This game is a near 1 to 1 remake of the original with a few new modern touches. Truth be told, I wouldn't have minded if they took these modern touches even further than they did. One change of note is the addition of an economy to the game and various vending machines and your ability to recycle junk you loot. This isn't a crazy big change by any means, but given the presence of vending machines in System Shock 2 this feels right at home here. My only gripe with this new system is how you need to manually right click and vaporize every piece of junk in your inventory. Not really sure why they didn't add a "vaporize all junk" command since there is no benefit to keeping junk and you can't vaporize usable weapons anyways. That aside, the rest of the modern touches feel like nice additions.
Another noteworthy change to this game is with it's inventory. It's similar to System Shock 2/resident evil games where you have limited space and can rotate items to fit like in Tetris. You also get a lift that transports between multiple levels but has limited storage. You will have more weapons and tools than you can possibly carry by the end of the game. Some weapons are straight replacements, such as the scorpion being a fully auto pistol replacement using it's ammo or a few of the pulse rifles replacing the sparq. Still you will likely have more weapons that you can carry and since there are upgrades for weapons, you won't want to discard them. So I used the elevator on maintenance level as storage for equipment. Ran into a bug where occasionally my gear would disappear. Reloading a previous save file seemed to spawn the gear back in. The lack of inventory space wasn't ideal but manageable. In retrospect, I should have used the executive floor as my bank since that ends up being a mid to late game hub you need to go to multiple times to maneuver between the upper and lower ship.
The biggest modern change is in the user interface and controls. If you played the original, first of all give yourself a pat on the back. That original was no joke with it's learning curve. It felt like operating a flight simulator. Clunky and un-intuitive. I played the Nightdive studios enhanced edition and while that was still clunky, it was significantly more approachable. Another noteworthy change to the game is with cyberspace. In the original game it was challenging just to read the screen and you often ran into walls until you stumbled on the right path forward. I still feel cyber space is clunky to maneuver and disorienting, it can be hard to figure out which way is up/down/NESW. A map or compass would have helped, but it is an overall improvement over the original game. Even if the green bug viruses are super annoying to fight.
Then there's the graphics. I really love the new pixelated graphics. Kind of similar to Amid Evil. Lo-Fi-Hi, it's an appealing aesthetic. It fits the game given it a nice balance between retro and modern. There's also a significantly varied sound track which is a nice touch. I had no issues with the original game with it's often times abstract and bizarre atmosphere. It did feel amateur at times, but somehow it still fit. The new sound track feels more modern. I honestly wouldn't have minded an option to use the original sound track in a given area (maybe that was an option I overlooked?).
It's kind of fun that they replaced the opening cut scene with a short interactive moment in your apartment. Doesn't fundamentally change how the game starts nor does it slow things down. So overall I don't mind the added flavor. The game itself feels like a faithful adaptation of the original. Movement is slow and clunky, but that's how it was in the OG game. The controls are significantly smoother. Though in the original game, it felt like leaning around corners gave you significantly more cover. Here I was getting lit up all the time if I so much as stuck a hair around the corner. I did eventually learn how to exploit the AI (which is pretty bad like in the original game) and learn to time poking out around the end of enemy volleys. Until I learned this I kind of tanked the hits and tried to take them out quickly. Distance was a better strategy where they seemed to not be able to target me if I was far enough away. So yeah, AI is pretty dumb like in the original but the atmosphere is top notch and so is the fun pulpy writing. Would have been cool to see a beefed up AI like you would see in later shooters like Quake. Still fun and to be fair it is faithful to the original. Enemies are close to hit scanners, with how fast their projectiles move and how slow you move. Some enemies will just fuck you up too. Diego is a pretty steep jump up in difficulty, for example. The game starts fairly easy, but ratchets up in difficulty as you progress to the Executive floor.
The cyberspace terminal in the Executive floor feels a bit cheap. It throws waves of enemies at you and it's easy to miss the turbo boost which is essential if you want to survive this terminal. It also ends with kind of a cheap hallway with tons of mines that if you don't dodge you die and have to start all over again... doesn't feel good. One thing of note with cyber space versus the rest of the game is quick saving is disabled, thus you have to complete cyberspace in one go or reset unlike the rest of the gameplay.
Cyberspace does feel like an improvement over the original game, as mentioned earlier, though it's still confusing and disorienting to navigate. I found myself disoriented with the Engineering floor cyberspace in particular. I eventually figured out how to navigate but it suffers from you being able to spin in all directions and no real focal point to gain your bearings. A map would have been nice.
But yeah the game is nearly 1 to 1 to the original and that's going to be a good thing or a bad thing. The good is how the main puzzle of the original game was figuring out what to do next. You are given disconnected communications and logs that tell you your objective, but there isn't a quest log. You just need to make mental notes. The game also has a decent amount of backtracking. Where you will hit a wall and then need to navigate to a previous floor to get the item to proceed. Since I played the original game, I just grabbed these key items and stored them for later since I recognized they would be important later (even if I didn't remember exactly how). Still the game is designed around you not recognizing clearly key items as important and they will tell you which floor a given item is for you to grab. Another puzzle that will likely result in you needing to backtrack is the launch code sequence. On the first 6 floors, after destroying the CPUs a number will flash on a computer screen. The code you need are the six numbers, in order, that flash on the first 6 floors after destroying their CPUs. Certainly not intuitive,. There are a few more cases where a code will start to flash on a screen after you do something and that number is a code you need. The game has multiple logs and a call that tell you this, so it does hint at it earlish. The game demands you pay attention and think critically which is a design philosophy missing from most modern games. If that design doesn't appeal to you, then the 1-1 remake will be a bad thing for you.
This is one of the best and first immersive sims. It's janky but densely atmospheric with fun and great pulpy cyberpunk writing. While I think System Shock 2 is an improvement in terms of gameplay, the writing in this first entry is far superior IMO. One issue I always had with System Shock 2 is how contrived the plot is. It doesn't really make sense how SHODAN and her hive mind gets involved based on how this first game ends, and SHODAN really isn't a necessary plot element to System Shock 2. If you can get over how contrived the set-up is, I really like the plot and the Hive Mind in System Shock 2, but I still consider this first entry better. This is definitely the best way to experience this gem given all the modern touches. Let's hope Night Dive does System Shock 2 next!
