System Shock remake review: The PC classic comes back to life

Anyone who has heard of this please stop. You wake up in the futuristic medical bay of an orbiting space station with new cyber implants to find everyone else dead.may be talking about bioshock again Dead Space Or if you close your eyes The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. But in this case I’m talking about system shock, remade by Nightdive Studios. This new version reveals how much video games as a whole owe to his 1994 classic.

Before I delved into the world of video games as a critic and journalist, I knew: system shock, But I couldn’t play. Originally developed by Looking Glass Studios, it was a moderate hit at the time, but it didn’t explode in popularity like the modern version. Doom. Over time its legacy has grown and has clearly influenced games like the one mentioned above. bioshock and Dead Spacebut also dishonor, preyand Deathloop. It also popularized some narrative techniques that we are tired of today, such as the common technique of telling stories through audio logs.

i always wanted to play system shock, traces the course of video game history, but it was an old PC-only game that was hard to come by. It’s been a long time since the game was released, so system shock Not just in the sense that we are accustomed to modern games with better UIs and more intuitive controls, Couldn’t buy anywhere. Most of my youth system shock, a very old game, originally released on floppy discs, but distributed by fans in download formats of questionable legality. When I first researched the game, I heard it had quite an impact. all matches As a result, I found someone on the forum telling other readers to go directly to it instead. system shock 2.

Now you can play the original system shock, thanks also to Nightdive. The studio acquired the rights to the game in 2012, Enhanced version And even if 29 years later it doesn’t hit the same way, you can play this remastered version now and enjoy a lot of that fun. A revolutionary physics engine at the time, originally programmed by Seamus Blackley. unlimited flights, may not leave the same impression on players in 2023 as it did in 1994. We’ve all seen too many physics engines mimicking his Blackley work in the meantime. If you think you can’t play the 1994 game, system shock The remake is pretty well done. Sometimes it even does amazing and original things. It makes you truly understand the passage of time.

of system shock The remake is beautiful. This is not a completely reimagined game like final fantasy 7 It doesn’t completely abandon the aesthetics or art style of the original like the remake of . Shadow of the Colossus. But it looks just like the 1994 game appears in my memory. Smoke shoots out of the vents and dissipates into the pixels. The lighting is often dramatic, with bright blue sparks emanating from fixtures that paint the screen red. In my hand, a lead pipe hangs heavy in front of my face, swaying right in front of my vision, sometimes slightly pixelating in the light. You walk slowly, very slowly, through narrow corridors with flickering lights, then get trapped in a metal maintenance corridor as you try to get through the map. It’s a dungeon crawler in the skin of a shooter.

famously, system shock It tells the story of a hacker caught hacking into the TriOptimum Corporation. You are whisked away to an orbiting space station called the Citadel and given a job. Join that company and get a fancy neural implant in exchange for removing AI SHODAN’s ethics protocol. It turns out that SHODAN really needed these codes of ethics, and when she woke up after her surgery, she had murdered everyone in the station, turning them into mutants and cyborgs.

Image: Night Dive Studios/Prime Matter

If you’re a fan of video games, you’ve met SHODAN in some way or another.if you’ve played Portal, you interacted with her very close relatives. The archetype of the character SHODAN would create, an amoral female AI with a biting, glitchy voice, is now a cliché. GLaDOS is just SHE’S SHODAN, with a sense of humor and a personal animosity towards players.of system shockSHODAN’s hatred is cold and pure, just like you hate bugs that come into your home. They are under you and shouldn’t be here. As you progress through the levels, she straps you into a torture chair and promises, “You’ll learn more about pain than you ever wanted to know.”

SHODAN’s existence somehow still feels new — or maybe all the old is new again.What I find incredible is the way the remake’s flourishes are highlighted system shockThe genealogy of further. Electricity dances on your fingers as you charge your electric weapon at the charging station. bioshock Derived from this game.when system shock It relies on horror elements to force you into a dark room with groaning monsters.i remember why i didn’t play Dead Space; system shock Rather creepy speed to me, but I can see how it got to the next speed. Playing this game in this format allows the player to converse with his entire genre of immersive sims, a collection of loose games that offer free gameplay. You can see the line that runs from the Citadel to the coast of Dunwall. dishonorLooking Glass, and now Nightdive, presents the Citadel not just as a space station, but as a puzzle, a map that can be unfolded with little or no instructions on how to proceed. Seeing this done on a small scale and with so much cleverness reminds me of a kind of open world that was technically impossible until recently. skyrim, Breath of the Wild, elden ring.

Image: Night Dive Studios/Prime Matter

What really excites me while playing system shock How small it is to hold my hand. You can, and probably will, eat absolute shit the first time you attempt to pass through Medical Bay. You may find yourself in an unsolvable situation. This is a game that demands your attention, but it doesn’t always tell you what to do next. It also rewards curiosity as much as attentiveness. I often found my way through a level mostly by accident by deciding to turn a hallway I had never been through before. Whether it’s new weapons, vending machines, or shortcuts, there’s always something to discover, or at least a useful lesson to learn. It’s easy to understand why people played this game and then fell in love with it, and why some people’s careers can be traced through the game.Ken Levine worked at the time Looking Glass was made system shockcertainly never stopped trying to make system shockwhich eventually gives bioshock infinite An ending that suggests there are thousands of variations on this theme.

system shock It will be released on Windows PC on May 30th. This game was reviewed using a pre-release download code provided by Prime Matter. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, but Vox Media may earn a commission on products purchased via affiliate links.discoverable Additional information on Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.