![]() Bearing in mind that the game teaches you next to nothing, I slowly got to grips with the compelling loop of Citadel Station’s initial levels.īasically, as you explore, you fill out a map, discover critical items and listen to audio logs not just to figure out what terrible things have happened but also to discover critical information. It’s closer to survival horror, at least initially, with a healthy dose of inventory manage and seemingly finite resources. I’d read that System Shock wasn’t just an immersive sim but the immersive sim, which was a mistake of expectations on my part. As you might imagine, that doesn’t go too well, and you wake up in the medical bay in the aftermath of an AI gone very, very rogue. You play as a hacker who’s given an offer they can’t refuse, which means stripping the ethical parameters from a rather powerful AI. The first impressions are great, mind you, from the gorgeous new-meets-old art design and immersive sound to the simple setup that bonds plight and protagonist. ![]() And by “handholding” I mean no mission objectives (markers or lists), no tutorials or reminders for critical gameplay elements, and none of those many quality-of-life features that respect the reality that gamers shouldn’t be expected to play with a notepad next to them.īecause that’s basically what you need to get through System Shock. Such is System Shock’s slavish devotion to the 1994 game that there is no handholding on normal mission difficulty. By default, it’s toggled to the middle for all four options (normal), which is what I went with. System Shock lets you tinker between four difficulty options: combat, mission, cyber and puzzles. But if you’re not a fan of the original game, you’re likely going to struggle with System Shock. If you’re a fan of System Shock from 1994, the chances are good that you’re going to love the infinitely prettier version from 2023. Remakes, on the other hand, offer the pretty but also make gameplay changes and/or additions (just look at the 2023 remake of Dead Space). Like the controversy with the PS5’s The Last of Us Part I, System Shock is technically a remake-in the very literal definition of “technically”: it’s being remade in a new engine-but, more importantly for the everyday understanding of the terms, it plays like a remaster.įor those unaware, remasters tend to only offer boosted eye candy for modern gaming platforms. Originally announced as System Shock Remastered, the System Shock Kickstarter page (from 2016) calls it “a complete remake of the genre defining classic from 1994”. And the last word of that sentence is where the disclaimers already begin. So I jumped at the opportunity to right that wrong with the long-gestation-but-finally-here System Shock remake. But I also regretted having never played BioShock developer’s precursor, System Shock 2 and, by extension, the original System Shock. Later on in the game, when I had the choice to kill or spare a villainous character, I created an all-caps ‘BIG CHOICE HERE’ manual save, then played the game from the two possible choices, like some sort of fracturing of the multiverse. Confronted with a simple locked door, I was blown away by my options: steal a keycard to open it, hack it with one of my abilities, or use an explosive to permanently open it albeit in a very loud way. Long before I was enraptured by Rapture, I discovered I wasn’t just a first-person shooter fan when Deus Ex broke my brain. I’m shocked to admit that my first “Shock” game was BioShock.
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