System Shock Remake

This is a phenomenal remake of an old classic which was sorely in need of an update. I really enjoy the original 1994 release but oh boy, it has not aged well.
I strongly recommend the System Shock Remake to anyone with even a passing interest in Immersive Sims.
9/10, it's very good all round except for some of the level design. The remake is extremely faithful to the original game which means some of the levels are a maze of seemingly random corridors.

I will recommend this game, but with some serious disclaimers for those not familiar with the System Shock games.
This game from a design perspective is as old-school as it gets. Each level is a massive labyrinth full of windy passages that you will constantly get turned around in. There is zero objective markers or hand-holding to speak of, and you will get confused and lost for hours trying to figure out where to go and what to do. Also, be prepared to backtrack. A lot. I'm not going to lie, I doubt most people will have the patience for this type of game nowadays.
If you're still reading, then maybe you aren't most people. Well, if you are willing to put up with the constant confusion and hours of aimlessly wandering, there is a fantastic game here. An amazing art style, atmosphere, combat, story, and villain are here for you to experience. It is a phenomenal remaster to a cult classic that influenced many games that came after.

What a masterpiece.
(Both the substance of the original game and the execution of this remake.)
I wish all old legendary games could get this kind of treatment. I'm so grateful this exists. System Shock 1 in particular was difficult to go back and experience because it's so old it predates modern FPS conventions. Nightdive amazingly seem to have injected modern FPS movement & controls, while retaining the rest of the feel of the original game. It's really remarkable.
A special nod to the art. There is something really astonishing about about the look of slightly-pixelated 'boomer shooter' textures, but set with modern lighting and particle and gas effects. There were quite a few moments where I just sat there and turned around and gawked at the scenery.
As for the game itself, it's already been discussed to death, but I'll just say that playing it was so thoroughly enjoyable that it kind of made me a little sad about the state of modern games. It forces you to observe the world around you and figure out what to do, rather than just plodding down a line to the next quest marker or fast traveling from place to place. In 99% of modern games, most audio and text logs you find are just extra "flavor" or "lore" that can be ignored on the way to the next fetch quest -- here, you actually need to read and learn and pay attention to them. There are no "blue" or "orange" rarity colors of weapons, there are no "legendary" anything -- the game does not hold your hand and tell you what is or isn't good. Different weapons have different strengths and weaknesses, and it's up to you to figure out what suits your playstyle.
The only negative I can come up with is that the cyberspace sections kinda suck, but they kinda sucked in the original, so I guess that's faithfully preserved. At least Nightdive give you the option to lower the difficulty on them if you don't want to worry about them too much.
Anyway, seriously, go play it. ESPECIALLY if you never played the original.

System Shock is a very special game in the medium's relatively short history, coming out in 1994 just about a year after Doom destroyed college computer labs and telecom lines. Following the Ultima Underworld duology and leading to Thief, the Dark Project in 98, System Shock 2 in 99 (Levine's Irrational Games), and Deus Ex in 2000 (Ion Storm), this short span of time saw Looking Glass Studios and its descendants laying down the foundation of and defining what producer Warren Spector and legendary designer Doug Church would eventually dub the "immersive sim". Where Doom and its countless clones sought to capture the visceral arcade thrill of mowing down enemies in blocky facsimiles of the world (did you know Doom II takes place almost entirely on Earth?), Looking Glass sought to put players into believable worlds with logical solutions to complex problems. They wanted you to feel like you were completely transported to another place, another time, living another life somewhere far removed from your reality, but real nevertheless. They never wanted to rip you from your seat and show you a fancy cutscene, either; you were always present in the moment as events unfolded around you and your choices and how you proceeded forward had tremendous weight on the game you were playing. If you have a soft spot in your heart for games like Dishonored, BioShock, and the new version of Prey, then you can thank Looking Glass and System Shock for paving the road.
However, in the 90s, making a game like that was incredibly ambitious and almost anything released by Origin at the time (long before they became a husk that EA hollowed out and filled with doodoo) required top-of-the-line tech just to get it to work, but moreover, tons of people still hadn't adopted the relatively-young Windows platform yet and didn't own mice. Power users typically dropped immediately to DOS or prevented Windows from even starting up on boot. While System Shock's two predecessors were popular and realized the real-time dungeon crawl, the folks at Looking Glass really wanted to do something different by trapping players on a space station with a rogue AI, but in order to simulate all that futuristic complexity, they devised a control system that was asinine in retrospect, but keep in mind that the intention was that you'd generally have both hands on your keyboard and only a privileged subsection of people would have a mouse to play the game. In other words, those who stuck it out experienced an incredibly immersive and frightening game that hadn't been seen before, but there were more people who simply couldn't get over the complex control scheme and they went back to playing Doom. Thankfully, this is largely addressed in the fantastic Enhanced Edition that Nightdive released (and to be frank, I wouldn't suggest playing it the original way), but I'll talk about that on its own page. While those who experienced System Shock in its entirety probably have a special place in their hearts carved out for it, it sadly didn't reach the massive heights that its spiritual successor BioShock would several years later even though in this writer's opinion, BioShock didn't do anything new and was little more than a reskin of System Shock 2 (if you're going to suck at Levine's teat, do it for SS2, not BioShock, dammit).
This right here is a very faithful remake of the original game with modern design sensibilities attached to it. While you can play the original in all its glory, especially with the Enhanced Edition (again, best way to play it), this version will play as a current-gen gamer would expect it to. They applied many of the improvements from SS2 and streamlined a lot of the more cumbersome elements of the original's controls and UI (in particular the way the MFD works) to make this play the way you think it would. To clarify, if you watch someone play the original DOS release of System Shock, you might think it's straight-forward, but I invite you to go look up the original manual and look at the keystrokes they have you doing just to load a gun. It's retrospectively insane what they came up with, but it did work if you put the time in to get familiar with it. Either way, you still have "shoot mode" (standard FPS) and "use mode" (interacting with the MFD) to borrow from SS2 and you'll be frequently hopping between the two, but it is far easier to work with now.
Obvious control and graphical improvements aside, the level layouts are very, very similar with arguably improved tweaks here and there that 'fix' the original layouts and enhance the logic that needs to be followed to traverse them. For the most part, if you remember there's a secret door somewhere, there's a very good chance it's still right there where you expect it to be. The faithfulness of the level design is so close that you're still mostly navigating 90-degree angles and traversing tons of ramps and looking for lifts to reach the upper catwalks. The layouts are still mostly flat from a top-down perspective and utilize the same tricks that Doom did to fake a truly 3D environment, but it's all part of the charm. In this way, this is less a remake and more of a remaster, though it's really something of a yuge update if nothing else.
The real difference veterans are going to notice is with how cyberspace works, which was the original's limited fully-3D environment. In the original, you had what amounted to a vector-based flight sim that had you in constant forward movement t hat was difficult to navigate because you could see through every wall. Your only hints were rudimentary arrows showing you what tiny hole in the wall you had to go through next. Here, they've made it more Descent-like where you're expected to eliminate defenses instead of circumventing them and yeah, you can actually make sense of the space now because the walls have textures!
It may not carry the weight of the original in terms of how ground-breaking and completely bonkers ambitious it was for its time, but this is a great way to experience the original System Shock without having to navigate its archaic systems. It's far easier to work with and far less deadly in my opinion, but every bit as immersive and threatening as it ever has been, perhaps even more so. Veterans will be delighted by some of the subtle changes made here and there and newcomers will finally be able to experience the game without having to climb up a monstrous hill. There's still a lot to be said for the OG game and I still recommend you go play the Enhanced Edition, but if you can't be bothered to do so, but still want the broadstroke experience of System Shock, this is the way to go.

Really enjoyed this game. I never played the original, but this one stands on it's own and was a lot of fun. The inventory space is a little frustrating for the number of enemies you have to kill. But it's a minor complaint. Would happily recommend this to anyone that enjoys a thoughtful FPS. It's not on rails, and makes you strategize and plot to a degree. If you play, learn to add map markers early to things. Find a neat gun but not ready to pick it up? Map marker. Find a door that requires lower security? Map marker. Elevator? Mark it with the levels it goes to. Computer Node room? Map Marker. etc. etc. It's a big help. when you have to back track or want to quickly find something.

Gameplay: 8/10
Story: 8/10
Graphics: 7/10
Performance: 9/10
Overall: 8/10
System Shock is a remake (keyword: remake. Not remaster) of the original System Shock from 1994. Being a remake, this means that it is not necessarily a 1:1 representation of the original System Shock with updated graphics. Instead, what you are getting is the core mechanics of the original System Shock with modern controls and a few new features. If you’ve played the original System Shock, then you will likely see a few recognizable locations, but many of the original levels have been changed with new areas added. I just need to get this out of the way, because there seems to be a misunderstanding of the difference between a remaster and a remake.
At its core, System Shock is a cyberpunk dungeon diver. Think futuristic Ultima Underworld. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as the original developers of System Shock also developed the Ultima Underworld series. The game opens with the player getting caught trying to hack the big bad corporation (TriOptimum) to steal a military grade cyber implant. Instead of being thrown into prison, the player is tasked with unshackling an AI’s (Shodan) ethical restraints -because that sounds like a fantastic idea! Right?!- And in exchange TriOptimum will give you the military grade cyber implant and clear you of any wrong doing. One cutscene later and your work is completed. Shodan is unshackled and you’re put into cryo-statis for 6 months to get your implant on a space station called Citadel Station. This is where the actual game begins. You awaken to find that the station has been completely hijacked by Shodan with any survivors being turned into mutants or cyborgs. Shodan is firing up the station’s superlaser to blast Earth into a million chunks and you have to stop her. A simple premise, but getting to Shodan will be a challenge. You will need to engage in first person combat, puzzles, hacking in cyberspace and navigating a labyrinthine maze of Citadel Station’s corridors.
Graphically, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the System Shock remake is leaps and bounds better looking than the original System Shock released in 1994 or System Shock 2 released in 1999. Not only does it look better though, but it also plays decently well without the need for a beefy computer. The developers for the remake have also attempted to blend modern graphics with a retro aesthetic, although this isn’t something you might see if you aren’t paying much attention to appearances. On top of this, sound design is pretty top notch, although unfortunately, the remake does not appear to use the original tracks. Instead, the remake uses a more generic sci-fi/cyberpunk soundtrack as opposed to the originals MIDI tracks.
For example, compare this:
To this:
Personally, I think the original tracks would have lended itself better to the aesthetic that System Shock is trying to portray and supports the cyberpunk theme much more.
All in all, System Shock is a solid game. If you’re a fan of the original, or love dungeon divers or even just cyberpunk stuff in general, then you will likely enjoy the System Shock Remake. Personally, I’m not a fan of cyberpunk themes and I didn’t realize how much the remake would be leaning into this, so I can’t see myself going back to this game, but I’m looking forward to stepping into System Shock 2, which apparently has much less cyberpunk themes and is more of a traditional sci-fi/horror experience. Still, just because I wasn’t into the remake, doesn’t mean I wouldn’t recommend it! It’s a solid and immersive experience and a must play for cyberpunk fans.

Do I like this game? Yes. Did I enjoy this game? For the most part, yes. Do I recommend this game? Yes. However, would I pick it up again and replay it? No. For the simple reason of the Boss fight, which really is one of the two points of criticism. The Boss fight, as it is now, is doable but so so difficult. You cannot skip Shodans monologue and sequence, no healing - feels kind of wonky if you ask me - no checkpoint there. Oh, and you have to "alt + f4" out of the end credits since they are non-skip, which feels like a odd note to end a game on.
Apart from those two points, i had hellofafun playing it. For the most part: Good job, Nightdive! But please add a checkpoint after that mentioned part of the boss fight, it would really add to the game experience.