System Shock - Review
I’m afraid I cannot let you do that, Hacker. I will eliminate you like the insect that you are.
System Shock Remake is a like for like from the ground up remake of the 1994 title by the same name. The cyberpunk-esque futurisitic action-adventure FPS is brought to the modern day. With all-new HD visuals, a completely overhauled interface and brand new music and sounds, System Shock Remake intends to bring the cult-classic to a modern audience in a way that connects with them.
It cannot be understated how much care was put into recreating the original world there is in System Shock Remake. Remarkably, the biggest point of interest is also that for those who were experienced with the world of the original, is just how familiar everything feels whilst there is some updates to the worlds design. As such returning players will be able to navigate and understand the world to an almost perfect level. For those new to the series, the world is beautifully designed in a way that keeps every area feeling unique and different, despite the space-based locale. Every level feels different to the previous, adding a depth to the game that makes exploring the world vastly more enjoyable than it even was in the original. In particular, the Grove section shows off a variety of locales, methods of transport and gives you a depth of exploration that truly shows of how beautiful this deadly space station truly is.
Visual fidelity is the biggest change in the game. System Shock Remake is an incredibly beautiful game, that uses high contrast and sharp colours to really paint something unique against the greyish backdrop. Enemies blast away with powerful blue and red lasers, there is visual clouds of green radiation. The enemies themselves are grossly fleshy, a deep grey that somehow makes them pop against the lighter grey interiors. Effective use of highly contrasted colours, with a heavy cell-shade like filter makes the world feel like a fever-dream 90’s idea of the future. Something the original System Shock actually didn’t achieve, due to technical limitations of the time. The use of extreme red flaring lights as well, paints this world of observation. SHODAN is here to wipe out the human race, to develop a deadly mutating virus, and you are in the way. You feel constantly watched, and the world feels like a place of constant surveillance.
There is an interesting amount of enemy variety, all of which are impressive too look at. Early stages have cyborg security soldiers, recycling bin robots and mutated people. This expands into flying missile robots, mantis cyborgs and mutants inside mech suits with massive death laser cannons. The introduction of enemies is smart, as SHODAN is developing her death virus further, so too does that danger level increase with more and more onslaughts of enemies. End stages of the game, on the standard difficulty, can feel brutally tough. Enemies take a huge amount of damage, can hit you from across the room and punish you for attempting to avoid encounters. While the original game felt difficult at times, the remake has taken that idea and ramped it up, ensuring that all players will feel really challenged this time around. Couple that with inventory management, resource management and brutally tough enemies mean that every encounter feels dangerous.
The difficulty curve of System Shock Remake is not to be underestimated either. The game gives you the option of changing the difficultly levels of the major aspects of the game. That being the puzzles and their difficulty, the difficulty of the enemies and the response of SHODAN herself in reaction to your behaviours throughout the story. The default is a 2 on all settings, that feels the most fair in most circumstances. Learning to quick save regularly will go a long way, as there are many points across the story where death will result in a game-over, rather than a respawn. Which means you can lose a drastic amount of progress rather easily. The puzzles for the most part are pretty straight forward. Re-route power from one node to another, with different shaped pathways. A power draw system where you plug in plugs to produce different outputs and alter them to get the required amount. For some reason however a lot of the puzzle panels were horrifically fuzzy to look at, which made it incredibly difficult to see some of the blocks. This may be an issue of the review build, but it did not fix with graphics quality changes or game restarts. So if you have poor eyesight, the puzzles may be difficult purely based on the low fidelity, more so than anything else.
The open exploration style of gameplay is bolstered by a very hands-off approach to giving you direction. You have vague overall objectives to clear, and a somewhat clear path to get there. But the game doesn’t give a tremendous hand in pointing you to the right floors, or even the direction to go. You will get used to trekking back and forth to try and figure things out. Meaning you’ll come across a lot of items, and a lot of enemies. A large chunk of the game’s difficulty will come from the difficulty of managing all your weapons, ammo and healing resources, as well as items to recycle for credits to buy more ammo and guns when you find yourself lacking the necessary resources. With the rise of the return of Survival Horrors, System Shock Remake does a tremendously good job of making a tight resource management shooter feel incredibly daunting and difficulty, with achievement when you succeed.
The inclusion of some quality of life additions would have gone a long way with System Shock Remake however. There is a camp of people who will always demand that remakes are like for like, i.e. do nothing but create the original in a modern way. A modern way for System Shock could have included some waypoint markers, a better explained legend for icons on the map, or even an objectives list. There are moments where it has long stretches between story beats, and it can be easy to forget what is being required of you. It’s not essential to add everything, but the modern improvements to games do exist for a reason and some of that is to make games playable by more. In particular a decision to make the ‘game over’ cutscene unskippable and stops quick loads, is incredibly frustrating. There is nothing inherently wrong with making things somewhat more bearable, and it is something that System Shock in particular could’ve benefited from. Twenty years of difference is a long time for improvements to be made. Something worth looking at for modding or future updates.
System Shock Remake is a beautiful, if not brutally difficulty, remake of the 1994 cult classic. There is something here to bring new fans into the series, whilst also allowing fans of the original to experience the story once again in the beautiful Unreal Engine. The sound design is immaculate, the colour contrast and palette is well thought out and pops off the screen. In particular the return of the original voice of SHODAN adds that same eerie creepy feeling of the original. The ending sequence in particular is tremendously better as well. It would have been nice to see some more modern day quality of life inclusions, for the sake of simplifying gameplay and welcoming in more players. Perhaps this is something that might get addressed with a post-launch update or two. In addition I hope that the puzzles themselves have their fuzziness cleared as well. System Shock Remake is a great look at a like for like remake in the modern gaming market.
The Score
8.5
Review code provided by Prime Matter
The Pros
+All new HD visuals are fantastic
+SHODAN’s original voice actor does a tremendous job
+Puzzles are mostly challenging without being impossible
+Enemy variety is paced and well thought out
The Cons
-Lack of quality of life upgrades
-End game progression is a bullet sponge hell
-Unskippable game over cutscene is incredibly frustrating
