The TriOptimum Company might have unleashed a murderous AI upon the world, however as I ready to vaporize the hundredth empty soda can and meals wrapper I’d picked off an eviscerated corpse, I couldn’t deny it had an A+ recycling program.

System Shock is likely one of the uncommon online game remakes which will truly be wonkier and extra sophisticated than its supply materials, and I wasn’t anticipating it to nonetheless be a lot enjoyable. The sport is an almost beat-for-beat replica of the ’90s Wanting Glass traditional, a groundbreaking early first-person shooter. However developer Nightdive Studios has up to date the unique with a putting visible fashion and a few new gameplay parts. It’s a fancy, typically irritating expertise that may’t exchange its predecessor however gives a properly comparable style.

System Shock takes place in a retro-future the place the yr 2072 seems like 1994 and is ready primarily on the sinister megacorp TriOptimum’s house station, Citadel. A slimy TriOptimum exec coerces a hacker into flipping off the “don’t be evil” swap for Citadel’s AI SHODAN, who (with my full help, truthfully) declares herself a god. SHODAN units up a veritable matryoshka of plans for destroying humanity, starting from house lasers to a grotesque virus. Because the hacker, it’s a must to thwart each one in every of her gambits and at last destroy her.

The unique System Shock appears much less extensively remembered in the present day than its sequel, System Shock 2, and religious remake, BioShock, and it’s fairly a bit much less approachable — till a 2010 mod, it required roughly half your keyboard to stroll round. Nevertheless it has a particular really feel that none of its successors reproduced. It’s a classy and action-oriented but extremely methodical entry within the survival horror canon, targeted on navigating a labyrinthine multi-level construction the place SHODAN at all times appears one step forward.

In each variations of System Shock, surviving virtually any given enemy is less complicated than cracking the puzzle field of Citadel Station. A typical goal would possibly work one thing like this:

• Hear about some flamboyantly omnicidal plan of SHODAN’s, usually from SHODAN herself, who loves taunting you as a lot as she hates people.
• Wander round whichever stage of Citadel Station you occur to be on, preventing an ever-proliferating crew of mutants and cyborgs, plus some robots that may make you rue the invention of the printed circuit board whereas watching the sport’s map fill in and being attentive to its many locked doorways.
• Loosen SHODAN’s maintain on the extent by taking pictures safety cameras, flipping switches, activating resurrection stations, fixing high-tech Pipe Dream puzzles, and jacking into our on-line world arenas that work like a good trippier variant of Descent.
• Go searching for large screens with numbers, and for god’s sake, write them down — you’re going to wish them.
• Notice you require an merchandise from a distinct stage and repeat all of the earlier steps there.
• Stumble throughout an audio log describing the exact resolution to stopping SHODAN’s plan and study you’ve already accomplished most of it by interacting with each object you’ve seen throughout the station — until you flipped the flawed swap within the flawed order, wherein case congratulations, Earth is doomed.

I’ve performed System Shock a number of occasions, and the remake nonetheless delivered the sensation of being pulled in a number of instructions directly. I don’t know how complicated new gamers will discover it. Mapping Citadel requires a hell of a trek: the toughest mode requires you to finish the sport in 5 hours — even tighter than the unique’s seven hours, which most gamers contemplate blisteringly quick — however my normal-difficulty playthrough took about 25 hours. The in-game map is a little more detailed than earlier than, however frustratingly, you may now not kind notes to remind your self of codes and merchandise areas. (Nightdive tells me that an replace will a minimum of allow you to place a number of varieties and colours of icon.)

The remake’s fight evokes traditional System Shock for higher and worse. There’s a wide array of weapons, together with standard weapons and futuristic choices just like the sequence’ trademark laser rapier, which on this iteration is ludicrously lethal. You may swap them shortly with hotkeys, making it simpler to reap the benefits of their distinctive strengths. However enemies are barely fazed by your assaults till they’re lifeless, so weapons really feel perpetually underpowered by fashionable requirements. The early recreation is stuffed with melee fight that seems like swinging a bat into a really offended chunk of uncooked hamburger. It’s jarring, and I don’t understand how intentional it’s, nevertheless it matches the punishing spirit of the sequence — a minimum of it’s not System Shock 2, the place your weapons degrade each few photographs. And it’s outweighed by how effectively Nightdive adapts the unique recreation’s visible language and complex stage design.

The remake leans exhausting into System Shock’s penchant for making gamers backtrack, not merely to entry new components of a stage, however to handle essentially the most sophisticated stock tetris I’ve ever encountered. Very like within the unique, your central stock will in all probability begin operating out of house halfway by means of the sport. The remake provides a cargo elevator that you will discover someplace in every stage — a intelligent variation on Resident Evil-style storage packing containers — nevertheless it’s solely sufficiently big for a few weapons or a number of help objects. I ended up throwing each different shiny object I didn’t instantly want on the ground exterior one elevator like some type of lonely cyberpunk bowerbird.

On high of that, there’s a brand new recycling system that offers you much more objects to maintain monitor of. Citadel holds huge quantities of junk, and you may decide it as much as recycle for giant gold novelty cash that allow you to buy elective weapon mods. The catch is that there’s just one recycler on every stage, so it’s a must to both tote the whole lot there or “vaporize” it into extra compact scrap which you can hand in for about half the reward scrip. (A regrettable exception to all that is TriOptimum’s surplus of human skulls, which somebody has thoughtfully distributed in crates throughout the station. The skulls are nugatory.) Oh, and the recycler’s compartment can also be tiny — actually unable to suit a minimum of one supposedly redeemable merchandise.

That is all constructing off present System Shock options: the unique recreation enables you to decide up junk for no specific purpose, and the sequel has a handheld recycler that’s nice for by accident vaporizing necessary stock objects. It’s extra inconvenient than both system, but oddly satisfying and ludonarratively hilarious. My hacker would possibly elevate a center finger to society, however relating to company litter removing, they’re a mannequin citizen. It’s in all probability okay if yours isn’t; I purchased practically each mod I may get my palms on and nonetheless ended the sport with an enormous stack of cash.

These adjustments don’t make the sport really feel existentially totally different, and the degrees, whereas not a one-to-one copy of the unique, are sometimes extraordinarily comparable. The most important replace is the sport’s look — which is attractive.

Nightdive has nailed the sinister company banality of Citadel, from its fake-looking wooden paneling to the gratuitous high-tech buttons on the furnishings. The sport is stuffed with stark and shiny corridors whose ominous glow would make Thomas Kinkade jealous, and its enemies retain the high-concept weirdness early shooters excelled at. (Why would an AI mutate a human being right into a shrieking doll-faced pterodactyl or an invisible seaside ball that spits toxins? Why not?) It bears some similarities to the latest wave of indie boomer shooters, however not like lots of them, it hardly ever mimics ’90s graphical limitations. Its our on-line world sections have gone from naked wireframes to glistening metallic mazes, and components of Citadel — like a set of domed backyard groves — are eerily lovely in a means no historic PC may render.

The remake doesn’t fairly have the aesthetic depth that made components of System Shock so compelling, although. Its shadowy ranges, just like the station’s upkeep bay, are now not so darkish and disorienting that they require planning each step. Its music is completely good, nevertheless it doesn’t match the driving techno earworms that the unique burned into my mind. Its enemies mutter creepily to themselves as they transfer round, and SHODAN is as soon as once more performed excellently by her unique voice actor Terri Brosius. Nevertheless it feels general like a lesser try on the nerve-wracking soundscape of System Shock 2, though failing to beat a number of the finest horror audio design of all time is nothing to be ashamed of.

Till a number of months in the past, I used to be not sure this remake would ever exist. Initially funded on Kickstarter again in 2016, its builders positioned it on hiatus a few years later, citing extreme artistic difficulties. Nightdive isn’t finest recognized for making video games; it primarily rereleases hard-to-find classics, and its final main improvement effort was a badly panned remaster of the Blade Runner journey recreation. I’ve seen the System Shock remake mistaken for System Shock 3, a doomed sequel whose rights now belong to Chinese language tech conglomerate Tencent.

However the finish result’s a pleasant shock. The place January’s Lifeless Area was a chic replace to a comparatively latest horror recreation, the brand new System Shock feels neither affectedly retro nor fully fashionable, neither lo-fi indie nor blockbuster-big. It’s one of the vital subtly odd labors of affection I’ve seen previously few years. And like SHODAN, if you happen to embrace its unconventional values, it would amply reward you — by itself considerably painful phrases.

System Shock can be launched on Could thirtieth on PC by means of Steam, GOG, and the Epic Video games Retailer.