Playing this game again without having to go through modding it myself has been nothing short of wonderful. I have a few hours into it so far, but there appears to be an issue that, to be fair, did exist in the original game, but it seems exacerbated in this version. Specifically, the movement of melee enemies like The Hybrid, the first enemy you encounter in the game, are highly erratic. In the OG their movement was quite scuffed because they would move toward the player to attack, then use super saiyan movement to quickly move out of melee range when you swung at them. That problem is now much, much worse. It happens more often and that glitchy movement is faster than it was originally. I hope Night Dive can fix this for good because it's so dang jarring. With that, it's really only one small issue that I've discovered so far since the rest of the game has been great.
After finishing the game I can see why people rate it so highly.
The game literally cannot be played in widescreen. At wider resolutions it forces black bars on the side to set a 16:9 ratio. I'm guessing having a wider aspect ratio would ruin some of their jumpscares or something, but it's a damn shame. Also, like altair777 said, the HDR implementation is not the best; in fact, it's probably the worst implementation of HDR I've ever seen. Refunded as a result. They also changed main parts of the original story for "modern audiences"; which is never a good thing.
This is absolutely one of my favorite games of 2023. This installment plays wholly different than the previous titles due to the introduction of weaponry. Ammunition is extremely scarce, and you cannot craft more. There are also padlocks that cannot be opened by any means other than shooting them. This forces you to conserve your ammunition to either fend off the beast or use that one remaining bullet for potential goodies. The gas grenades, in my playthrough, seemed to do absolutely nothing. Perhaps I wasn't using them correctly, but they only ever served as a hinderance to myself. Rats weren't afraid of them and the beast walked right through without so much as a cough. The beast seemed quite omniscient at times as well, since it often spotted me through large objects, such as crates, that I was hiding behind; or when I was hiding under tables and beds without moving or having a source of light or sound. Kind of annoying, but I was able to work around it. I also found a soft-locking bug that can only be fixed by reloading a save. When holding both your revolver and the flashlight, press the Reload and Flashlight button in quick succession. This will bug the animations and cause them not to play, as if they cancelled each other out. Afterwards you cannot interact with anything or open your inventory. You MUST reload a save. I must say the ending did catch me off guard, and I found the one useful item that beast gets distracted by and used it during the end sequence. Better use it wisely though, or you'll throw it, watch it bounce sidewars and fall down a deep, dark hole like I did. I really do wish it was a bit longer, but for $25 I definitely can't knock off stars for its length. I hope Frictional Games continue doing what they love so that I may continue to play through their stories.
I've never played the original System Shock, but I can definitely see that Nightdive have put a lot of passion and heart into this game. It runs flawlessly with the only actual glitch I've discovered thus far is that my mouse will stutter randomly; I'm not sure if this is even the game though since it could just be my wireless mouse acting up. The game absolutely does not hold your hand. No objective markers, no "quest log", no journal telling you what to do. You had better listen to those audio logs because they're the only thing that will give you an idea of what to do. From what I can gather this is in line with the original game, which I definitely enjoy. Too many games today hold your hand and guide to directly to your next objective. You WILL be confused at points, but don't worry since you can always come back. ULTRAWIDE SUPPORT. Holy crap this game actually has ultrawide support and it does it extremely well. I am able to play at 5440x1440 with no issues. I cranked the FOV up to 120 and there is absolutely NO STRETCHING on the sides. What a miracle it is when the developers actually put effort into their games. Ignore the joker who gave it 1 star and claimed "no wide screen support". That simply is not true. I kept the game on level 2 difficulty for everything and, boy-oh-boy does it get difficult if you don't manage your resources properly. Exploration is rewarding; I was able to either purchase or find upgrades for myself and my weapons simply by being a kleptomaniac. I haven't beaten the game yet; I've put about 8 hours in to it and only cleared 4 levels out of 10 (I think). One gripe I have so far is that enemies will continuously respawn even when SHODAN's security level is 0%. These guys don't drop enough materials to make up for the ammo they absorb, so eventually I just started running away from them. Some puzzles are legitimately difficult to figure out, but just keep looking around and you'll find that one switch you didn't see before.
