System Shock (2023)

2024-07-21
When you boot up the System Shock remake for the first time you're presented with a difficulty selection screen. There's basically no context given for these decisions and once you make a choice you're locked in for the entirety of your 20 hour playthrough. Oh you don't like the garbage knockoff Descent hacking minigame? Well too bad you set the "Cyber" difficulty to Normal and by the time you realize your mistake you're already several hours into a playthrough. As much as Nightdive Studios freshened up this immersive sim classic, this sort of old-school, unfun, waste-your-time design still permeates the game.

Don't get me wrong, I had a lot of fun. The beginning where you're perpetually on the backfoot eking out your existence in Medbay, hoarding ammunition, running back to the Surgery Machine to heal up, as you try and find your way through to the next part of the ship is a blast. But once you hit Storage and find you're vastly outmatched the tedium of running back to Medbay to heal up and store supplies starts to wear thin. There's back tracking for quests, there's back tracking to heal, there's back tracking to store things because your inventory space is always shit. Adding insult to injury enemies respawn fairly regularly. Not only are you walking the same spaces over and over you're killing the same enemies over and over. It's a bit Groundhog Day.

That being said, if you can deal with the repetition there is a lot to love here. The labyrinthine nature of Citadel Station is a joy. The power curve as you slowly push yourself into dangerous areas to get upgrades for your arsenal rewards persistence with deadly firepower. And all along the way you're presented with beautiful visuals and cool sounds. Despite the at times rough voice acting and writing, Nightdive really breathed a huge amount of life into Citadel Station.

I'd say it's worth a gander especially if you like immersive sims at all. You can see the DNA of what brought about the Prey's and Bioshock's of today. Just make sure to turn the Cyber difficulty to easy. That minigame is terrible.