System Shock Remake PS5 Review. System Shock, developed by Nightdive Studios, is a remake of the original 1994 cult classic. The original and its sequel have inspired many extremely popular series that we see today such as Thief, Prey, and Deus Ex.

Chief among them is System Shock’s spiritual successor, BioShock, which has been praised worldwide for years and attracted a cult following of its own. With all of the excitement around the series, and after inspiring so much of what we see today, how good is the remake, and how does the series’ first foray onto consoles fare? Read on to find out!

System Shock Review (PS5) – A Moonage Nightmare

System Shock opens with a beautifully cinematic trip around New Atlanta in the year 2072. The camera that the player was following stops before a building and zooms in to show the player character, known as Hacker.

We then take control of Hacker as we see that they are, well, Hacking. They are attempting to gain access to a neural link device that was created by TriOptimum.

When you gain access to the device, armed people burst into your apartment and surround you, taking you to the Citadel space station. Once there, an executive of TriOptimum offers to drop all charges on you and provide you with a neural link free of charge if you override the station’s AI’s ethical restraints.

Seeing no better option, the hacker does this and is given the surgery to install a neural link. After many months of recovery time, the hacker wakes up from a stasis chamber and finds Citadel Station to be devoid of any intelligent life outside of SHODAN, the AI that runs the station.

As you go through the story, you will peel back the layers of the narrative from many different perspectives through audio logs and text files that are found throughout the station.

The effectiveness of these files is only made more by the environmental storytelling that is seen at every turn. Where you find the audio logs and the scenes that surround them tell you a lot about the story of the people in the recordings before you ever press play.

Humanity’s Last Hope Against AI

The gameplay of System Shock is best described as what you get when you combine the fast paced first person gameplay of DOOM with the survival horror inventory system of the older Resident Evil games.

Every item and weapon that you will use throughout your time on Citadel Station will be found as you make your way through its endless corridors on each floor.

Your goal is to gain control of the station one floor at a time by loosening SHODAN’s control. This can be done by destroying security cameras and destroying nodes found in the station.

Certain areas can only be accessed once SHODAN’s security has been weakened on the floor to a certain point, while others can only be accessed through Cyberspace. Cyberspace can be accessed through terminals throughout the station, which will transport the player to a new world in SHODAN’s domain.

While in cyberspace, the player will be able to fly through corridors and can shoot at enemies and activate switches to move though until you complete the course, which boots you back out to the station.

SHODAN’s Grand Design

In my opinion, the thing that System Shock does best, above all else, is the same thing that caused me to fall in love with BioShock. The environments that you will see are absolutely fantastic.

In the beginning, while it’s still new, the winding corridors feel like they will lead you to your death before SHODAN ever has a shot at you. However, as you spend more time on each floor and learn their secrets and shortcuts, you start to feel like you can see the threats coming from a mile away.

Once you start feeling comfortable on the floor, like you can handle any challenge that comes your way, you go on to the next and the process starts over again.

This loop, along with the audio files and messages written on the walls that you find, makes the station really feel alive. It does an unbelievably fantastic job of feeling like a real place where tragedy has struck.

Some of these audio files that you will find will really pull on your heartstrings and make you care about characters that you don’t even meet. Even the ones that are just there to give you a passcode may be presented as someone trying to leave a message for other survivors in the middle of an attack, just so they have hope of finding a way out.

What’s New?

While the content of the game is largely similar to the experience you would find going back to the original, the first thing that many people will notice is that the graphics are greatly improved for the remake.

Unlike Nightdive Studios’ recent Star Wars: Dark Forces Remastered, which kept the art from the original game and increased the resolution it for modern hardware, System Shock has been rebuilt from the ground up with modern players and gaming machines in mind.

The visuals are absolutely astounding, from the initial fly through of the city in the intro to the breathtaking view of space that contrast the grimey, gory halls of Citadel Station.

It is very clear that the developers put in a lot of work to make sure that this renowned game comes to modern audiences as a high quality product. System Shock feels like a fresh, new beginning for the franchise, which has been dormant for so many years.

System Shock is an incredible remake of a cult classic game that gives the original the facelift it needed to become relevant and present in today’s gaming conversation. It is a great reminder of how ahead of its time the original was, and how much it shaped all of the games that followed it. Even thirty years after the original’s release, this remake has faithfully held on to how the original outing was designed and improved upon it to make it feel fun and fresh for a modern audience.

System Shock Remake is out now for PS5, PS4, PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One.

Review code kindly provided by publisher.