By the standards of the 1980s and even 1990s, we have been living in cyberpunk for a long time, which does not prevent 2 play games developers from not only creating new worlds in such settings, but also turning to proven classics. One of these pillars was System Shock, released in 1994, and we will tell about the long-suffering remake of which, coming out after 7 years of development, in this review. NAMELESS HERO The further plot is not quite typical for cyberpunk - we are taken from the neon city to the Citadel station owned by the corporation and offered to atone for guilt not with blood, but with mental labor - to remove ethical restrictions from the manager of the SHODAN artificial intelligence station, since, according to the head of Edward Diego, they limit the effectiveness of the work - we will learn about his secret motives later. For doing the job, the hacker is promised a new neural interface. He successfully copes with the task, but when installing the neural interface - who would have thought - something goes wrong again. The hacker loses consciousness, and when he wakes up, he finds himself in a completely new reality - SHODAN, deprived of ethical restrictions, captured the station, and either killed all of its personnel or turned them into mutants and cyborgs. But the problems do not end there - the station is equipped with a powerful laser, which was conceived for mining rocks, and is now aimed at Earth. In general, guess who will have to rake all this. The theme of the rise of machines, first raised by the Czech writer Karel Capek in the play "Rossum's Universal Robots " back in 1920, has since run like a red thread, perhaps, in all areas of human creativity, and has recently regained popularity due to real successes in the development of real, not fantastic artificial intelligence. System Shock in this regard is almost a “spherical in a vacuum” example. Of course, it’s worth making allowances for the fact that we have a remake in front of us, and in 1994 all this was perceived fresher, but in 2023 the situation “the evil computer killed everyone” only causes a reaction in the spirit of a wolf from a cult Soviet cartoon. IMMERSIVE METROIDVANIA One of the main merits of System Shock is considered the foundation of the immersive sim genre, the essence of which is to immerse the player in the setting through the presentation of information in the language of the setting itself: notes, diaries, messages, and even art objects. A new (albeit not the latest, but more on that below) technical level implies a new level of immersion, and the remake copes with this brilliantly - voiced messages and audio diaries, a terrible picture of corpses and remains scattered throughout the station, words written in blood on the walls. The gameplay of the remake almost repeats the original with an eye to the technical processing. Before us is an early version of immersive sim - a little shooter, a little horror, a little bit of puzzles and a kind of “game within a game” in the form of cyberspace. Given the plot, it was not without its own nuances - there are no quests, dialogues and NPCs (because everyone died), so the very messages set the course of the plot. I didn’t notice any variability in the passage - at any level, to one degree or another, it is required to “clear” the map, collect the maximum number of useful items, solve key puzzles, go through sections of cyberspace, find out the location and restore the operation of the revitalizing machine, as well as destroy computer nodes and cameras, reducing the level of security. Each task has only one solution, and options like “climb through the ventilation and steal the right item” or “burn computers by arranging a power surge” are not possible here. The level design takes us back to the 90s, when the developers seemed to be competing to make the trickier maze. It's funny, but here such a structure of levels is explained from the point of view of the setting: the creators of Citadel deliberately wanted to increase the level of stress and anxiety of the staff in order to test how much people are ready to endure a long stay next to each other in order to plan future space flights. In general, feel like an astronaut. But unlike "corridor" shooters, no one leads us by the hand - we ourselves explore these labyrinths in all directions at a pace that is comfortable for ourselves. In fact, we have a real metroidvania, albeit not in the canonical two-dimensional design. You will have to return to many levels again, opening previously closed doors, and to solve one of the puzzles closer to the final, you need to run through the six previous levels. Moreover, all this is implemented without loading screens, in a completely seamless mode - downright open world. Puzzles are most often variations on the theme of electrical circuits, where you need to build a path from one point of a square field to another by turning blocks with different elements, or dial a certain level of energy on the scale, which is achieved by redirecting flows. But there are also puzzles built on the use of the environment (for example, buttons and elevators). Cyberspace is made in a bright and memorable visual style - this is how it was described in early cyberpunk works - and is a completely three-dimensional world in which our virtual avatar (or rather, even the virtual avatar of our virtual avatar in the face of a hacker) can move through all possible degrees of freedom. Technically, it looks like a simple space simulator, where the enemies are stylized as pixel monsters images of defense programs, on which we work as software weapons. Having flown along a given route, we destroy the last target and return to the real world, where for the passage of cyberspace we can be given some kind of code, turn on a bridge from a force field or open a door. In cyberspace, the main battle with SHODAN also takes place. On the issue of pace - the developers assure that at the easiest level of difficulty (it is set separately for four components: combat, the 2 play games world itself, cyberspace and puzzles), the cool game can be completed in 6 hours, and to fully explore the maps and the maximum level of difficulty, it will take 30 hours. True, such calculations give only a very remote idea - at least in the case of the first passage. As I said, no one leads us by the hand here, so extensive study of the map is required if only to find where the objectives of the task are. NOT BY HACKING ALONE Let our hero be a hacker, but he has to shoot a lot. The weapon came out very beautiful, original and detailed (as far as possible with this level of graphics). The assortment is also more than sufficient - here is a firearm, and energy weapons, and a railgun, and improvised means, and even a local analogue of a lightsaber in the form of a laser rapier. Some weapons can use different types of ammunition (armor-piercing, incendiary) or fire in different modes. All this is complemented by grenades, mines and a variety of consumables, from first aid kits to reaction boosters. The shooting model is also implemented very worthily - recoil, ballistics, penetration, special properties of weapons and different ammunition are very different. Moreover, modifications are available for weapons - for example, increasing the capacity of the magazine or reducing overheating. Not Borderlands 3 with its "basillion", but almost everyone can find a gun to their liking. Naturally, no cyberpunk is complete without implants and additional equipment. Of course, everything is much simpler here than in Deus Ex or Cyberpunk 2077, but a flashlight, a radar, shields from enemy fire and an aggressive external environment, a navigation module, a target identifier, a vital signs monitor and boots with turbo acceleration can expand the capabilities of a biological body, in localization called TURBOBOOTS. There is no pumping as such, but you can find an improved version of the implant and replace the old one with it. There are also modules to expand the inventory. And there is always a lack of inventory here, especially given the similarity of the economy - you can collect various items and hand them over to special processing machines, receiving credits in the form of physical coins, strange for a cyberpunk setting, that can be spent in vending machines for ammunition, consumables or modifications weapons. Moreover, you can pre-disintegrate the item into the trash, or you can hand it over “as is”. There are different options for different items. A similar system was in the first Mass Effect (uni-gel), but in System Shock, for some unknown reason, functional items such as weapons cannot be recycled, even if they are not needed. Another oddity is that damaged weapons suitable for recycling and serviceable weapons unsuitable for processing are indistinguishable from each other in the inventory. REMAKE FRONT, RETRO BACK If you've been following development, you'll know the misadventures the 2 play games went through. The remake was made for seven years - even by the standards of AAA projects, this is a long-term construction, but the new System Shock does not look like an AAA project. Despite the switch from Unity to Unreal Engine, the game looks graphically mid-noughties. The extreme pixelation of some textures is especially striking. This was probably done on purpose, but in my opinion, the cool game was exactly in the position where it is not yet retro, but you can’t call it modern either. Although the artists must be given their due - as is often the case, they perfectly “pulled out” what the game cannot cope with purely technically. I don’t know how the modern audience will appreciate the game, but I found this whole retro vibe very cute. Although it is quite possible, it's just nostalgia for youth. On the other hand, Unreal II is no less nostalgic, and the graphics there were already better then, almost 20 years ago, as were the animations of the enemies. But every cloud has a silver lining - modest graphics allow you to run the 2 play games on weaker PCs. My game was flying on a laptop with a GTX 1660 Ti, delivering 60 frames per second on ultra in both Full HD on its own display and in 2K on an external monitor - and would certainly give out more if it were not for the limitations of the display itself and HDMI cable. For immersive sim, sound is very important, and here the developers have also tried. Atmospheric music, technical noises, screams of mutants, robotic voices of cyborgs and SHODAN itself make a significant contribution to the overall immersion. I especially liked the voiced audio diaries with a very emotional presentation and interspersed with gunfire in the background and radio interference. But what the new System Shock was not lucky with is the interface and control. And if everything is fine with movement and shooting, then interaction with the inventory at times turns into a living hell, especially on the gamepad, when instead of selecting specific items, we have to move the cursor with the stick. I wonder how this will be implemented on consoles, a version for which is promised later. The function of separating “packs” is absent in principle, forget about automatic ordering too - although some people enjoy lovingly laying everything out into cells manually. Another "nice" bonus is the different behavior of the menu with mouse and keyboard actions. For example, if reading a message in the archive, go back with the mouse, then we will return to the previous menu, the list of messages. And if you press Backspace on the keyboard, we will exit the menu completely. And for dessert - the lack of binding keys to activate the implants and the need to prescribe them every time you enter the 2 play games, because they are not saved. Waiting for patches. The list of “merits” of the interface is completed by a completely creepy font, which, when scaled, becomes poorly readable. By the way, the game has Russian localization. I can’t call it ideal, but I haven’t come across any outright blunders. The main problem was not the quality of the translation, but the use of an even more disgusting font, due to which there are even more unreadable places, so I played in English. I hope this can be fixed somehow with patches. VERDICT The reincarnation of System Shock leaves an ambiguous impression. The 1994 original aged pretty badly and was hard to play as early as the early 2000s. The remake looks to be about the middle of that decade. Even for me, a person of that era, despite the pleasant retro vibe, it still causes a slight misunderstanding of why it was necessary to release a similar 2 play games in 2023. It will be able to amuse the nostalgic feelings of the fans or please connoisseurs of the genre, but a significant part of the modern audience will surely seem technically outdated, monotonous and drawn out. On the other hand, the 2 play games retained the basic gameplay and remained interesting, and the updated technical component, even in this form, pleases with much more immersiveness. And an additional bonus of the lack of graphic frills was the low system requirements and the ability to run even on relatively weak PCs. As I often say on such occasions, it's a good way to revisit or experience a classic for the first time.
The opening cutscene camera takes us over the neon-lit skyscrapers of Atlanta in the 2070s, between which flying cars scurry through not the most environmentally friendly fogs and rains. In a small window of one of these skyscrapers, we first meet our hero - a nameless hacker who tried to steal the files of the powerful TriOptimum corporation. But according to all the laws of the genre, something does not go according to plan, and corporate special forces break into his small apartment.
