System Shock is a First Person Shooter set on the Citadel space station, which has been taken over by a rogue Artificial Intelligence called Shodan. The player is a hacker who must find a way to stop Shodan before it can destroy Earth.

I never played the original 90’s version of System Shock, but it clearly influenced some of my other favourite games such as Bioshock and Prey, so I was excited to play this remake and experience part of gaming history.


• Each level of the space station is a massive maze of rooms, corridors, elevators and crawl spaces. You’ll regularly need to find keycards to unlock doors and switches to open shortcuts, as you fight your way through Shodan’s defences.

• Most of the Citadel’s employees have been turned into cyborgs and equipped with various ballistic or laser weapons. You’ll also have to fight mutated wildlife, flying drones, and sentry turrets.

• There’s a wide variety of guns to use, including pistol, shotgun, SMG, assault rifle, energy gun, pulse rifle, railgun and grenade launcher. You can also use a wrench and laser whip for melee attacks, place proximity mines, and throw frag, EMP and gas grenades.

• As you explore each level you’ll find junk items which can be turned into scrap and then recycled for cash, which can be used to buy weapon upgrades, medkits, and ammo from vending machines. However, your inventory space is limited, so you’ll need to prioritise what to carry, especially later in the game.

• You can also acquire useful gadgets such as an energy shield to reduce damage of enemy attacks, jump boots to reach higher ledges, and a radiation suit for protection in areas where the environment is hazardous.

• The difficulty settings allow you to separately adjust different areas of gameplay. I played with everything set to medium, which mostly felt well balanced.

• Combat can be challenging because your health bar can go down quickly, but I usually felt like a death was my own fault for making a dumb mistake. The bosses took me several attempts to defeat though, mainly because they have a tendency to spam grenades all around the small rooms where those encounters take place.

• Puzzles are fine once you understand how they work (similar to Bioshock’s pipe puzzles), although its not really explained properly in game, so this can take a bit of trial and error to figure out.

• With mission difficulty on medium there are no waypoints or quest logs to guide you, so you need to pay attention to audio logs and explore everywhere. I did have to consult the forums for help once when I was stuck. Early in my playthrough I found a code, but as I was exploring each floor fully before moving on, I didn’t find the related computer terminal until about 10 hours of gameplay (and 2 days in real life) later, so by that time I didn’t even remember finding the code.

• Occasionally you’ll need to enter Cyberspace to destroy locks. This is by far the weakest part of the game. It plays like a 6 degrees of freedom shooter, and its really confusing to navigate, tough to avoid enemy projectiles, and some sections feel far too long. I think even the developers know these sections are bad, because there are health pickups all over the place. Thankfully this means these sections aren’t difficult, but they’re not fun either. And the final section of the game is even worse


• It took me 23 hours to complete the game.

• FPS mechanics feel good on mouse and keyboard.

• Controls are mostly rebindable. I would have liked to reverse the mouse wheel scroll directions because the default feels wrong, but I couldn’t see this listed in the options menu.

• The game crashed twice, but I didn’t encounter any other bugs or framerate problems.


System Shock is one of the best First Person Shooters I’ve played for a while. It doesn’t have fancy AAA graphics, but it has everything else you’d want in a fun shooter. This is a must play for FPS fans, and is worth buying at full price or a small sale.

System Shock is a First Person Shooter set on the Citadel space station, which has been taken over by a rogue Artificial Intelligence called Shodan. The player is a hacker who must find a way to stop Shodan before it can destroy Earth. I never played the original 90’s version of System Shock, but it clearly influenced some of my other favourite games such as Bioshock and Prey, so I was excited to play this remake and experience part of gaming history. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] • Each level of the space station is a massive maze of rooms, corridors, elevators and crawl spaces. You’ll regularly need to find keycards to unlock doors and switches to open shortcuts, as you fight your way through Shodan’s defences. • Most of the Citadel’s employees have been turned into cyborgs and equipped with various ballistic or laser weapons. You’ll also have to fight mutated wildlife, flying drones, and sentry turrets. • There’s a wide variety of guns to use, including pistol, shotgun, SMG, assault rifle, energy gun, pulse rifle, railgun and grenade launcher. You can also use a wrench and laser whip for melee attacks, place proximity mines, and throw frag, EMP and gas grenades. • As you explore each level you’ll find junk items which can be turned into scrap and then recycled for cash, which can be used to buy weapon upgrades, medkits, and ammo from vending machines. However, your inventory space is limited, so you’ll need to prioritise what to carry, especially later in the game. • You can also acquire useful gadgets such as an energy shield to reduce damage of enemy attacks, jump boots to reach higher ledges, and a radiation suit for protection in areas where the environment is hazardous. • The difficulty settings allow you to separately adjust different areas of gameplay. I played with everything set to medium, which mostly felt well balanced. • Combat can be challenging because your health bar can go down quickly, but I usually felt like a death was my own fault for making a dumb mistake. The bosses took me several attempts to defeat though, mainly because they have a tendency to spam grenades all around the small rooms where those encounters take place. • Puzzles are fine once you understand how they work (similar to Bioshock’s pipe puzzles), although its not really explained properly in game, so this can take a bit of trial and error to figure out. • With mission difficulty on medium there are no waypoints or quest logs to guide you, so you need to pay attention to audio logs and explore everywhere. I did have to consult the forums for help once when I was stuck. Early in my playthrough I found a code, but as I was exploring each floor fully before moving on, I didn’t find the related computer terminal until about 10 hours of gameplay (and 2 days in real life) later, so by that time I didn’t even remember finding the code. • Occasionally you’ll need to enter Cyberspace to destroy locks. This is by far the weakest part of the game. It plays like a 6 degrees of freedom shooter, and its really confusing to navigate, tough to avoid enemy projectiles, and some sections feel far too long. I think even the developers know these sections are bad, because there are health pickups all over the place. Thankfully this means these sections aren’t difficult, but they’re not fun either. [spoiler]And the final section of the game is even worse[/spoiler] [h1]Technical[/h1] • It took me 23 hours to complete the game. • FPS mechanics feel good on mouse and keyboard. • Controls are mostly rebindable. I would have liked to reverse the mouse wheel scroll directions because the default feels wrong, but I couldn’t see this listed in the options menu. • The game crashed twice, but I didn’t encounter any other bugs or framerate problems. [h1]Recommendation[/h1] System Shock is one of the best First Person Shooters I’ve played for a while. It doesn’t have fancy AAA graphics, but it has everything else you’d want in a fun shooter. This is a must play for FPS fans, and is worth buying at full price or a small sale.