Recent reviews by chocolatekake

I want to play the game. Please let me play the game.

While I do recommend the game and think it's really good overall, I did have a lot of small issues. Also, as with most co-op focused games, it's much better with a team of players, but it's still enjoyable playing solo.

For the majority of my time I joined a friend with them as host and this in itself was the source of most issues.
- Unfortunately, you can't develop items while in someone else's lobby. It doesn't matter too much, because mission availability and weapon/powerup drops are based on what the host has unlocked, but it would be nice to be able to unlock new cosmetics at least.
- Mission progress also didn't count at first. The first 4 or 5 levels we did together, but then I had to go back and complete them again on my own in order to progress further while playing solo. Oddly, every level we completed after that was properly tracked. This may be because I had developed all the level unlock requirements before we resumed playing, but I'm not sure.
- There are a few levels with challenge rooms that, upon completion, award a new cosmetic item. However, all but one of them only unlocked for the host and I again had to replay the levels on my own to unlock those rewards.
- For some reason, when stacked together on top of the replicas, there's a small input delay while controlling the movement of the replica beneath. This delay was even more noticeable when playing co-op and led to a number of missed jumps and some unnecessary damage.
- The replicas AI was notably worse when playing co-op, especially during the auto-scrolling stages. I had minor problems playing solo, but they generally followed orders, unlike co-op where they would semi-regularly ignore commands or stand around instead of shooting.
- We also had to restart a level due to a bug that prevented an enemy from dying, but it only happened once.

Despite all that, the game is a lot of fun and I was still having a good time even when those problems arose. The magnet dash and stacking/bouncing mechanics are especially cool and fairly well utilized in every level. The weapon variety is also pretty nice with some unique weapons like the loop grenade and slow-down shot.

The story was surprisingly funny and doesn't feel like just a throwaway addition to pad out a co-op focused game. The story missions themselves don't overstay their welcome and getting through them all doesn't take all that long. But there is a lot of replay value in the patrols and simulations, which offer even more variety.

The vibrant, naturalistic, yet tech-filled environments and strange enemies are beautifully designed and the visual effects of the glitches warping geometry and colors bring out the charm of the corrupted internet world the game takes place in. The friendly AI characters and the Busters team are super cute and expressive too, which really endeared them to me. And the goofy faces the player characters make when stacking or ending the levels adds a lot of personality to otherwise silent avatars.

The music is nice as well. While nothing blew me away, it's quite a solid list of compositions. More specifically, all of the music in the final world, some of the bosses and the lobby music are my favorites.

Ignore the inflated hours, game's fun but not that fun. The .exe just doesn't close properly and constantly racked up time while I was sleeping and I spent a lot of time idling for research (should probably be around 900 hours actually playing the game). Probably the biggest problem is the always online garbage and the overabundance of microtransactions. The game does reward you with some pocket change of the paid currency for free, but it's bad practice to have it at all.

Single player:
A pretty solid mix of MGS3 and MGSV. Some of the survival mechanics from Snake Eater return with a vengeance, the game saves infrequently enough to make it more challenging as well. The stealth and movement mechanics are largely intact from The Phantom Pain which, with the new enemies, ends up feeling kind of like Metal Gear + Silent Hill. Crew management from MGSV and PW returns for the base building, but is more annoying this time because you can't fire staff. The story is actually moderately interesting, but unfortunately is delivered primarily via slideshow and the player character has nothing going for them. Too many gameplay interactions are slow and boring, lots and lots of holding buttons while waiting for the things to happen. Asset reuse is hit and miss, some of the locations you revisit from MGSV are utilized well, but with how empty the world is in some places, more reuse actually would have been preferred in this case.

Co-op:
This is where most people will probably find the fun in the game, but you do need to do a decent amount of story progress before this game mode is a viable choice. Leveling can be very, very slow, but it's mostly a good time if you've got friends to play with. The content is a little light: only 5 maps (2 mostly original, 3 basically straight from MGSV) with 3 variations on enemy spawns and 3 difficulties. The 4 different classes don't feel all that well balanced, Scout is too good and basically all most people play and there isn't a lot of synergy between the classes (even a Medic and Assault combo isn't really that good, just ok). Events and daily condition modifiers help give it more life, but they really dropped the ball on keeping it updated with new content to keep the game alive. It's fun to play in repurposed MGSV outposts, it's a shame that we didn't get more.

All in all: lots of promise, only partially delivered, but a solid enough foundation that still makes it worthwhile on sale.

Unfortunately there are a lot of small annoyances that I ran into, so I'm going to list my problems before getting to the positives. First the problems that remain after the 1.2 patch, then the ones I originally listed that were fixed.

- Some items are hard or impossible to grab.
- The automap is mostly fine, but given that you need to carefully examine it to find a number of secrets, having lots of corners and hallways not completely filling out despite having no secrets, makes it harder to find the actual secrets.
- "Read log" and "take all" are bound to the same key and you can't rebind them separately, and most important hardware functions (energy shield, enviropack, turbo boots) are simply not bound by default.
- With the MFD open, you can click and drag the screen to rotate your viewpoint, but this doesn't lock the mouse's position, so if you click on the left side of the screen, you can't look very far left. Additionally, this means that if you drag your mouse all the way to the side, you need to release the button and re-center it yourself in order to turn more.
- There was no music for the majority of my time on level 8.

Also, even with slightly better than recommended hardware (i7-4790k, 4GB GTX 970 and 16 GB RAM) the stuttering was a HUGE problem, even on the lowest settings. Lots of sections brought me down to 15-30 fps, meanwhile Steam said it was a constant 60. Walking through areas I had already been to, with no taxing effects, I'd see drops to around 30 or 40 fps. And maximum settings fluctuated between 30-50 fps, so I'm not sure why those hardware specifications are recommended when it performs so poorly. This was somewhat improved with the 1.2 patch, but it was still very noticeable and quite a bit of a problem at a few moments.

Problems that were fixed in the 1.2 update:
- Items will sometimes clip into or below the floor. (I didn't see any issues on a new playthrough.)
- Menuing is mostly not a problem, even with the new inventory system. However, vaporizing items is a slow process and with how frequently the game expects you to use this feature, it could be bound to a key, but isn't. (There is now a vaporize all key, though it is not listed nor rebindable in the options menu.)
- First person animations tend to be too long. If you're in the middle of combat and need to heal, there's a chance you'll die before the animation to heal finishes. Similarly, with berserk patches it takes so long to apply the patch and then have the animation for drawing your weapon before you can actually swing at anything. (While the first-aid kit animation is still long, the patch animations have been sped up considerably making this less of an issue.)
- The perma-death animation is long and unskippable. (It can now be skipped.)
- The final boss is a bit drawn out and underwhelming. (The new boss fight is pretty good, nothing amazing, but neither is the final boss in the original or even the one in the more appreciated sequel. However, it is still fairly long and difficult as there is now perma-death when dying within it, whereas before dying was of no consequence.)
- Not important to the game itself, but a number of achievements are also bugged and don't unlock properly. (I already managed to unlock them all, but it seems this was fixed.)

These issues weren't enough to ruin the game, but they were still a bit of trouble.
As for the good parts...

I'm glad that Nightdive stuck with the general layout of all the levels and the changes that they made are mostly good, such as adding shortcuts. I've seen some people complaining about how the level design is "bad" or "archaic" or even "nonexistent", but it's important to remember that the previous games the developers of the original made were dungeon crawlers, and that carries into System Shock as well. It seems like in searching for "immersive sims" these people might be putting more weight on the level design itself (or rather how easily they can find their goal or how "realistic" Citadel is), rather than how the level design allows for the player to use the game mechanics to navigate and interact with it. Deus Ex and System Shock 2 have very "modern and approachable" level design compared to the "antiquated" mazes of Citadel, only if you forget about games like Legend of Grimrock and Etrian Odyssey continuing this tradition of labyrinthine maps. I think if people come to this game understanding that, in some ways it's less like BioShock and more like Wizardry, they'd have a better idea of what to expect and be less harsh on it.

The new puzzles are great. The wire puzzles in the original weren't the most intuitive, so the new design I think is an improvement. But, there's no tutorial unless you look at the also unmentioned .pdf manual in the install directory, so you have to figure out the surprisingly complex mechanics (compared to circuit puzzles) on your own. The new circuit puzzles are not better or worse, but they seem a bit simpler than the originals, still they are fun to solve and are easier to grasp the concept of than the wire puzzles. On difficulty 3, wire puzzles in the original were perfect for logic probes, due to how trial and error they were. But I actually prefer solving all the puzzles in the remake instead of skipping them.

Visually, it looks fantastic. Really nice updates to bring the old enemy sprites into 3D and the environments look beautiful as well, with tons of new detailing added all over like restrooms and additional clutter. The pixelated textures fit the blocky design of the station very well.

Music was mostly just ok for me, good moody tracks that I enjoy on their own merit, but they're tonally different than the original and I don't feel the new tone fits as well.

I think the weapon upgrade system and grid inventory taken from System Shock 2 were great additions. Being able to carry the SparqBeam all the way to Level 9 and have it be useful the whole time is cool.

Overall, I appreciate the effort to recreate the game fairly faithfully and the return to this design after years of trouble. I still think System Shock: Enhanced Edition is quite easy to get the hang of and would recommend that version over this to anybody who isn't put off by "outdated" things. This version is a good substitute though, to any who may find the original too hard to stomach, and a good remake for any who enjoyed the original.

Thief is a very flawed game. Surprising probably not many that played the original trilogy. Abound with fun and a lack of it both, there's much to find disappointing. Though fortunately not much to find overly maddening. Aside from the first boss fight, which is seriously one of the worst designed fights I've seen in a long time. If you want a "Thief" game, there's a good chance this won't fill that desire, but it's ok enough as a way to pass some time.

One of its many problems is in the characters. In the first level, the tutorial, you're introduced to a brash character who's at moral odds with the player character and is kind of obnoxious in her dialogue and actions. Furthermore, while the game still takes place in The City and the player is again Garrett the master thief, this new character Erin, has never appeared before. So when she (spoiler alert) dies at the end of the tutorial level, there's no reason to care about her. There's no history to make up for the lack of appeal she possesses as a character. Therefore her importance in the plot feels unnatural, as I don't care about this character and don't see why Garrett should either. Similarly, Garrett's fence friend Basso, is "charismatic" and "charming" in a way that comes off as almost more of a poorly executed LARPer than a longtime friend I actually wanted to interact with. Meanwhile, the "bad cop" Thief-Taker General is fairly cartoonishly evil whenever he makes an appearance, befitting his Snidely Whiplash mustache. I wasn't sure whether to take him as a serious threat or just laugh at him. The overall plot is nothing to write home about, be it particularly good news or bad. But small details here and there and a number of the primary characters pull the whole thing downwards and apart. One redemption is a number of incidental dialogue bits and some of the documents found scattered around that do provide interest and humor.

Gameplay has taken some odd turns, most notably in how limiting many of its mechanics are. Jumping and the use of rope arrows to facilitate vertical mobility have been reduced to context sensitive actions. Even dropping down off of buildings is context sensitive in that it (most of the time) will prevent the player from falling to their death. But these restrictions don't feel like aids to improve the game's fairness, but simply...well, restrictions. It's frustrating to be able to do things only when the game tells you to, when one of the principles of design in the older games was freedom. Sure, it isn't necessary to jump most of the time, but it shouldn't be necessary to remove the option to jump. Button mashing sequences are present as well, but in a binary manner where progress is either being made or undone, where a single press really would have been enough.

Enemy AI is pretty buggy and their behavior will often pull a literal 180° when loading a save. If you're sneaking behind an enemy and save, when you load there's a good chance they'll turn right around and ruin any chance for stealth. Sometimes it's a coin toss whether something you do is seen or heard by whatever aggressors stand nearby. Birds that will alert guards if you move too quickly by them can't be heard at all or seen very well from a distance, nor around corners, making them potentially one of the most threatening presences in any given level. Overall, the situational awareness afforded the player is given mostly by sight, as sound cues are significantly less helpful than I remember them being in the older games.

Design is mishandled at best (most of the time) and seemingly neglected at worst. Level design suffers from modern concessions such as points of no return (untelegraphed ones at that), and consequently linear, forward progression rather than an open, roaming progression.

The City of today and the missions surrounding it take some inspiration from The City of old (insofar as practically cribbing a level straight out of the third game), but are all so samey and bland that they miss the mark of what really made the setting interesting. See one very old building with a hint of steamwork and electricity, you've seen them all. Which is unfortunately about as varied as the visuals get. The only level that really shook things up a bit was the underground cave brothel and maybe the burning bridge, but the overworld is filled with copy/paste looking architecture and clutter with only two real distinct areas.

The music, while serviceable and pretty decent on its own merit, doesn't really fit, apart from one or two standout tracks. Not recruiting the composer of the first three games, Eric Brosius, was a loss for this one.

On the other hand, the game crashed significantly less than other games I've played. Still a non-zero amount, but much less, regardless.

I only tried playing a bit of System Shock without mouselook before this and unfortunately gave up, so the integrated mouselook was essential, but I did eventually go back and play the DOS version which I'll mention at the end.

There are some moments that can be frustrating with regards to enemies, but overall the combat is fairly well paced. Most of the weapons were neat enough, but I favor the laser rapier and flechette.
Cyberspace is kind of weird and trying to manipulate the hitbox of the avatar through the obstacles got tough in the late game. But the whole thing seems like a neat idea that could be improved with better feedback in combat and maybe a better defined player hitbox.

The methods through which the player interacts with the world and inventory is weird at first, but really pulled me into it the whole time, even at the start. The ways the complex character movement and item/weapon management connects the player to the world is so engaging that it makes it hard to stop playing. Even how the game can halt in action as you try to solve an incredibly complicated wire puzzle really makes you feel like the hacker.
Each level is intriguing and tons of fun to explore. The level theming is cool, and the environments look pretty good, though a bit samey at times which does lend some assistance to its realistic feeling, instead of feeling "video gamey", I suppose. But the level designs themselves are solid and cohesive as world elements and as mechanisms to propel the player forward. And there are lots of secrets that are a joy to discover all over the station.
The story is also excellent, with SHODAN always only one step ahead or behind the player as they try to cut off each other's plans at multiple points. The desperate search for contact with any remaining humans being consistently just out of reach is compelling as well.
Every piece of the soundtrack is nonstop quality, especially the Executive and Security themes. These compositions are so strong that even their maligned midi origins carry them and produce songs that get stuck in my head constantly.

Very few times have I been so drawn into a game and consumed by it, it's easy to see a whole here that clearly surpasses the sum of its already stellar parts. In these regards, it's the best Shock game hands down.

System Shock: Classic is a bit harder to get into, not because it's difficult to play, but just that years of modern keyboard controls meant learning a new layout. After an hour or so I started to get the hang of it and got pretty used to it, but even after 8 hours I would frequently press the wrong keys under pressure. Other than that, it has the old dynamic music and has some other minor quirks absent from Enhanced Edition. I would still recommend Enhanced Edition over Classic for ease of use, but Classic is still perfectly playable and worth seeing. The only problem is that you need to limit your CPU via the "dosbox_systemshock.conf" file in order to beat Shodan. I found 40000 cycles worked well without slowing the rest of the game down.

Pretty very good.

The best multiplayer fun there is.

Definitely in top 5 3D platformers ever. Easily challenges Mario and Banjo-Kazooie.

A few cool and interesting moments weren't really enough to save this game from being as much of a disappointment as it was, and that was without having any expectations at all.

It relies an uncomfortable amount on jump-scares with obnoxiously loud noises, stupidly placed enemy spawns and deadly surprises that force trial and error. Some of the actually creepy parts are pretty cool, but it was a chore playing through the rest of the game just to get to those moments, which are few and far between.

The story is interesting, which is a shame that the gameplay dragged it down so much.

There are a few stability issues, problems with AI and buggy/frustrating clipping (walls, tables, vents, ledges, etc.), which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the tape recorders being the only possible way of saving your game. Also frustrating is that one of the most useful abilities, being able to quickly dual wield without fiddling around with the inventory, isn't even explained at all in the game.

Finally, while the developer's commentary was interesting to listen to, to hear their dedication to making a nice LOOKING experience (and they definitely did a good job with such and old engine), it seemed pretty clear that they knew next to nothing about good level design.

This is indeed a free game, but that doesn't excuse it from being as poorly
made as it is.