izigame.me

The game is great and I recommend it, but the ending was quite disappointing and changed from the original in a way that I don't agree with, plus it's the only part of the game that feels unfinished and half baked.
Recommended reading if you've already finished the game or have played the original and just want to know what's up with that.
The original ending had you battling Shodan in cyberspace, it wasn't epic, it wasn't difficult, but it showed how only in cyberspace Shodan is vulnerable and it's a battle of hackers as you chip away at her core while she overlaps her face on your screen, representing that she's hacking you on the same terms.
The remake changes this, now you're in cyberspace but in first person human perspective with a cyber gun you're given, it's a new gameplay style made for the "final showdown", and it feels like something out of a 7th gen triple A game where the game tosses the window all the hours you've spent playing it just to have a gimmicky and safe final fight that makes for a more controlled "cinematic setpiece".
Say what you will about the cyberspace Shodan fight of the original, but at least that happens in a familiar gameplay environment and without putting at risk the themes and narrative, this one doesn't even have stakes as if you die you just respawn on the spot, and gameplay-wise you just have to complete the same gauntlet of shooting things and activating viruses (?) 3 times in a row (is there anything more cliche than make a player repeat a thing 3 times?).
The result feels lame, unpolished, has no stakes and no narrative weight. It's an attempt at making a cinematic setpiece and it fails on all fronts except visually, visually looks really cool, but everything else feels half baked, and really there was no need for this, a cyberspace segment would have worked well, no need to pour resources in a final epic showdown, the two levels leading up to this moment are already really long and dangerous, specially the final arena, that's intense enough and it happens in "real" gameplay space.
While I'm mentioning the final level, where are the giger-esque organic growths on the walls and floors from the original? It was disappointing that that's missing, that area should be showing Shodan's influence the most, it's her sanctum, the place she's in the most control of and yet in the remake is dreadfully monotone visually. I'd like to know if that was left out because of a conscious change (perhaps to distinguish it more from The Many in SS2?) or because they ran out of time, hard to believe seeing how polished the rest of the game is.
I'll list a few more negatives before jumping to a conclussion.
-Missing feature from the original to write on the map
This might seem like a minor thing but I'm saddened by it, I noted down a lot of stuff in the originals map and I really miss it in a game with such a focus on codes you have to remember (not all of them are on audiologs) and/or places you can't access but will later, like a metroidvania, I go as far as to say that I miss this feature in every metroidvania and games with a focus on exploration since I played SS1.
Most of the negative criticism I see of the game focuses on lack of direction and streamlining in the story, perhaps having the notes feature and nudging the player to use it would help mitigate this for new players and players used to more than 2 decades of streamlined story games, or maybe not, just a thought.
-The inventory system
The inventory system is overall a great addition to the game, but it has a couple of problems, some of them might have annoyed me more than others because I played the game on Hard and tried my best to get an edge in combat whenever I could.
My inventory filled up quite quickly, not really because I was picking up all the garbage I could find but because between ammo, weapons, grenades and a couple of patches you'll already fill it up more than halfway through if you're using 4 weapons, and if you enter to explore a level chances are you'll find a new weapon, a mod kit for a weapon you're not currently using, quest items and some other stuff, as a result I felt that for more than half of the game my inventory was dreadfully small, and this is because the guns take an obscene amount of space and the game is really stingy with the inventory upgrades.
This game seems inspired by SS2 and Prey for the inventory system and at least Prey doesn't have these problems because the weapon roster is small and the upgrades you get are generous, but System Shock has a lot of guns.
On hard difficulty I was using quite a bit of ammo in some levels which made me pick up a safe space to drop weapons I wasn't using at that time, so I kind of established a "home" (I kinda love that you can do this) and if I ran out of ammo for one weapon I could make a run back home and swap it for something else. A lot of reviews say that they dumped some and other weapon in favor of their mains but at least I can say I used them all quite a bit (except the melee ones) because I was cycling them as I ran out of ammo, which is fine to me but the game doesn't make it easy on you to store them somewhere and grab them later. There is a dumbwaiter elevator where you can store stuff but it's 4x4, a weapon takes up easily half of that, I'd gladly install a mod that makes it three times that size so I don't have to make runs back and forth between a home point and the level I want to explore, I think that would make the game better and overall just give the player more options, and options are always good.
Anyway, despite my gripes I have loved the game, it's a good remake of a great game and if you want to know about what makes it good there are plenty of reviews that focus on that. I wanted to mention the things I'm seeing missing from the general discourse as I believe there is plenty of fair criticism to make of the game and the way it was modernized but there is also plenty to praise, in fact there is way more to praise than to complain about, but I'll leave it at that.