The long-awaited and much-delayed remake of System Shock came out this week, and it was an old mixed bag for me (with an emphasis on “old” there). It’s clearly a labor of love for Nightdive Studios, and in some ways that love is a bit too obvious that they decided to leave the remake as mysterious and luxurious as the original 1992 game.
Don’t just take my word for it: the consensus on the remake is pretty divided, with the game averaging a score of 75 on Metacritic at the time of writing, with plenty of scores appearing in different ways above and below that. Your mileage will vary depending on whether you find yourself frustrated with the maze map design and obscure puzzles, or whether you consider these sorts of things to be part of its outdated charm.
But if you’ve been interested in the kind of immersive sim that the original System Shock helped bring to life, but the remake’s mixed reception gave you pause, rest assured there’s a game out there that acts as a sweet homage to System Shock while feeling firmly. Much more modern, shiny, and (in my opinion) fun than Nightdive’s effort. This game is 2017’s Prey, made by Arkane Studios, which to me is one of the most underrated and easily forgotten recent memory games.
The place of prey is the Talos-1 space station – a shining monument of scientific utopia. A symbol of a brave new world in which nations put aside their insignificant earthly differences in pursuit of a greater understanding of the universe by studying the mysterious Typhon life form. Talos-1’s lavish art design—a bit deco, a bit 60s American, a bit Soviet—makes it look solid, unshakable like a futuristic cosmic pyramid.
Then, as in System Shock, everything goes wrong, as everyone aboard Talos-1 is killed when a mysterious shape-shifting alien species known as the Typhon Break Containment is killed. It’s up to you, Morgan Yu, to try to get things back under control, while still knowing Typhoon’s motives.
To help you out, you’ll have the option to specialize in a number of Neuromods – powers derived from the Typhon, that allow you to do things like shoot super-hot plasma, or transform into random objects, from harmless mugs to cannon turrets at higher levels. Or you can say no to alien powers and instead blast through a human skill tree, embracing skills like hacking, engineering, as well as the fun and original arsenal of weapons at your disposal.
On the other hand, System Shock has a relatively linear progression system. Sure, you may find some upgrades and not others in play, but you’re basically collecting everything you find, and it doesn’t force you to think about your design or how You You want to get closer to the game. To me, this makes System Shock feel mostly like a first-person shooter with a few frills and an inventory rather than a proper immersive simulation that offers myriad ways to tackle obstacles and combat. I’m sure all of those things were groundbreaking in 1994, but I would expect a lot more variety from a game like this in 2023, and Prey delivers.
System Shock’s Citadel station design is cubic, straitened, and confusing—like single-layer Minecraft tunnels designed to get lost in (a relic of ’90s game design, when padding games with fuzzy puzzles and fuzzy navigation was a quick way to “expand” a game). On the other hand, Talos-1 looks like it lives somewhere. With modern architecture and a logically segmented design, you can search through living quarters, corporate offices, and dining halls, and listen to audio records slowly revealing poignant stories among the station’s residents.
Traversing Talos-1 is a lonely, paranoid experience where you constantly wonder if an office chair will suddenly transform into a Typhon and attack, or if there is a Telepath around the corner that will turn those mummified corpses into Phantom enemies. Despite this, Talos-1 is full of humanity. You’ll find game consoles in every common room and sleeping bay, and copies of the trashy sci-fi comic saga, the Starbender series, are dotted throughout the station. You can also find the remains of a tabletop D&D game (called Fatal Fortress, a nod to the early Arkane game Arx Fatalis), complete with character sheets filled with grainy messy handwriting, and a treasure hunt to embark on.
A fitting D&D tribute, because Prey, while not an RPG, shares with board game an open-ended, improvisational approach to each encounter. Encounters with larger Typhons such as Telepaths, Technopaths, and colossal Nightmares are rarely straightforward unless you have combined Neuromods in your weapon skills. Each enemy has its core strengths and weaknesses, so you need to pre-evaluate your environment and look for things that can be used to your advantage; A wall, perhaps, that you can scale with your GLOO Gun into a vantage point, a staccato-spitting fire that you can lure a Typhoon into, or an unexpected alternative entrance to a room (such as via a vent).
Typhon may be a homogeneous group, but encounters with them are unique and situational, shaped by a potent mix of systems and environments that conjure unexpected scenarios. I remember one nightmare encounter in the Arboretum, blocking my way to the main area. I got close to the monster when I turned its back and turned the lumpy shell of a nearby corpse into a friendly phantom. While my big bastard friend kept me busy, I switched myself to a nearby tower and scattered the nightmare while my Penny Held Phantom roamed the area. Once again, I outsmarted the pool-patrolling telepath by heading to the gym area overlooking the pool, smashing glass, then ducking between large light stands as he struggled to reach me.
Prey is not interfering with propelling you along its narrative path. In fact, it’s one step away from being dumped in the lobby and saying ‘Okay, I’m out. Enjoy’. Those early hours of running into prey invite more curious gamers to explore and start trying the GLOO Cannon; throw some balls at the wall and see HOW TO STICK.It’s an eye-opener when you first use GLOO Edges to scale into an area you thought could only be reached by Grav Shaft, or get to a balcony leading to a room for which you needed a key code.It’s a dream for speed runners too, who They use the GLOO Cannon along with glitches in the world’s engineering to skip to any part of the story and space station to their liking, eventually completing the game in a matter of minutes.
System Shock’s remake is an interesting artifact, taking us back to the tough and sloppy designs of the past through the lens of modern (though still charmingly tainted) graphics. On the other hand, the prey pays homage to the shock of the system but evolves Everything On the subject, fully embracing the years of progress the im-sim genre and games as a whole have made in the past 30 years. Both experiences have their merits, but if you want to see modern-day manifestations of many of the great ideas System Shock has to offer (save for the undeniable presence of evil AI SHODAN), then the overlooked gem of Arkane is the best way to do it.
You can get Prey pretty cheap these days, and it’s bundled with Game Pass, too.
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