System Shock – old school simulation (pic: Prime Matter)



The long-awaited remaster, of one of the most influential PC games ever, shows how much modern games have regressed in terms of play freedom.



It’s impossible to overstate the impact that System Shock made when it was first released in 1994. At that time, it felt like a blueprint for the future of video games . Although essentially a first person shooter, its 3D graphics, emphasis on puzzle-solving, pioneering physics engine, and cyberpunk vibe was hugely influential and went on to directly inspire the likes of Deus Ex, Bioshock, and Prey, while helping to establish the nascent (and stupidly named) immersive sim genre.



Its broader influence can also be seen in the likes of Dead Space, Mass Effect , Cyberpunk 2077, and Half-Life and yet as a PC only title it’s one that’s largely unknown to console gamers. Even now, although console versions are planned, there’s no release date for them.



Remaking such a stone cold classic using modern technology was never going to be easy and, sure enough, this remake by Nightdive Studios has not had a smooth gestation. First touted in 2016, and heralded with a Kickstarter campaign, Nightdive originally intended to create a full-blown reboot, but what we have ended up with is essentially a faithful recreation of the original game, with remastered graphics but still very much the look and feel of a 1990s release.



Depending on your attachment to classic PC games of that era you could see that as either a positive or a negative. If you want to relive the precise experience of playing System Shock, then you should be happy with Nightdive’s approach to the remake. But unlike the original game, one thing which Nightdive’s remake emphatically lacks is any sense of being at the cutting edge of video game technology.



As it was made using Unreal Engine, it does, of course, look a lot more impressive than the original game. But by modern standards, there’s no getting away from the fact that its graphics are deeply unimpressive. It apes the original’s luridly colourful art style, so at least it looks distinctive, but in textural terms it looks old-fashioned.



There are other issues you soon encounter, such as the vaguely comical way in which the mutants you frequently have to dispatch lurch and stumble about, as well as their distinctly rudimentary character design.



Classic emergent gameplay



Gameplay-wise, though, System Shock is beyond criticism. Again, it doesn’t feel as thrillingly fresh and innovative as that of the original game, but there’s a very good reason for that: every single element of its gameplay has been copied by several other games over the last three decades. In a scene-setting intro, the character you play – an unnamed hacker living in a dystopian future city called New Atlanta – is arrested, transported to a space station called the Citadel Station and ordered to hack into SHODAN, the AI that controls the station, and remove its ethical protocols.



Waking up six months later, after an induced coma, you find you’re the only living being left on Citadel Station. SHODAN has gone rogue, threatening to fire a devastating weapon at Earth, and it’s up to you to reach the evil AI and shut it down. A pretty timely plot, given the current spotlight on artificial intelligence.



The way you shut SHODAN down is pretty much up to you: System Shock’s gameplay is wonderfully free-form and, at times, emergent. SHODAN has turned everything that moves in the Citadel into an enemy that will aggressively attack you, so you encounter mutants, cyborgs, robots, turrets, giant robotic spiders and more. You start off with a lead pipe but soon acquire an arsenal of weaponry including various guns, for which either the bullets or the energy they need are in perennially short supply.



System Shock – SHODAN is not user friendly (pic: Prime Matter)



Much of System Shock’s gameplay involves gaining entry to locked parts of the Citadel; opening new areas often involves solving puzzles (the game’s circuit-connection and wiring puzzles have been much-copied), finding access cards, and discovering door codes from audio logs. Some areas can only be opened by completing Cyberspace challenges, in which you jack into 3D shooter mini-games. Those, it must be said, do look an order of magnitude better than they did in the original game.



There are countless cute touches, such as recycling stations that will take all the useless rubbish you pick up and turn it into money that can be used at vending machines, to buy implants which restore health and stamina or increase adrenaline – as well as ammo. Exploration is rewarded with useful and sometimes crucial items, and each deck of the Citadel is studded with SHODAN’s cameras. The more of those you take out, the lower the overall security level, and in some instances, you can only reach particular areas if that security level falls below a certain threshold.



If you play System Shock at its normal difficulty level it acts as a reminder of how brutally hard games habitually were in the 1990s: it offers very little by way of hand-holding, and you must treat your character’s health as a precious commodity and work hard to acquire a decent set of resources. It has a pretty erratic approach to checkpointing, so saving regularly is de rigueur.



However, the remake does make one concession to modern gaming conventions: you can independently adjust the difficulty levels of various aspects of the game, including the puzzles, the enemies, and the Cyberspace sequences.



Also, if you know what you’re doing (perhaps on a second run-through) you can speed run your way through, missing out a large chunk of the Citadel’s voluminous floorplan. That, frankly, feels a bit rude, since System Shock’s labyrinthine level design still holds up well today.



If you approach this remake of System Shock in the hope that it might be a modern game which captures the spirit of the original, you will be disappointed. It’s better to think of it as the original game, spruced up with a more modern coat of paint.



Old-fashioned freedom



But bearing that in mind, it still has the capacity to surprise, chiefly thanks to the fact that its free-form gameplay remains fun, challenging, and thoroughly distinctive, even after nigh on 30 years.



System Shock is very much an exercise in nostalgia but not quite in the usual sense. Not only does it demonstrate just how sophisticated games could be way back in the 1990s, it almost functions as a type of gaming encyclopaedia, showing you exactly where a number of elements that we take for granted in modern games actually originated.



As remakes go, it isn’t the most technically impressive; nor is it, by modern puzzle-shooter standards, very original. But as an item of gaming memorabilia, it’s absolutely fascinating, and much more fun to play than you might expect it to be. If you fancy yourself as something of a gaming historian, you’ll find that System Shock is full of delights.






System Shock review summary In Short: Not the high-end remake that some fans would have been hoping for but even as a, at times, too faithful remaster this is a fascinating second look at one of gaming’s great unsung heroes.
Pros: Varied, free-form gameplay that feels far less linear and restrictive than most modern games. Satisfying challenge, hugely atmospheric, and with a great story and villain.
Cons: Unimpressive graphics and textures, with some clunky character animations. Few substantial improvements from 1994.
Score: 7/10





Formats: PC (reviewed), Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5 Price: £34.99 Publisher: Prime Matter Developer: Nightdive Studios Release Date: 30th May 2023 (consoles TBA) Age Rating: 18









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