It's a good game, not for the weak of stomach though lol. I really wanted to play it as a piece of gaming history. Definitely holds up today, as I understand the remake is mostly unchanged as far as gameplay and level layout. Some people call it the first immersive sim (at least that's what I remember), and I don't think that's entirely accurate but I do think that genre took a lot of inspiration from it and expanded the toolset. The modernized controls are pretty intuitive, but I don't have the original to compare to. I just have heard many complain that the controls are really hard in the original. The gunplay is pretty nice, don't know how that compares, but yeah, guns have nice sounds, great effects and good control and feedback. You're often wanting to conserve bullets, so each shot is considered and you don't really get to use the guns as much as you might like. I got a ton of use out of the spark pistol taser thing since it only uses energy and energy is technically infinite. Aaaanyways, even though System Shock is an FPS, it has almost as much puzzling as fighting - which is interesting. So if you like shooting, scrounging resources, and puzzles, you'll like System Shock!
Very fun game!! I really like the gameplay, level design, visuals, and music. For those that don't know, it's a cyberpunk parkor action game with an emphasis on speed. Overall I enjoyed a lot. I really liked the flow state you could get into while playing. I felt that the game was challenging without being overly punishing. In fact that was one of my favorite bits being that death was very quick to recover from and checkpoints were frequent. The combat is very unique in that you can only be hit once. There is no health bar, you just die if you're hit. They frequently add enemies throughout the game that change your approach and up the ante, so combat is very much a puzzle fight. That said there was almost never one solution and you're given tools (read, powers) that allow you to defeat enemies in different ways, potentially making part of the puzzle easier or bypassing the "intended" way to complete it. There were definitely some encounters, either combat or jumping puzzles, that were incredibly annoying to do. That usually had to do with dealing with particular enemy types or for the parkour, very long sequences with tight timings. That said I completed this game in 7 hours so even with the areas I got "stuck" on, it was rarely for more than 10-20 min. The story was interesting, albeit somewhat predictable if you're familiar with Cyberpunk and honestly just general Sci-fi tropes. The environments, sounds, and music really helped to sell the experience, though, so I liked it a lot. The one thing I really did not like was the suicide enemies. They aren't in very many encounters, but they have little counterplay which is frustrating. Having them on the field changes the fight from a puzzle to a frantic dash where standing still for one moment means certain death. That's generally true anyways, but with these guys nowhere is safe. Anyways I very much recommend playing, especially since it's short!
