System Shock

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The game very closely sticks to the original, 1994 game, so much, that it's essentially a remaster instead a remake, with a few QoL updates here and there. Even the Unreal engine is using somewhat pixelated textures to have the original aestetics. Having said that, you might as well just play the original game, with it's clunky combat, tedious inventory management, awful level design, and whatnot. They've kept almost everything from the original game, which is good if you want an almost perfect recreation of the 30 years old game, but bad if you want to play a decent game today. I was waiting for this, but it's a big disappointment.

Six years late and what do we get? Graphics that are jarringly good and absolutely godawful at the same time. Puzzles that are actually WORSE than in the original. Floaty movement and lousy combat feedback. I can't believe NDS messed this up so badly. It's a miserable experience - and that's coming from someone who struggled through the keyboard limitations of the original. I can't even express what a tragedy this game turned out to be.

In my own experience the audio is super choppy and noise-riddled. Audio is an integral part of the story & experience for this game. So until this is fixed I have wasted my money. I was very excited, as my introduction to the series was System Shock 2 (SS2) and I'd bought but never quite played SS1 in older forms. (This is the ONLY game or application having this problem despite updated drivers)

I really wanted to like this more, but I feel that my expectations were too high. While it is true that the game mechanics are user-friendlier and graphics are a nice mix of retro pixels, bright neon colors and modern design, the gameplay itself just feels too boring and not engaging enough. Every battle seems too easy and too short and the spooky atmosphere of the original game is gone. The illuminated corridors and enemies don't seem that frightening and threatening anymore. Lack of music also bothers me too as I really liked the original score. Now it's just your average ambient noises in the background and occasional generic battle music that is not exactly memorable. And while I praised the graphics, the bright colours will strain your eyes quite quickly.