System Shock Review (alhexx)
If you have played and liked the original game(s), then this remake is a must buy.
If you are new to the System Shock franchise, well, then the situation is a bit more complex and whether you should buy it depends on your personal preferences, so I'll write this review primarily with newcomers in mind.
First off, the graphics are nice, but very far away from anything that you see in a modern AAA game. The textures are (intentionally) heavily pixelated, which gives the game a certain "boomer shooter" style. If that's something that gives you eye cancer, then you should probably stay away. Personally, I'm fine with the graphics since I generally think that realistic graphics are overrated.
Aside from that, you can really feel that the game is a very close-to-the-original remake of a game that is almost 3 decades old, which may be either good or bad depending on whether you are interested to experiencing the atmosphere and feel on a game that was way ahead of its time in the early 90's -- without having to deal with the almost impossible-to-play controls of the original.
On the downside, this remake has also inherited a few very bad aspects of early 90's shooters: the most important point being the really bad combat mechanics, both in melee combat as well as in firearms combat. Melee strikes are very slow and somewhat delayed, so it takes a certain amount of practice to get the timing right to prevent being torn to shreds. As for the guns, there's really no proper feedback or anything - it's almost impossible to jugde whether you are actually hitting something or not. I guess that this is one of the reasons why Doom was so much more popular that System Shock and Half Life so much more than System Shock 2 back in the days: the combat just felt so much more fluent and satisfying.
Another problem, that stems directly from the close-to-original point are the very densely packed maps (I mean the map, not the level), which are pretty hard to read, although not quite as hard as the original maps thanks to the increased resolution and details of the maps. (I have just finished the first level in the remake and, yes, the map is almost perfectly identical to the original one.)
One issue that did not exist in the original, but instead has been "borrowed" from System Shock 2, is the "Tetris Inventory", which is one of the 90's gameplay features that I have hoped to never see again -- this was a pain in the @$$ back then and it really should not have made its way into the 21st century.
Finally, I think that many players, who have not played the original, will struggle to figure out what they have to do in almost every aspect of the game, because the game gives you VERY little information on what it expects you to do, i.e. there are hardly any tutorials or anything in the game. If you're new, then I suggest looking at some "Things I wish I knew before playing the System Shock Remake" guides or videos before playing.
All in all, I like what I have seen so far despite the above mentioned downsides, so I'm giving it a thumbs-up. If you're new to the franchise and are not immediately thrown off by the issues I have mentioned above, then you should also give it a try -- even if it's just to figure out what all that SHODAN fuzz is about, that the old guys with grey beards are talking of...