Games worth discovering

System Shock (First Impressions)

1K View2023-06-02

Developer: Nightdive Studios

Publisher: Prime Matter

Released: May 30th, 2023

Price: $40 USD

What comes to mind when you hear the words Remake or Remaster?

I imagine a game that has been repurposed and polished to meet the gaming standards of this generation, most notably a game that was heavily adored, with small if not zero alterations from the original outside of graphical enhancements.

Unfortunately, many developers these days believe that it's all about the visual flair, while also disregarding everything the first games stood for and did well with. Finally it seems like some are going about it in the right direction!

Presentation

Nostalgic

Familiar with the franchise or games such as Bioshock, Deus Ex, and Prey?

The original System Shock was the genre-defining forefather for all of those immersive simulation games; without it none of those games would have ever come into existence and if they did, they would have been much different.

Everything about this game is a one-to-one reproduction of the original, right down to the core. There is no clipped content, no filler, it's completely authentic, and that's what makes it so good but also quite a bit frustrating.

The atmosphere is tense with music and also visually stunning especially if you ever decide to take a look out of the spaceship window ports. A fantastic view.

Problems

Saving

A number of video games from back in the day did not feature auto-saving. This is a feature that many modern gamers take for granted until they are pushed into a game that auto saves maybe once every couple of hours or not at all, meaning that if you die without conducting manual saves, you will lose a lot of progress.

I went into cyberspace to hack and when I came back, the game had saved, but I continued for another hour without manually saving. I died and ruined so much progress. Hours of new weaponry, scrap metal, recording, monster kills, and recordings, only to have to go through it all again which was quite exhausting.

Inventory Management

While it's not bad, it could have used a bit more polish to be less click intensive with something more convenient like a "scrap all junk" option to make inventory management less of a task that eats up your time as you clean it up.

Soft Locking

If you don't have numerous saves in multiple locations, then you can possibly soft lock your character and lose all of your current progress. It's terrible!

Issues

I've had a few situations where the game doesn't hold your hand. This was the norm in these types of classic games. You're basically left on your own to figure things out yourself by reading messages for passwords or solving a room puzzle.

Using the initial introduction to Cyberspace as an example. You ultimately wind up in a room with a blocked gate and a green electric current running through it.

I floated around this room for a few minutes, unsure what to do, and decided to shoot at this green light dead center, which had a equally green core that could barely be seen, and nothing happened. No indicator or anything to give me the impression that I doing the right thing to hit it and that it was just a visual thing.

I continued to float around getting a bit nauseous with how you float and spin around giving a sense of vertigo for a good half hour as I was stuck in this room with absolutely no guide at all on what I was suppose to do. I eventually got back to the conclusion that I should shoot the center of the green light again, which it promptly exploded lowering the forcefield that was preventing my movement.

Potential Crashes

While I was frequently on the verge of crashing in game. I came out with only major stuttering and freezing. These are the sorts of issues that one would want to see resolved within the first few weeks of the game's release.

Gameplay

So far it is enjoyable

While it has primarily been moving from location to location, gathering up plot bits and locating new gear and new stuff while fending off small groups of Cyborgs along the way. I don't think it's bad. It does a good job without feeling like a chore or a walking simulator, there is always somewhere to go and something to do, rather than wasting time running in circles all day.

Difficulty

The game will never guide your hand, but Easy mode will give you a push in the correct direction. If you decide that fighting cyborgs is more your thing than solving difficult puzzles, you have the option to pick this at the start of the game.

Instead of selecting Easy for everything, you might select Easy for everything except combat. Allowing you to glide through the puzzles and places while having difficulty fending off the more aggressive and plentiful cyborgs.

Conclusion

Promising

I'm currently highly invested in the lore of this game, what occurred, and why we're here. It's a really engrossing game that serves its purpose perfectly.

While I haven't had the pleasure of playing much of the original, I can definitely see and feel the genuine comparison to similar games that it inspired.

It's quite unusual when remakes or remasters touch on the appropriate topics, because many people don't recall things completely and often remember only nice aspects far more than the negative ones, such as janky controls/glitches.

There's a lot more to discover and explore as we dive in head first to take on Shodan and put an end to her once and for all.

My initial thoughts on this game come to a close with the caveat that, while others may disagree, that is what makes gamers unique. You don't have to share their interests or agree with them and are welcome to critic me on mine.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

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- Pawkt

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