KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[Fenix]

Just watched more than hour of gameplay, and coudn't grasp what's wrong with the game, untill Lemming42 said it.
I mean, besides absolutely dogshit lighting/bloom that literally hurt the eyes.
What angered me is they changed audiologs - added new, maybe even removed old, but the new the added are all wymen you guess it.

Steaming pile of dogshit.

 

[Trithne]

I played through SS1 just a few months ago, and the demo today - the voice logs are the same, just rewritten and recorded. None were added or removed, but the tone is different. And there's a total of 3 women in the logs for med - Althea, Mira, and one other I can't recall the name of. Stop making up issues that don't exist.

 

[Melcar]

One is one too many.
So if I pre-order this on GOG I get the remastered #2 for free. Still have my original game install for both and the games never wowed me too much, so I guess I will pass.
Haven't checked how this new remake looks currently, so I may change my mind.

 

[Trithne]

In SS1 some stuff pops out or appears behind you. That's fine. Occasional surprises are fine.
But games that constantly lay it on and want you to feel like you're in constant peril, it annoys me. One answer is to get the fuck over it, and that could be how it contributes to a game's design, having to control your reactions.
Just doesn't seem like SS1 to me.

FWIW this doesn't happen in the remake. One thing i agree with Lemming42 (and forgot to mention in my previous post even though i thought about it) is that compared to the original there aren't many enemies (i've only noticed the game respawn monsters once whereas in the original they were respawning almost all the time) and those that are there are pretty much in your face. Never had an enemy appear behind me while i was playing the game.

Wander around for a bit and then come back to an old area - It'll be absolutely crawling. I would pass through a previously cleared area and find it had half a dozen mutants in it, and then stumble into another half a dozen while kiting the first lot.

The initial map seeding of enemies is pretty much the same as the original, except for a few assassins changed into their new melee assassin, the removal of the cyborg horde after blowing up the cpu nodes, and one repairbot missing in the tunnels. Oh, and the cyborg enforcer guarding the cpu room changed for a secbot, which actually makes it more dangerous.

 

[LudensCogitet]

the removal of the cyborg horde after blowing up the cpu nodes

Hmm... I clearly should install this new demo. I'm sorry to see that go from a theoretical perspective.

That's a good "oh shit!" Moment in the game.

 

[Melcar]

Does the demo run like crap for you guys?

 

[Fenix]

And there's a total of 3 women in the logs for med - Althea, Mira, and one other I can't recall the name of. Stop making up issues that don't exist.

You contradict yourself, fucker.
I played SS1 long ago but I'm sure those 3 were not exist before. Better think before telling something.

 

[Maggot]

Everything about this is irredeemable dogshit.

 

[Melcar]

Oh my God, my eyes. I forgot how shit this looked. Blur and bloom everywhere. Surprised that they did not clean it up by now.

 

[Maggot]

Oh my God, my eyes. I forgot how shit this looked. Blur and bloom everywhere. Surprised that they did not clean it up by now.

The textures seem to look even worse now and motion blur kept re-enabling itself as I tried to play through the demo. This is still just an amateurish fan project at best.

 

[Invictus]

Looks just fine to me, a bit too dark remembered it being less dark and more moody in a Blade Runner kind of way with very constrasting colors lights here and neon there making it feel techno pop but other than that it looks like a very worthy remake love the inventory and sound effects so far
Oh and the guy who says he has never been scared by a game I call bullshit; yeah try wearing headphones playing Amnesia in the dark or not jumping out of your seat while getting jumped on a previously “cleared” level by a hybrid who moans “Kill me” as he hits you with a pipe

 

[Bad Sector]

Wander around for a bit and then come back to an old area - It'll be absolutely crawling.

I was wandering through the same areas pretty much the entire demo and i've only seen monsters respawn only a couple of times and the respawn happened only once (ie. after killing them again they didn't respawn). One of the most common areas for monsters to respawn in the original game is around the room where you wake up, which is a place i visited several times to refill my health - in the original you get respawns often around there whereas in the demo it happened only once (though when it happened it was like five mutants waiting for me :-P). It was easy for me to notice the respawns since in the original i abuse them to collect the randomly generated stuff by hitting the mutants with the lead bar :-P this didn't work in the demo though, both because the respawns are much less frequent and because the lead bar doesn't seem to have the same range (and the mutants seem to hit harder, though that might be because i need to come closer to hit them and i get hit more often).

Hmm... I clearly should install this new demo. I'm sorry to see that go from a theoretical perspective.

That's a good "oh shit!" Moment in the game.

Yeah i was a bit let down with that part too.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

All that without mentioning how dark everything is coupled with disgusting levels of bloom, janky worthless grenades, and uninterruptable animations. As well as clingy ladders and godawful voice acting which includes Terri, she really phoned that welcome email in.

You can turn the shaders down which fixes a lot of the bloom and shadow problems. I find it looks more faithful to the original game when you do that.
The combat isn't great it feels really clunky very poor hit detection.

 

[JDR13]

Wander around for a bit and then come back to an old area - It'll be absolutely crawling.

I was wandering through the same areas pretty much the entire demo and i've only seen monsters respawn only a couple of times and the respawn happened only once (ie. after killing them again they didn't respawn). One of the most common areas for monsters to respawn in the original game is around the room where you wake up, which is a place i visited several times to refill my health - in the original you get respawns often around there whereas in the demo it happened only once (though when it happened it was like five mutants waiting for me :-P). It was easy for me to notice the respawns since in the original i abuse them to collect the randomly generated stuff by hitting the mutants with the lead bar :-P this didn't work in the demo though, both because the respawns are much less frequent and because the lead bar doesn't seem to have the same range (and the mutants seem to hit harder, though that might be because i need to come closer to hit them and i get hit more often).

The amount of respawn is affected by the difficulty level you choose, so it's possible he was playing on a different difficulty.

 

[Tacgnol]

Fear is one of the most fun and thrilling human emotions. I feel sorry for you people.

Depends on the type of fear. Retarded jumpscares and/or gratuitous graphical content don't count.

That's what I liked about System Shock 2 back in the day, the game doesn't have many intentional jump scares but it kept a very tense atmosphere.

Good sound design is pretty key to this I think.

 

[Jenkem]

why you want remake to be exactly like same game just play the enhanced edition lol

 

[Bad Sector]

The amount of respawn is affected by the difficulty level you choose, so it's possible he was playing on a different difficulty.

I decided to replay both the original SS1 (well, SS1EE but AFAIK they're the same) until i unlock the elevator and play the demo again. Originally i played the demo at the default difficulty setting (2/3) but now i played it at maximum difficulty for combat (i left the cyberspace and puzzles at 2/3, shouldn't make any difference). I also played the original SS1 at the default setting (3/4), so technically SS1 should be at a lower difficulty.

While there were a few more monsters in the level, they still only respawned once and i went multiple times over the same areas (especially the healing pod area). By the time i had unlocked the elevator everything was dead and nothing to shoot in sight - which was a bit disappointing since i had just picked up the magnum and wanted to try it out :-P. On the other hand in SS1 there were respawning monsters all the time, almost every time i went back to the healing pod area there were new monsters to the point that i collected 52 med patches just from the monsters i killed (and not all of them have those, many had just empty cans). At one point i even had killed every monster in a room only to turn around (literally just turned around, i didn't move) and when i turned back there were three new monsters in front of me :-P.

Regardless, now that i played both one after the other i can easily say that aside from respawning it is a faithful remake and an improvement over the original (I even changed my mind about the sobbing in a couple of recordings since if you think about it those people aren't some hardened marines, but scientists and other civilians... and some of the recordings in the original do not sound that great TBH).

 

[RobotSquirrel]

why you want remake to be exactly like same game just play the enhanced edition lol

Normies couldn't play it so they had to System Shock 2ify it so they could kinda attempt to play it. Didn't work though.
Not sure how I feel about System Shock 2 getting an update though. On one side ok they did a good job with Enhanced Edition on the other side though Please don't touch anything lol.

I'd straight up settle for the same game but with the multiplayer actually working properly this time. No more zone dsync errors plz.

 

[Trithne]

The amount of respawn is affected by the difficulty level you choose, so it's possible he was playing on a different difficulty.

I decided to replay both the original SS1 (well, SS1EE but AFAIK they're the same) until i unlock the elevator and play the demo again. Originally i played the demo at the default difficulty setting (2/3) but now i played it at maximum difficulty for combat (i left the cyberspace and puzzles at 2/3, shouldn't make any difference). I also played the original SS1 at the default setting (3/4), so technically SS1 should be at a lower difficulty.

While there were a few more monsters in the level, they still only respawned once and i went multiple times over the same areas (especially the healing pod area). By the time i had unlocked the elevator everything was dead and nothing to shoot in sight - which was a bit disappointing since i had just picked up the magnum and wanted to try it out :-P. On the other hand in SS1 there were respawning monsters all the time, almost every time i went back to the healing pod area there were new monsters to the point that i collected 52 med patches just from the monsters i killed (and not all of them have those, many had just empty cans). At one point i even had killed every monster in a room only to turn around (literally just turned around, i didn't move) and when i turned back there were three new monsters in front of me :-P.

Regardless, now that i played both one after the other i can easily say that aside from respawning it is a faithful remake and an improvement over the original (I even changed my mind about the sobbing in a couple of recordings since if you think about it those people aren't some hardened marines, but scientists and other civilians... and some of the recordings in the original do not sound that great TBH).

Gotta say that I dunno why you aren't seeing respawns - I get shitloads of them, consistent with the original.

Someone suggested it's tied to difficulties - I've been playing the demo on 3133, but even on combat 2 I saw a fair few respawns.

Alternatively, maybe I'm taking longer and thus giving the game more time to respawn shit.

 

[Bad Sector]

Gotta say that I dunno why you aren't seeing respawns - I get shitloads of them, consistent with the original.

Someone suggested it's tied to difficulties - I've been playing the demo on 3133, but even on combat 2 I saw a fair few respawns.

I did my second demo playthrough at 3122, but i do not think the cyberspace and puzzle difficulties affect respawning. Perhaps i'll try it again tomorrow at 3133 as i am a bit tired now.

Alternatively, maybe I'm taking longer and thus giving the game more time to respawn shit.

First playthrough was a bit above three hours and as i wrote i did see respawning but it didn't repeat, it was only once. The respawn happened somewhat quickly but never after that. I didn't count how long i played the second playthrough but it was certainly above an hour. Regardless in the original game i can see respawns all the time even at the default difficulty, there is barely any wait between them.

Now I wonder if we're playing a different game - ie. Nightdive uploaded a different version of the game on GOG than on Steam (i play the GOG version) :-P.

 

[Beowulf]

I gave the new demo a spin.

It passes the criteria for acceptable FPS game - you can see your character's legs, however the model itself doesn't cast shadows.

I agree with the posters stating that it has this amateurish vibe - and the lack of polish shows everywhere, from the ragdolls restarting every time players enters area with corpses to the enemy spawns placement. The combat also feels somewhat weightless, player character being hit lacks proper feedback. I hope they had time to iron out this kind of issues since they prepared the demo.
I'm also not sold on the low res textures. In original it was mainly to give impression that those screens show something, but the tech limitations allowed for this kind of creative solutions. In SS2 they moved to make at least some text readable. It feels like a cop out under disguise of a "remake".
Other than that I found it quite enjoyable and visually ok with nice atmosphere.

 

[JDR13]

I think it looks and feels great. Not everyone is going to like it of course, but overall it's pretty solid for a game that's not even finished yet.

 

[Beowulf]

I think it looks and feels great. Not everyone is going to like it of course, but overall it's pretty solid for a game that's not even finished yet.

I'm not saying it looks bad. Quite the contrary in fact. But I have some qualms with their choice to go with this retro pixelated look at some places, and high poly in others.
Like I said - the blurry and unreadable screen displays were the limitation of the time; doing it now, especially that everything has some lights in different colours, feels like a cheap solution to me.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

But I have some qualms with their choice to go with this retro pixelated look at some places, and high poly in others.

I agree there, I think its very strange that the frame rate is so bad when the number of texels on the screen per texture are so few. Makes me wonder what the point was in going for that style then if the actual benefit of doing this style just isn't ever utilised fully.
(also incase you think I'm inventing a word texels here's some more info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texel_(graphics) basically its pxiels translated onto a UV surface more texels more resolution but higher cost, in laymans lower texture resolution is good Vram go brrr - this however is untrue for atlasing where you want it as big as possible)

 

[Beowulf]

The spawns on combat 3 can get intense at times.

If only grenade throws were more predictable.