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This is how you remake a piece of gaming history - System Shock review

3K View2023-05-29

System Shock

10.0

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It’s probably impossible to overstate the importance of the original System Shock, which debuted on PC way back in 1994. While Doom had reshaped expectations of what a 3D game world could be a year earlier, System Shock’s dark, creepy space station hallways charted a course that we’re still following today. What we now know as the survival horror and immersive sim genres simply wouldn’t exist as we know them without this weird, niche game from Looking Glass Studios.

Remaking such an important piece of video gaming history is a dangerous task. This isn’t like an update for Resident Evil 4, which still feels relatively modern. The original System Shock is a difficult game to play at all, because so much of what we take for granted as conventional in games now simply hadn’t been invented when System Shock launched. To be too reverent, leaving it mostly untouched, would result in a game that feels unplayable to modern audiences. Changing too much, on the other hand, would risk making something that felt disconnected from the original game.

I’m pleased to say that in this modern remake of System Shock, Nightdive has managed to avoid either of those outcomes. This is a masterful rebuilding of the original game that thoughtfully incorporates modern innovations to evoke the same tense and spooky atmosphere that playing System Shock in 1994 did. It’s built on the memories of those experiences as much as it is on Looking Glass Studios’ original designs. It’s a total transformation of the original System Shock that nonetheless feels entirely authentic.

The story follows an unnamed hacker who is abducted while breaching the TriOptimum Corporation’s databases in an attempt to download files on a secret project called Citadel Station. They’re dragged before the corporation’s CEO, Edward Diego, who offers to drop the criminal charges if they perform one job: hacking into Citadel Station’s AI, SHODAN, and removing the ethical constraints so that Diego can steal a dangerous virus that scientists aboard Citadel are analyzing. As a bonus, Diego offers to throw in a powerful neural implant.

I jumped into the hacker’s boots months later, after they’ve been taken to Citadel for surgery, and woken from an induced coma only to find that things have gone terribly wrong. Released from her ethical restrictions, SHODAN has taken control of Citadel and its security systems, forcibly mutating much of its staff and murdering the rest with an army of heavily armed cyborgs.

Armed only with a lead pipe, I began my exploration of Citadel’s medical level. Maintenance robots had gone haywire, and horribly mutated former staff members lurched at me from the station’s dark corners. As was the case in the original, System Shock provided me with periodic guidance via data discs and memory sticks I found along the way, and these have now been enhanced with full voice-over.

The rest of the station has been dramatically enhanced as well. In the original version, the angled walls and cramped maintenance shafts of Citadel Station were viewable only in a small portion of the screen, most of which was taken up by several multifunction displays that provided information about weapons, biological readings, and the map. While the haunted space station’s layout has been preserved almost exactly, it’s now rendered fullscreen, with the cold glow of emergency lights and dark shadows adding drama and tension to every scene.

Citadel Station is a huge space to explore, and every inch of it is fraught with potential danger. In addition to radiation and toxic chemical leaks, there are ravenous mutants, lethal drones, and heavily armored cyborgs lurking around enough corners that I was constantly on edge as I entered a new layer of the labyrinth. Enemy AI isn’t particularly clever, but once I reached the mid-game, the creatures I faced were dangerous enough that I felt entirely justified in abusing the occasional piece of level geometry that gave me an advantage. Cyborg enforcers and security bots could easily take me out in a single salvo if I wasn’t topped up on health and hadn’t thought to activate my energy shields, so the few times I managed to get the drop on them during my thirty-hour playthrough felt well-earned.

Resident Evil fans will recognize the constant juggle of inventory management that I faced as I made my way through the station, first disabling the mining laser SHODAN intended to use to wipe out major cities on Earth and finally facing off with the evil AI herself. The lead pipe I found when I woke up was just the beginning: Gradually, I uncovered a whole arsenal of increasingly lethal weapons that included a powerful shotgun, an assault rifle, and a devastating railgun.

Each weapon has alternate fire modes or multiple ammo types to use, but there’s a catch: I could only hold a few of them at a time, because they all occupied slots in my inventory. Stacks of ammo, grenades, healing, and certain key items needed to progress all competed for space in there, and there was never enough room for me to carry everything I needed, particularly as I made my way into the final areas of the game.

That restriction helped keep things feeling tense throughout System Shock’s full runtime, because I always had to make agonizing sacrifices of things that I wanted to have in order to carry things that I absolutely needed. Could I really afford to be lugging around a whole grenade launcher when I had maybe one EMP grenade left? I could use that space for more medkits, or a new stack of rifle ammunition I found. I abandoned my Magnum pistol somewhere on the executive level as I was searching for a way into one of the four eco-domes attached to the station. I was kicking myself for that decision later on as I fought SHODAN’s elite units in the security level, where the plentiful high-density osmium slugs would have been useful against their heavy armor.

The complaints I have about System Shock are trivial. I died frequently while playing on medium difficulty, and when that happened before I had activated the medical station in the level, I was locked into a cutscene that showed my body being harvested by a terrifying robot called a cortex reaver and turned into one of SHODAN’s minions. It’s not that this was upsetting or too gory, but there’s no way to skip it, and so I scrambled to hit the escape key whenever I knew I was dying so I could reload a save before the cinematic kicked in. Another minor complaint is that enemies’ bodies sometimes ragdolled comedically when they interacted with a repulsor lift or door. Seeing a dead giant cyborg wobbling crazily after a white-knuckle firefight would sometimes shatter the otherwise tense and spooky mood.

I could go on at length about how much I enjoyed each level of Citadel Station, how the ongoing puzzle of figuring out what I was supposed to do and where to explore next kept me glued to my screen from start to finish, and how this early example of the audio log story format is still its best. Instead, I’ll simply say this: Play this game. Difficulty for puzzles, combat, the cyberspace sequences, and the story itself are independently adjustable, which means just about everyone should be able to dial in an experience they can enjoy.

System Shock remains one of the most influential games of all time, and this modern version stands shoulder to shoulder with 2016’s Doom as one of the best re-envisionings of a classic game I’ve ever played.

SCORE: 5 STARS OUT OF 5

PLAY IF YOU LIKE:

• Immersive sims or survival horror games. System Shock is their common ancestor, and this new version is a thoroughly modernized way to experience the classic that inspired so many of today's greatest games.

• '90s cyberpunk and sci-fi. Another thing the System Shock remake gets right is the aesthetics. While the halls and narrow corridors of Citadel Station contain plenty of terrors, Nightdive has preserved the vibrant color scheme of the original here, and the neon-drenched look works incredibly well with modern lighting tech.

• Hating on AI. System Shock arrives at an eerily appropriate time: ChatGPT and other "AI" systems are all the rage now, and taking down SHODAN is a perfect way to fight back against the machines.