System Shock

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.

This game is actually really, Really fucking good, a solid 9.5/10. it would get a perfect score, if the health wasnt as scarce as it FUCKING WAS

I've played System Shock 2 when it came out back then and knew it'd been the successor of a first one I simply missed playing before. After SS2 I gave SS1 a shot but I never finished playing it, don't know why.

20 years later, the remake is great fun for me so far. I like figuring stuff out myself first, and I actually enjoy doing so in this game, I didn't searched the web for help nor did I watched any video yet, because I know, the required item or the answer is some where on the station and I'm eager to find it. What put me off a bit in the beginning was the combat feeling pretty clunky, I didn't expect it to be that old school, but I went on and got used to it. I simply made the decission to play it like I would have back then before the internet existed (or had any real use ;-).

Okay, I'm a old gamer, I've played a ton of games in my life and in the 90s many games were often special or quite experimental, the entire industry still was young and developing, people were more open minded and less used to certain things most take for granted today, even WASD + mouse look had to be established yet. But afaik SS1 had been always a bold game none-the-less, putting the player into a scenario where you don't know what the heck is going on nor what you're supposed to do at first.

Playing it reminds me of that time and I like it, you need patience though. When I'm really stuck I just stop playing it and give it another try next day, I made one or another mistake, dropped weapons instead of stashing them some where (items and their location persist in crates at least), I did not make use of the little elevator, wasted consumables etc. And I used quick safe way to often which lowered the intensity of the game quite a bit.

That said, it will get annoying if you missed something important like a key card or a recording / email, which happened to me here and there, but "that's life". You're stuck on this damn station until YOU find the way out, this idea drives me and I enjoy it. The concept of simply creating a scenario and handing out clues and items in it to just throw the unsuspecting player in at the end is pretty bold, but can lead to a pretty satisfying experience because no one but yourself has managed to overcome all the hurdles, has put the pieces together.

Overall, I think it's a faithful remake, a bit to faithful at times maybe. It made me miss these "corridor worlds" again where you can get lost, not knowing what's behind the next door and just get an idea of the final goal when you were half through already. I'm kind of happy now that I never played the entire game before, a lot is actually new for me.

Overall of course, amazing game, but i wanna highlight that this game is gorgeous. Its the only game I've ever seen utilise unreal engine rather than just be made in it. Its also CRAZY optimised, unlike 99% of UE games this game runs like butter at max settings.
0 glitches throughout my entire 27 hour game, save for some rare minor ragdoll weirdness.

"Poor, poor earthlings!"

What a ride! Especially great in VR with UEVR+custom mod!
Writing, plot, atmosphere, art style and visuals, challenge, gun-play; all is great.

9/10, highly recommend!

If you like tougher immersive sims that aside from a few tutorial prompts, basically doesn't care if you live or die, this is very much for you. Lots of danger, tight corridors, and a rogue AI that is very skilled at the art of both verbal and physical abuse.

Oh, and basically no hand-holding the entire way through. You're on your own, Hacker.

This game would have been great if not for the unbelievably bad design decisions during the end game. Like a 6DOF cyberspace with unresponsive controls and enemies with inconsistent hitboxes, an extravagantly made optional chess game that serves no real purpose, puzzles that are randomized so the solutions are harder to look up, and the most egregiousness screw up, the reason for this bad review: a complete disregard for conventional level progression. What do I mean by that, well later in the game you will have to go through these groves and the last one is filled with toxic gas that will kill you in about 30 ~ 60 seconds and to combat said gas you need something called the Env. Pack v2 which is on a different floor but it's locked off due to the area's security level. To get the security level down you have to go through the grove filled with deadly toxins because afterwards there is a trigger that unlocks all those doors and you can get Env. Pack v2.
That is inexcusably bad design and I don't think you should waste money unless on the off chance NightDive comes back to the game and redesigns that part.

This game is simply AMAZING. It feels great to play. I love the graphics, shooting actually feels good. Game is really immersive. And also there is no hand holding and pointers showing you where you should go or what you should do. You need to deduce everything on your own by listening to the tapes, reading through messages and exploring all levels. I absolutely love this gameplay design.

[b] Very great oldschool game but very harder, my only problem it's that sometimes is very complicated to get better weapons and ammo in this game, for that i'd recommend you watch deep tutorial videos about it and stay prepared yourself for this game

You will just need a lot of skills, IQ/intelligence, dedication & preparation

it's a style FPS quite different, it's a hardcore immersive sim

Classic good game of years 90s back in a time when Doom and Quake were quite famous before Half-Life 1 come out

Totally recommend.

i want to like this game but unfortunatly the enemies just keep respawning making exploration tedious .... if enemies respawned less or not at all this would be a top tier remake but as is it gets old really fast when you wana explore and for the 50th time the same enemie just comes up out the floor ....after playing it some more i still want to like this game but the cyberspace missions that are insanley dificult and i have zero idea why i should be doing it or wtf i should be doing in there ..combine that with finding a code on monitor in the library or a random head is ridiculouse and my favorite doing a circuit that opened SOMETHING..cue up john trovolta looking around like where.. this style of gaming absolutley does not hold up today whatsoever ... i have zero idea were to go what to be doing or where i should go first i even got some biohazard suit that does absolutly nothiung for anything.... im throwing in the towel .. i give up

This is an incredible remake that is very faithful to the visuals and design of the original. I loved exploring every inch of each area, which often rewards you with early weapons and upgrades. SHODAN was a really great villain that berates you throughout the game, much like GLaDOS does in Portal. The combat was initially hard but satisfying when it clicks, and the variety of enemies were fun to kill. This game felt like a blend of Deus Ex and Bioshock!
The original ending of this remake was a bit lackluster, but it was later redone and I now enjoy it a lot more. I beat the game twice, back to back, and it was a blast to 100%. I cannot wait to see what they do with the System Shock 2 remake!

10/10 single player experience, really enjoyed every moment

Really fun game but don't drop Abe Ghiran's Head you find around 5 hours in, in a random spot because it's taking up too much inventory space after holding onto it for 10 hours. You're gonna need it by hour 25 like I do.

Typically if a key item falls out of bounds it'll respawn in maintenance's recycling room. But in my case I dropped it for a weapon mod, cool gun, or another immediately needed key item. Which could be anywhere in this god forsaken maze game.

Despite this L, the game's a lot of fun and I think if you want a solid RPG you should give this a try. I will be solving my problem with cheat engine.

Awesome remake. Very faithful to the original without any major cuts. The only problem I had was navigating throughout the game - the map isn't the best and it even says in an audio log that the ship you're on was designed to confuse its denizens. I mean, that's great world building and all, but when the game intends for you to do lots of backtracking, it gets obnoxious. Another problem was the lack of guidance regarding your current objectives. This might not bother some, but I found myself using a walkthrough for certain parts of the game that poorly conveyed what you were meant to do.

Steam Deck performance was exceptional. I had everything on mostly high settings. I remember three instances of crashes through my 30+ hour playtime and no other major issues. I strongly recommend buying.

Really excellent, an oldie upgraded to play a bit more like modern day bioshock.

A Game That was Well Ahead of Its Time in 1994, A Game That Still Holds Up in 2025

I never played original System Shock but I have always read about it or heard mentions of it, and its influence on gaming in general. To be completely honest I kind of believed that it was just similiar to the well known games in its era; particularly Doom.

As I started playing the remake, I expected to see mostly known and hundreds-of-times deployed game mechanics, an old school style shooter in makeup, but one that preserves that nostalgic feeling. These expectations were all fulfilled, however what I did not expect was to experience a gameplay and overall atmosphere well in line with modern top tier games of the last decade.

This caught me extremely off guard, I could not believe what the original developers had achieved. We all know masterpieces like Doom, Half Life, Fallout and their effects on gaming, but to realize System Shock tried combining all kinds of elements like puzzle solving, navigating, upgrading, shooting and telling a narrative story in 1994; it is simply mindblowing. It is like a huge A-ha! moment, in which I thought about all the games I loved for the past almost 15 years, especially Deus Ex Human Revolution, Bioshock, Fallout and every cyberpunk themed game as well, those all owe their existence and success to this game, and it is not even an exaggeration. Enourmous appreciation to the devs for sticking with this design in an era when gamers were generally used to a simpler approach, in my opinion that must have required huge balls (pardon my french).

Aren't there any shortcomings? Surely there are many sides to the gameplay anybody could easily criticise, particularly backtracking and repetitive cyberspace combat. In a remake these elements could very well be redesigned or adjusted, but personally I am glad that they kept it almost as it was in 1994.

I could really write hundreds of pages about this game, but simply everyone should at least give this one a try. If you could manage to see beyond the offputting details or fat/junk parts as some of players are calling it, get ready to be immersed wandering around in Citadel and fighting against Shodan.

Nightdive Studios managed to do the impossible and actually made an amazing remake to a classic that frankly I did not wanna play due to its age. Here you get the conveniences and QOL improvements of a modern FPS while retaining the "rat in a maze" aesthetics. The station is purposefully difficult to navigate and SHODAN messes with you constantly. I appreciate the fact that the game doesnt hold back in the way it treats you the player so all of this coupled with a very strict inventory means you'll be forced to play a bit dangerously to min max your resources and it lead to some really cool encounters.

I seriously hope they do more remakes of other classic games that didnt age the best cause I'll be there to play them all considering this is the quality of work I'm getting, just *chef's kiss*.

This is by far one of the best remake of classics I've ever played.

Preserving the challenges of the original game, the remake puts it on steroids with the modern yet lo-fi take on retro-futuristic visuals, crafted to the excellence. Level design stays true to the original dungeon crawlers, wrapped in a slow paced shooter where you have to tread carefully. Enemy AI is rather stupid-simple, yet there's plenty of action and challenging combat, especially when played at the higher difficulties.

Audio and music are masterpieces of their own. Special praise goes to environmental sound, which makes you feel the station is alive. Every corner, every obscure blipping thingamabob on the wall has some sort of ambience which contributes to the overall immersion. This, in combination with atmospheric graphics, makes me want to play the game in VR.

The controversial (by many reviewers) inventory management, well... isn't controversial at all. It's an organic part of the overall challenge where you gotta make a choice how to equip yourself. Despite the space limitation, you still can easily carry 6-7 weapons of choice, plus some dermal packages and ammo. Enough to cut through another level or until you run out of ammo and then you can return to the stash and reorganise the layout. For those nagging about this - let me remind you that the original game was based on one of the oldest dungeon crawler which by design imposes the limited inventory with the emphasis on management. So yeah, this is hardcore, baby. Too tough for you? Go back to Fortnite.

Finally, few words on Cyberspace. That was amazing, but could be a little more in terms of immersion. Visually stylish, its accent is mostly on the combat (and here's a word of advice - keep the cyberspace difficulty no higher than 2, unless you're a sucker for "permadeath" or chasing an achievement). But I'd love to see Cyberspace... maybe more spacious?

Well oh well now the game is finished, I'm a little nostalgic but extremely content. The amount of fun I had playing it can't match even a dozen of a new games getting released in the entirety. Despite I got nothing to do with the game except being from the original's generation, I feel proud for it and for the developers. This is a true old school rebirth. I'll be waiting (hoping) for System Shock 2 remake, which was my fave in the past.

Well done, guys, very well done.

Marvelous. Gripping. I just finished it on 2 difficulty in every category. It was brutal at first, but I got the hang of it by mid game, and it was a bit punishing at the end. Progression feels about right. System Shock uses an interesting method of communicating goals to the player. No one will radio you with, "You need to go here and get this, then put it into that and pull the switch!" Instead, you may find an audio log explaining what the mining laser does, how it works, what it needs, and what can go wrong. The problem is, Shodan is aiming it at Earth. How do you stop that? This is one puzzle.

While you search for the answer to that problem, you'll have to deal with enemies, radiation hazards, navigation, and hacking circuits. Most of the game will involve creeping through tunnels, laboratories and storage bays, as you search for ammo, clues and card keys.

Graphics are excellent. Slightly pixelated, not overly taxing to your PC, but you can tell what everything is. This, to me, is exactly how graphics should be.

The system shock map is still confusing to navigate. Not much has changed there. It feels like it could be a real space station. That sounds like it should be a bad thing, but, listen to me: You will get the hang of it. Medical will feel a bit overwhelming. When you get to Storage, you'll know what to look for. You know what you're doing.

Guns are sufficiently shooty. They sound and feel right. It's satisfying to chunk a cyborg with a blast. Ammo was an issue at several points in the game, but halfway through, I abandoned my melee weapon. Because: I knew what I was doing.

The most important challenge is how to stuff all that valuable junk into your pants. Inventory management is a key ingredient here. I usually felt excited to cook with it. Just drag and drop, vaporize it down, or haul it to the recycler for those valuable credits.. I found a single inventory upgrade on my playthrough. Added a handful of slots. You've got to choose which weapons you will take, and leave else behind in a storage crate somewhere. Pin a spot on the map so you remember. I had a feeling I'd be returning to the Flight Deck eventually, so I stashed an assault rifle and 600 rounds of ammo there. That was the right call. By the end, that ammo was spent.

System Shock has a way of making you feel tense. This is intentional, but it can be misleading. Make choices and press on. You'll get the hang of it. You'll know what you're doing. Eventually, you'll know this ship like the back of your hand.

Very accomplished remake of the 1990s game, with numerous QOL improvements.

Cons: the remake is still faithful to the old game's reliance on cryptic clue-giving. Several times you have an element of the environment or level design which is easily overlooked, and which will block off entire levels of the game if you're unlucky and don't notice them.

Places where I got stuck enough to refer to a walkthrough:

1. Putting the sample into the shield activation computer. This one was on me, I had literally stood in front of the interface, but I guess I just didn't mouseover the right part of the environment. I kept playing after this.

2. The Cyberspace challenge in Maintenance. This one was different from earlier ones because this one does NOT require all enemies to be killed, whereas earlier ones did. The game never tells you this.

3. In Maintenance level, there's a fairly easily-missed button on the wall that opens an elevator to two additional levels. I had to refer to a walkthrough to find it.

4. In Flight Deck level, I met a miniboss and could not beat it normally. It turns out there is a somewhat-contrived "drugs and melee" approach that will kill it quickly. I had heard hints about this and found a clue in discussion of the game.

5. Worst of all, I reached a general abstract point in the game, where about three separate channels of inquiry and exploration were all dead ends. As often happens in Zelda games and Outer Wilds, I abandoned one path to try to explore another, thinking that I would need more clues there. In SS1, this can result in you becoming very underpowered for an unintended environment and overpowered for later ones. I got stuck and confused, and attempted to complete Reactor and Storage levels before the intended preparatory level of Flight Deck, which made for about 12 hours of very difficult "die and respawn" attrition-based progress in those two levels. When I finally got back to other levels, they were trivially easy.

I finally got completely stuck trying to solve several blocked mysteries, including how to lower the reactor locked area, how to deactivate the mining laser beam since its area was locked off, and how to access the Executive suite level since the elevator wouldn't take me up there. By this time, I was 28 hours into the game, and had already had to refer to walkthroughs about 3 or 4 times to get out of a single roadblock rut. I realized that I had sequence-broken a few parts of the game by accident, and even referring to a walkthrough was going to be a logical challenge in finding the thread itself.

I eventually watched a glitch-free speed run video, and that was much more satisfying that trying to read the designers' minds about what cryptic clues they thought I should have noticed.

The game's interior environment is littered with NPC corpses with guns nearby and bullet wounds to their heads. Clearly, the game narrative emphasizes how hopeless and frustrating the game world is. The designers' dedication to recreating this same hopeless frustration for the gamer is rather impressive.

Along with Far Cry 1 and Baldur's Gate 1, this game is the first of a series that spawned a phenomenon. But in each case, I can confidently say if I had tried to start the series with the first game, I would absolutely have refused to play any later game in the series.

This may suit folks who can dedicate very intense or sustained focus on a game's internal environment. Many clues are very lightly emphasized, and failure to notice them will literally make the game unwinnable.

A technically slick modern remake of a very old "classic". But in my negative experience: I guess you just had to be there.

I never played the original game, but i really love this one. The aesthetic style of this game is really great and i really liked the interactivity with the enviroment.

I like the fact that it's difficult, without handholding and that it has actual Puzzles where you have to actually think.

While i like the no handholding approach, i'd still loved if there was some kind of log or at least a marker for each terminal or button on the map, just like it's the case for the elevators and codepads. Or at the very least a checklist on my current objective. I lost a lot of time just running around aimless because in one sequence i had no clue to where i was supposed to go, because that one thing i was looking for wasn't marked on the map at all. This is the only game since a very long time where i actually had to look up online on what to do next.

Other than that it would've been nice if the storage lift had much more space than it did.

All in all it's a solid 8/10. I hope we'll get a System Shock 2 Remake too.

I haven't played the original game, but after playing this one, I feel like I have. This is what any remaster of an old classic should look like. From fans to fans, from gamers to gamers. 9/10

A masterful remake of the cult classic. Nightdive Studios nailed it by updating the controls, the visuals, the physics, and the soundtrack, while keeping everything else pretty much the same. Since this is one of the OGs of the Immersive Sim genre, there isn't much in terms of build customization, but there is an amazing balancing act of resources, inventory space, and exploration. Don't get intimidated by the complex map design, it gets intuitive after a while, and you will want to find weapons, hardware attachments, and upgrades for both, so explore thoroughly. I also liked the puzzle panels and the 6DOF hacking sequences, albeit those are rather simplistic compared to fully 6DOF games.

My only complaint is that some light effects are too strong at times, and the HUD is less readable depending on the contrast between the color you chose for it and the background of where you're standing. Apparently both issues are related to the baked-in chromatic aberration that can't be disabled.

I highly recommend playing it on Hard settings for Combat, Cyber, and Puzzles from the get-go, but keep Mission on Normal for your first playthrough. If set to Hard, there's a 10-hour limit to the playthrough, which is not friendly to new players.

Thanks for the gift, Pat!

One of the few remakes that does exactly what most people who want a remake want: It's very close to the original, down to level layout, but it removes all nuisances that stem from the fact that game developers hadn't discovered some of the more intuitive mechanics that are commonplace nowadays.

It should be noted that the game design is more on the old school side of the scale, so it expects you to write down things and backtrack. On normal difficulty enemies kill you fairly fast but you can also kill them with ease once you figure out the combat.

The graphics are a mix of modern and retro that gives it a unique aesthetic. Music is different from the original, less funky and more "appropiate" for a horror setting.

Overall it was really enjoyable.

It's quite impressive how restrained and considered this game is in the context of the original, in the way it tastefully blends a more System Shock 2 gameplay style with System Shock 1's now slightly hackneyed neon faux-80s cyberpunk. I really enjoyed it, the cyberspace parts definitely ruin the pacing though, and outstay their welcome.