The immersive sim has seen a revival in recent years. Not only from larger studios like Arkane, keeping the faith alive with their time loops and space stations, but also from a bunch of smaller developers bravely exploring a typically ambitious genre. RPS has always had an affinity for these systemically luxuriant simulations, historically lauding the likes of the original Deus Ex as the best game ever made. But given everything that has come since, is that still the case? Only one way to find out: make a big list.
]]>A big 'ol patch is coming to the System Shock remake next Thursday, headlined by "[reworking] the entire final fight with new mechanics and a unique flow" and adding a female character option for our hacker. Update 1.2 will also tweak and fix and fiddle with heaps of other things. Our System Shock review called it "a breathtakingly beautiful and astonishingly faithful remake that proves the enduring power of Looking Glass design" when it launched last year, though I would say System Shock's final battle is one of the most dated parts, so I'm curious to see the new form.
]]>Welcome to my first selection box for Rock Paper Shotgun, where I get to pick my favourite games of 2023 that didn't make it into our Advent Calendar draw. In anticipation of your judgment incoming, I'd like to preface this list by saying I didn't play nearly as many games as I should have this year (something echoed by other RPS staffers). My pile of shame is ever-growing, but here are a few games I did play and actually liked.
]]>Cor, there's been a lot of games this year, haven't there? While I've only slapped one Bestest Best badge down in 2023 (woe is me), our lovely freelancers, current RPSers, and former RPSers have done a whole lot more badge-slapping. A grand total of 26 Bestest Bests have graced our monitors this year, which makes it three more than last year's Bestest Best round-up. And I'd say it's a nice mixture of big budget open worlders, puzzle gems, and indie delights that make up our roster for 2023, too.
So yeah, I'd encourage you to have a flick through the list below and see if there's anything you can add to the wishlist. Even as the person with "Reviews" in their job title, I can confirm I literally have loads of these Bestest Bests in my backlog. I will endeavour to play a handful over this Christmas break on my Steam Deck, maybe combining the experience with a nibble on a mince pie. Anyway, enjoy! And Merry Reviewsmas!
]]>"I was looking up our Wikipedia page to see what happened this year," says Nightdive Studios' CEO Stephen Kick as we sit down to chat. That might seem like an odd thing to say about your own company's activities. But when you look at what Nightdive have done in the last twelve months, it's less surprising. In March, Nightdive announced they were being acquired by Atari in a deal worth $10 million. In May, they released their long-anticipated remake of System Shock, in development for eight years. July brought Rise Of The Triad: Ludicrous Edition, while August saw the release of Quake 2 Remastered, and a remaster of Turok 3 arrived at the end of November. Nightdive are currently working on an overhaul of Star Wars: Dark Forces, due out in 2024.
In short, it's been a busy year for the remastering maestros. In the wider context of 2023, which has been simultaneously a banner games and a deeply worrying year for the people making them, I wanted to know how Nightdive view the last twelve months, and what the audience response to these projects means for the studio's future.
]]>Stephen Kick, CEO of Nightdive Studios, has said he'd love to remaster Epic's 90s FPS Unreal. Not familiar with Nightdive? They're the team behind this May's triumphant System Shock remake, which Jeremy Peel described in his review as "a breathtakingly beautiful and astonishingly faithful remake that proves the enduring power of Looking Glass design". They're also the studio behind last week's surprise-released Quake 2 remaster, and a bunch of other classic 90s remasters including the PC version of DOOM 64 and Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition. It's safe to say they know how to pull off a retro (sorry, Kamiya-san) comeback.
]]>It’s been about an hour since Evelyn Mansell - one of the lead art directors on the System Shock remake - and I started talking about guns. Specifically the big, daft chunky guns that she worked on, but also about videogame guns in general - what makes them tick. What separates a good one from a bad one. Whether or not Doom 3’s shotgun is one of the good ones (it is).
If there’s one area where all of the remake’s ideas truly come together and shine, it’s in the weapons. There wasn’t much to see in the original - nothing beyond the tip of a barrel. Here, the weapons are very much the star of the show. Heavy, industrial things covered in thumb-print smeared LCD screens and superfluous greeblies. NERF guns that've been painted by a 12-year-old and covered in spaceship parts. These are the toy guns you would have wanted for Christmas, and I wanted to know more about them.
]]>“Oh yeah, we’ve got the System Shock IP,” said the insurance company. “What do you want to do with it? Do you want to make a sequel?”
It’s a question you could imagine being posed to Ken Levine, or Warren Spector, or several other notable designers who could reasonably lay claim to the legacy of Looking Glass and Irrational’s legendary immersive sims. Instead, it was asked of Stephen Kick - at the time, a recently unemployed videogame artist holidaying in a Guatemalan hostel. Up until that point, Kick had dedicated his life to creative pursuits. He had no business background, and none of the acumen required to understand contracts or negotiate licensing fees. More to the point, he had no more than $5,000 to his name. Hardly the foundation for a follow-up to two of the most acclaimed PC games of all time.
]]>You didn’t hear it from me, but games look different now to how they did in 1994. Mmm. Nonetheless, Nightdive Studio’s System Shock remake stays resolutely faithful to the Looking Glass original even when giving it a modern 3D makeover, with a retro flourish in its intentionally pixellated textures.
As a snappy little After Eight to the main course of Jeremy Peel’s review and OG System Shock oral history (both great, do go read those first), here’s a look at how the 2023 remake’s visuals compare to the trailblazing immsim’s previous iterations. In other words, the 2015 System Shock: Enhanced Edition, also by Nightdive, and the original. Well, System Shock Classic, which is basically the original except it runs on my PC.
]]>For a certain sort of PC gaming fan, System Shock is where it all began. 30 years of immersive sim development started here, as Looking Glass escaped the restraints of the RPG genre and embraced thoughtful first-person action. SHODAN broke free, and the world was never the same. Without System Shock, there would be no Thief or Gloomwood, no Prey or Dead Space. Bioshock was conceived as its sequel. The creative figureheads behind Deus Ex and Dishonored were wrapped up in its creation, and forever changed by contact with Looking Glass and its unique philosophy.
Countless studios have used Citadel Station as a star to steer by, measuring their own work against System Shock’s commitment to simulation, dense atmosphere, and method-ish refusal to break character. This was not so much a game as an alternate reality. As one of our interviewees tells us: “We were trying to build the holodeck.”
Here’s the story of how it was made, as told by the people who made it.
]]>Developer Nightdive Studios were hoping to release their System Shock remake by the end of March, but they’ve had to push the PC release to later this year, now locking in a May 30th release date. The immersive sim will release on consoles at a later date, but PC players can experience the classic this summer, complete with a facelift and a space station full of other changes.
]]>With a March release window already locked in, we won’t need to wait much longer to experience developer Nightdive’s System Shock remake. The 1994 immersive sim is receiving more than just a facelift, though, as Nightdive have released more new clips of the game in action over on their Kickstarter blog. Nightdive’s first blog post of the year gives us fresh looks at the game’s enemy variants, visual updates, and most importantly, its bloody cool dismemberment system.
]]>A release window for Nightdive Studios’ long-in-development remake of sci-fi immersive sim System Shock has popped up on Steam, like a rogue AI on a futuristic space station terminal. Nightdive now appear to be aiming for a March 2023 release for System Shock, according to the game’s recently updated Steam store page. Although there’s nothing more than that, and Nightdive haven’t announced anything themselves, it’s a step forward for the game.
]]>It's been six months since the last time we got an eyefull of Shodan mark 3, the AI villainess of OtherSide Entertainment's upcoming System Shock sequel. Now in a new pre-alpha gameplay trailer we finally get see 'er in action. The studio released the video earlier today, giving a slightly clearer picture of the revamped universe of System Shock 3 and its unfortunate denizens who are out there living their lives, being ripped apart by machines and attacked by mutants. Shodan also appears to have gone under the knife herself, cosmetically-speaking, at some point since the last time we saw her.
But that's for after the jump.
]]>It’s a bit tricky to knock together a list of the best upcoming stealth games, because it’s a bit tricky to say what a stealth game even is anymore. Stealth is more frequently looking like a playstyle or bulletpoint rather than the crux of an entire game. Even the best stealth games in recent memory - yer Invisible Incs, Ian Hitmans, Alien: Isolations - have all layered their stealth within towering trifles of genre mashups. And that’s good! It just means we've had to flex the definition for this list.
Below, I’ve gathered together a few of the best upcoming stealth games that I’ve got my ridiculously over powered, patrol pattern-sensing eye on. Some of these aren’t strictly genre adherent, but all offer stealthy play as at least core element. Do feel free to suggest your own upcoming games in the comments.
]]>Not too long ago, we reported that things were sounding a bit wobbly over on the System Shock remake's Kickstarter page. Plans to divert from a pure remake to redesign the game from the ground up had spiraled out of control, and money was running low.
While some less optimistic folks took this as a death knell for the project and declared it done and dusted at the time, the reality of the situation doesn't seem to be nearly so dramatic. The game is officially back on track using their previous design, but it has come at a cost of time.
]]>Am I being a mad old man or does this look quite different to the bluer, brighter, System Shockier demo put out to publicise Night Dive's System Shock Reboot [official site] Kickstarter last Summer?
In this matter at least, I am confident my sanity is unaffected. For as well as an apparent shift in its art direction to something more traditionally sci-fi/horror, SSR has hopped from Unity to the Unreal engine, resulting in a very different-looking game. Better in many way, yes, but perhaps less like the 1994 original. Take a look below, and hear Night Dive's reasoning for the ol'switcheroo.
]]>Nightdive's System Shock [official site] remake will be coming to Mac and Linux, with the project having passed the $1.1m mark on Kickstarter and hitting the relevant stretch goal. In announcing the additional platforms, the developers have also taken the opportunity to alter one of their other stretch goals. The $1.4m target had initially read "RPG elements" and Nightdive have acknowledged that "it was vague and misleading". Now, they'll be adding more maps if they reach $1.4m and those RPG elements will be included whatever the final figure. Here's what that means.
]]>At this year's Develop conference in Brighton, I grabbed an hour with keynote speaker Luke Crane, Head of Games at Kickstarter, to talk about the state of play of videogames on the crowdfunding platform in 2016. Discussed: what makes a good project now, the odds of making it, 'Kickstarter fatigue' and the question of glory days, Kickstarter's reaction to funded projects that are not then released, the importance of community, how the press can be unhelpful and whether or not famous names are dominating the ecosystem at the expense of smaller developers.
]]>This one was never in doubt, but it's nonetheless a relief to see that, yes, the world still cares about System Shock and, yes, Kickstarter can still drum up a ton of cash for videogames. Just so long as those videogames are related to videogames we loved when we were kids, I guess. With $970,000 of its requested $900,000 in the bag and 16 days left on the Kickclock, we can expect Nightdive's System Shock Reboot to handily pass the $1m mark.
Sadly most of the stretch goals are pretty dull unless you're a Macker, a Linuteer or prefer non-English dialogue, but if it makes it all the way to $1.3m they intend to add new locations and dialogue. Heresy! Delightfully intriguing heresy!
]]>Suddenly, we have an embarrassment of System Shock riches. First System Shock Enhanced, then a Warren Spector-augmented System Shock 3, and now System Shock Reboot, a total remastering of the first game. It's just poor old System Shock 2 that's left in the cold, as EA jealously guard the rights to the sci-horror series' most acclaimed instalment. That's another day's concern, though: right now, let's talk about the free alpha demo released to promote System Shock Reboot's Kickstarter. When they say 'reimagining', just how much similarity and how much change does that actually mean? It's compare and contrast time, chums.
]]>We've talked about it a lot recently, but the reboot of System Shock [official site] is coming — and it's going to need a bit of help through Kickstarter in order to make it. Developers Night Dive Studios are looking for a tidy $900,000 (about £675,000) in order to make their complete remake of System Shock a (hopefully) terrifying reality, and there's even a nifty little demo you can play to help you make up your mind.
]]>Night Dive's remake/reimaging/reboot/rejiggering of the frighteningly important proto-immersive sim System Shock is due for Kickstarter later today, and word is it may include a playable demo. Ahead of that, here's nine minutes of footage from the start of the game that are so impressive that I might have to end my moratorium on the use of the word 'stonking.'
]]>Just when you thought there was one retro-remake that was simply gonna get itself made rather than sing for its supper first, System Shock Remastered [official site] has dropped an upside-down hat on the ground and is fixing passers-by with an anxious smile. NightDive Studio's remastering of SHODAN's first adventure is happening in parallel with OtherSide Entertainment's Warren Spector-assisted System Shock 3, but going on the impressive alpha footage earlier this year is likely to happen first. Presuming the newly-announced Kickstarter works out, anyway.
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