Nightdive’s remake of System Shock has been delayed till 2020, however enjoying the 1994 authentic is a extra tempting choice now. Paving the best way for immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored, System Shock is a crucial a part of the style’s historical past, and after a shock replace yesterday it’s a much more playable one.
System Shock: Enhanced Edition is now a sharper wanting game, expanded to widescreen and with modernised, configurable controls. Below, a trailer displaying off what System Shock seems to be like, freed of its DOS-era jank. It’s additionally on sale, which is good.
While System Shock: Enhanced Edition beforehand provided slight enhancements to graphics and interface, this new model feels way more trendy. It helps resolutions as much as 4k, widescreen and variable field-of-view. It additionally integrates the Mac model’s larger decision artwork. More importantly, this replace makes System Shock far simpler to play. Inventory and cybernetics administration requires a floating mouse cursor, however almost every thing else might be performed utilizing trendy, configurable FPS controls.
This suite of enhancements comes because of Nightdive rebuilding the game from its authentic supply code, which they released publicly earlier this yr. Nightdive’s coding crew have now hooked System Shock’s ageing guts as much as the more moderen Kex Engine, created by Samuel “Kaiser” Villarreal. This engine was beforehand utilized in Nightdive’s remasters of Forsaken, each Turok games and way back to Samuel’s solo effort to port Doom 64 to PC, so I’m to see the place it (and its creator) crops up subsequent.
The new Enhanced Edition additionally provides built-in mod assist. From the renovated primary menu you’ll be able to decide from a number of user-made campaigns. The first of which – System Shock: ReWired – was up to date yesterday with absolutely voiced audio-logs and repackaged for simple use on this new model of the game. It’s like two remastered System Shocks for the value of 1, or only a free replace if you happen to already owned it.
While it hasn’t aged as gracefully as Doom, that is now the easiest way to expertise System Shock, particularly as Nightdive’s beleaguered remake is delayed till 2020. While it appears to be back on track now, its future seemed grim for some time after plans to remodel the game into a contemporary re-imagining (versus a extra conventional remake) fell by. In the meantime, right here’s hoping for extra of these mods.
System Shock: Enhanced Edition is presently 50% off on Steam (£3.49/€5/$5) and even cheaper on Humble – £1.39.
