Reviewing a title like System Shock 2 is always difficult. The original game, as released on PC in 1999 is extremely influential. It would serve as a gameplay predecessor to designer Ken Levine’s followup, Bioshock in 2007. All that being said, it is also an extremely ambitious first-person survival horror meets role-playing game from 1999, and plenty about it has aged. It is also a game that definitely wasn’t designed with controllers in mind. But with Nightdive studios at the helm, I was excited to give this remaster a go.

System Shock 2 technically follows up the original System Shock, though it is largely designed to be a self contained experience. You’ll start the game by going through basic training, and then making a series of character choices that will affect your starting stats. This includes what branch of the military you choose to join, and what assignments you take on in your first few years with them. After this brief tutorial, you awaken on a ship that has clearly been through some sort of disaster. Strange zombie-like creatures roam the halls, bodies litter the floor, and damage is evident everywhere. By picking up audio logs and exploring the ship, you’ll slowly piece together exactly what happened. There is a degree of freedom in how you explore and deal with enemies. A lot can change based on how you develop your character in terms of what abilities you have and what actions you’ll have access to.

This is a very complex game, featuring mechanics smashed together from a variety of genres. It was of course originally intended to be played with a mouse and keyboard. Mapping it to a controller for this remaster is an ambitious goal. Anytime you interact with something or access your inventory, an overlay appears on screen for you to interact with. This then removes your ability to look around, but not necessarily to move. Navigating these often-times multilayered menus is handled via an analogue stick and the d-pad. They’re awkward, clunky, and the game continues unpaused in the background. With a mouse this interface is quick and simple but with a controller it just doesn’t work particularly well.

The remaster itself comes off as relatively light touch, especially compared to the all out remake of the original System Shock. Texture resolution has been improved, some models have improved polygon counts, and on Switch you’ll have the option of activating ambient occlusion which has a mild but pleasant effect on lighting. You also get optional gyro controls. It all runs very well, especially if you’re playing on Switch 2. Like the original game this remaster does not feature any autosave feature. Unfortunately it also doesn’t have a way to map a quicksave to the controller, making saving regularly a tedious trudge through menus.

This is a very straightforward HD release of System Shock 2. This remaster does little to modernize actual gameplay, and playing with a controller is simply not ideal. On a technical level it does exactly what it sets out to do and does it very well. The game itself remains an important release that would lead directly into iconic titles like Bioshock and thus makes for a fascinating historical curiosity. But it is important that you approach System Shock 2 from the right perspective, keeping in mind its ambition at the time of its original release.