System Shock

As a huge System Shock 2 fan who found the original System Shock hard to get into, I was *really* looking forward to playing this so I could revisit the System Shock universe. I have three major complaints with this game: - The enemy animations are laughable. The death animations - and you need to understand I'm not joking or exaggerating - are literally just 'ragdoll + spark/blood animation', And they're not much better animated when they're alive. I don't care about graphics at all - unless they break immersion. And my word they do. - Many of the design choices are questionable. If you're going to update the graphics, why not the gameplay systems too? Why should they remain unevolved? For example, the lack of a meaningful quest log reeks of padding out the gameplay hours. Having to delve through tens of minutes of notes and audio logs for one single code is just painful. - The Cyberspace sections, some which can't be avoided, are just plain annoying. In Cyberspace you can move forward, backward, left, right, up, and down. You can also look in any direction and move forward. You get the full sphere of rotation to use. But you do it INCREDIBLY slowly, and you don't get a dodge move or anything similar (either that - or you're allowed to progress to the point where you need it before you've gotten it). Meanwhile your enemies is allowed to gang up on you AND spam their attacks, some of which cast a VERY wide net. Every single Cyberspace battle I've done has devolved into 'tank, heal, tank, heal' - all while my little pea shooter water pistol joke gun is plinking away at the frankly cruelly implemented enemies. This is genuinely some of the most mind-numbingly turgid 3D combat I've ever had the misfortune of being subject to. AND IT CAN'T BE AVOIDED. -------------------------------------- I was rooting for these guys, dammit. They got Shodan's old voice actor which is the only reason this travesty didn't get 2 stars.

Elecrical box puzzles are bugged

controls won't work with steam deck

I cant believe they made the game more tedious than the original which was already a bit too tedious. Everything takes too long for no good reason (animations, puzzles, virtual reality, even opening doors is more complicated than in the original...) and it has the exact same maze-like corridor map which is just stupid and makes the remake completely pointless. Casual players should get SS1 Enhanced Edition instead. This is made just for the hardcore fans of the first game.

First of I never played the original for real, so can't say how true it holds to the original. But I am for one a person who believes a remake is a place to modernize and to have something that can be evaluated by its own merrits. A big problem with difficulty in games comes to mind when it is storybased. Some chalanges are even nonsensical storywise. Starting the game you get teh vibe that when you die, it is over, so you save at the right times. Just as you would in many oldschool shooter, like quake or duke nukem for example. Now this really gives the survival horror aspects some real punch until you find the respawn pod!. That kinda destroys it but hey, you can set the difficulty meaning you could life without that if you wanted to, but to those settings I come back later. Now first pet pieves, at certain moments even after activating you get a gameover screen if you die on a boss or in specific levels, now this would also be somewhat okay, if it wouldn't mean actually game over and if those where varied! But it is the same game over screen again and again!. So now you've got a random spike in difficulty that doesn't really mesh with the difficulty setting. Also the difficultysettings are hard to diterment beforehand, meaning that you need to restart the whole run if you notice that something is to complicated. For example at one level I couldn't get past a door because I've only would get the code after beating an Cyberspace level that was impossible to me!. So I ended up meshing the codepad until I accidently got the right combination. So what to do in a long game, where you just end up wanting to see the story trough? Well cheating! Of course this game has no cheats!. You are making a remake, call it retro, and have no cheats? I know it is uncommen for todays games to have cheats but c'mon!. Let me have some fun!. I am not at trying to make my Master Thesis! There is no reason to not let me cheat!. Ah I've got more problems but alas the limit is reached.