I was very excited for a remake with Night Dive at the helm but the more if I see of the game, the worse it looks. This looks/feels nothing like System Shock. Nothing they've shown so far, except SHODAN and the Tri-Optimum sigil, tells me this is System Shock.

You will say I'm superficial or pulling my asscrack hair, but the simple fact of changing the music from a rocking Cyberpunk techno-industrial soundtrack to a generic cinematic/horror soundtrack COMPLETELY and UTTERLY changes the game's identity. Such a small change on the surface has drastically altered the game. I also heavily dislike the inclusion of RPG systems in a game that didn't need it. I love System Shock 2 with its hilariously broken and imbalanced RPG systems, but System Shock is an excellent game as it is. System Shock is a Cyberpunk horror dungeon crawler with rocking music, not a generic sci-fi space station horror RPG with cinematic music. I seriously think they don't understand it.

Also, take a listen. System Shock's theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CalFsdE4tA&list=PLF2E2D1B4832DCE95

System Shock Remake's theme: https://soundcloud.com/nightdivestudios/main-title

I don't pretend to be a supreme authority on System Shock, but I certainly would NOT be taking this direction if I were the project lead. I'd try to stick as close to possible to the original's heavy Cyberpunk aesthetic and try to hire Greg LoPiccolo for the soundtrack again, with Eric Brosius at the helm of the sound department. 

Well no, actually. It DID look like System Shock when it was still running under Unity. http://i.imgur.com/1M04dPz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xY9IqCf.jpg

And I mean it has Chris Avellone writing new stuff for it and Robb Waters, the art director on the original, working on it.

But that Unreal 4 video? Looks like any other sci-fi shovelware game you see on Greenlight. This, unnecessary RPG systems and cinematic soundtrack to 'enhance' the horror aspect while completely misunderstanding what the original's tone was makes me incredibly wary of it, and honestly disappointed by the turn of events. Really feels like I dodged a bullet by not backing this, and I'm not the only one. 

If you're done spunk-baptising Grim Dawn, now may be a good opportunity to give Dark Souls another try - a new mouse fix has been released which apparently works much better than older solutions: http://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/862-dark-souls-mouse-fix/

Features
* True raw mouse input without controller emulation
* No additional smoothing or acceleration
* Flexible options such as individual horizontal and vertical sensitivities for camera movement and bow aiming
* Allows any action to be bound to any mouse button, the mouse wheel or keyboard key
* UI Auto Cursor mode that enables and disables the cursor whether a menu is open or not
* Improved target switching
* Includes a GUI for easy configuration
* Compatible with DSFix 

Nah thanks I got loads more games to play. Also I got burnt once wasting a few hours trying to get DS to work, that's enough already. But cheers anyway. 

Okay I got into it properly.

Still clunky as fuck with the constant jarring jumps to 3rd person anims, the super long-winded dealings with merchants (click on merchant, listen to their intro, choose to buy, only THEN go into their sales computer, then reverse the whole fucking procedure to leave - WHY NOT JUST HAVE ONE FUCKING CLICK TO ACCESS THE COMPUTER ONCE YOU'VE INTRODUCED YOURSELF TO THE MERCHANT THE FIRST TIME), and the totally broken mouse rebinds that means that if mouse is bound to movement, it still applies as movement inside inventory menus, so that whenever you try to left/right click on an item, it moves up/down to an adjacent item, so inventory and augment functions require endless juggling to get the right items selected - this didn't happen in DX3 so why fucking break it now??

Anyway....

The good stuff, in order:

1. It's a giant secret-collecting sim. There's a ridiculous amount to explore and almost every little nook and cranny rewards you with some loot or progressive information. I spent over 24 hours in the first two smallish maps, I reckon you could do the main quest parts in 2 hours in sidequests in 4 hours, the rest has just been exploring around and I didn't get bored and hardly retraced my steps apart from trying a lot to thoroughly raid the bank.

2. There's a lot more cool details and designs in the city than it first appears. I was initially underwhelmed by the graphics, once I got used to the mediocre face quality and turned the awful AO off, it looks okay, but the more you look around the more is appealing. The Palisade bank is a case in point, some real nice use of very square designs and polished textures.

3. The blend of old and new is done pretty well. Pretty standard old city buildings that are slowly being crowded by slick near future developments. Quite a good extrapolation of how it actually happens today and kinda captures the vibe of new money and tech coming into an old culture.

4. The people you meet have some character. Not quite enough to compensate for Plank O' Jensen's anti-character, but some of them are fairly entertaining in a grumpy Eastern European / spazzed out post-gen-X sort of way.

5. See 1. 

 

Though I think they're misguided with their System Shock remake by changing the game far too much. 

....that should be fine. 

Okay....

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=879057910
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=879058051
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=879059675
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=879060039

Possible spoilers for mid-game aesthetic, although not story. Industrial spunkfest. 

Lovely visuals and just a fun time. 

No it wouldn't. System Shock is not a decent game, it's a masterpiece and a milestone in gaming. I dare say it's one of the most important games ever made. It's a game that was way, way ahead of its time both in terms of narration in a first person game as well as technology and gameplay mechanics everybody takes for granted nowadays.

Without System Shock (and by extension Ultima Underworld 1 and 2), there would be no immersive games like Deus Ex, Bioshock or more recently Dishonored and Arkane's Prey. The legacy of System Shock is found in almost every game that came afterwards, despite the game doing a bit timidly at the time, overshadowed by Doom 2 and other simpler FPS (not a pejorative in this context ofc).

A remake of such a game being only 'decent' would be plain unacceptable. 

The fact that people are still not aware of how and why System Shock or any other very important title is so important is because there is next to zero gaming history and historians curating it. There's nothing like a film or literature history for games.

Here's a very interesting article written by Felipe Pepe on the matter: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/FelipePepe/20150211/236041/The_Ministry_of_Hype_The_danger_of_letting_the_gaming_industry_curate_its_own_history.php 

Never played SS myself. And if the remake is decent, I am going to accept the fuck out of it.

:p 

A bit over dramatic don't you think?

I mean, if one great piece of artistic work is never created that doesn't shut down human creativity in the slightest.

Now, all this reboot/remaster/remake shit that's happening, that can have an affect that is chilling. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mir02TwFjtA 

It doesn't shut down human creativity, but all these games I named are direct descendants of System Shock and Ultima Underworld. Even Wolfenstein 3d and Doom are descendants of Ultima Underworld, because Carmack thought he could do a better engine than Looking Glass' in less time. 

Top trolling starbuck ;) 

Never have I been so apathetic about a game carrying the "quake" label. Well, maybe other than Quake Wars - I think my give-a-shit-o-meter was actually reading negative on that one. 

But Quake Champions seems incredibly meh, and this is coming from someone who's played a fair share of both QuakeWorld and Quake Live. The art direction just seems incredibly bland and uninspired, some elements look like they were pulled straight from a different game (weapon models from UT, Clutch player model from Reflex) and others look completely out of place in a Quake game (Sorlag looks more like something you'd encounter in an Elder Scrolls game). And I'm not a fan of the whole abilities aspect, why try to revive Quake with a game that goes against one of the fundamental draws of the series? I'd rather just play Overwatch (which I do), which is an entirely different game and doesn't try to be Quake or any arena fps.

Pass. 

 

id and God-Mode Games.

I'm not super hopeful about it, but there was never any chance they would (or should) just clone Quake Live with new graphics. If they want to tweak it a bit with some gameplay differences between the character models, whatevs. I'll be interested to see if or how that works out. 

Sorry, the other developer is actually Saber (who developed a game called God Mode). 

I never played SS either. I would have if I knew it was this amazing piece of history in gaming, but it kind of just flew under the radar for me while I was playing more standard shooters like Doom, Hexen, Heretic, ROTT, Dark Forces.

That new trailer looks just like a standard survival horror indie game. The voice is nice but over the top. The design just looks like copy/pasted corridors. The combat looks awful. It's not even clear when you hit the enemy, they're just standing there button mashing.

Although, I didn't mind that main theme after listening to it as a comparison to the old one https://soundcloud.com/nightdivestudios/main-title
That's pretty sweet. I'd rather have that over my game then some thrashing techno giving me a headache. Maybe I'm getting old. 

First person shooters according to wikipedia

2005: 44
2013: 20
2014: 7
2015: 5
2016: 9

Damn, did FPS's die a horrible death at the end of 2013? 

CHAMPIONS
WILL
RISE

I am so hyped, it looks amazing! Jokes. Really is quite horrifically bland. I guess this was to be expected so at least the letdown levels are equally average.