izigame.me

as somebody who's a big fan of both the original system shock and system shock 2 (one of my favorite games :D) i was on high alert for this game when the kickstarter initially dropped in 2016, and i put my preorder in to this game in 2021 ... unfortunately it took them 2 more years to bring the game out and i cancelled my preorder in between then and now cause i was getting fed up with waiting, but now we finally have it and i was absolutely not disappointed.
system shock 1 desperately needed a remake. of course, the original game is very playable today and is still a load of fun, but the enhanced edition added traditional fps mouselook, a feature that the original game was not designed with in mind (remember, this was 1994, they haven't really figured out the whole fps thing just yet) and it makes the game not only a lot easier but even trivializes some parts where the game is expecting the player to be using the traditional weird operating system controls. i was able to blaze through the hardest difficulty of the original with no real resistance thanks in part to mouselook. even keeping in mind that the game was insanely innovative for the time (it had poor sales partly because many computers at the time couldn't even run the game) some parts stick out as being dated and you can only help but think "if only they did it again today with the design practices and technology we have now, it'd be so much better" ... well, that's exactly what they did with this remake and i was very impressed.
the game is admittedly a little rough around the edges, which personally doesn't affect my experience that much but it can throw some people off. i mean, if you look down at your feet and lean your upper body will separate from your lower body, that seems like something that would have been easily caught by testing... there are some other minor bugs sprinkled throughout like ragdolls glitching through walls or physics items acting weird, and i only had one "fatal error" crash. i've heard rumors of bugs with saves, but i didn't personally experience this.
there's a lot to go over in terms of gameplay, so i compiled my general positives/negatives into a list.
the good:
+ the game no longer suffers from horrible control problems. the game controls like a typical fps, which makes it a lot easier to pick up for people not willing to study the controls of the original for 20 minutes.
+ the inventory system makes a lot more sense than the original's "you have x amount of slots for weapons, and x amount for "miscellaneous items" and that's it". it's more reminiscent of system shock 2's inventory system with each item taking up a certain amount of slots.
+ normally i don't care too much about graphics, but in a survival horror game like this that emphasizes immersion it's worth bringing up that the game looks absolutely stunning. the groves, for example, actually look like the advertised "simulated outdoor environments", the gore looks visceral and nasty as expected, and even the overall design of citadel station itself looks incredible.
+ the balancing of the weapons in this game, including the new weapons, feels far more deliberate than the original's. i'm pretty sure in the original game you could easily go the entire game with only using the laser rapier, it was that powerful. mutated cyborgs, cortex reavers, even edward diego himself stood no chance against the original's laser rapier. here, in comparison, every weapon you pick up has a purpose and you can easily be juggling multiple weapons all the way up to the end game, each with their own use case.
+ the music is fantastic. i really admire that they not only fit in the fast-paced music reminiscent of the original's, but they also fit in some great survival horror ambience as well. they could have did a better job with the dynamic music so more of the tracks could shine, but overall it was still very well done.
+ the cyberspace segments, even despite being disorienting (as are most 6dof-controlled games to me) i never really got lost in them and the objectives basically completed themselves as you traverse through them.
+ overall, the gameplay is well done. the puzzles are more enjoyable and rewarding to complete compared to the original's "just mess with it until it completes", the weapons are satisfying, combat is fun, and i never particularly found myself lost or not sure what to do next.
the questionable:
? although the new music is great, the credits didn't even use the system shock theme. i know, it's a nitpicky complaint, but they had it in the intro for a little bit, i don't see why they couldn't use it in the credits too where it could serve as a good bookend track (where it would fit, and where it was in the original too)
? the voice actors for the audio logs in the remake deserve credit, they did an absolutely wonderful job roping you in to the story and there were no particularly bad performances. however, i personally prefer the original's audio logs since the original's gave a more "desperate employees/scientists getting caught in a horrible situation" tone and it never came off as too dramatic, it was completely believable. the remake's, however, goes a little too far with the audio glitching and felt overacted to me which at times took me out of the immersive environment they've built.
? unlike the original, the targeting upgrade doesn't tell you how much damage you did to an enemy or enemies. instead, you press alt on one target at a time and it tells you the health/energy of the specific target. you can also "hack" an enemy, which i hardly used as i felt it just wasted time when i could just be shooting the enemy to death.
the bad:
- the intro was stupid. i'd have much rather preferred a well-crafted cinematic like the original had. in immersive sim fashion, the intro of the original gave you a blank slate (the hacker) to insert yourself into so you could truly be put into the experience, and the shift of shodan's third-person speech to first-person to signify the extent of her ethical constraints being removed is a wonderful way to hint at the devastation she would cause to the station, which you're otherwise put in the dark about for some time. this new intro has none of that, and your hacker "character" is flipping off trioptimum agents and is supposed to be The Ultimate Cool Guy:tm: in the face of edward diego, a character who no longer has the "charismatic businessman who will drop ethics if it means profit" type personality that the original portrayed. this is probably my biggest complaint with this game overall, the intro missed a lot of marks and first impressions really matter.
- they added a bit more to the final boss fight compared to the original, and i suppose it's more eventful, but it just didn't really feel impactful for a final boss. in a similar vein to the original's, you just Shoot Stuff Until Something Happens, which i felt was a missed opportunity to make the cyberspace duel maybe a little bit more climactic.
- next to the pocket dimension add-on, there's an audio log that's literally just a verse from rush - 2112. i wouldn't care if it's just a reference, but it's literally just one of the verses from that song ... come on, that just takes me out of the experience.
i commend the developers for keeping many of the elements that made the original so great unchanged, and stripping out or updating the dated mechanics. it says a lot that even though the remake is more "modern" than the original, a lot of the elements of the original were left unchanged (like the energy system, the acquiring of add-ons, add-ons like the envirosuit being hidden to gate your progress and pace the player, the environmental storytelling) because they were so well done. if you liked the original system shock, or like immersive games in general, there's a very good chance that the remake will be worth your time. well done nightdive.