Posted by: JDoran
« on: 04. July 2024, 16:01:31 »
I finished System Shock Remake a week or two ago, and here are my comments on it:
I mostly really liked the game. I've not bothered watching or reading any reviews as I like to go into a game knowing nothing of what to expect (aside from stuff that I've read on this forum), so apologies if I'm the eight millionth person to point something out. Also this is only about the Playstation 4 version, as I've never played the other versions of SSR.
I had no problem knowing what to do any time in the game, but I have to wonder how much of that was because I remembered things from my (two or three) playthroughs of the original game. SSR doesn't show you a list of objectives, so you have to piece together your objectives, which I found very enjoyable, and it goes against the modern 'Dumb it down and you'll sell more copies' style of game development, but it might well be that those new to SSR might be put off by the game expecting you to pay proper attention to the messages and diary entries and not have the game sign-post what you need to do next.
The graphics I think are great. I was worried, from what I've heard, that they had problems, but have no complaints. Maybe the PS4 lacks some fancy effects that are on the PC that some people don't like, I don't know.
I can't comment on the music, sound effects, or speech, as I don't have great hearing (thankfully, SSR, has text/subtitles for everything, which should be common for all games by now).
I found the game to be enjoyable, and I am really glad it was made. The enhanced weapons were great*, traversal of the levels was never a problem, Citadel felt like a real place (although, like just about every game set on a space station or space ship, I could imagine people working there, but I was never convinced that people would live there ('live there' as in they resided there, slept there, spent weeks or months at a time there, etc), and the game mechanics were mostly very good.
The puzzles were sometimes a little too surreal - one of my complaints about SSR is that it doesn't give you clear instructions on what to do in the puzzles, though once you do work out the rules of the puzzle, then it just becomes a short, partly trial and error experiment. Inventory management was never a chore, though I would have liked some QoL features, such as a function to automatically put all junk items into the recycler, and make the icons for some things (the grenades, the skin patches, etc) look different enough so you can look at a grenade and know if it's a frag, or EMP, or gas grenade, etc.
The game was fair, I never thought something killed me by cheating or glitching.
And I am happy that we also still have the Enhanced Edition of System Shock, as it's different enough to still enjoy it as a reasonably different game. But I do feel like it's somehow not as good or atmospheric or it doesn't grab you as much as the original did. And I say that as someone who isn't too enamoured with the original - I do like the original, but I've only played it all the way through a couple of times, and that was a long time so, so I no doubt missed many of the changes made to SSR.
On the downside, I still hated cyberspace. I have never liked Descent type games, and I found cyberspace to be boring. On the plus side, it does look gorgeous compared to the original game's version, and is much easier to navigate, though I do think that an on-screen radar (to show when enemies were attacking you from behind) would have made these sections less irritating to play. At least they weren't long or too difficult. I did think, though, that Night Dive should have added an option on the game's start menu, to give a 'Practise Cyberspace' option, so that people who didn't know how to play Descent style games could have a practise course that introduces all of the facets of the hacking mini-game, to build newcomers' skills for when they face these sections mid-game.
System Shock Remake has some serious bugs, though I've not played the PC version, or any other console versions, so I don't know which, if any, of these bugs exit only on the PS4 version.
The worst is that once the game lost all of my saves games. I had four save-games, and I died, so rather than wait to be resurrected on a different floor and have to walk back to where I died, I went to the load menu, only to find all four saves had gone. Luckily, I was going to be resurrected, not get a 'game over', so when I had been resurrected then I saved that game. If I'd have had to restart the game from the beginning, then I might not have bothered, it's a good game, but I'm not sure that i was enjoying it to the extent that I would have immediately started a new game after losing so much progress.
Another time it lost one of the four game-saves that I had. It never lost any more, though, so I was able to complete the game on one playthrough without ever having to restart the game from the beginning.
(Come to think of it, why do you sometimes respawn on a different floor, but sometimes not, is that a bug or for a non-story related but legitimate reason?)
The game also crashed once, resulting in the PS4 giving me an error message and having to reset the console.
A couple of times, I have dropped a weapon from my inventory, temporarily, so I can clear space in the inventory to do something. So the dropped weapon should be lying on the floor, but instead only a small part of the weapon is visible, as around 90% is in/under the ground, and the part that is visible is rotating around. And the weapon can't be now picked up.
I was using the user added marker feature on some parts of the map, but one time when I looked at the map, the markers were gone, and the game wouldn't let me put any new ones on it from that point on.
On the game's Start Menu, then when you click on 'Resume', the game doesn't load the most recent save-game, it loads an older one. And (and this is probably a design 'feature', rather than a bug) the LOAD or SAVE menus don't sort the save-games by time/date. It doesn't even sort the save-games by their creation number.
There were A.I. glitches, with the odd mech enemy stuck in a walking animation as it tries to walk through a wall, or into a corner. Some enemies also refused to follow me through a door-way, which might be a bug/glitch, or might be them actually acting intelligently by refusing to follow me through a bottle-neck where I could focus my weapons on them. I also seem to only remember (possibly) bugged NPC behaviour being performed by purely robotic enemies, never the (semi) organic enemies.
Occasionally, when I was using the inventory and dropping or moving items, the cursor would disappear, so I had to exit and then enter the inventory again, to regain the cursor and continue what I was doing.
Whenever a save-game reloads, or starts again after loading a new level, when I'm in the lift (elevator) the frame-rate goes down to like 3fps, and you can watch the textures appearing. It only lasts maybe two to four seconds, then it's fine, and it never does this during gameplay (that I saw), so it's not a problem, but I mention it for completeness.
And this is weird, and must be a bug; whenever I renter an area, then any corpses that are due to me (i.e. corpses (organic or robotic) that I caused by killing something, not corpses that were never alive/active but were put their by the game's designers) would do a sort of shake or stunted animated. This was a little alarming until I realised that weren't coming back to life, it's just (I assume) a bug. I don't know how this got past beta-testing, though, since it's unmissably obvious.
There were more bugs or glitches, I think, but I can't remember. They were probably non-important things like your gun clipping through a bit of scenery, or an NPC taking too long to notice you when it had line of sight, but nothing game-threatening.
Edit: I just remembered that a few of the save-game's screenshot icons were corrupted, always a light blue smudge. It didn't seem to effect the save games when they were loaded back, though.
Not a bug, but a stupid design decision was that some bits of information only are shown for a couple of second, and then disappear too quickly for you to notice and see. And why isn't there a control to automatically replay the last audio message that you might not have been able to listen to and process when it was played because you too distracted by fighting for your life? Yes, you can search for it in the audio list, but you can't sort this list by the order that the messages were received/played. Why not?
I'm not sure if this is a bug or it's deliberate, but the Laser Rapier is rather overpowered.
It's very effective against all normal enemies (especially if you can attack them when their back, be it organic, or robotic, is facing you, so they have to turn around to attack you, or if they have to come through a door whilst you are waiting, sword in hand, to attack them).
And if you use the sword, plus a Berserk Combat patch, plus a Reflex Reaction patch, and the EMP grenades then the boss fights (other than the final, SHODAN boss fight) become utterly trival. Before the boss fight starts, you should apply a Berserk Combat patch, plus a Reflex Reaction patch. Then go and trigger the boss fight, then as soon as the boss appears, hit it with an EMP grenade, then get right up to the boss (and use another EMP grenade on it if you've taken more than a few seconds to close the distance to the boss - for some reason an EMP grenade detonating next to you doesn't harm your electronical systems, though of course it temporarily stuns the robot bosses). The repeatedly hit the boss with your sword, and in a few seconds the boss is destroyed. Doing this presents no challenge, and no danger to you.
And my PS4 is permeantly online, so if there is a patch to fix these bugs, then it hadn't been released by that point.
And since this was a remake of a game that came with a thick manual, then it might have been a nice touch to have a similar manual as a digital document, viewable from the main menu. I likely wouldn't have bothered looking at it, but fans of the original game might appreciate it.
A minus for SSR on the Playstation is that it doesn't make great use of the controller. It's adequate, but adds no quality of life features for the console version. You'd think that they would at least have some button/control combination, such as a feature whereby, for example, you could press two or three controls on the joypad at once, and the protaganist would immediately use a health pack, that would be *extremely* welcome.
And a directly accessible weapon wheel would have been really handy too. These are great for quickly selecting a weapon (or whatever) when you are in combat and don't want to use a real-time inventory grid or repeatedly have to move left or right through your quick access bar which might not even have a shortcut to whatever you want to use.
I assume all console versions have these limitations. And NDS took a year beyond the PC version's gestation to produce the console version - why?
And System Shock Remake DEFINITELY has one of the lamest end boss battles, and a terrible ending overall. It's too surreal for it to be evident what you need to do, you inevitably die at least once, until you realise that the falling pixel flows aren't just a visual effect, and from then onwards you might as well be invincible as it's so easy to complete the game. It just takes a little time for you to experiment to find out what to do to progress, then it's over.
And the you get like a three second cutscene, then the game goes back to the main menu. Then after the end credits then you get another short cutscene. Not a lot of reward for saving the Earth.
Calling it anticlimactic would be a massive understate. When the boss battle starts, it seemed like it would be a deathmatch type battle. Why not stick with that? SHODAN has no physical form in the real world (well, except as computer hardware) so her appearing humanoid in a surreal deathmatch arena might be something that appeals to her ego and desire to experiment. Most games (at least from the games I've played) have a disappointing end in both the end boss fight, and the too short a summation of what happens to the protagonist/the Earth, the human race or whatever. And SSR is definitely a good example of a bad ending, both game-play and story-ending wise.
All in all, I found SSR to be an OK console port of a mostly good remake of a classic game. I'm really glad it exists, but I didn't find it that compulsive to play (replayability is a very important factor to me, I love playing through my favourite games and seeing if I can improve my performance somehow) as it never really grabbed me, the way say System Shock 2, or Prey 2017 did. I have replayed Prey 2017 and especially SS2 a few times, and they never lose their appeal to me, and whilst I did enjoy SSR, it won't be a game I play over and over, I think.
I am least VERY glad that the current generation of gamers get to play System Shock, though, even if only in this slightly off version, so many thanks Night Dive for this pretty good remake (you can tell that the people who made it loved both it and the original game). And thanks for SS:EE, that was great.
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