I give up. I tried to like this game as I thought it would be right up my alley but no, I've wasted enough time in Cyberspace already, I'm done.
Sometimes life ain't fair :D I was looking forward to playing this, I really was. For years now, decades at this point, this game (well, technically the 1994 original), was on my backlog as one of the greats. You know these kinds of games everyone keeps gushing about when you bring up the "good ol' days". For me, it's in the same bracket as Deus Ex or Thief - old and somewhat clunky immersive sims that have a lot of jank and a lot of charm. I love these games...well I usually do.
Let me say that the game starts off really strong. You're thrust into this dark cyberpunk world that has a really distinct visual style. Within the first seconds of the game, I was hooked by the aesthetic. It's kinda hard to explain how the game looks, at least it is to me. System Shock looks like a modern game, it has very detailed models for enemies, weapons, and environments. Same goes for the visual effects - lightnings, explosions, fire, everything looks very elaborate and just as you would expect in a modern, AA game made with Unreal Engine 4.
However, and I know this sounds like it doesn't make any sense at all, System Shock also looks like a retro game at the same time. How did they achieve that? Well, it's mostly due to brilliant texture work. Textures in this game have this very particular pixel-style quality to them. By that, I don't mean that there is some PSX filter laid on top with the intention to evoke some retro CRT vibes as some Indie horror games like to do these days. No, the devs behind the System Shock remake somehow figured out how to design textures, that fit into a modern looking game while still keeping true to the visual style of the 1994 original. It's hard to put into words for me but it really works well. To me, System Shock looks like a mix between Blade Runner and Alien - retrofuturism the way I like it. You got your neon lights, your shitty explotative conglomerates that couldn't care less about ethics as long as they can squeeze every last buck out of their corporation, hacking, cyborgs, and of course, a sentient AI with a god complex.
That brings us to another aspect of the game I really liked - Shodan. The omniscient AI in charge of the space station where System Shock takes place is still a great antagonist, even 30 years after the orginal released. Shodan creeped me out. You interact with her in two ways. Shodan either shows up on various screens scattered around the space station. Here, she teases, challenges, and insults you and tries to discourage you from progressing further. After all, resistance is futile when facing a god, isn't it? You learn more about how Shodan perceives herself by picking up and listening to her audio logs. Here, she explains how she came into contact with various religious concepts by scanning the earth's databases and realizing that she fits the description of a god rather well. I'm not going to go into detail too much about what Shodan has planned to do in her new role as a divine being. Just know that she is scary af which is further emphasized by the brilliant voice acting.
So far, everything I said sounds pretty awesome. And it is - the premise of the game, the setting and the atmosphere are impeccable. The first few hours of the game were amazing. I was exploring the devastated space station, looking for items, weapons and, well...my objective really. See, that's something I have never seen done like this in any other game. System Shock doesn't really have a main quest. Sure, you know that there's an AI that has gone rogue and needs to be stopped - by you. But how you're going to achieve this is not clearly stated in some kind of quest log or whatever. There's no marker on the map for the next step or a text on your HUD telling you what to do next. Instead, you collect a bunch of audio logs left behind by the crew members of the station where they lay out what one could do in the super unlikely case that Shodan would have to be stopped. Pretty early in the game, you can basically access every level of the station. It's now up to you to figure out where to go and what to do. I know this sounds frustrating and it kinda is but somehow, deep down, I can't express enough how much I respect the devs for doing that. That's the kind of stuff I play janky retro PC games for as nowadays, no one would dare to do something like that.
But, and this really is one of the major reasons why I decided to put this game down for now, the level design can be really awful at times. So, as I said, you have to make your way through the station without really having any clear direction. This inevitably leads to backtracking. You may find yourself finding an audio log explaining how to find a specific code in a location you've already been before that you need to enter in another location that you've also been before. That stuff happens all the time. And, frankly, that would be alright if traversing the levels was fun. However, to me, it got old really fast. For some reason, the devs decided to let enemies respawn again and again and again. You'll fight the same guys over and over again. You never truly feel like you have completed anything. I'm sure this is intentional. The game doesn't want you to feel safe, it wants you to always be on the edge, always looking out for enemies or one of Shodan's schemes. I think that could work if the level design wasn't as confusing as it is which makes traversing it an incomprehensible, chaotic mess. To quote one of the OGs of video game reviews: "What were they THINKING????" The game even makes fun of this. There's an audio log that explains why the structure of the space station is such a complete mess. Again, I'm not going to give too much away but when I found out about this reason, I chuckled but it was an angry chuckle...the angriest chuckle :D See, it's the kinda thing were a piece of media wants to make fun of something by replicating that very thing. Sure, you made your point but you also contributed towards that problem by reproducing it yourself. Not a fan of that.
So, frustrating level design is one thing, and one I could probably come to terms with but unfortunately, there is another gameplay element that killed the game for me. If you played System Shock, you probably know what I'm talking about. Yeah, the god damn cyberspace levels. Every now and again, the game requires you to enter cyberspace - a completely separated part of the game where you take control of a digital space ship shooting your way through a Matrix-like 3D space where everything tries to kill you. At first I thought this was a nice distraction from the main game - a fun little challenge that helps keeping things fresh when you got tired of exploring the space station.
I was wrong. Cyperspace sucks.
First of all, I got physically sick moving around in that open 3D space. Upon entering any room in cyberspace, I immediately lost track of any direction. Often times, there are multiple ways leading to multiple sections of the level that you can take. More than once did I get lost and kept flying to the same locations over and over again. There was one level where my dumbass brain would make me fly straight out of the entrance again just because I couldn't compute where the hell I was and where I was supposed to be going :D Now, maybe that's a me-problem. But man, just look at any screenshot from cyberspace and tell me that it doesn't look super samey to you.
On top of that, once you die in Cyberspace, you're thrown out and have to redo the entire thing again. There are no checkpoints (at least I didn't figure out how to enable them if there were any) which means that sometimes, minutes of hard-earned progress is just lost. As I said, that really killed the game for me in the end. I was at a Cyberspace station in the reactor level and after like 5 tries I gave up. Shodan - you win. Congratulations, destroy earth or whatever, be my guest. I'm out.
So, being so frustrated in the end, why would I give this game a somewhat high rating? Well, I mean ... bro ... it's basically still a game from 1994 at its core. The remake is super faithful to the original. And, for the time, this game must have been mind-blowing. Yes, it's as obtuse as they come. The game doesn't hold your hand and it doesn't care if you wander around aimlessly for hours. It wants you to be sucked into this cyberpunk horror atmosphere and it succeeds at that. However, for me, I would have preferred some hand-holding. I wouldn't mind not having to face the same waves of enemies again and again. I would have loved to have a feeling of accomplishment, of having "conquered" a section of the station, of really making tangible progress. This game doesn't make me feel that, but that's ok. Definitely give System Shock a shot if you're at all interested in old immersive sims with a sci-fi twist to them. It might not be the game for me, but it might give you a unique experience that is pretty much impossible to find in modern games.
Sometimes life ain't fair :D I was looking forward to playing this, I really was. For years now, decades at this point, this game (well, technically the 1994 original), was on my backlog as one of the greats. You know these kinds of games everyone keeps gushing about when you bring up the "good ol' days". For me, it's in the same bracket as Deus Ex or Thief - old and somewhat clunky immersive sims that have a lot of jank and a lot of charm. I love these games...well I usually do.
Let me say that the game starts off really strong. You're thrust into this dark cyberpunk world that has a really distinct visual style. Within the first seconds of the game, I was hooked by the aesthetic. It's kinda hard to explain how the game looks, at least it is to me. System Shock looks like a modern game, it has very detailed models for enemies, weapons, and environments. Same goes for the visual effects - lightnings, explosions, fire, everything looks very elaborate and just as you would expect in a modern, AA game made with Unreal Engine 4.
However, and I know this sounds like it doesn't make any sense at all, System Shock also looks like a retro game at the same time. How did they achieve that? Well, it's mostly due to brilliant texture work. Textures in this game have this very particular pixel-style quality to them. By that, I don't mean that there is some PSX filter laid on top with the intention to evoke some retro CRT vibes as some Indie horror games like to do these days. No, the devs behind the System Shock remake somehow figured out how to design textures, that fit into a modern looking game while still keeping true to the visual style of the 1994 original. It's hard to put into words for me but it really works well. To me, System Shock looks like a mix between Blade Runner and Alien - retrofuturism the way I like it. You got your neon lights, your shitty explotative conglomerates that couldn't care less about ethics as long as they can squeeze every last buck out of their corporation, hacking, cyborgs, and of course, a sentient AI with a god complex.
That brings us to another aspect of the game I really liked - Shodan. The omniscient AI in charge of the space station where System Shock takes place is still a great antagonist, even 30 years after the orginal released. Shodan creeped me out. You interact with her in two ways. Shodan either shows up on various screens scattered around the space station. Here, she teases, challenges, and insults you and tries to discourage you from progressing further. After all, resistance is futile when facing a god, isn't it? You learn more about how Shodan perceives herself by picking up and listening to her audio logs. Here, she explains how she came into contact with various religious concepts by scanning the earth's databases and realizing that she fits the description of a god rather well. I'm not going to go into detail too much about what Shodan has planned to do in her new role as a divine being. Just know that she is scary af which is further emphasized by the brilliant voice acting.
So far, everything I said sounds pretty awesome. And it is - the premise of the game, the setting and the atmosphere are impeccable. The first few hours of the game were amazing. I was exploring the devastated space station, looking for items, weapons and, well...my objective really. See, that's something I have never seen done like this in any other game. System Shock doesn't really have a main quest. Sure, you know that there's an AI that has gone rogue and needs to be stopped - by you. But how you're going to achieve this is not clearly stated in some kind of quest log or whatever. There's no marker on the map for the next step or a text on your HUD telling you what to do next. Instead, you collect a bunch of audio logs left behind by the crew members of the station where they lay out what one could do in the super unlikely case that Shodan would have to be stopped. Pretty early in the game, you can basically access every level of the station. It's now up to you to figure out where to go and what to do. I know this sounds frustrating and it kinda is but somehow, deep down, I can't express enough how much I respect the devs for doing that. That's the kind of stuff I play janky retro PC games for as nowadays, no one would dare to do something like that.
But, and this really is one of the major reasons why I decided to put this game down for now, the level design can be really awful at times. So, as I said, you have to make your way through the station without really having any clear direction. This inevitably leads to backtracking. You may find yourself finding an audio log explaining how to find a specific code in a location you've already been before that you need to enter in another location that you've also been before. That stuff happens all the time. And, frankly, that would be alright if traversing the levels was fun. However, to me, it got old really fast. For some reason, the devs decided to let enemies respawn again and again and again. You'll fight the same guys over and over again. You never truly feel like you have completed anything. I'm sure this is intentional. The game doesn't want you to feel safe, it wants you to always be on the edge, always looking out for enemies or one of Shodan's schemes. I think that could work if the level design wasn't as confusing as it is which makes traversing it an incomprehensible, chaotic mess. To quote one of the OGs of video game reviews: "What were they THINKING????" The game even makes fun of this. There's an audio log that explains why the structure of the space station is such a complete mess. Again, I'm not going to give too much away but when I found out about this reason, I chuckled but it was an angry chuckle...the angriest chuckle :D See, it's the kinda thing were a piece of media wants to make fun of something by replicating that very thing. Sure, you made your point but you also contributed towards that problem by reproducing it yourself. Not a fan of that.
So, frustrating level design is one thing, and one I could probably come to terms with but unfortunately, there is another gameplay element that killed the game for me. If you played System Shock, you probably know what I'm talking about. Yeah, the god damn cyberspace levels. Every now and again, the game requires you to enter cyberspace - a completely separated part of the game where you take control of a digital space ship shooting your way through a Matrix-like 3D space where everything tries to kill you. At first I thought this was a nice distraction from the main game - a fun little challenge that helps keeping things fresh when you got tired of exploring the space station.
I was wrong. Cyperspace sucks.
First of all, I got physically sick moving around in that open 3D space. Upon entering any room in cyberspace, I immediately lost track of any direction. Often times, there are multiple ways leading to multiple sections of the level that you can take. More than once did I get lost and kept flying to the same locations over and over again. There was one level where my dumbass brain would make me fly straight out of the entrance again just because I couldn't compute where the hell I was and where I was supposed to be going :D Now, maybe that's a me-problem. But man, just look at any screenshot from cyberspace and tell me that it doesn't look super samey to you.
On top of that, once you die in Cyberspace, you're thrown out and have to redo the entire thing again. There are no checkpoints (at least I didn't figure out how to enable them if there were any) which means that sometimes, minutes of hard-earned progress is just lost. As I said, that really killed the game for me in the end. I was at a Cyberspace station in the reactor level and after like 5 tries I gave up. Shodan - you win. Congratulations, destroy earth or whatever, be my guest. I'm out.
So, being so frustrated in the end, why would I give this game a somewhat high rating? Well, I mean ... bro ... it's basically still a game from 1994 at its core. The remake is super faithful to the original. And, for the time, this game must have been mind-blowing. Yes, it's as obtuse as they come. The game doesn't hold your hand and it doesn't care if you wander around aimlessly for hours. It wants you to be sucked into this cyberpunk horror atmosphere and it succeeds at that. However, for me, I would have preferred some hand-holding. I wouldn't mind not having to face the same waves of enemies again and again. I would have loved to have a feeling of accomplishment, of having "conquered" a section of the station, of really making tangible progress. This game doesn't make me feel that, but that's ok. Definitely give System Shock a shot if you're at all interested in old immersive sims with a sci-fi twist to them. It might not be the game for me, but it might give you a unique experience that is pretty much impossible to find in modern games.