It’s always the way, isn’t it? You’re minding your own business having fun on your computer, then suddenly in come the cyberpunk corporate cops to kick down your door and whisk you away to an immersive sim nightmare on a space station. That’s exactly what happens to you in Night Dive Studios’ System Shock remake, a game about a bad day that only gets worse for your hacker protagonist. Now, this reimagining of the legendary 1994 original has received a huge free patch that adds options for a female player character, overhauls the last boss fight, and more.
Released last year, the System Shock remake is a largely faithful reimagining of the classic immersive sim FPS game, with a few changes to make it easier to play in the modern era. Depending on your tolerance to game design decisions of years past this meant that you could either bounce off the remake, or welcome it as a throwback to a less polished but potentially more adventurous age of gaming. Since launch, developer Night Dive Studios hasn’t stood still, and the colossal 1.2 patch for the game has just launched.
The biggest new update included will require you to start a brand new game as it adds the option to choose your gender when beginning your adventure. While this will have limited impact on the game as you rarely see or hear from yourself, it does mean you’ll have a completely new model and new voiceover grunts for when you inevitably get hammered in the head by a wandering mutant. That said, this is an immersive sim, so adding more options for immersion is extremely welcome.
The other big change regards the end fight against Shodan, the AI who’s gone rampant and taken over Citadel Station. The original fight was a bit of a damp squib, being little more than killing a few enemies and pressing a button to end the game. Now, there’s waves of foes, death lasers to dodge, new weapons to shoot in a greatly improved and more involved boss fight that more fittingly caps off your cyberspace experience.
There’s a load of other fixes and updates thrown into the pot too, from new enemy attacks to improved gamepad support, animation improvements, AI refinements, and more. They’ve even put in quest markers for the easy mission difficulty setting, something very welcome as the setting always said it had mission waypoints. Turns out they were never there, but they are now.
If you’ve been waiting for the right time to start your cyberpunk nightmare, you can grab the System Shock remake for $17.99 with 55% off over on Steam until Thursday, April 25.
Should you now want to unfurl your cyberdeck and wade into grim futures, why not take a peek at our guide to the best cyberpunk games you can play on PC. Or blast off out of the atmosphere with our best space games guide and get a taste of the final frontier.
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