The game switches neatly into what feels like a space shooter, as you fend off digitised defences while connecting nodes by shooting at them. What is thrilling, however, are the hacking sections that see you “enter” the computer system. Weapons hiss and fizzle, and nothing feels precise enough to be considered thrilling. It has all the feeling of an old school boomer shooter without the “boom”. Enemies move towards you without much intelligence, and they rarely even strafe to avoid fire. Melee weapons lack impact, and the shooting – particularly with the first few guns – feels wishy-washy at best. The combat, for example, is faster and more fluid, but it remains the weakest link in the chain. While the puzzles remain intact, along with the layout of each area and the placement of enemies, certain things have been enhanced and modernised.

To the more vehement fans of the original, it’s worth saying that the Remake does a solid job of recreating the gameplay and mechanics of the original, but it’s kind of a warts and all deal. There are blood and bodies everywhere, shambling zombie-like enemies, and a lot of cameras and security turrets that really, really don’t like you. Like in Bioshock, the cause of the disruption isn’t immediately apparent. It casts you as a hacker lost aboard Citadel Station, where a rogue AI called SHODAN has unleashed murder and mayhem. The result is this: System Shock Remake, a faithful-to-a-fault homage to that ancient sci-fi horror classic. It garnered such an interest that the same devs decided to take the concept further, and remake the entire game. Which is why in 2015, developer Nightdive Studios released an updated version of System Shock that made it once more accessible to PC gamers. The release of Bioshock stirred interest in the floppy disc classic, but by then it was a difficult game to even get hold of. Lauded as the spiritual precursor to games like Bioshock, or even Arkane’s Prey, the mystery and tension behind System Shock’s plot earned it a legion of fans – many of whom came to the party years after it had ended.

The concept of a rogue AI going insane and slaughtering a space station full of people may not seem all that original now, but it certainly was when System Shock was released in 1994.

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