System Shock remake

Play it on: Windows (Steam Deck YMMV*)

My current goal: Graduate to using big-girl guns

As a retro nerd who has Serious Complaints about 90+ percent of video game “remasters” I can’t believe how wonderfully Nightdive’s System Shock remake turned out. It’s not only an aesthetic triumph—feast your eyes on those saturated colors, those tastefully pixelated surfaces—but it near-perfectly recreates the vibe, if not every last detail, of playing 1994’s revolutionary cyberpunk hall crawler.

And true to form, I’m being just as much of a scared, hoarding baby as I was in the original. The chief way this manifests is in my total overreliance on the venerable SparqBeam, a laser-like weapon you find very early on. It uses your own energy supply as ammo, which you can refill at various stations throughout each floor. So while I’m not wasting the limited bullet ammo of other weapons, every few minutes I have to beeline back to a damn refill station (assuming I’ve even found one on the current level).

As you can imagine, that gets old. I’m now several decks in, the enemies are getting nasty, and I’m tired of all the runbacks. But I’m playing on the highest combat difficulty and none of my other guns feel particularly strong either, so switching to ballistic weapons isn’t feeling super optimal. Yet that’s actually awesome. System Shock remake, when you crank the difficulty sliders up, develops a very solid survival-horror feel, giving battles serious consequences and making resource management a continual worry.

I wish I could stop playing it like a weenie, but I’m having so much fun being scared. — Alexandra Hall

*Your mileage may vary