It’s hard to imagine a more intimidating proposition for a remake than the original system shockArguably, this game really sparked the greatest immersive sim craze in history – fans of the genre are notoriously demanding, despite never really being able to give a general idea of what an “immersive sim” is recognized definition.
It’s a genre specific to a time and place, and games have the visceral vibe of chunky keyboards, clunky cardboard boxes, and 640×480 CRT screens. How do you steer it in the age of ultrawide monitors and digital-only gaming? Anyone want it? Warren Spector himself was one of the key creative figures in PC gaming’s heyday about flipping shelves and reading emails, but couldn’t get the messy System Shock 3 out https://www.igamesnews.com/system-shock-3 – Tencent on the whole Work hard before it crashes.
This isn’t the first time developer Nightdive Studios has wrestled with licensing – immediately after acquiring the IP in 2015, they released System Shock: Enhanced Edition, a slightly glorified version of the original optimized for modern systems. At the same time, it began developing content that aimed to be a complete remake. Here, we’ve had seven full years of on-and-off development, engine changes, general direction shifts, and later scope expansions, and the game’s release should be considered a miracle. Never mind that it’s definitely a groundbreaking piece of visual design that elevates the original in every possible way without losing anything in the process.
This System Shock is both a remake and a reboot, following all the same beats but with enough additions and changes to keep veterans on their toes. You are an anonymous hacker brought to Citadel Station, a corporate haven orbiting Jupiter, by a shady executive. He offers you freedom and tasty neural implants in exchange for your help removing the space station management artificial intelligence – SHODAN’s moral failsafe.
Apparently you’ve never seen a sci-fi movie, so you quickly accept his offer. You wake up six months later and everyone has been turned into mutants by a now omniscient SHODAN who has delusions of becoming a god and who plans to shoot giant laser beams at Earth and turn the survivors into a new creature A race of mechanical horrors came to worship her and spread her splendor among the stars.
You’re now trapped in a multistory labyrinthine megastructure of twisting tunnels, shattered doors, and rickety elevators – populated by killer robots, mutant hybrids, and murderous cleaning robots. SHODAN stares at you from hundreds of security cameras throughout the station, taunts you and your helplessness from the screen, and unleashes enemies from hidden compartments when you turn around. You are apparently the only hope of mankind, and you have a pipe.
From there, you’re more or less on your own. Any worries that this new version would make things easier were quickly dispelled. Still no objective markers. Hell, there’s still no clear target listed anywhere. For the various codes and clues that won’t be added to the journal, you’ll still need a real pen and paper. It’s a matter of working your way from room to room, filling out your automap, scavenging for resources and weapons you can find, all while trying to figure out what all those blinking lights, levers, and switches do. Once at its best, the core loop remains surprisingly chilly; the satisfaction of disabling the camera and turning a once daunting and unknown floor into familiar territory. The illegal thrill of collecting all your trash and recycling it.
Mechanically, everything that made the original system shock a reality is still here. While the controls are now closer to a traditional first-person shooter, this is still a game about inventory management. About thinking about clearing enemy rooms in the most cost-effective and safest way possible. You’ll spend most of your time trying to piece together a way to save the day by gathering fragments of audio logs and emails scattered among the dead bodies, following clues from various terminal and site systems.
While everything from the level layout to the general ebb and flow remains largely the same as the original, Nightdive’s aesthetic is where it’s bigger and bravest. Instead of a visual design based on realism, but on the standard ugly sheen of most Unreal Engine remakes, Nightdive has opted for something a little more interesting here.
The large, colorful pixels that make up System Shock’s weapons and environments perfectly and effortlessly evoke the atmosphere of the original while leaving plenty of room for expansion and interpretation. It’s not quite the look of a modern baby boomer shooter, but it’s definitely more modern fidelity than the look of a low-res PC game from the late ’90s. These rooms and corridors retain their intuitive readability, although filled with more detail.
Weapons are where the improvements are most obvious. In the original, most guns took up a small portion of the bottom middle of the screen. You’re lucky to see anything behind the muzzle. Here, every instrument of death you pick up is lovingly flipped in your hands the first time you pick them up. They’re thick and colorful, and every move you make with them produces a loud click and whoosh. They look and feel like something someone made for a Halloween party out of cardboard and LED lights.The reload animation is tactile and overdesigned in the best possible way, showcasing that exaggerated physics those videos Portrait of guy loading toaster and other household appliances. Weapons vented steam from their inlets, arcs rippled across them, and cheap plastic ammunition display cases were scratched and finger-smudged.
It’s easy to dismiss all of these as superfluous window dressing, but they all support world-building. These weapons range from industrial tools to cobbled together laser beams and mass-produced security guns. They all fit into this oddly colored horror game set in the distant future but filled with wacky anachronistic tech like USB memory sticks and LCD monitors. You basically have a Nintendo Power glove strapped to your arm. It’s a faux ’80s low-tech cyberpunk world—pop culture’s usual affectations that often come across as gimmicky or lazy, but executed flawlessly here. This makes sense.
As a remaster, this improves on everything that might frustrate modern players without compromising the experience, simplifying the controls and inventory management to modern standards while retaining all the functionality and atmosphere. As a reboot, it’s an impressively confident foundation for a new generation of immersive sims.
With its System Shock, Nightdive not only built the definitive way to experience one of the most fundamental entries in the extremely specific and intimidating genre, but also created the definitive entry for players who want to get into a game about crawling through vents and collecting keycards Point but not sure where to start. Spiritual successors like 2017’s Prey or Void Bastards may have done a fantastic job of passing the torch, but it’s really nice to be back where it all started.
advantage
- Perfectly reimagined for the modern gamer
- Simplified and standardized without compromising System Shock’s unique heritage
shortcoming
- Small bug that caused corpses to bounce whenever you reloaded a save, which isn’t ideal for a horror game
- Veterans No Big Environmental or Narrative Surprises
Version test: personal computer. A copy of the game is provided by the publisher.
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