System Shock: Enhanced Edition

one of my favourite games of all time

seriously so fucking immersive and charming. the remake is technically better but the 90s charm, modability, edward diego, the secondary antag, being an aspy nerd rather than a bond villain, minigames, and THE FUCKING BANGER ADAPTIVE SOUNDTRACK this has over SS23.

buy this game but do use a guide

Don't see the appeal of what makes this game "good". Looks like absolute garbage, worst movement known to man and sounds make me wanna throw up. Too much bullsh!t on the screen and graphics are trash for an "enhanced" version. The only people that think this is good has some sort of nostalgia for it binding their judgement.

Don't bother with this, wipe your @ss with it, and flush it down the toilet.

Still unmatched in atmosphere , depth and design philosophy. Alongside Deus Ex and Thief, this is a gem straight from the golden era of pc gaming , when the "FUN" factor was just one slice of a pretty big cake. This is a rough diamond , a complex book, difficult to read , that changes you deeply. The System Shock "experience" can make you a different gamer , an "aware" one , and gaming will never be the same. 10 / 10

A true classic. Not as good as the follow up, but still worth a playthrough

very fun game. incredibly impressive for 1994 and the enhanced edition makes it easy to play in 2025 and beyond.

Not for the faint of Heart but If you take your time to adjust to the control scheme there is a lot of fun to be had with the story, puzzles, and combat.

At first both the interface and the controls feel complex. But as you play, you gradually get better at them, and the game becomes incredibly fun. It's crazy that a 1994 game , which now makes it more than 30 years old, is still so fun after all this time.

The detail on every single floor of this game puts AAA games released 30 years later to shame.

Weapon and enemy variety is spectacular.
Each weapon has either multiple ammo types or firing modes, you can even cook grenades and adjust bomb timers.



The control are not nearly as bad as people say. Although it very much feels like you're remotely controlling some kind of combat machine, it kind of makes sense when you remember your character has just received a series of radical cybernetic enhancements and was never trained on how to use them. The menus are easy to customize, with the two side menus letting you see your ammunition, map, health, or other important stats. Even when I had to play this game with no mouse and keyboard aiming only, controlling the hacker was never too bad.

The game does not hold your hand at all, but if you truly explore every corner and listen to every log you will find that the environment tells you exactly what to do. You always get rewarded the more you explore, sometimes with extra supplies or unique software or weapons.

The atmosphere is captured perfectly, even with so many bright textures and the amazing soundtrack. There is never a friendly NPC you actually meet. Every corpse you find has a story, and even when you find audio logs and follow stories of other crew members, they all have some fate ending on the station. The sound design is beautiful; you can tell exactly what kind of enemy is around the corner, weapons sound very satisfying, and the background music slightly changes depending on your condition or the environment.


This game is a lot more of a power trip than the sequel. You have much more health, and the enemies less. There is also less resource management, with surgery beds and respawn chambers being free. The second game's combat is a lot like a puzzle, with fewer but more dangerous enemies appearing at a time, causing you to think carefully about how you approach. Do you risk close combat with the wrench or shard? Use up bullets or PSI points? The first game's combat is much more like an all-out firefight. You rely on your reflexes much more, and your tactics subtly change whether you're in a wide open arena like the flight decks or the cramped corridors of somewhere Engineering. It's a wildly different but amazing experience.

Overall this game is a masterpiece and deserves much more recognition. It pioneered so many things we expect in games today like 3d graphics and physics, voice acting, and environmental storytelling. The only problem I can think of is the ending boss fight (which is a problem in the sequel too), but it does not overshadow everything you experience up to that point. Perfect

For all true video game enjoyers who are sick of "games" designed by retards for the lowest common denominator of modern day gaming audience

System Shock Classic: Unbearable. Movement is incredibly inconvenient.

System Shock Enhanced: At least I can move, but I still can’t properly look around. Half the screen is cluttered with UI, and the fake 3D sprites rotate like cräp.

Its like Doom in space but its a thinking and a strategy game. All in glorious retro FPS style.

This game is awesome, the gameplay is fun and the exploration is awesome too. I love how the game is designed, so much of this game is awesome, don’t get me wrong it’s confusing at first but that’s why I love the game, that learning curve of trying to understand what the fuck I’m looking at felt so great. Highly recommend; though it is a bit cryptic at times so be aware of that.

Colour me pleasantly surprised, i was not expecting to love this game as much as I did.

The environment and atmosphere is done really well and i would of been blown away if i played this when it first came out. The controls took some getting used to but once i understood it I found myself enjoying it for what it was.
Theirs not that much story but from I've learnt this was the first game to have a proper story told mainly through audio logs something that is still seen in Bioshock and prey etc so i found myself still enjoying it. Though it is quite funny after completing the game you really do see how and where every game after was so heavily inspired.

The combat was very doom like so i enjoyed it lots of cool weapons. In effect if you don't mind playing older games i would definitely recommend giving this game a try, I'm definitely going to give its famous sequel a try soon.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game. That said, I could not finish this version due to a movement bug that made me feel like I was playing an ice level at all times. Just emulate it or pick up it up on gog. Don't be like me- for some reason I suffered through 9 hours of it before I decided to stop.

Great game with a horrible frame stutter when turning character. If it ever changes i will update my review.

ᅠ

Want to recommend, but can't since Nightdive has completely neglected to fix a well-known stuttering issue for years at this point. Not some PC-specific issue, but a problem that plagues every version. This has been on their radar for ages, but I guess they're too busy moving on to new remasters to ever bother going back and fixing a problem THEY INTRODUCED in one of their updates to a new sourceport.

A lot of care seemed to go into this initial package. Then ND stopped caring. I shouldn't have to mess with various Vsync, FPS, and Renderer options - or rolling back to previous versions - to get a satisfactory experience. If you do want this, go for the GOG version since at least that makes rollbacks easier.

FunFun

the code for the first door is 451

Excellent, shame i got hardstuck near end game and couldn't finish, well, System Shock 2 here i go

I would recommend System Shock Enhanced Edition if not one tiny, yet very impactful issue: save system is broken. As I found in Steam community, it's probably because this remaster can't find Windows user if username have symbols (or more exactly, non-english letters). But System Shock is actually pretty good after you learn how everything works in first place. If you even want to play this game, I'd recommend to download System Shock Classic (hasn't tried it yet) that comes with Enhanced Edition. If Nightdive actually fixes this issue, then I gonna change this review to positive one

Goated

ceo of nightdive is a vile cuck

Fun and not too cryptic

An absolute blast to play through, graphics and lack of direction be damned. If you've ever wondered what's it like to be a lone wolf terminator on a quest to save humankind, this is THE game. Cybernetic upgrades, huge range of weapons, large enemy variety, and of course, the massively underrated soundtrack, all come together in this groundbreaking title all the way back from 1994 to create a one-of-a-kind, unforgettable experience. Truly special game.

I was going to do a longer review, but unfortunately I hit the review length limit when I was, like, 40% done with my review, so I'll have to give the condensed version instead. Sorry if not all of my points are well explained or easy to understand, but I genuinely don't have space to elaborate on them.

Don't believe the 91% positive review rate (as of this writing, anyway) saying this game is good, it's not.

The game is considered a cult classic for a reason: The gameplay wouldn't appeal to 99% of people but would very strongly appeal to 1%.

No, you are not part of the 1%, because they knew they wanted the game without reading reviews. If you have to check what others have to say before you buy this, it doesn't appeal to you enough for you to like it.

I suspect the reviews are as high as they are despite this game probably being terrible for most people based on a combination of the small minority of people who actually like the game giving it positive reviews and then most of the rest of people who don't like it either not wanting to be the one to say the emperor has no clothes or else possibly thinking something like, "I know I personally don't like it, but that doesn't mean others wouldn't. It must just not be my cup of tea, but I guess it must be good if everyone praises it all the time. I should avoid a negative review so as not to slander the name of what I assume is a good game" (which is admittedly kind of fair because the review system on Steam isn't "Did you like the game?" but it's "would you recommend the game to others?" and "I didn't like it, but someone else might like it, so I guess I recommend it" is sort of fair under that system), but these people are just doubting themselves for no reason. Their personal assessment is quite correct, this game is not good. Sometimes if it looks like a cat, sounds like a cat, and eats mice like a cat, it's because it's a cat, and so if this appears to be a bad game, it's because it is.

You can check the completion rate for this game yourself. If you look at how many players actually have the achievements for doing basic things like completing the first major objective or actually finishing the game and compare to other games' completion rates, you can see that the completion rate for this game is about one quarter of what you would expect for a typical game. I assume this is because only about a quarter as many people as usual who played this game actually liked it enough to complete it.

I suspect fewer people than average who didn't like the game and didn't finish bothered to leave a negative review because the way this game disappoints players is by giving them the illusion of making progress without actually letting them advance until they eventually get bored and say they're going to play the game some more tomorrow and yet somehow just never do, as opposed to a normal game that would be kind enough to let you know that you're stuck so you can rage about it and scream, "I'M NEVER PLAYING THIS TRASH AGAIN!" and then go off and rant on Steam about how awful it is. If players knew how hopeless their situation was and how little REAL progress they were making, they would have probably gotten mad enough to actually review it rather than the apathy that the game seems to leave most players with.

As for the game itself, the primary problem is that it gives you NO clue on how you're supposed to advance, and it's not just that they don't tell you how to complete your current mission, but there IS no current mission. You're not even told what you're supposed to DO, let alone how to do it, so you spend all of your time wandering aimlessly. I understand you're supposed to immerse yourself in the game and figure it out without being told as if it were all really happening to you or whatever and you really were just stranded here with no way home, and it's supposed to be an immersive gaming experience or whatever, but I feel it fails at that because whatever immersion it might have is ruined by the RIDICULOUS level layouts and stuff, and I cannot for the life of me imagine that this was once a real functioning space station because every room feels ridiculous, they have no discernible purpose other than just to be a vague abstract room in a video game, and who builds a weird random red room with nothing in it right next to the weird random blue room with nothing in it down the hall from the series of raised walkways with no guardrails that I guess workers were expected to operate a series of levers and switches to activate the very dangerous narrow bridges they had to cross every day on their way to lunch? You could argue that maybe this is just a result of hardware limitations of the time and they wanted more detailed realistic rooms with more recognizable purposes but computers back then couldn't handle it, but I don't believe that, because there ARE a handful of rooms that look like they have a real purpose in the game and contribute to a believable environment, so the large number of rooms that are just vague abstract incomprehensible nothings have no excuse to be there other than we needed a level in a video game.

Related to my previous point, but I take it this is a game where you're supposed to become familiar with the layout so that when you find a random log saying "I was in such and such a room and left a key there to such and such a different room", you know how to get to those rooms, and so the point is across multiple partial playthroughs you might become more familiar with the game until you can beat it based on the vague clues it gives you, but the problem is that it fails to do this properly because it's hard to learn the layout of a series of random colored rooms with no purpose because they don't have meaning to the human mind, and it feels like the difference between memorizing a random series of words like "shoe, stick, seventeen, to, some, elbow, paneling" and memorizing a meaningful passphrase like, "the sun sets when the wolf howls" or something, because one of those has meaning to the human mind and one of them doesn't, and so I'm not even saying that the problem with the game is how it's trying to be something other than the modern games that give you a quest arrow to everything or whatever because this games just leaves you to figure it out yourself (though I personally don't like that aspect of it either), but I'm saying that even for what it's trying to be it's a bad example of it because it fails to have anything that makes sense to the human mind, and as an example, Dead Rising, (a game that actually DOES have a quest arrow and so presumably only incidentally teaches players the layout because they're not expected to have it memorized anyway, and yet somehow it does it better by accident that System Shock does on purpose), does a better job of having players learn the map, because I know the mall from that game like the back of my hand and could take you from the roller coaster to the movie theater to the gun shop to the food court or just wherever blindfolded, because Dead Rising feels like a real livable space that could actually exist in real life and everything there has PURPOSE and MEANS something, while System Shock is just a pointless maze of no meaning just for the sake of having a pointless maze of no meaning, so I'm sorry, but it's not just that the game isn't for me (though I probably wouldn't like a better made example of what it's trying to be either), but it just fails even at what it wants to do.

The game also has general "old game problems", and even though the enhanced edition fixed a lot of stuff (You can move the camera with the mouse now, YAY!), things like the nonsensical combat that makes it really difficult to hit anything even when it's two inches in front of your face still persist, but these problems are sort of numerous and miscellaneous to the point where they're hard to list individually in a limited space.

In short, just don't buy it.

shodan please sit on me

SS2 will always be my ultimate favorite, and while i can see why someone would consider SS1 to be anachronistic and/or perhaps even unplayable, i still think it was ahead of its time, even when picking out the more clunky aspects of the game, such as the notorious control scheme from 1994. awkward movement and controls, to me at least, are the cherry on top for games that already have a certain heaviness to them. there comes a time where what we have now becomes repetitive, and you wish to see a different approach from different, more hardware and software-limited days. the enhanced version offers the mouselook option, making the game easier to control. it does remind me a lot of a total conversion for doom. even the inventory has a hexen look to it, i dunno i like it a lot.

the only thing that i can add is that, while SS1 is not as brutal and terrifying as its sequel, the game over cinematic is one of the more horrifying ones to date. a cortex reaver lifts you up with its electric currents, sucks your head into its under belly, turning you into his own kind in a matter of seconds. the eye-rolling, the darkening and cracking of the skin, the stiffness of your hanging body, the shift from upbeat midi music to the sound of a sizzling breaker box. the sfx is also very uncanny and the robotic chattering makes me so uncomfortable, lol crazy stuff.

very fun if you like having your balls busted

Go to level 3 ASAP
When you get out of the elevator, turn left and go through the first maintenance door
Climb up the ladder, kill the security robot and nab the laser rapier before going to level R

Truly a one of a kind game, inspiring many games of it's kind and beyond.
If you prefer a retro experience, than I recommend playing this version. Otherwise the Remake is probably for you.
The controls take a bit to get used to and I remapped some of the bindings to suit me. Otherwise the game feels smooth to play.
The cybernet section, if even they were pioneering at the time, are a little tedious and confusing to play. But they don't occur often and are sometimes optional.

I also find it incredible how the game steers you to the next objectives without outright showing or telling what you should do. There are no annoying pointers or arrows that show you the way a la Fallout. You get emails telling you your overall objective, but how you get there is your task. And you also find emails in the environment that give you further hints. For example, early on you need to find codes in a library. But the lights are out and the hallway is full of enemies. So you remember that in one of the emails a technician said that he installed a switch to bring back power, giving you your next objective.

The voice acting is hit or miss sometimes. However, the star of the show is Shodan. She is a terrifying villain. Her face sometimes appears on random screens throughout the station, giving you the feeling that you are always being watched, and that you are facing a powerful enemy. Absolutely brilliant.

One of the exemplars of classic gaming touched up for quality of life conveniences. Helpful tips: Save before firing the station laser. "E" toggles between mouse look and mouse cursor. And drop the music volume down to 50%. This is one of the most influential games of all time for a reason.

Heard about the remake and decided to play the original and honestly I wasn't sure what to expect. Safe to say...I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued. The game presents itself with interesting cyberpunk visuals as you navigate the Micro-tech walls and sliding doors of citadel station. Exerting all efforts to stop the the stations A.I "shodan" from going rogue.

For some reason despite its dated graphics and game-play I absolutely love this game. (I haven't finished yet but im already sold) The premise and intro sets up the story very well and the concepts within it are very reminiscent of William Gibson's "Neuromancer."

I can see where bioshock gets its flare from haha. All and all System Shock is a 9/10 and for someone born way after its creation im glad i spun the clock back to experience it.

its good game but not typical straightforward FPS, the environment and atmosphere really good and i would of been blown away if i played this when it first came out all those years back but still impressed.
there a variety of monsters and weapons in this game to keep you busy. However the story-line is alright as it can be but personally for me the level designs are so complex that i find it hard to figure out where i meant to go most of the time.
The controls are not simple and did take me abit to figure out the controls it was annoying at fist but after an hour getting use to them they didn't really bother me. the interactions with things with the environment was fun dint like the re-wiring part that bugged me abit lol. however for a game for its time its good. however if your thinking getting this for running and gunning and blasting through the levels think again, your stamina is like your character smokes 40 a day, also depends on the difficulty you play can be straightforward or a straight up nightmare. this game makes you think more than you should on where to go and what to do, but after a few hours in you get the idea.
my pros overweight the cons with this game hence positive review.

System Shock is one of the best games out there. If you can get over the initial hump of the dated, blocky graphics and the occasionally fiddly controls (which have been improved in the enhanced edition), it is an insanely investing atmospheric experience. Getting through each floor felt like a massive success, and figuring out the objectives through emails and notes was incredibly satisfying. The free aim system and leaning, while not always the most necessary functions, were still fun and added another layer of enjoyment for taking out enemies, and I've not seen it replicated anywhere else.

The game itself is by no means brutal, either. System Shock has a reputation for being a clunky, unforgiving game from the past, but it's far from the truth. On default difficulty you're given infinite time and saves to play the game at your own pace with enemies that generally play fairly. Not to mention each floor has a rejuvenation chamber you can activate which will restore you to max health upon death and make you lose zero progress. On top of that, respawning cannon fodder enemies can drop an infinite amount of health patches and other goodies to make sure you're stocked on consumables.

If the idea of working your way through a hostile space station piece by piece, triumphing over an all-seeing AI sounds fun to you, I'd say give it a shot. You're at least bound to appreciate all of the features and design that future games took from it.

its cool old shit! but i think i'm going to play the remake instead

I was not expecting this game to be much fun, but it's surprisingly good. It's not like a true "immersive sim", all of the game is completely linear, but you can see the first seeds of the genre here. At first UI looks very confusing, but once you figure out how to use it, it starts to make a lot of sense. The game is very heavy in mechanics, but it never feels overwhelming, you kind of learn it when you need it.

At first, it feels like the game is really hard to control (for example, you have to manually unload and load guns, and move items by hand into your inventory), but actually it feels very appropriate for the plot and situation: you're just a teenage hacker that probably never held a gun in their life and now have to learn to survive, and by the end of the game you're a pro at room clearing and reloading on the go, because you as a player learned what to do and what not to do. Manual handling of everything also makes you vulnerable, enhancing the feel of horror.

The plot makes sense and goes beyond just AI becoming suddenly evil, there's a whole different layer to it, you learn why exactly AI is evil, what the corporation was doing, your role in the story and why people don't know who you are. The game in the beginning feels like "in and out 20 minute adventure", and by the end you've been through so much turning points and changings of plans that you feel physical relief when it ends.

It feels like developers really had fun making the game, and it reflects on the gameplay. The puzzles are brilliant, each one is completely different and utilizes the level design, clever use of common game mechanics, log information (and not just go-here-do-this) and leverages player knowledge or vision.

There are, of course, negatives. Cyberspace is confusing, some puzzles aren't very clearly communicated, some enemies respawn continuously, it's often not clear who's attacking you (and I'm not talking about assasins that are obviously silent), and the final "boss" is a pushover, It's still very fun still.

too old to enjoy, look forward to the remake

Absolute classic.

this game is incredible(i don't have time to explain, but you have to buy it)

WELCOME TO MY DEATH MACHINE, INTERLOPER

Amazing and atmospheric

It's much more playable than the original with mouselook. Terri Brosius absolutely kills it with her voice acting.

-I tried to conserve ammo, do not do this. You will have more than enough for every encounter if you just spray enemies with bullets.

I prefer a quiet station, thank you.

The game is currently in an unplayable state, with constant jittering, and stuttering frames. Really unfortunate.

Along with Ultima Underworld (which you should play if you enjoyed this) this started the trend of immersive sims as the gaming press liked calling it. There's a catch with this game though, remember to write down the number you see on levels 1 to 6 when you take out the central security computers, because they're needed as the passcode for the reactor in the endgame. Just to save time from backtracking all of those six levels for that code, because it's different every playthrough. The spooky vibes of the desolate space station are unparalleled for its time. Some newer games like Prey (not the shooter where you play as an Indian) pay homage to this classic series.

Excellent game

comes with the original game that i played for 21.1 hours, according to steam.
really good! an objective or two is sometimes a bit unclear, but is otherwise fine. also b-serk has a really silly side-effect that i enjoy greatly.

i haven't touched the enhanced edition much, as it doesn't take too long to adjust to the original's controls.

I really love this game but the damn BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP telling you that you can interact with something is just so painful. Please Night Dive, throw me a fricken bone here

I admire System Shock for its historical significance; however the combination of horrible controls, incomprehensible GUI/HUD, and ugly graphics (even for the time) means it's simply not an enjoyable experience in this day and age.

This early immersive sim is very unique and is quite advanced for a game that was made in 1994.

The problem is that this port isn't very well optimised - Every now and then, the game gets into this micro-stuttering fit until I pause the game and then unpause. The stuttering then resumes itself after roughly 30 seconds, until I have to pause and unpause again and this goes on endlessly. The same framerate instability is in the GOG version too, regardless of which rollback it's on - How frustrating.

I'm very disappointed that we have yet to make this 30 year old game run smoothly on modern systems. I won't come back to this until either Night Dive comes up with a solution, or a better optimised alternative presents itself. Other people have been experiencing the same thing, even from old forums - So it can't be only me. For the sake of this game please do better, guys.