There’s a hubris to reviewing a unanimous classic decades after the fact—this mostly applies to guys on YouTube not named Mandalore. Yeah buddy, sure, you’ve got something to say about Earthbound that nobody cottoned on to before. You really couldn’t have said it in less than five hours?
Thank god, then, that I’m not charged with reviewing the 1999 classic System Shock 2, one of the most important PC games ever made. I’m only reviewing System Shock 2’s long-awaited 25th Anniversary Remaster from the specialists at Nightdive. How does it compare to the original, what does it add, and is there anything lacking?
Need to know
What is it? A prettied up version of the 1999 sci-fi immersive sim.
Release date: Out now
Expect to pay: $30/£24
Developer: Nightdive Studios
Publisher: Nightdive Studios
Reviewed on: Steam Deck
Steam Deck: Verified
Link: Official site
I’ll cut to the chase: This is the way you should play System Shock 2 now. You could approximate the remaster with a constellation of mods and quality of life fixes: The venerable NewDark engine upgrade, texture and model packs, maybe some cheeky tweaking of EAX sound files, but Nightdive’s System Shock 2 removes the headache, offering a well-curated suite of changes and upgrades (with some of that dedicated mod community even represented on the dev team). I also have to say that screenshots and even side-by-side comparisons with the original don’t quite cut it: This game looks fantastic in motion.
One thing you can’t get in any mod is the remaster’s redone cutscenes. Even with NewDark and fancy high-res panels, we’ve been condemned to a blurry 4:3 hell for the past 25 years. The new intro and finale movies—which Nightdive has said did not use AI-uprezzing for their 1:1 perfect recreation—are crisp and gorgeous. And unlike some game preservation nightmares, this version of System Shock 2 isn’t trying to replace the original. If you don’t like it, that original is still $10 on GOG, and all those great mods are free.
For the uninitiated: You are a UNN space soldier who wakes up aboard the good ship Von Braun on her maiden voyage to Tau Ceti, and shit hit the fan during your long nap. It’s up to you to shoot, hack, and/or mind blast your way through worm hive mind aliens to figure out just what’s going on, with much of the story told through audio logs strewn through the ship.
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The thing I love about System Shock 2 is its exploration and sense of place, with sprawling, labyrinthine maps that you could imagine someone living in before the crisis, while they also serve as excellent stomping grounds for what is ultimately a very abstracted old school dungeon crawler. The Recreation Deck in the back half of the game is a real highlight, with the creature comfort familiarity of a very ’90s-feeling mall, garden, and gym deliciously out of place on the otherwise-utilitarian vessel.
System Shock 2 is also, honestly, a pretty bad RPG, but in that classic PC gaming way I cherish. You can soft lock yourself at a few points in the story—I actually lost an hour of progress during this review by spending all my dosh on ammo before a main objective required me to buy a geegaw—and while the space wizard PSI powers seem cool, I’ve yet to stray from the ‘Ole Reliable build of guns plus hacking.
But balance is for chumps, and rough edges grip—I’d take ‘Shock 2, warts and all, over any meticulous skill tree of +5% critical damage nodes. I appreciate Nightdive’s restraint in not touching any of that funkiness. Let modders figure out how to make the hacking minigame not suck while the base experience charts a more conservative course.
Nightdive has also taken to stuffing its remasters full of all kinds of DVD extras like concept art, old trailers, and office pics of the dev team. I love this stuff, and on PC you get the added benefit of accessing the files right through your install directory, in addition to an in-game menu.
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The revived four-player co-op leaves me conflicted. I love that it’s here, and it sounds like it was a huge lift development-wise, but I do not recommend it as anything more than a single session novelty. There are no technical flaws to its restoration—it works perfectly—it’s just fundamentally flawed design-wise.
It’s fun enough in that anything shared with a friend can be fun, but System Shock 2 doesn’t build on that appeal. What is an oppressive, cerebral experience solo winds up feeling weirdly cheap and stepped-on in co-op. Audio log-based objective tracking is a real headache when you’re trying to listen for a door code while your friend(s) are yapping, as well as when your co-gamer (PC Gaming Show editorial director Jake Tucker, in my case) grabs an important log, forgets to listen to it, and you both wind up hopelessly lost.
It feels bad to lambast the game over an ambitious bonus feature, but you shouldn’t seek this one out with co-op as a main priority. What was far more transformative for me was playing it on Steam Deck: Nightdive made a very complicated UI work great on gamepad, and the remaster gets a locked 60fps and three hours of battery.
A note on modding: Nightdive has said that the remaster will have backwards compatibility with gameplay/balance mods from launch day, with support for ‘Shock 2’s fan missions coming down the line. I could see the in-game mod menu coming in hot during the pre-launch period—new widgets popping up and better detection of mod files with each new update. I was unable to get the popular Rebalanced Skills and Disciplines working in my game in time for review, however.
With the studio’s track record, I’m optimistic it will deliver on both counts, but as for the System Shock 2: 25th Anniversary Remaster as a product, this doesn’t affect my score or recommendation. If modding fell through somehow, I’d be more miffed at the broken promise than its effect on my enjoyment of the game.
But System Shock 2 is now easier to access and better to play than ever. We’ve certainly come a long way from it not even being commercially available at the beginning of the 2010s, and playing this PC gaming classic on my giant Valve PSP feels sacrilegious in the most delightful way. Now I just need someone to convince EA and the Embracer Group to let Nightdive go weapons free on Ultima Underworld and Thief, respectively.
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