You’ll be looting key items and new equipment agonising over your loadout and limited inventory space toggling on and off powerful, upgradeable “neural wares” listening to audiologs and reading notes for clues on where to go next studying the map or signs in the environment to find key locations and triggering switches, entering door codes, or solving updated circuit puzzles to open paths through and between each deck. What makes System Shock (2023) so enjoyable is how that basic structure serves as a framework for dozens of other engaging mechanics. Superficially, System Shock (2023) is a competent FPS: you can run, jump, or sneak about melee attacks are simplistic aiming and shooting are functional but unremarkable and there’s a lean mechanic that works like a basic cover system. Too many modern games claim to be “immersive” when what they mean is “cinematic” – a design used to obscure limited mechanical depth or oppressive directorial control that often treats the player as an idiot with no attention span. Now it’s worth stating upfront that System Shock (2023) is “immersive” in the sense you’re thrown into dense sandbox-like environments, designed to encourage freeform exploration, a degree of non-linear progression, and player-driven emergent gameplay that rewards creativity. They’re anesthetized after disabling the sub-systems and wake in a medical ward months later, only to discover the trade-off for their new neural implant is a space station strewn with corpses and patrolled by an assortment of rogue security robots, humanoid and animal-hybrid mutants, deadly cyborgs, and a homicidal AI with a god complex. Shuttled to their Citadel Station research facility orbiting Saturn, an executive named Diego offers to drop charges and provide a professionally installed implant if the hacker can disable the ethical constraints on the station AI, “SHODAN”.ĭespite their apparent education and incredible coding skills, the hacker’s judgement is abysmal. You take the role of an unnamed hacker arrested by the TriOptimum corporation while trying to access schematics for a cutting-edge military neural implant. A good choice when you consider it laid the foundations for games like Ion Storms’ Deus Ex (2000), Irrational Games BioShock (2007), and Arkane Studio’s Dishonored (2012) or Prey (2017).įor those who never played the original, System Shock (2023) is set in the cyberpunk future of 2072. Of course, it also enhances, expands, and refines the experience so it’s closer in style to its sequel, System Shock 2 (1999). The result is a game rebuilt from the ground up, but one that stays true to the core mechanics, narrative framework, basic map layouts, and even the aesthetics to a degree. System Shock (2023) is the culmination of Nightdive Studio’s 7-year, once-rebooted attempt at modernising the ambitious but impenetrable 1994 original – an influential immersive sim from Looking Glass Studios that plays like an awkward hybrid between an FPS and point-and-click adventure, with headache-inducing visuals and an overbearing UI to boot.
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