Someday earlier than SHODAN’s moral constraints have been eliminated and the rogue AI set about changing the individuals of Citadel Station into cyborgs, a researcher named Stacy Everson discovered a smoking gun hidden among the many blinking servers of the spaceship’s library. Not an assault rifle or mini-pistol, however a decades-old e-mail chain between her TriOptimum bosses and a psychologist named Jeffrey Hammer. Within the early phases of Citadel’s development, Hammer urged that every degree of the station be designed in such a method as to induce stress and anxiousness, in order that consultants may research their affect on the human psyche throughout area journey.
“I at all times knew one thing was off about this place!”, wrote Stacy to a colleague. “We’re simply rats in a maze.”
What Hammer calls stress and anxiousness, I’d name System Shock’s stress and ambiance. And whereas I’d dispute Stacy’s characterisation of Citadel’s residents as rodents, I can’t deny I’ve spent greater than a dozen hours skulking, scurrying between holes within the partitions, and pulling away on the station’s wires with out a full understanding of the results. What Hammer most likely didn’t predict is how a lot enjoyable it could all be. That I’d love my new life lived within the gaps between radioactive storage amenities and robotic restore rooms. Stick that in your dataset and print it, company evil.
There’s no disputing that Citadel is a maze of uncomfortably cramped corridors, cubbyholes and crawlspaces – a Japanese capsule lodge made large. However pushing in opposition to these claustrophobic constraints is exactly what makes System Shock such a satisfying throwback to the mid ‘90s. Whether or not rerouting energy to unlock doorways, searching down the subsequent elevator on a darkened flooring or shoehorning a grenade launcher into an already-stuffed stock, you’re at all times an escapologist determinedly and methodically reaching the inconceivable – pulling your self alongside the stinking pipe that results in freedom from a science fiction Shawshank State Penitentiary.
What’s putting is simply how intently the structure of Citadel follows the blueprint first laid down by TriOptimum, Hammer, and naturally, Trying Glass Studios. New developer Nightdive has mimicked the feng shui of particular person rooms in all their angular glory, to the purpose of deja vu. It nonetheless takes a simultaneous hop and swing to succeed in one among SHODAN’s watching cameras with a lead pipe. Even the position of explicit enemies tickles the reminiscence – all the way down to the amorphous mutant blob floating beneath a grate on the Analysis flooring, like Pennywise if he was simply the balloon.
![The players wonders the sickly green, metalic corridors of a space ship in System Shock](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/System-Shock-remake-(3).jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/System-Shock-remake-header_HblAtxu.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![A bright white forcefield on a ship acting as a window to the outside of the ship, the endless vacuum of space in System Shock](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/System-Shock-remake-(4).jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
No, this isn’t a remake within the free, Ultimate Fantasy or Resident Evil sense of the time period. The unique System Shock will not be merely a jumping-off level right here, nor a immediate for some grand reimagining. As a substitute, Nightdive has positioned religion within the sport because it was first constructed, regardless of the three a long time of change that has unfolded since. It’s a religion that’s been rewarded, leaving the studio with a play expertise that sits someplace between a hardcore BioShock and an ingenious indie dungeon crawler like Legend of Grimrock. One which eschews goal markers and even quest logs in favour of asking you to maintain monitor of your individual progress.
At occasions, you’re left to scour current audio diaries for pin codes and clues regarding SHODAN’s plans and the way you would possibly counter them; to scan the minimap for unopened doorways which could permit additional exploration. It’s a shock to the system, in an age of AAA player-pampering, however you quickly discover that every one the breadcrumbs are there. And that there’s a thrill to self-sufficiency; in feeling the load of the chances in opposition to you and lifting it with your individual palms. It’s an old style form of energy fantasy that requires few fireworks to impress.
But this new System Shock can be unmistakably trendy. For one factor, it has a recent magnificence about it that makes a advantage of Trying Glass’s palette, which begins with turquoise and orange and goes bolder from there. Within the improper palms, this station could be a garish mish-mash. As a substitute – with the enter of returning artist Robb Waters – it’s much less lurid than vivid. The anti-grav lifts burble with a kinetic yellow haze, and the our on-line world sequences are mesmerisingly unusual, setting you adrift inside a mercurial motherboard. There, the golden partitions transfer woozily, like waves on the ocean, and primary-coloured masks hearth projectiles in summary, bullet hell waves. When visiting, I can’t assist however hearth the screenshot key extra typically than my very own weapons.
![The player launches a shot of red twisted energy at a wall lazer in System Shock](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/System-Shock-remake-(1).jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Then there are the weather which were lifted from the video games Trying Glass impressed. The soothing hiss-and-snap of the medipatch was first heard in System Shock 2 and made its option to the BioShock sequence earlier than coming right here, to the homeland it by no means knew. The Tetris-esque stock has made an analogous journey again from the longer term with a purpose to drive you into troublesome decisions whereas managing your gear. And the recycler, first seen in System Shock’s sequel, turns into the idea for a good useful resource economic system on this remake. Any junk merchandise could be damaged down and exchanged for credit, which in flip could be pumped into merchandising machines, now and again, for desperately wanted consumables and upgrades.
Consequently, you may rapidly find yourself a devoted litter-picker, just like the protagonists of Bethesda’s Fallout video games. It’s a job I occur to get pleasure from – one which naturally attracts my eye towards the thought-about object placement of Citadel’s busily embellished rooms – although your individual mileage could differ. Extra readily loveable is the station’s array of automated home equipment. The mechanical recycler which visibly gobbles your fastidiously organized junk, earlier than firing recent cash right into a regularly rising pile with an irresistible sequence of staccato clinks. The assorted merchandising machines that may be activated by inserting a coin within the applicable slot, after which urgent the corresponding numbers to trigger a chocolate bar to drop into the tray under. Satirically, it’s the whole lack of automation on the participant’s finish that makes these easy acts so enthralling – the form of mundanity that may actually floor you in an outlandish setting.
“Nightdive has positioned religion within the sport because it was first constructed, regardless of the three a long time of change that has unfolded since”
This tactility extends to System Shock’s rewiring puzzles, too, which ask you to succeed in into Citadel’s innards to open sure locked doorways or restore glowing laser bridges throughout chasms. In precept, they’re not so completely different to BioShock’s pipe puzzles – merely rather more demanding of their selection and complexity. But it surely’s humorous how a minigame ceases to really feel like one when it’s built-in seamlessly into the world – as if SHODAN refuses to let you’ve even one temporary second of escape from her station-wide oppression.
The takeback of Citadel is a sluggish and hard-fought course of, as you regularly cut back SHODAN’s affect by smashing up her datacores and CCTV. Even as soon as a degree is claimed and you progress onto the subsequent, you could be positive you’ll have to backtrack in your mission to foil the murderous AI, in addition to unlock armouries that have been beforehand off-limits. The circulate of recent mutants and cyborgs to the decks, in the meantime, means no atmosphere is ever actually made secure.
![To the right is a puzzle grid with a bunch of wires that effect a series of lazers to the left in System Shock](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/System-Shock-remake-(6).jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![An abstract virtual map showing explosive pieces of pink and purple wreckage in System Shock](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/System-Shock-remake-(7).jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![A machine with four legs lurks in a bunker, it looks like there's a human body hanging from it's centre in System Shock](https://assetsio.reedpopcdn.com/System-Shock-remake-(5).jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
Fight is fought within the thoughts as a lot as with the fingers. When you’ll unlock some endearingly daft jet-boots halfway by way of the sport, Nightdive properly rejects the mobility of right this moment’s dominant first-person shooters with a purpose to protect a steadier tempo. There’ll be no sliding or mantling within the corridors, and the deadeye accuracy of SHODAN’s cyborgs ensures you gained’t be outmanoeuvring your opponents. As a substitute, leaning round corners stays necessary – as does realizing when to face nonetheless and take goal. Greater than something you’re inspired to know your enemy, matching the correct weapon or ammo kind to your goal, and losing as few pictures as attainable. A double faucet to the top will fell a mutant, and the spare bullets are a present to your future self. In every single place and always, System Shock is a useful resource sport.
It’s not essentially all as you’d hope: whether or not melee or ballistic, hits don’t fairly ship a real sense of drive. And people weaned on the artistic problem-solving of Deus Ex and Dishonored could not discover all they’re on the lookout for within the authentic immersive sim. Shock has at all times been much less yielding and extra punishing than its kids, and has a definite double-strength flavour consequently.
However in the event you’ve an urge for food for area dungeoneering within the firm of one among gaming’s most iconic and influential villains, you’ll discover the remake cleaves near that authentic pitch. That is the product of a workforce which, to its credit score, believed within the 1994 proposition of System Shock and trusted it could nonetheless arise right this moment, despite a 30-year shift in the direction of smoothing the participant’s path. The consequence has proved them proper. It transpires that our creepy, manipulative robotic mom is aware of greatest.
This assessment relies on a assessment construct of the sport supplied by the writer Prime Matter.