System Shock 1 is loaded with ideas that almost feel lost to time, things that never made it into System Shock 2 or any of the other imsims that came later. Maybe that's because it's barely an imsim, feeling more like sci-fi survival horror-lite mixed with progression reminiscent of an enormous zelda dungeon.
I won't really spend much time talking about what's good about the original game. You know what's good about it, it's what got carried over into System Shock 2 and Bioshock and Prey. The good parts defined the imsim genre, and they're still that good.
The bad? Well for one, it's a much harsher game than it's successors. Ammo is more scarce, encounters rarely dip beneath a level of challenge where you could die in a few hits, and stealth isn't really an option. The hacking segments are interesting as an alternate mode of gameplay, where ammo doesn't matter but enemies come at you much faster, but are just as difficult if not tougher than the rest of the game. Also, I just found myself being ready for the game to end around 5 hours before it did, which is also around the time things got unreasonably hard.
The remake is pretty good. For the most part I like the visuals, though I wish they'd strayed a bit further from the original game's art and played up a bit of the horror, or helped the floors of the ship stand out from each other a bit. Besides that, it's wonderful to have a version of the game with controls I can easily wrap my head around.
I know most of this was negative, and maybe that's because the last few hours' difficulty left a bad taste in my mouth, but I really did like this game, and I bet it would be much more fun with a lower difficulty selected (you can't change the difficulty mid-campaign though). It's a cool look into the past, and it's good that the game is accessible like this again, but I also feel like it's pretty outclassed by its younger brothers.
I won't really spend much time talking about what's good about the original game. You know what's good about it, it's what got carried over into System Shock 2 and Bioshock and Prey. The good parts defined the imsim genre, and they're still that good.
The bad? Well for one, it's a much harsher game than it's successors. Ammo is more scarce, encounters rarely dip beneath a level of challenge where you could die in a few hits, and stealth isn't really an option. The hacking segments are interesting as an alternate mode of gameplay, where ammo doesn't matter but enemies come at you much faster, but are just as difficult if not tougher than the rest of the game. Also, I just found myself being ready for the game to end around 5 hours before it did, which is also around the time things got unreasonably hard.
The remake is pretty good. For the most part I like the visuals, though I wish they'd strayed a bit further from the original game's art and played up a bit of the horror, or helped the floors of the ship stand out from each other a bit. Besides that, it's wonderful to have a version of the game with controls I can easily wrap my head around.
I know most of this was negative, and maybe that's because the last few hours' difficulty left a bad taste in my mouth, but I really did like this game, and I bet it would be much more fun with a lower difficulty selected (you can't change the difficulty mid-campaign though). It's a cool look into the past, and it's good that the game is accessible like this again, but I also feel like it's pretty outclassed by its younger brothers.