System Shock is a classic first-person action-adventure title that holds up to this day. You’ll need a bit of patience as you work through a future space station that has been taken over by an evil A.I. Shodan has destroyed the station’s workforce, turning them into mutants and cyborgs to serve at her pleasure as she attempts to use a giant frickin laser beam on the Earth. Will your mostly silent protagonist save the day? No clue, but mine did, and here’s my tale.
The Setting
The year is 2072. You are an unnamed hacker who is caught mid-job by the TriOptium Corporation. After being caught you’re taken to Citadel Station and tasked by a corrupt executive of the company to hack the A.I. Shodan, who runs the place. You’re offered the implant you were trying to steal in the opening scene as compensation and then get knocked the f*ck out after completing the job. You awaken 6 months later having been put into a medical coma after being granted the implants but shit has gone sideways.
The station is overrun by mutants and cyborgs under Shodan’s control, and it’s your job to try and stop Shodan from using the station’s mining laser. They want to destroy all of Earth’s major cities and declare themselves an A.I. God. The writing and voice acting hold up well. The original game released in 1994 and it is hilarious to go back to it after seeing this Unreal Engine remake. System Shock (2023) is damned pretty. Lighting and color is used to great effect to evoke the feeling of the original while modernizing it. What hasn’t been fully modernized, and I think it’s a good thing, is the gameplay.
Layin Pipe
System Shock is played from the first-person perspective. You’ll spend lots of times looking at things to see if it is selectable in your interface as you attempt to find keys and switches to progress through each level. The game has a number of difficulty options, which is hugely important as the game plays just like the original release at normal. Old hats who are used to games that seemed to actively hate us (so that they would take longer to beat) will be used to how obtuse everything can be. I did my original playthrough on the PC port last year on normal and had a blast. I couldn’t do it again here though and chose easy mode on everything to see how different the experience is.
You’ll start the game swinging a pipe before you find any ranged weaponry. All of the combat is extremely basic and you are encouraged to explore and potentially find other solutions on how to get passed certain encounters based on your playstyle. The majority of the game will find you dancing around enemies as you smack them in the head or picking them off from afar with shooting controls that feel a bit stiff. The game controls like a dream on a mouse and keyboard but I found the dead zones and aim acceleration settings to be a hair-off on my Xbox Series X. I was able to adjust over time but Halo Infinite this is not.
Most of the game will be inventory management with you trying to balance melee and ranged combat as ammo can be scarce. Junk is useful in that you can choose to vaporize it and then sell that material to a vendor for credits. Those credits can net you food for healing, direct heals, buffs, ammo, and guns. A lot of it feels rudimentary now but all of the systems were mind-blowing back in 1994 and hold up well today.
The Remake
This System Shock remake took a while to come to fruition after a successful Kickstarter. Originally it was going to be a faithful remake, then a reboot/new game, then back to a faithful remake. As a huge fan of the original I think they nailed that final goal. While this game obviously looks far better than the original it still feels like System Shock to me. The majority of your playtime is in the real world, but their take on how Cyberspace looks, how the UI fits into everything, and the colorful nature of the station’s lighting give it a creepy ambiance that matches Shodan in all of her weird-assed glory.
As stated previously the writing and voice acting still work well. Most of the story is conveyed through audio logs you’ll find about the station or through radio broadcasts to the player. You are a silent protagonist though you can hear your masculine or feminine character’s grunts and yells of pain during combat. I had no major bugs with the port, which was a nice change from my time on PC last year. I had multiple hard crashes at launch then but things have worked perfectly on Series X with Quick Resume being of great use.
Wrapping Things Up
System Shock is an all-time classic, and this is by far the best way to experience it. Nightdive Studios have followed through on their promise and delivered a full remake that gets what made the original so special.
System Shock (2023)
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- Looks Beautiful
- Easy mode Helps a Lot
- Hard mode is there for a true challenge
CONS
- Controls on console are stiff
Remember how BioShock Infinite had 1999 mode that made it more hardcore. This game should have had a 2013 mode that made it as simple as BioShock.
Has anyone who backed the Kickstarter received their console code yet?