"Interesting, Innovative, But Far Too Clunky"

'System Shock: Enhanced Edition' is a re-release of the original title from 1994. While the controls are cleaned up slightly and some visual enhancements were made, the game underneath feels unpolished and is very hard to recommend from a gameplay perspective. However, it is an important game that laid the framework for the Immersive Sim genre.

The gameplay is exceptionally diverse for a game that was released at such an infantile time for the video game industry. There is a variety of systems, and the story is actually told in a fairly entertaining way. There is a large selection of weapons and items to use, and the game is actually fairly scary despite being an older title. However, it is extremely clunky. The general design that is a mix of an FPS and a point-n-click game is very unintuitive, and always felt awkward during my time with it. The menu navigation is by far the worst, with lots of information being trapped behind a UI that is rough to look through. Additionally, the graphics are not very good at all, and the extremely jarring colors and textures hurt my eyes after a bit of playing.

Despite these faults, the game has the groundwork of an immensely influential title. Seeing elements of the Deus Ex and Bioshock games within this title is amazing! However, no matter how influential and important this game is, and how awesome it must have been at its release, it feels terrible to play now. I would Not Recommend checking this game out unless you are extremely patient or are familiar with unorthodox control schemes within computer games. It was super interesting to check out, but I wasn’t keen on finishing it after a few levels.

Final Verdict: 4/10 (Below Average)

Reviewed on Aug 17, 2021


1 Comment


2 years ago

Depending on your inclination I actually think the fiddly nature of the controls to be a really charming aspect of the game playing having played it modernly. That said it does control… questionably. For me the uniqueness of how it controls despite being kind of wonky made the experience fresh for me, even with mouselook nothing really controls like this game, and I wonder if cleaning up the interface but maintaining some of the flow of those interactions would allow controls to work in a modern title. It seems like for the remake nightdive has chosen to make things more like shock 2, which is probably the correct thing to do, but theres a part of me that will miss the very experimental feel that this game has.