System Shock

This game takes the essence of the original, the atmosphere, the isolation, the immersion, and wraps it in modern gameplay systems. Very little of the original game is lost in translation, the devs really need to be given praise for this alone, especially considering the age of the original. There are a couple of minor gripes for me, nothing major, though. Firstly, the weapon selection seemed to remain fixed to melee, pistol and energy weapon for the majority of the game, then towards the end you get everything all at once. Maybe spread the weapons out more but limit the ammo to prevent the OP shotgun from making it easy early on. Secondly, the puzzles took me off guard. I'm ashamed to admit, but I have grown accustomed to the hand-holding puzzles of the modern day, so when faced with the first tricky wiring puzzle I assumed I was missing a "logic probe" because it mentioned one and nothing I tried seemed to work. Shortly after scratching my head, I realised the problem, I needed to move back into the old world, I needed to pull my pants up and figure things out for myself. Once this clicked, I stuck at it and realised I had not noticed the notches around the edge of the discs. The puzzles aren't hard by any means, but they are tricky if you haven't encountered them before. On a plus side, the puzzles are mostly random and spread far enough apart so that they are a break from normal play rather than a "oh look, another move things around to unlock the next area task" Aside from these minor gripes, this game is excellent, I had an absolute blast playing through it.

Not anything new to say that hasn't already been said before. But if you are experiencing unbareable stutter it's most likely caused by the games affiinity only using four CPU processors instead of 16 on my PC. Soon as I set it to use all of them the stutters went completely away. Also if you are adding the game to your Nvidia control panel and Windows graphics settings like me you could of set it to prioritize performance on the wrong one, it's the Win-Shipping.exe not the other one. This worked for me and now the game is absolute butter. I thought it was down to the fact that it's a UE4 game which is prone to horrendous stutter issues. I can handle bugs/glitches, the occasional crash etc. But stutter completely destroys the immersion/fun factor for me. So I hope I have helped.

This is an absolutely fantastic remake of an absolute classic! I beat the enhanced edition of the original system shock a few years back when that released, and I must say, I can absolutely recommend this remake over the original. It doesn't do everything right, but man does it improve upon what really counts. There are a few minor grievances I had with the game, such as the final boss (as it stands, it's kinda worse than the orignal's final boss fight, although with a couple tweaks it could definitely surpass it), a less memorable soundtrack, and the lack of feedback for certain things like melee attacks and taking/giving damage in cyberspace. As for what the game improves from the original, well, it makes just about everything better. Weapons feel great, level design is faithful but not frustrating, the atmosphere is fantastic, and the additions to the lore are cool too. All the archaic stuff from the original has been fixed without dumbing it down. The interface is in line with System Shock 2's very intuitive interface. The game also keeps the difficulty of the original too. As a huge system shock fan, I am incredibly impressed with the quality of this remake. Thank you Night Dive for bringing this game to the modern age!

Like any good remake, it straddles between giving you the game you know, while also adding new stuff, improving gameplay and visuals, remixing things, and so on. As with many remakes, there is an unwritten rule that the remake must be harder, and that's definitely the case here. The original was no walk in the park either, but the remake definitely feels harder, at least combat wise. I recommend all players that are new to System Shock 1 in general just pick easy for all the difficulty options, and it will still be harder than your average FPS. Some elements from SS2 bleed into the remake, with there now being a grid inventory, instead of there being a list of stuff you have on you and being able to shove an entire armory down your trousers. You have to pick a playstyle in what weapons you use, just like in SS2. For example, I ended the game with SMG, Assault Rifle, Magnum, Shotgun, EMP Shotgun, and Railgun. I abandoned my melee weapon about 70% through the game because meleeing enemies at that point was a bit dangerous. New to the remake, is credits and buying stuff (weapon upgrades, ammo, meds, and recycling kind of like Prey 2017, but less fun). You recycle junk at recycling stations for credits to buy with. Junk takes up room in the inventory, but you can vaporize it into scrap, which lowers the credit value, but saves space. I think SS2 is still the better game, even with the remake of 1 being here. SS2 is more fun and less convoluted, it still holds up. Original SS1 is goofy as hell, the remake is not. As with the remake and original versions of Resident Evil 1, the OG is still worth playing for how wacky and charming it is. *Incredibly pixelated high energy techno music plays while the player leans left and right quickly doing a rapid dance while robots and cyborgs hurl obscenities at you while the player's ears bleed from how shrill and piercing the UI sound effects are while also being blown up by an exploding roomba of death* THE REBEL THE DEBEL

This is not the remake I wanted it to be. The original System Shock is in my top five games of all time. I got the demo from one of those shareware discs, installed it on our 486DX4-100 and fell immediately in love. The game had an atmosphere like nothing else at the time. System Shock is one of those games that was so far ahead of its time that I'm not sure people knew what to make of it, but its influence in games of the next three decades is undeniable. Without System Shock there would not have been Deus Ex, Bioshock, Doom 3, Prey, Thief, Dishonored, and more. SS1 tends to get overshadowed by its sequel. System Shock 2 leaned harder into the survival elements and for that reason was, in my opinion, the lesser game. I have no doubt this claim will upset fans of SS2 because if I've learned one thing about people who like survival games, they REALLY like survival games. Having played the remake I suspect quite a few devs at Nightdive are in this camp. Because this isn't a straight remake of System Shock 1. This is a quasi-remake that tries to remould System Shock 1 into something more like System Shock 2. It injects new and unwelcome elements like a grid-based inventory that needs constant management, or scavenging for junk to feed vending machines, that were not present in the original game. System Shock 1 was its own game with its own style. It didn't need to steal some its younger brother's clothes. Even with mods you can't revert these changes entirely. What you end up with is a game that just doesn't play like the original. Which is a real shame because Nightdive have done a fantastic job elsewhere with the visuals and sound design. If they had simply not chosen to add these new elements to the game it would have been an amazing remake. Instead the game suffers from a kind of identity crisis. I wanted System Shock 1 but what I got was System Shock 1.5.