System Shock

Never played the original, but if the remake is faithful to the original then I can see why the game is so well-known - it seems to be a very genre-defining game, with many aspects that you see several more modern games draw inspiration from. One example is the storytelling through voicelogs, and environmental storytelling, as is seen in games like Bioshock and Prey.

The game started slow, but I forced myself to keep playing for maybe 2-3 hours and then it started picking up for me. Haven't been able to put it down since. I think one reason for the start feeling slow to me, was because I had to "realize" how the game was meant to be played. It is not fast-paced in any way, but rather slow and methodical.

I love the exploration and survival aspects, with every encounter being potentially dangerous. You are always managing your inventory, changing weapons and tactics (and utility) depending on the situation and what tools you have available at any given time. Do you forego some of your power, to use a power-fueled weapon and save ammunition for your more conventional weapons? Or do you save use your last ammo in order to conserve some power for other gadgets later? The inventory is also limited so you have to consider what you want to bring a long, and what you leave behind (For the time being).

Something else I really enjoyed about the game was that at most times it was up to myself to figure out what the current objective was, and how to reach it. I often had to browse through previous voicelogs, or messages I had found throughout the game, in order to remember what "that man" said about how to reach a certain area or goal etc. The voice-acting was good, and the messages were never so long that you lost interest, but were kept short and to the point.
This relying on voicelogs and other media, might be a turn-off for some, but I enjoyed having to think for myself and remember what I had learned throughout my exploration.
This also means that for the most part you are not guided down a certain path throughout the game's various areas, but you can often chose which order you explore things in and what way to go.

In keeping with the system shock tradition the final boss fight was terrible.Whoever designed it and the CyberSpace sections should be kicked in the nuts. Also if you ignore the frequent crashes the game's pretty good. Theres something about crawling through the underbelly of a ship falling apart that speaks top me.

Would love to see a lot old shooters brought to life in this way. This is fantastic.

Heard the legends about System Shock, but the old graphics were a bit of a barrier. This remake? Absolutely blew me away. I haven't been this hooked on a game since Gothic 2 – seriously, I binged it. The atmosphere is incredible, the "no hand-holding" approach is perfect, and the art style is just

chef's kiss. It's modern, but with these stylized, almost pixelated textures that give a real nod to the original. It might not be for everyone, but I think the devs nailed it. The gunplay feels great, and just creeping around, carefully checking corners for enemies… so satisfying. Finding a secret door by accident? Pure bliss.

The only real downside for me was the cyberspace sections. They felt tedious and actually made me a little dizzy (and I never get motion sickness from games). But honestly? That's a minor gripe. I can't recommend this game enough. If you're hesitant about the price, wait for a sale, but it's absolutely worth it.

so much fun. i can't believe i missed playing this classic when it was originally released

I don’t have a word for how difficult this game is. I had no idea where to go, go stuck in constant death loops, and god absolutely furious. But, I’m glad I played it.

Great atmosphere, sound design, and gun feel. The characters were was strong was some similar games like Bioshock where there were multiple audio logs of one character that gave you a window into that person. In this one, most of the audio logs are of a variety of crew members giving you tiny little surface level details. Or an all important instruction for completing the game. There is no in between with the logs. Shodan was creepy too. All in all, fun game. And very hard.

SHODAN reminded me of my wife. Game looks great and kept me hooked. Jump boots were quality, definitely will play again.

Hoping they give number 2 same the treatment and remake that.

Do you like System Shock 2? Or Dishonored or any of those awesome immersive sims?

Most people never played the original, I tried to, I can't get over the point and click weirdness. This is a very faithful remaster/boot from what I can tell. This game does not hold your hand.

I haven't beat it yet, but as I said this doesn't hold your hand. You won't know a certain thing is needed later. This is minor spoilers, but it's to save anyone a headache of backtracking.

There will be points in the game where you see a number flashing between random numbers. You do....something... and it stops. WRITE THIS NUMBER DOWN.

That should help save an hour of headache later on, it will make sense. (that spoiler is story free spoiler, I tried to leave it as light as possible, this was the only hint someone told me before getting this game, to do the above).

Thouroughly enjoying this challenge.

What I liked:[\h3]
I personally really enjoyed playing the SysShock remake! Modern graphics and redone UI make the game easier to parse visually (looking at you, cyberspace) and less clunky to play, while still keeping true to the original's maps and puzzles. The final confrontation with SHODAN has also been totally redone, making it much more climactic and fun. It definitely gets all positives from me on the gameplay and story side.
That doesn't mean it won't frustrate you at all -- cyberspace is still difficult, and I REALLY wish the final boss battle had an autosave AFTER the long on-rails dialogue instead of before -- but it's a huge step up from tabbing between mouselook and free mouse.

[h3]What I didn't like:

Should you play the original first?

The Tl;dr:

Great classic shooter, with punchy weapons, lengthy campaign and lots of flair. The only thing, I did not like, was the overly maze-like level design, which is a headache to navigate.

Faithful remake which improves the game in almost every way. Had an absolute blast! Please do the same for System Shock 2!

Super fun - this would have been a game of the year contender for me if i had played it in 2023. Feels atmospherically similar to Prey (2017), but plays a lot like Bioshock. I didn't play the original System Shock, so i cannot speak to whether this remake remains faithful to the original. I'm assuming that it does, because it feels carefully, passionately and thoughtfully made.

Edit: After watching a couple reviews, i feel it is responsible to include in my review that this game is pretty much mouse and keyboard exclusive and controller support is mixed. Additionally, it is true to the classic styling of RPG's and it does not hold your hand or give you direction. You have to rely on memory, explore, listen to logs, and really 'chew' on some parts of the game to determine what move to make next.

Yes it's what you were hoping for. Addicting, terrifying, somewhat cruel (in terms of puzzles and throwing away critical objects). I've only just made it past the medical facility so we shall see how it goes. I also enjoyed DOOM (the remake before eternal) this game is not quite as user friendly, as was the original system shock, but they did a beautiful remake and you WILL enjoy it.

Faithful remake of the original.

-Visuals are pseudo retro, with obvious improvements to lighting and effects.
-Sound design has that level of spooky and isolation that really make for an immersive experience, wear headphones!
-Gameplay is back to the old days of no handholding. Can be difficult, but you'll manage. Recommend highest difficulty settings for the real deal experience.

Having never played the original System Shock, I cannot compare it to that. However, I quickly fell in love with it and beat it in consecutive sessions throughout a few days. I simply adore the atmosphere, the feel of the game and the difficulty it poses. It truly does feel like you're not supposed to win and that's great. No hand-holding with quests, no huge 'safe room' inventory to store all of your weapons and items, nothing is given to you without a fight and I love that approach. Shodan does truly feel like she wants to kill you mercilessly with the kind of cruel ambushes or surprises she plans for you. It's a great game that looks well, feels well and sounds well (with the voice acting or the soundtrack or ambience). Highly recommend.
The only drawbacks the game personally had for me were the cyberspace sections, as that was quite nauseating with the movements and camera flips. I cannot say I enjoyed those parts. Overall though, I love it.

Genuinely amazing experience, extremely faithful to the original and I wouldn't want it any other way. The definitive way to play the 1st System Shock game.
It's basically like Super Metroid but 3D. The original game was ahead of its time but genuinely held back by limited technology and it's controls. This removes those issues and overall improves on the first game. Some people might be turned off by the fact that this game doesn't hold your hand but it's genuinely a much more memorable and personal experience because of that. It's not the game giving you a list of things to do with setpieces in between. It's YOU who's figuring out how to beat SHODAN, and it's something that SO MANY games have failed to do as well as System Shock does. System Shock is fairly open while having a fairly visible path of progression that keeps you from being lost.

9/10 experience, and props to Nightdive for making System Shock actually playable in a way that holds up.

If you're someone who is more used to modern first person action games, the System Shock remake is definitely the best way to experience the 1994 classic.

Top of the list of improvements is cyberspace, just go look at a video of the '94 game's version of the cyberspace hacking mini-game and you'll understand that it is visually unpleasant. In the '23 version, cyberspace now looks like what one imagines Looking Glass were trying to pull off with the computer tech of the time.

The main game play systems are largely unchanged from the original, they just control A LOT better. Controls should feel familiar to folks that have played first person RPGs.

It does need to be mentioned that, since the gameplay is largely unchanged, System Shock is quite a bit like an old fashioned Dungeon Crawler. It's important to pay attention to the map and where you are in the station. The game also does not hold your hand and have objective waypoints and the like (unless you play on the lowest mission difficulty). A lot of where you need to go and what you need to do is told to you through audio and text logs. This shouldn't be too much of a problem if you've played Bioshock.

This is a very well done remake that is faithful to the original while making it more approachable to modern audiences.

Excellent game very good gameplay and its engaging graphics and artsistic sticking to its dos roots. good performance too then again unreal engine is very well optimized.

8.5/10

- Very fun game and it has that great old school game progress like Metroid where you're near godlike with all the upgrades by the end of the game.

Pros -
Good enemy variety
Fun puzzles
No real direction in game if you're not paying attention to the media you pick up, you have to figure it out or go check a guide if you missed something

Cons-
Enemies are a little dum-dum
Ending scene is blegh

System shock is quite the treat. I did not play the original so this was my first time experiencing the horrors of SHODAN.
I am the type of player who searches everything and tries to piece together the story of a game and I was pleasantly surprised. The audio logs, various messages and SHODAN's taunts were well written and I was compelled to search for all of them. The game doesn't really hand feed the objective to the player and most of really good hints are within these logs that game me a lot of ''oh...'' moments.
The graphics are very nice, at some points a bit overwhelming and hard to locate items. Gunplay was amazing and the limited inventory requires quite a lot of management. There are various ways how one can tackle standard enemies and bosses which I appreciate.
Music was okay. It did justice to the overall feel and mood of the game, perhaps a few moments where combat music game away enemies.
I am not the biggest fan of the cyberspace sequences. Perhaps its due to my laptop's weaker hardware I had trouble hitting the more nimble enemies, but its doable.
I was really impressed by SHODAN's contempt towards humanity and the horrors that happened on the station. I have to admit that the game over sequence will haunt me in my nightmares.

Do I recommend the game? Yes. It really did scratch that itch for a good shooty mc bangbang with puzzles and amazing atmosphere. The game even offers the player to select their own difficulty when it comes to combat, puzzles and cyberspace sequences.
Hopefully we will get a remake of the sequel as well. Cheers

This game was incredible, felt like a more rewarding, challenging version of PREY (2017). You can tell a lot of love and care was put in by Nightdive Studios. The unusual voxel-looking art-style was a perfect design choice for remaking a game as old as this while keeping the "old" charm.

This was my first Nightdive studio game, and I'm very much looking forward to whatever other game they remaster/remake :)

One of the best games i've played in recent years.

System Shock grants you with an arsenal that is varied and well rounded. You have complete freedom on how to approach each enemy and no weapon fells like a placeholder. Moreover, the constant lack of ammo means you can't overrely in one weapon. You must use every resource you have.

Citadel Station is wonderfully crafted and, while in the majority of the time you don't NEED to backtrack, you will find yourself doing it quite a lot, mainly because of inventory restrictions and resource gathering.

The inventory system is probably the worst part of the game. Not the inventory itself, it's akin to the RE4's inventory (and that's good). But the "chest" where you will store your items is highly limited. The items and weapons you drop will stay were they where droped, and you may use that as a provisory storage. But that means that you will have to walk to that place every time you need those items, resulting in needless backtracking.

Moreover, while i've not found many bugs, the game crashed on me twice on my playthrough and other reviews also related similar situations. So, if you gonna play it, save often.

With all this in mind, System Shock is hard, punishing and sometimes unfair. And i highly recommend it.

Haven't played the original but enjoyed this game very much! I'd actually go as far as to say this is among the few best games that I have ever played. I can't believe this does not have "overwhelmingly positive" reviews. The soundtrack is great. The athmosphere captivating. You can't just coast through this but have to pay attention to audio logs etc, maybe take some notes etc. Really glad Nightdive (seemingly) put that much heart into the game. Now do Deus Ex, pleeeaase 😁

Absolutely fantastic. Couldn't recommend more playing this for anyone wishing a good immersive game. It actually made me jumped a couple times on my chair. ****cking 5 stars game

Absolutely fabulous! I loved getting to just explore and figure things out on my own. It was very fun and refreshing to experience when most other games directly tell you what to do and show you where to go. Not this one! No hand holding! You just get to work figuring things out on your own and it's so satisfying when you do. Visuals, music, sound design, voice acting, gameplay, atmosphere, story, all stellar! 10/10!

I wouldn't necessarily say this game is bad, but I wouldn't say its good either.

This game is a faithful remake of System Shock, warts and all. While I initially enjoyed the game, it quickly became stale. After around 8h it felt like you experienced everything gameplay wise, but it seems like the game goes on for another 12h. There are some really annoying frustrating aspects of the game that come from the original that can't really be fixed without a major overhaul to the level design. Some very important weapons and items are hidden and must be found. This is annoying because the gunplay is tedious and boring. There is very little weapon variety and there is no way to defeat enemies without taking damage, unless you want to peak around every corner for a microsecond, wait for de-aggro, and peak again. I do like game with peaking, but here it just feels awkward. It doesn't help that most enemies are bullet sponges for what the corner-peaking fighting style asks for.

What originally drew me to this game was recommendations for System Shock 2 for because I enjoyed Prey so much, and I decided to start with the first game in the series. While I do see the resemblances and there are some glimpses of the good parts, I feel they are just nowhere near as fun. After 12h I just realized I would much rather just go replay Prey.

If I played the original when it came out, I would have loved it. For its time, it genuinely seems like an amazing technical feat compared to other games at the time. But nowadays, it not all that special. I still look forward to playing the sequel in hopes that it fixes my issues with this one, although I am aware of it more well known issues.

One of the finest examples of a remake. Recreated from the ground up, but so accurate to the original that old walkthroughs still work. The recycle/money system for upgrading weapons and buying ammo/meds/food is a welcome addition. The game is rendered beautifully in 80s cyberhorror style. I cannot recommend this game enough. An absolute gem, through and through.

Old school classic. I kinda picked it up on a whim as something to try out on my new PC, and ended up really getting into it. Do keep in mind, System Shock was originally created in 1994, and this remake is VERY faithful, so there is a learning curve and it can get fairly difficult even on the standard difficulty. Most of the times when I got stuck it was because I had to look at something that was written on a wall that I had missed.

According to steam achievements, only about 16% of players have beaten the game. Are you up to the challenge?

This is very faithful remake of the original.
Make sure you look at some footage before buying to see if you can deal with the semi-pixely art style this game went with.

The gun play is good without being anything extraordinary either, but the story, atmosphere and experience of fighting against an omnipresent ever watchful AI entity is real good. It's a marked shift from present day horror with enemies that are unsettling but sufficiently over the top or quirky to have this ummistakeable 90s PC gaming vibe to them.

The difficulty is mild on 2 (normal difficulty), once you get used to the control scheme, the level of challenge for an experience fps user is very middle of the road. I would advise veteran fps players to bump that up from the start.

The one single aspect of this game that is irredeemably bad are all the sections that take place in "cyberspace". This was terrible at the time, it has been improved, but it's still just a whole lot of suck. It's a very jarring genre-shifting experience that will completely break the pacing of your current game, to have a Descent-like game of pew-pew in cyberspaaaaaace. I would recommend players to put that on the minimum difficulty, so as to expedite that, because the rest of the game is truely worth it.

Technically ran flawlessly for me, with not a single crash, slowdown or visual bug. Some ragdoll mechanics are still all sorts of borked, with gibbed body parts infinitely twitching on the ground or enemy corpses just moving slightly.

Otherwise a very safe buy, at least on sale, which this is now getting serious discounts. Took me about 26h to complete (including some serious backtracking), which these days is kind of good for a first person shooter type of game. Granted i got lost a lot in the maze-like levels of citadel station.

Some PSA that will potentially save you hours of frustration:

- Note down every single digit the game shows you. It expects you to notice and will have you backtrack for if you don't the first go around.
- Clicking and holding [v] while viewing your inventory will mass vaporize every item in your inventory.
- Clicking [t] while viewing your inventory will reorder your inventory.
- Make sure you immediately reduce the UI transparency to 0, it is by default very high and makes things not readable at all.
- The game lets you put markers down on your map and edit them with text. If you're as untalented as me at orienteering, make use of those.

If an item falls through the floor, it will reappear in a garbage chute type area in one of the levels so you can retrieve it. Very nice feature!

great atmosphere, solid gameplay, map is thrash same as in the original and sometime you are wondering aimlessly.
nobody is grabbing you by hand and explaining what is happeninng, no quest markers, good stuff.
awesome soundtrack and attention to details

We neeed System Shock 2 remake.

Well worth the full price. A phenomenal, unique game; a rarity in a sea of modern, throwaway Netflix games. This game has an incredible immersion factor, atmosphere and sense of dread on a desolated space station. It does not guide your hand, it's hard and rewarding when that puzzle finally clicks or when you figure out what to do next. I have never played anything similar to this, Deus Ex being the closest. It takes a while to get familiar with the rules of the game, but after that, you will be immersed.

A faithful remake of the original, with a very unique and befitting graphical style.

buy it if you feel like playing FPS metroid.
hold v to vaporize all junk in your inventory. it also vaporizes food so eat your snacks first.
search for logs, they contain all the information so if you get stuck go through them
write down big red numbers
game crashed twice on second playthrough, otherwise it's fine. enemy AI is not ubisoft-tier stupid but it could still use some more work

I must start with a little bit of a personal story.
Back when I was a very young kid, my dad had a CD for the original system shock.
I remember looking at it and always wanting to play it. but.. unfortunately the CD was scratched and would not install or play no matter how many times i tried. and i guess as the years went by i forgot about it.
... Cut to today, where I discovered it was being re made, I was thrilled to finally sink my teeth into SystemShock.

Even though it was a remake, I had a total blast. as someone who grew up on older games of this era, im really happy to see that spirit kept alive in a remake. Even though I never played the original, I am quite satisfied with finally being able to experience what it was like to play system shock.

The graphics were very beautiful and every passing hour of playing this game felt like a 3 course meal that you chewed slowly and enjoyed every byte. (ha, see what I did there) and the spirit of old was definitely kept alive in visual style as well, I absolutely adored the pixelation still present on every texture, while still incorporating modern shaders. This really was how i imagined video games wanted to look back then, if they just had the resources.

Its one of thoes games i wish i could forget about, and play it all over again blind. Ill definitely have to pick it up again when the years go by again. or maybe a system shock 3???

Side note: its interesting how a story involving cyber technology and the future from 1994 can be still quite relevant today. here comes the AI i guess!

This game rocks from start to finish. Old school with a new layer of paint and tons of flexibility in how you would like to experience the game. LIKE OLD GAMES if you put it down for two weeks it's going to take some time to actually remember what the hell you're doing.

Fun game. Fully recommend. The ambiance and gameplay is top tier cyberpunk.

Iconic, incredible story. Extremely faithful to the original vision. Anything changed is definitely for the better. I don't get the soundtrack haters, the music is clever and takes homage from the original OST.

It's just...so...peak

Okay for real I've never seen a remake be such a labour of love as much as this one.
+ Keeps with the art style while still looking graphically more impressive than most game I've seen.
+ Original story is there with the Mother of video game cyber villains and even improved with better cinematics and improved ambient/combat music.
+ Its so much more accessible to play than ever (albeit still don't expect the game to hold your hand and show you where to go, use the internet as a guide if you're having trouble anyway).
100% couldn't recommend a game harder.

a really good remake and art style is awesome while being very optimized if u go floor by floor and scavange anything you will get great playtime from it.

Incredibly immersive. Not a survival horror, but I don't think it was supposed to be. That's the sequel to this game. Nonetheless you will have a great time playing this game. This was my first playthrough and now i'm going to play the sequel.

Never played original only a little system shock 2. Big fan of bioshock. Enjoying this in that context, very familiar and largely intuitive.

muito bom, fazia tempo que nao ficava 27 horas jogando um jogo single-player

prepare yourself ! for hours of tracking back stuff , with no clear objectives and almost no guidance more than a few audios that later on you realized that you should paid atention ! xD 10/10

It felt good to be *the* insect. Slightly old-school and greatly immersive - an absolute must-play for anyone who missed it (me, me!) and respects the science-fiction genre.

Absolutely wonderful. They took the original System Shock, made it look great and run back, and made lots of visual and sound improvements. I loved everything about it! Wonderful job! <3

I recommend for sci-fi nerds, especially on sale. Its worthy remake of iconic game. Shodan is truly mesmerising villain. But i would give neutral rating if i could. Game has got LOTS of quality of life issues, typical for "oldschool" games of that era. Once nostalgia glasses falls off after first few hours... Its truly a slog to get to the finish line - lots of backtracking, tedious inventory management, one-dimensional map on multilayered levels, and couple more annoyances. Because of that game is definitely not for everyone. I truly enjoyed setting and story which allowed me to push through some rough stuff, but if You are here mostly for action packed gameplay maybe look for something else, word of warning :)

Truly a masterpiece, without the direct instruction of modern games sometimes quite challenging. Especially at the beginning the low amount of Ammo and health is not easy but that makes it fun and challenging.

its an old game made new. The updates make it a lot more fun to play and keep the same game feel. Great remaster and given the age difference from 1994, well worth it. Only trouble I'd imagine for new players is the backtracking and puzzles, its very different from most games today and I'd say much more difficult.

TLDR:
I recommend you play it on easy, i liked the puzzles and the exploration but the combat feels iffy and the cyber space its the worst.

It's a caution recommend,

For years i had known of the legend of system shock but i also knew of the reputation, its a great game but it does feel archaic in some parts, the maps did not age particularly well, its true that it feels like a real place instead of a videogame level but it does test your patience in some places, for me its the respawning enemies, the game its very quick save and quick load intensive, you pretty much have to fall into traps to know are there and while its not always bad it does interrupt the flow of a modern game design, the controls are ok but some details like your (very weak) flashlight using power always irked me in games.

There is not really an ammo economy, you can't buy more ammo, you rely on finds and drops, the enemies are tanky and when they respawn it's just a drawn on resources, the directions you get are vague since you are out of the context of the conversations in the game, you get very little directions. It wouldn't be a bad thing but the game it's more on a action direction than a horror or stealth directions

I feel its hard for new players to explore since many games like bioshock, dead space or dishonoured have come out with the evolved game design integrated already.

I recommend you play it on easy, i liked the puzzles and the exploration but the combat feels iffy and the cyber space its the worst.