System Shock Remastered is indeed back on track, and a demo currently available as part of The Stꦰeam Game Festival shows that while i꧙t will certainly please the fans, the game is most likely too dated to attract a new audience.
A new addition to The Game Awards this year, Papa Keighley has granted us access to a slew of demos for highly anticipated new games, but only for a limited time. The SteamGame Festival, as it's called, features demos for games like Spiritfarer, SkateBIRD, and perhaps most interestingly, a remaster of the original System Shock.
System Shock Remastered has had a difficult journey over the year⛎s. Layoffs, restarts, and even delayed the project again and again over the last 3 years since it's . Fans and backers have grown increasingly worried while they wait for any kind of sign that the game will ever come to fruition.System S
Production has evidently resumed, and we now have a playable demo for the game. Developers Nightdive Studios (working with some developers of the original System Shock) have always promised that System Shock Remastered would be a faithful recreation of the original. That faithfulness is evident from the first few moments of the demo.What this remaster has going for it is atmosphere. Everything looks, feels, and sounds just as you'll remember it, if you do in fact remember System Shock fondly.
If you don't remember System Shock, what you'll find is a game that really shows it's age. Despite being built from the ground up to "give today's gamers the modern look and feel expected from a great game," System Shock Remastered looks old. I want to believe the pixely details are a st🅠ylistic choice, but I find it so inconsistent that it's hard to say. Sometimes enemies and environments look as crisp and detailed as any mode🎀rn game in the Unreal engine would, but other times it looks like they're almost going for a retro look. It's strange.
Compounding the feeling of playing a poorly aged game is the developer's commitment to faithfully recreate the same featureless hallways and meandering maze-like levels of the original. The entire demo is spent wandering these 💃halls, hitting dead end after dead end, occasionally bashing mutants with a wrench as they slowly stumble towards you down a hallway. This isn't what modern games look like or how they play.
System Shock is an enormously important game. It's the grandfather of immersive sims and the foundation for so many great video games like Dishonored and Prey. I am happy to experience the game in a more palatable format finally, but in a world where Resident Evil 2 Remake can completely reinvent the classic into a modern game, System Shock Remastered stands out for sticking to the past.
System Shock Remastered is currently scheduled for a 2020 release.