What? You play a military mechanic on the recently terraformed moon Ganymede of the planet Jupiter. One days things start to go wrong and you are to assist in the investigation of the strange happenings. Seems the water has been contaminated by strange lifeforms that endanger the colony. Before you know it you search for survivors, battle aliens, assist a planetary exodus, help a crashed spaceship, fix an UFO and visit an enormous alien mothership with it. The good? - some kind of an isometric "Doom" version, "Crusader: No regret/remorse" type - a decent enough story & situations that make actual sense - acceptable graphics & overall good lightning effects - well worked out level design & presentation of Ganymede base, mines & spaceships - some very nice pieces of music & sound effects - challenging & stealthy combat - 11 chapters - 5 lives per chapter - a good variety of weapons & useful upgrades - various monsters & aliens with different powers/weapons & weaknesses - good monster AI - responsive controls - some fun resemblances with SF movie iconic requisites The Bad? - save games only at start of each chapter, no saves whatsoever in between chapters - long duration per chapter (> 2 hours) - so check the time when starting a chapter, because it's till the bitter end of the chapter or a restart next time ... - you have to restart the whole chapter when you die 5 times, so take care! - some minor bugs (I got firmly stuck in a forcefield when I was slowly approaching a main generator with 3 forcefield generators -> to avoid a chapter restart I had to blow myself up with the grenade launcher & therefor sacrifice 1 life) - you run around the whole game in your base uniform, no other wearable armor & upgrades whatsoever - low interaction with the environment (no containers to open and only some windows, crates & barrels to demolish) - some protuding obstacles & companions sometimes blocking your passage/escape So? I had very much fun with it when I bought it on a sales. It has it's flaws and I had no high expectations of it, but ultimately I was drawn into it. The combination of the story, the level design, the music, the weapons & their upgrades, the monsters and the graphical presentation of it all, made it all very believable. A steal at 5,00 or less.
Demo is broken - game always freezes somewhere when I am in the first spider bot area. It was a pleasant reunion with my memories past, the layout was the same, the weapons were the same, atmosphere was there, graphics were bettered of course, all was there but still it missed somethings - the tension, the weirdness and the initial immersion in the story to name a few. I know, it's pre-alpha and it was very temping to Kickstart it also as the collectors box and artbook looked nice, It was also nice to see for Nightdive to reach their funding goal but to be frankly, I really don't believe in all those remakes (movies, games, . . .) They always try to overdo the original, you gain some but eventually - in most cases - more was lost in the progress. As I have read their intentions, I fear the loss will outweigh the gain here as well. System Shock will be one of my all time favorites as of many of you, but I don't believe this one will replace it . I will stick with the original and wait for number 3 to waste my money on :)
