feeling a lot of its faithfulness comes from a desire of just swimming against the current than an actual creative choice.
For the French - https://lacritiquedumoment.wordpress.com/2023/11/30/un-jeu-et-son-remake-system-shock/
I appreciate the effort, but I can't shake the feeling a lot of its faithfulness comes from a desire of just swimming against the current than an actual creative choice.
For the French - https://lacritiquedumoment.wordpress.com/2023/11/30/un-jeu-et-son-remake-system-shock/