System Shock

I'm in two minds about this game. It is a fairly faithful recreation of the original, and to its credit, it doesn't dumb down or compromise on requiring you to pay close attention. I decided to try it out to get an idea of the experience which went on to inform a huge gaming legacy, and that is essentially what I got, give or take additions to the remake which muddied my perception, like the talking vending machines and the musak. This is a difficult game. The level designs border on ridiculous, but are in-universe established to be intended to drive people to madness. The puzzles come with zero instructions, as in, you can't really tell without simply bashing your face against it what function completes a puzzle. You can lose hours and hours trying to beat an AI at chess. Your only weapon in the face of these demands is outright familiarity. Slowly becoming less lost, knowing the backtrack path to each elevator and which floors connect, slowly lowering the security level to make each area more survivable. And, though a slog, there's a definite sense of pride in overcoming each floor of this hostile, mind-bending station. On the other hand, there are a lot of detractions. Bugs, for one, needled my enjoyment - sometimes a quickload that you punch in too fast will cause a CTD. The deceased enemies will vibrate, float, explode on respawn, and sometimes wedge into the walls and ceilings - or gyrate uncomfortably in your peripheral vision. A few elevators did not register on my map after using them, leaving me far more confused than I should have been trying to navigate, and the mission markers can just float around unhelpfully. After being at least decent enough to obtain 45/46 achievements in the game, the final one - which should unlock as a reward for getting everything else - just did not drop, which did not exactly feel satisfying after surviving 3/3/3/3. What tips this into a not-recommend, though, hinges on the final cyberspace fight with SHODAN, which is uncompromisingly awful. I never minded cyberspace personally, but the boss fight changes what you're used to into a half-and-half with reality - you can't fly, and you get a gun. There is something just so pathetic, so creatively unburdened, about being told you can only combat SHODAN in her own realm, in digital form, leaving the physical world behind, and then just being given a new gun you're not used to, and shooting incredibly annoying floating things for half an hour. Being killed in cyberspace leads to a nonsensical real world death on all difficulties. I don't like handholding, but there is zero indication for how to proceed, no visual signposting or building on gameplay skills that you've perfected through the preceding hours. It's just random, punishing, and starts with a several minutes long cutscene you have to rewatch on every attempt. Were this true to the original I would be lenient, but they changed the boss fight into something incomprehensible where a simple easy pulled switch would have been more than adequate after the big final firefight gauntlet on the Bridge. Worth playing for curiosity's sake? Sure. A faithful adaptation of a classic? Eh, kind of. But be prepared to put up with a lot beyond the intended difficulty level of this genre-starter.