System Shock

90/100

Amazing remake (after looking at clips of the original). Didn't even knew System Shock was a thing until I played this.

My advice with this game is to take your time and pay attention because you will get lost, forget, and get extremely sidetracked. Specially on a first run.

I love the pixelated look and the movement feels good. So many cool guns and their functions. If a game has me thinking about it while at work then it's a good game.

It's a game with pros and cons. Thankfully, the pros easily outweigh the cons.

Pros:
-Atmosphere, immersion, and visual style
-Gameplay variety (lots of tools, weapons, and gadgets let you approach combat scenarios in many different ways)
-Enemy variety
-RPG elements and character progression
-SHODAN (such a relevant and iconic antagonist still today) and general voice acting
-HUD, map, and inventory system is great
-the game is a challenge in the best way, meaning if you make mistakes you can die easily, but if you are intelligent about how you approach situations you really won't ever die to something unfair

Cons:
-little guidance (both for objectives and for how some mechanics work)
-confusing and maze-like level design
-puzzles are not fun (somewhat optional)
-cyberspace sections are not fun (somewhat optional)

In summary, it's a fantastic remake that is almost too faithful to the original in some ways.
Anyone who has played the original System Shock is likely going to love this remake, because it is faithful to the original in many positive ways. If you've never played the original, but you are a fan of space horror and gaming, you're probably still going to love it. If you find yourself frustrated by certain things, just stick with it. SHODAN will reward you.

While not a game for everyone, those into the immersive sim genre will certainly enjoy this.

Awesome remaster. System Shock remaster is clearly done with love and it delivers an essential classic in an approachable form. The game keeps intact what is worth keeping and changes some things that have room for it.

I especially enjoy the old style of no quest logs and compasses pointing your way. The game feels more engaging when you really need to listen up where to go next. Backtracking through the levels doesn't feel like a chore and makes the space station feel like a really lived-in place, not just set dressing for a game. The main antagonist SHODAN also carries the game from start to finish.

I also very much appreciate the different difficulty sliders, already present in the original. Difficulty doesn't need to be a singular factor and you should be able to adjust different aspects of the game, in more games.

All praise being said, the final 15 minutes of the game almost manages to ruin my good feelings. (Spoilers:) The end sequence has somewhat been altered from the original game. It still happens in cyberspace but suddenly the cyberspace gameplay is totally different than earlier in the game. The ending is very detached from every other aspect of the game, and also very frustrating and difficult in all the wrong ways. Finally finishing it I just felt frustrated and didn't pay enough attention to the ending.

I still very much recommend the game, but be prepared for a weak ending.

I was fascinated by the great atmosphere and design, so I bought the game. Unfortunately, System Shock is a real old-school game, which isn't really my cup of tea. There's a lot of backtracking, boring puzzles, and minigames; you have to write things down and read and listen to everything if you want to advance. It might sound immersive and cool, but for me, it's just boring.

Also, I was expecting much more exciting looting. I anticipated seeing a lot of cyberpunk/sci-fi upgrades, but there's almost nothing like that.

This is a very specific kind of game. It's not a typical shooter; it's a very old-school adventure/puzzle action game, so be aware.

it was hard to enjoy the game at the start but soon it brought me a lot of satisfaction. I'm happy i beat this game - it was worth the time I spent on it.

Hard game, great game, you don't need to look anything up if you pay attention and take minimal notes. Solid 8/10 experience. There's only one level in the game I felt was really "bad" but outside that had a great time.

Absolutely incredible game!
I was completely drawn into the atmosphere of Citadel Station. Looks amazing and runs silky smooth.
If you are a fan of games like the original Deus Ex, Thief 1 & 2, or even the Dishonored games, you'll enjoy the System Shock Remake.
it is a way to show how a game should be: hard, no hints, immersive, an experience that pushes the player to the limit, that leads him, her, to despair for not being able to advance and has to go tempting a darkness void to achieve the goals.

good game, doesn't directly tell you what you need or where to go, just implies it via audio logs and the occasional call mid-late game

Never played the original but this remake is incredible, makes me excited for the remaster of the second game coming out in a couple months!

Good game, i never played the original because im not 1000 years old but this feels like an old game brought to the modern world

This game can be kind of unbearable sometimes, but that’s alright.

It’s a lovingly faithful remake, for better or for worse. Hardcore fans of the original must be so happy for it to be this way; legends say you can almost complete it using ancient 1994 walkthroughs - that’s how faithful it is.

Unfortunately, that means the rest of us have to navigate through a painful level of obtuseness, with Pipe Dream puzzles that were already tired beyond reason back in 2007 when we were playing the first BioShock, and boring white noise that is cyberspace hacking minigames. This game demands a lot of patience, let me tell you. If you don’t want to deal with constant tedious "where-the-hell-do-I-go" moments, you better play it on easy, and I tend to recommend that. There is a fine line between challenge and wasting the player’s time for no reason, and System Shock has crossed it - an unfortunate side effect of the game's age.

I swear, I still overall liked it, but mostly due to historical interest and SHODAN. I don’t regret playing it, but I will probably never touch it again.

Can’t wait for the remaster of the sequel, though!

The whole game is basically one giant easter egg you need to unlock. so look up guides if you're gonna play.

Don't like the lack of hints or direction, getting totally lost at times, but that might be a personal problem. Otherwise. If this is an accurate remake of the original, WOW, that's an amazing game for its time. And this remake stands on its own as a solid work. I like the snappy simplicity of things compared to the overzealous interfaces of other games. But at the same time it's incredibly engaging and intricate. A real masterpiece.

As someone who's never played the original game. Based on what I've seen and the reviews that have come out. This is a really faithful and amazing remake for someone to jump into who's interested in the games.

The game looks beautiful in UE4 and exaggerates the cyberpunk aesthetic in a really good way. Gameplay is fun, as someone who doesn't really do survival horror games often. I got into this game really quickly. The Cyberspace sections are fun sections that I feel are pretty well spaced in between one another. Enemy designs are really nice and the music is fuckin phenomenal.

If there's a couple things I didn't really like about it. I'd say inventory management can be a bit of a problem, especially if you don't find the two upgrades that are entirely optional. But even with those two upgrades, it was a bit difficult to determine what items I should keep and what ones I can safely drop. And also, there's a death animation that only plays during specific sections of the game that is admittedly very creepy and worth seeing, the problem is that it's only like that the first couple times you see it, and you can't skip the animation either, and given the fact that near the end of the game, where there isn't a whole lot of autosave sections and that you have to manually save a bunch of times basically. If you die, and aren't fast enough to pause and load your save. Then guess what? That death animation is playing again and you CAN'T SKIP IT. Which can get really annoying. Other than that. The System Shock remake is really good and I very much recommend it!

Such an awesome game... Also SHODAN is so friggin hot and I'm gay for her. I wish there was more chances to side with her.

Catches that feeling of the era of game design that doesn't do any handholding, and throws fair challenges that keeps it interesting. Wish they made more games like this today

I would very much like to recommend this game. I wish there was a neutral option.

Much of it is the old original, but IMO better. It's a very old-school kind of design. It's not going to hold your hand - it expects you to pay attention and be careful when listening to know what to do and where to go, thought if you set the story difficulty to minimum I think it gives you marker points.

Visually, I really like the style. The people making it clearly used the original as a basis, and it's amazing how well the graphical style matches up - giving it a cool and interesting look now thirty years later. The maps are big and complicated, with you having to go back and forth across the station to complete objectives. It's fun, all the levels are visually very distinct, and there's tons of gear, audiologs, and other desirable items tucked away in corners. Exploration is rewarded.

Gameplay-wise, there's a surprising variety of enemies with various weaknesses, the guns have had the chaff trimmed out of them, have modifications and (like the original) different ammo for different situations. Combined with the variety of explosives, cyberware and drugs you have available, you have a lot of options for how you want to fight.

The enemy spawning can be a bit much, though, with enemies respawning right next to you immediately after killing one sometimes. My friend had enemies spawn behind him quite often, though I didn't encounter that much if at all on either playthrough of mine.

Admittedly, some of the weapons have abilities or ammo that feels underwhelming. The magpull weapon never quite felt like it earned it's inventory space, even against robots, and the dragonsbreath rounds for the shotgun felt like they didn't excel compared to ordinary shells.

Cyberspace is improved from the original, in it isn't absolutely atrocious. Only a few cyberspace terminals are actually mandatory, and tend not to be too difficult when they are.

I did encounter a few bugs, mostly minor. Corpses of executive bots duplicated when gibbed. A few enemies clearly spawned in the wrong place. A couple of times, the game violently lagged and slowed down for a few seconds before recovering. None of the issues were truly bad.

Why can't I recommend it? Because the ending cyberspace fight is absolute garbage. It's awful, and that's both versions of it. I first beat the game with the original cyberspace fight, which was very bad, being both impossible to lose (you just respawned) and generally unfun. Learning it was redone, I played through again on the maximum difficulties, and was bushwhacked by the new, even less fun cyberspace fight.

Unlike all the other cyberspace parts, the final showdown against Shodan's Ominous Cone you are on foot with a virtual rifle. The new end fight is still on foot for some reason, meaning you're slow and have to shoot up at every enemy, which are just two kinds of standard cyberspace enemies.
Instead of respawning, you have to load a save before you enter cyberspace, then sit through riding a platform, which takes a full one minute thirty (i was salty enough to time it) from right clicking on the cyberspace terminal to actually being back in the boss fight. On foot, you're slower and have to shoot up at every enemy, using weapons that have projectile delay against enemies that are flying about. Two of the weapons you can get can also friendly fire yourself. As you're looking up, be careful not to fall off the platforms, as not everywhere has a barrier and it's instant death. If you die, back to the start and Shodan's magic train ride. There's no healing at all during the fight, it's just a gauntlet.

It's not fun. It took me from thinking 'hell yeah I'm beating System Shock max difficulty' to 'god damn i wish i was done with this already'. My final impression of the game is one of frustration.

It sucks, and I can't imagine it changing at this point - since they already redid it once. If I ever think of replaying this game, it will be with the thought 'oh, but I don't want to play the ending'.

Like your mother, it's a fun ride for the most part, but when you finish you're left unsatisfied. If you don't mind that, I'd recommend this game.

This game is so fucking good, it’s so much fun to run through over and over again. All praise SHODAN, our goddess.

+++ Excellent sense of immersion and isolation.
+++ Well-executed semi-retro art direction.
+++ Utterly faithful to the original...

--- ...Utterly faithful to the original.
--- Clunky controls.
--- Aggravating traps and boss battles.

This is a weird one. It's recommended for whoever played the original. It's not recommended for whoever didn't. This remake is a near-perfect reproduction of the original game, faults and all, wrapped into a total graphical overhaul. A fresh run can be expected to take upwards of 20 hours for a newcomer, much less for a returning veteran, and the hard difficulty expects a completion time under 10 hours. The complete lack of handholding can be jarring if unexpected, but ultimately contended with. Combat is a much more frustrating affair, with most battles being resolved less through traditional gaming skills, and more through cheese strategies. This comes to a head in boss fights, in which their incredible speed and punishingly high damage output will quickly turn the quickload button into one's best friend. For one who hasn't played the original, this will be a hard-as-nails, unforgiving, impenetrable experience. For one who has played the original... this is exactly what they requested, and what was indeed delivered. And I cannot fault a game for delivering exactly what the customer wanted.

The original DOS era System Shock was a prime candidate for a remake, especially since, despite a legendary standing, it is niche enough that developers wouldn't feel compelled to excessively update or transform it. And indeed, there have been plenty of more successful games inspired by System Shock that refine its gameplay or basic narrative, so keeping the original's experience mostly intact - if presented in a way more palatable to a modern audience - is crucial as the remake's main point of interest.

They do, and the result is a veritable Culture Shock. The game demands you pay attention, show patience and do at least a little bit of your own thinking and exploration. Which is all fine and well, but I have a hard time believing that adding QoL features like a log search, more mapping icons or better/less mouse-dependent would have resulted in rioting legions of System Shock purists. Oh well.


Quick rundown: The maps get quite sprawling, but slowly finding getting your bearings in a labyrinthine 90s environment can be fun once in a while. Its details and layout aren't as perfectly thought out as Prey's Talos I (amazing criticism to spring on a 30-year-old game, I know), though the levels do match the station overview schematic, which is nice.

In general, the higher graphical fidelity of the remake introduces a lot of visual clutter that can feel overwhelming in the beginning, before you have figured out which objects are relevant. Overall weapon variety is fine. The difficulty settings are quite unique and a wonderful glimpse into another era of game design. Boss fight balance is completely off.

Cyberspace segments are brief and represent an okay diversion, but won't be anyone's favorite. The music is okay, but had a habit of transitioning to a battle theme when the fighting was already over. There are a few bugs related to ragdolls glitching out. The voice acting (mostly in audio logs) is consistently high quality.

This is a great restoration of a very influential game.
I played the original 94. game but a lot of the stuff about it was forgotten.
Yet this brought a lot of good memories and you can see how this game influenced a lot of games that came later on like Prey, Bioshock, Dishonored, Soma to name a few.
The updated graphics are really good and music is excellent.
I even liked the cyber space portions of the game as they reminded me of an old game called Descent which i played as a young kid.
The main draw for me about this game is the atmosphere as it sucks you into its world.
You read the station logs and get the better picture of the story and your goals.
What I also love about the game is it doesn't hold your hand and you must keep track of some things on your own. I can see how this might be a problem if you accidentally miss some item or info on what to do next you can easily get stuck and frustrated.
In the logs they explain why the station is like a maze so you can easily get lost :)
Shodan is one of the most iconic game villains of all time.
This game came out almost 2 years ago so not a single bug in my playtime.
I would recommend this for anyone that remotely liked the games I mentioned above.
Good job to all that participated in recreating this masterpiece.

Nice mix of nostalgia trip with updated graphics. It's a good game and it clearly shows why the original was an influential sucess. Certainly not easy, but perpetual threat mixed with no quest markers keeps exploration necessary and excitingly dangerous. Cudos to the devs for bringing back what I heards is a very faithful remake.

A frustrating, confusing, and oftentimes unfair or unfun game. This is a true throwback to when the original came out in 1994 - there will be times playing where you will have no idea what you should be doing, and then once you realize where you should be you will die to a robot appearing out of the ground again and again. If anything, this game proves as an interesting reminder of features that may be taken for granted in modern gaming. I tried so much to enjoy this game but it just keeps coming with relentlessly tedious design and infuriating combat.

Ironically, one of the parts of this game that I enjoyed the most was the cyberspace sections. Seems like that is one of the main gripes the general public of negative reviews has. Otherwise, the combat is rough, and I often found myself getting absolutely bent by enemies who spammed attacks that were near unavoidable. Flying robot AoEs were by far the worst of this. If you enjoy difficult games, you'll like this, especially if you are a madman who plays on difficulty 3. I played on all 2's and it really humbled me as a person who isn't the same gamer I used to be, lol. Worst part of the difficulty as well - once you start on a setting, you *cannot* change it. Maybe if I accepted or knew that I needed to play on difficulty 1 at the start it wouldn't be as bad, but it's too late now as my playthrough is many hours in and restarting would be brutal.

If you are a true retro enthusiast who can get over design choices from that previous era of gaming (example - constant backtracking and absolutely no handholding or guidance), well, this will be right up your alley. Otherwise, if you're like me and you're not in the mood for a frustrating experience, it's best to avoid this one.

I am not saying this is a bad game because it isn't. I haven't even finished it yet.

What I am saying is that if like me you don't finish games in a single sitting. God forbid if life gets in your way and say you can't play for a week or three. You better have perfect recall because there is so much you have to read, listen to and remember in this game. Let alone the details whilst obvious to some can be easily overlooked by others.

Others might like the lack of an arrow pointing out an objective but if like me you have a job and kids knowing which direction is forwards after not playing the game for a month is really useful. A brief summary of the objective and pertinent information that you will need to complete it would be great as well. I can't remember my own pin half the time let alone a code I saw once for a brief second in a video game.

If you have played Deus Ex and Bioshock the feel of the game will be familiar. I know not all games need to be designed specifically for me and this is a remake of an old game. Maybe I am just too used to modern conventions. But man this game is full of bad game design left behind 20 years ago.

This game does not respect my time.

I will finish this game. But I will be using this guide
GUIDE

and it will be out of spite.

Also the music is terrible.

I've never played the original but this game is a masterpiece. It's one of those rare games that makes me want to investigate every square inch of the map. The story is almost entirely told through voice and text logs along with environmental storytelling and it's very compelling with good writing and voice acting. Organically dividing the game into levels via the leveled space station makes for fun progression. The combat is old school but really solid with a handful of cool guns you can find upgrades for throughout your playthrough.

The updated graphics are amazing. While the texture resolution is very low, accentuating the retro look, scenes end up looking very detailed from just a couple feet back with reflections and lighting adding a lot to every room. Each level has a unique style with lots of detail on every wall.

The joy of this game is figuring it out without it holding your hand. The only guidance it generally gives is instructions or clues within the logs. I had to make notes outside of the game to remember what I needed to do next or later down the line, though it does allow you to mark the map with custom text as well. I played on the middle difficulty and it was fairly challenging in spots.

Ultimately this game is a huge sleeper hit. It might not be for everyone but it's so unique, full of character, and constantly fun. My final save file gameplay time was just over 20 hours.

Insanely fun to play and explore. The difficulty of the game seems reasonable, though honestly a few parts of the game don't seem as seemless as others. If you are not paying attention or if you haven't looked the game prior to playing it, then you will be stumped over a few decisions. Regardless, the gameplay is really fun, gunplay feels satisfying, exploration is rewarded. Best part of the game hands down is the setting and ambience.
Recommended.

Disappointing and forgettable

Cons:
-pointless changes to the script and intro cutscene
-unmemorable and bland voice acting compared to the original game
-unmemorable and almost unnoticeable music compared to the original ost
-recycling mechanic is just a filler since it provides no challenge
-worst of all: too much visual clutter and little lights everywhere make it difficult to find small items and make your eyes bleed after 5 minutes


Pros:
-the retro-modern artstyle is unique and fits the game
-the puzzle panels are more interesting than in the original
-final boss fight is still lame, but better than the original

Honestly, System Shock 2 plays better than this remake. It’s just not fun. I get it, it’s a very faithful remake. But perhaps too faithful. Just a very obtuse, meandering game. And i tend to like vague games. But this just feels aimless, and combat is subpar. I revisit old games all the time. But I think the design is this is just too archaic.

Despite being made in Unreal Engine it doesn't run like shit surprisingly.

This game is a massive upgrade from the original, but remains archaic in many ways and is not for the faint of heart. Be prepared to fail and be confused and maybe need to look up a guide, but more importantly be ready to triumph over shodan and all citadel station has to throw at you.

I never played the original, so I can only base my opinion of the remake itself, but, it's a great game.

It's a slow burn, but get into it and you'll be immersed within Citadel Station. Finding audio logs and notes is vital to finding the codes for opening the way to certain rooms. Anything that seems important usually is important, so don't throw it away. You can store items in a cargo lift that can be called up to any floor you're on.

This is pure retro game design, so expect backtracking. Especially if you're like me and didn't pay attention to certain numbers that will pop up in certain rooms after doing a certain thing, note down everything or you'll be having to backtrack to every floor to find those numbers, 6 in total, 1 per floor.

It can be brutal, but rewarding, and figuring out things on your own gives a good dopamine hit. It's worth picking up and I'm glad I finally got to experience System Shock.

Also, Laser Rapier and Berserk dermal patches are powerful - extremely powerful. As in, melt through bosses within a few hits powerful - so abuse it.

A great sci-fi game with great puzzles and great exploration. The citadel space station looks really nice and is fun to explore, as you’re left by yourself to find out what to do with guidance from audio logs. Combat isn’t that great, but it’s decent if you don’t treat it like an fps shooter. I recommend turning cyberspace to 1, as it’s the worse part of this game. Overall great game and makes me want to try the original system shock along with the sequel

Tho i havent finished it yet, by far a 10/10 for me, i miss the old days of playing SP games, now most intresting games REQUIRE friends to enjoy, witch i have very few. so its refreshing to play these games more then multiplayer games most of the time, well worth a shot playing.

Holy moly, it's good. Keep in this mind, this had inspired Bio Shock, and thus has a game-play far similar to that than a straight up action shooter. There are puzzles and resource management, a bit lighter than, but akin to resident evil games.

The unique thing the System-Shock remake offers is one; beauty. the stylized 3D is fantastic (And it runs great on my pc).

Second is *super* claustrophobic maze-like design. Some comments have said they dislike that experience, but it definitely wasn't an accident, you get squished. You're designed to get squished. So you got to learn to get cozy with being pressed. It's fun.

Having never played the original System Shock 1, I was going into this game completely blind. By the end of the game, I realized this game is nothing short of a masterpiece. The atmosphere in this game is unmatched. It was incredibly dark, depressing, and horrifying. The gameplay was superb and the puzzles felt rewarding. I played on normal difficulty, but I found the game actually rather challenging combat wise. I had to be very smart with my moves, and I had conserve my ammo and manage my inventory effectively. While some gamers may see this type of stuff as chore-like, I actually really enjoyed this aspect. I had to think on my feet a lot, and plan things ahead of time. The game also didn't hold your hand like 99.9% of games nowadays. I had to constantly read text logs and listen to audio logs to figure out what to do next. I really appreciate games that do not underestimate the intelligence of their audience, and this is one of them. I can see why this franchise is considered one of the greatest immersive sims to date.

A stunning revival of a classic that successfully blends modern visuals and gameplay improvements while maintaining the essence of the original. This is what every remake should strive for.

System Shock is a really great survival-horror game.
It's tough. It's not hand-holding at all.

Highly recommend - If you love a challenging survival horror game that's not hand-holding you at all. This is a game for you.
Not recommend - If you are more of a linear story driven game or more on the casual side. Because this game literally just dropped you in the space and vola explore! xD

*Don't forget to note stuffs down tho.

It started out high, and ended pretty low. Cyber space is the least fun aspect of this game, it's frustrating and disorientating, and it's a slog to get through especially when the game gets the better of you. Systems like recycling and scrapping are very clunky with the management of physical currency and lack of QoL for mass vaporization of materials if need be. The Nanites from SS2 handled currency much better. Weapon mods are a nice touch, but are hindered by the recycling and currency system. Though the game encourages exploration by design, it's very unintuitive on the user's end to figure out where to go. I've had to pull up walk throughs to navigate to important locations where I must recall a sequence of numbers, and it's just been more frustrating to backtrack instead of it being engaging. Enemy encounters especially towards the end of the game felt very sparse, and instead of a rising escalation it just plateau'd into an anti-climatic show down.

Despite these short comings, and a few nitpicks in regards to faithfulness such as the Bridge, it's a very accurate and faithful remake of the original System Shock game. It inherits a lot of traits, both good and bad, of its predecessor, and the presentation impressed me through the beginning to end, barring cyber space. It's a much more digestable way to play System shock that requires less navigating through unintuitive UIs and control schemes, and I hope others can appreciate the merits this game has accomplished.

I WISH STEAM HAD A MIXED REVIEW CHOICE. You can try it the demo (which is a bit different from the actual game and see if you like it and wait for a discount IMO . And to mention I have not played the original.

I am trying to push myself to finish this game honestly. Don't get me wrong the atmosphere, story, gun-play, voice acting graphics and performance are really good. But because the game is a remake of a game made in the 90's. the level design and puzzles are very old and just not fun. There is a lot of back and forth you have to do and nothing is really explained on what you have to do. you just have to listen and trust all the audio logs you find along the way and remember what they said.

The game is also very punishing and has this weird disconnect between it's modern graphics and difficulty. You are on a corporate space station that closed so no one could leave, that looks amazing but it looks like everyone took everything and left, with the couple of dead bodies on it left behind, which makes it WEIRDLY empty, You barely get any supplies along the way with the occasional small health-pack/ammo on the ground or enemy drop. Enemies do a lot of damage as well. Also there are a ton of crates you can find but 90% of them are empty along with most of the side rooms they are in.

Like I said, I haven't finished the game but I will try to, slowly.

Was having a lot of fun, until I hit a hardlock that affected both my autosave and manual save. Don't save while you're in the surgery rehabilitation machine. On the save it kills me and says I was crushed, on the autosave it says i'm fatigued then the camera fades to black.
If anyone wants the save files to debug let me know

a lot of wandering without direction, and the cyberspace sections are not fun

I don't think the game holds up very well despite the remake, It's supposed to be a tedious search through logs for stuff but I just plain can't enjoy this. Stopped after completing Beta Grove (which makes the game a lot worse). Feel free to clown me, this review is based on enjoyment anyway.

Solid 4/10. The visuals are awesome, but the game lacks serious polish. voice logs are dull/flat and lack the "this is a place people lived/worked" of the original. the final boss battle is unpolished and buggy as fuck.
The upbeat original music replaced with a lifeless ambient mix that is completely unmemorable.

This is an excellent remake! It has the original vibe in modern presentation and controls. I absolutely love it, for me this is 11/10 game. However, new players should be aware that there are no objective markers, no quests nor other modern babysitting mechanics. Just plain simple - explore and figure it out by yourself.

First of all, if you are considering playing this game and have not yet played System Shock 2, go play it first. Turns out the sequel is much better known than the original for good reasons.

I have overall given this game a thumbs down but I actually liked many aspects of the game - mainly connected to the history, setting and overall ambience. However, the game became a chore to the point where after 36 hours of playing it just wasn't fun anymore and I couldn't force myself to finish the game, even though I am usually quite persistent at finishing games.

This game gets unfun due to a combination of multiple reasons. Weapons and ammo are limited (even in vending machines), which is quite realistic and a valid game design choice. However, enemies are not (they do have item drops making items technically unlimited, but the drops are almost always less than what is required to kill them in the first place). This creates a problematic experience where you can get soft-locked into a scenario where you have inadequate resources for progressing and your resources dwindle continually. The game is also very mazy, requiring significant amounts of backtracking, and mostly does not prevent you from entering game areas in basically any order. So sometimes what seems like the nearest and logical continuation of the game is filled with enemies and hazards that are too strong, and the actual supposed continuation is very well hidden in some incredibly remote place. This makes the previous problem of potentially soft-locking yourself with ever dwindling resources more likely to happen. In my opinion any of these game design choices by themselves seem valid, but the combination of the three is very unfortunate indeed.

For a real example of my play experience, at a point I had wasted so much time and resources looking for a code to a certain keypad (necessary for progressing the game) that I gave up and just resorted to trying out all possible three digit combinations in sequence. This took me 20 minutes until I hit the correct code. This amount of time was one degree of magnitude less than the time I had wasted looking specifically for the code (measured in hours instead of minutes). I could just have read it somewhere in a walkthrough, but I hate doing that to the point that I prefer to not play games that are walkthrough dependant.

There are some game mechanics that are also very illogical. It would be best if they had been fixed or correctly designed in the first place. At the very least they should have left hints in the game to highlight how these mechanics work. One of the most jarring example (spoilers ahead): all throughout the game you encounter radiation filled areas. There are very limited items to protect you from radiation and even those items do not give you 100% protection, so exploring these areas is very painful. Usually these areas are filled with barrels of radioactive waste, the supposed source of radiation. Very late in the game I discovered that these barrels can be destroyed with your weapons, and if you do the radiation goes away. What?!?! Destroying a vessel of radioactive waste (in theory spilling the waste everywhere) results in the radiation being gone? This is bonkers and completely different from how radiation actually works, and there is no hint whatsoever in the game that I could find - and I am very thorough - that explains that this is how radiation works in this game.

In summary, the history is very cool, the setting and ambience - including decoration, level design, lore, etc. - has been very well achieved, it's a game filled with exploration, varied levels and a good execution of typical cyberpunk themes. However, the gameplay experience starts off well but quickly levels off and then falls off a cliff, as a combination of game design choices collaborate to make the game feel more and more like a chore over time. None of this happens in System Shock 2, so go play that first and then if you're hungry for more and cognizant of this game's limitations, then come play it.

It starts off pretty strong but there are a series of things that make it less and less fun to play. It starts to get way to convoluted as nothing is explicitly stated and you're left to fend for yourself when it comes to finding important items. Also some of the weapons fall off way to hard and the hacking minigames are just not fun.

A strong remake of a classic with phenomenal atmosphere, but while I like my intelligence being respected, there is such a thing as not telling the player enough and System Shock can tend to be a bit to vague for my liking.

its one of those classic modern type modern classics. as a work of art, stunning. love a good inventory management survival game. enemy encounters feel dated but if you can look past that, you might just love everything else

Freaking amazing game, and Nightdive have done top tier work here.

Feels just as good to play this now as it did when I was a kid playing the original. SHODAN's voice lines still creep me out, the level design is still superb and the fact this whole game is played with no loading screens and allows for non-linear exploration is a testament to all the exceptionally good work behind the scenes.

The way the game has been updated graphically to take advantage of everything my 4070 has to offer while still maintaining the look of the original is also superbly executed.

Definitely pick this one up. It's one of the few games that are truly worth the normal price tag, doubly so when discounted.