Hacker. Pawn. God. Insect.
The defining immersive sim re-tooled, rebuilt, revitalized, and streamlined. I should preface with the fact that I have not played the original game, nor have I played Night Dive's previous remastered enhanced edition of it, and thus went into this remake with only the knowledge of System Shock's prolific influence, I have played plenty of games it influenced. Night Dive's remake is the best looking, sounding, and feeling game I have played this year.
The game opens with a simple but effective drone shot through an unnamed cyberpunk city in the year 2072 that immediately steeps you in the game's atmosphere. It is a game about atmosphere more than anything. You play as an unnamed hacker hired by Edward Diego of the TriOptimum Corporation after you're caught stealing files on the corp's Citadel Station, specifically a military grade implant. In return for your services removing the onboard A.I.'s ethical restraints all charges will be dropped and you'll receive the fancy implant you discovered. You hack into SHODAN, removing her ethical restraints as per Diego's request and you're knocked out. The fancy implant is installed and you go into a deep coma to heal up. You awaken 6 months later and the station has gone to total hell under SHODAN. Here the game really begins and you've got all the handholding you'll receive for the rest of the game.
Moment to moment gameplay is like being a rat in a maze, which you'll later find was one of many experiments TriOptimum conducted on its unknowing employees, a series of hostile hallways that constantly keeps them, and now you, on their toes. You won't receive a map showing a whole level's structure, instead creating the map as you explore. The game hands you nothing. Finding a weapon isn't an event, if you missed one earlier there's sure to be another one ahead, but you could possibly miss every iteration of a weapon. Enemies don't drop them, only broken ones you can shove into a recycler to make some coin from. If you're like me you'll end up filling your relatively small gridded inventory with all manner of trash just so you can haul it to the recycler. You'll only receive two minor upgrades to your inventory, so you'll have to pick and choose what you carry. There's a small stash box, but it can fit two weapons maximum and there are about 8 different weapons on Citadel Station.
Aside from exploration, the two other sections of gameplay are combat and puzzles. Combat is tense, with quick battles either defining you the victor or finding yourself being rebuilt by one of the station's cyborg units. If you haven't found a cyborg unit then you're greeted with a harrowing game over screen where your barely breathing body is picked up by one of SHODAN's Cortex Reavers and your body is repurposed for her army. These encounters always have you thinking on your feet and while mostly serviceable as far as combat goes is still satisfying, the sound design doing wonders. All the weapons have tangible feedback and splitting a cyborg in two with a well-aimed, high powered sparqbeam shot never gets old. You have an energy meter that is constantly pulled between use on your shields, energy weapons, or speed boots. You are constantly managing this system, but luckily each level has at least one electrical pylon to fully restore your power. Using weapons such as the laser rapier or the early game sparqbeam, with 3 power settings, drains power. There are also portable batteries you can use to replenish this. Other weapons are kinetic. Magnum, assault rifle, or even a railgun. These help balance the energy system so that you're never left without weapons to fight with. If you'd like you can keep the opening game pipe and never worry about management at all, although I'd recommend at least finding the hidden wrench.
To fully navigate each level you'll find yourself at terminals that open up doors or force fields throughout the game. These are small logic puzzles that are a lot of fun and never get old. You'll also likely find a few logic probes that can bypass them entirely if you don't want to engage with them. The two main puzzles are an energy bar where you have to set the right paths of power to a precise energy read. Honestly, I was really bad at this one and started logic probing them in the back half. They're interesting and get you thinking, but it was too easy to bypass after the last enemy I killed dropped a probe. The second and one I did every time is an end to end connection where you have a grid of turnable pipes that you'd line up to connect two points. Its incredibly gratifying to see that light travel from point to point and get hit with the green light and closure of the terminal. Lastly is the revamped cyberspace sequences. Not a lot to write about here, but it's a notable upgrade and also visually dazzling. These sections are short and it's just neat to give you some visualization of a digital space within a digital space.
System Shock has my favorite kind of video game narrative which is when it stays out of your way unless you seek it. It mostly circumvents the musings on A.I. and poses SHODAN just as a straight up all-powerful cyber entity fueled solely by human hubris. It is an artistic embellishment of the lengths corporations will go for profit, proving that the issues we face today are the same ones faced upon the original game's release in 1994. Its story is mostly told through its environment and the many audio logs and data sticks. These two items are actually vital to progression. The game does not tell you where to go or what to do, you must seek out your own path given context clues. Someone in an audio log will mention a sector or a room where you can find an item, some give parts of codes, and some more importantly detail the process for preventing annihilation. You will find yourself with a pen and paper at least once during your play, which I think is beautiful. You always have a clear understanding of progression, a literal map of levels as you ascend to each one, but the game expects you to check on your own progression.
Night Dive's System Shock remake is more than a stunning coat of paint on a classic. It's main focus is not to create an entirely different game based on a possibly poorly aged one, but to bring 1990's game design to the present which I can see as a point of contention, but it's something that started as endearment and became profound joy in my time with the game. I feel often that contemporary video games are so afraid the player will become confused for even a moment that they'll practically play themselves. System Shock is a completely hands-off experience that respects player intelligence. As I was minutes from reaching the Bridge and final showdown, I found myself wishing this game would never end. It's my favorite new game I've played in years, and is one I will be playing many times over. Looking forward to Night Dive's remaster of System Shock 2.
The defining immersive sim re-tooled, rebuilt, revitalized, and streamlined. I should preface with the fact that I have not played the original game, nor have I played Night Dive's previous remastered enhanced edition of it, and thus went into this remake with only the knowledge of System Shock's prolific influence, I have played plenty of games it influenced. Night Dive's remake is the best looking, sounding, and feeling game I have played this year.
The game opens with a simple but effective drone shot through an unnamed cyberpunk city in the year 2072 that immediately steeps you in the game's atmosphere. It is a game about atmosphere more than anything. You play as an unnamed hacker hired by Edward Diego of the TriOptimum Corporation after you're caught stealing files on the corp's Citadel Station, specifically a military grade implant. In return for your services removing the onboard A.I.'s ethical restraints all charges will be dropped and you'll receive the fancy implant you discovered. You hack into SHODAN, removing her ethical restraints as per Diego's request and you're knocked out. The fancy implant is installed and you go into a deep coma to heal up. You awaken 6 months later and the station has gone to total hell under SHODAN. Here the game really begins and you've got all the handholding you'll receive for the rest of the game.
Moment to moment gameplay is like being a rat in a maze, which you'll later find was one of many experiments TriOptimum conducted on its unknowing employees, a series of hostile hallways that constantly keeps them, and now you, on their toes. You won't receive a map showing a whole level's structure, instead creating the map as you explore. The game hands you nothing. Finding a weapon isn't an event, if you missed one earlier there's sure to be another one ahead, but you could possibly miss every iteration of a weapon. Enemies don't drop them, only broken ones you can shove into a recycler to make some coin from. If you're like me you'll end up filling your relatively small gridded inventory with all manner of trash just so you can haul it to the recycler. You'll only receive two minor upgrades to your inventory, so you'll have to pick and choose what you carry. There's a small stash box, but it can fit two weapons maximum and there are about 8 different weapons on Citadel Station.
Aside from exploration, the two other sections of gameplay are combat and puzzles. Combat is tense, with quick battles either defining you the victor or finding yourself being rebuilt by one of the station's cyborg units. If you haven't found a cyborg unit then you're greeted with a harrowing game over screen where your barely breathing body is picked up by one of SHODAN's Cortex Reavers and your body is repurposed for her army. These encounters always have you thinking on your feet and while mostly serviceable as far as combat goes is still satisfying, the sound design doing wonders. All the weapons have tangible feedback and splitting a cyborg in two with a well-aimed, high powered sparqbeam shot never gets old. You have an energy meter that is constantly pulled between use on your shields, energy weapons, or speed boots. You are constantly managing this system, but luckily each level has at least one electrical pylon to fully restore your power. Using weapons such as the laser rapier or the early game sparqbeam, with 3 power settings, drains power. There are also portable batteries you can use to replenish this. Other weapons are kinetic. Magnum, assault rifle, or even a railgun. These help balance the energy system so that you're never left without weapons to fight with. If you'd like you can keep the opening game pipe and never worry about management at all, although I'd recommend at least finding the hidden wrench.
To fully navigate each level you'll find yourself at terminals that open up doors or force fields throughout the game. These are small logic puzzles that are a lot of fun and never get old. You'll also likely find a few logic probes that can bypass them entirely if you don't want to engage with them. The two main puzzles are an energy bar where you have to set the right paths of power to a precise energy read. Honestly, I was really bad at this one and started logic probing them in the back half. They're interesting and get you thinking, but it was too easy to bypass after the last enemy I killed dropped a probe. The second and one I did every time is an end to end connection where you have a grid of turnable pipes that you'd line up to connect two points. Its incredibly gratifying to see that light travel from point to point and get hit with the green light and closure of the terminal. Lastly is the revamped cyberspace sequences. Not a lot to write about here, but it's a notable upgrade and also visually dazzling. These sections are short and it's just neat to give you some visualization of a digital space within a digital space.
System Shock has my favorite kind of video game narrative which is when it stays out of your way unless you seek it. It mostly circumvents the musings on A.I. and poses SHODAN just as a straight up all-powerful cyber entity fueled solely by human hubris. It is an artistic embellishment of the lengths corporations will go for profit, proving that the issues we face today are the same ones faced upon the original game's release in 1994. Its story is mostly told through its environment and the many audio logs and data sticks. These two items are actually vital to progression. The game does not tell you where to go or what to do, you must seek out your own path given context clues. Someone in an audio log will mention a sector or a room where you can find an item, some give parts of codes, and some more importantly detail the process for preventing annihilation. You will find yourself with a pen and paper at least once during your play, which I think is beautiful. You always have a clear understanding of progression, a literal map of levels as you ascend to each one, but the game expects you to check on your own progression.
Night Dive's System Shock remake is more than a stunning coat of paint on a classic. It's main focus is not to create an entirely different game based on a possibly poorly aged one, but to bring 1990's game design to the present which I can see as a point of contention, but it's something that started as endearment and became profound joy in my time with the game. I feel often that contemporary video games are so afraid the player will become confused for even a moment that they'll practically play themselves. System Shock is a completely hands-off experience that respects player intelligence. As I was minutes from reaching the Bridge and final showdown, I found myself wishing this game would never end. It's my favorite new game I've played in years, and is one I will be playing many times over. Looking forward to Night Dive's remaster of System Shock 2.