Quest items and healing share the same limited space, so managing your inventory is an essential requirement. Given the limited nature of your inventory you’ll have to make hard choices about which weapons to carry and prioritise the appropriate resources. I was surprised how far these options took the game into first person shooter territory, although there is still some complexity in juggling the guns and ammo best suited to either organic or robotic foes. To begin with, you’ll just have access to a metal pipe and have to get up close and personal with your enemies, but there are a multitude of other weapons to find and choose between as you get deeper into the game. In the first few hours, collecting everything and then either junking or recycling for credits is a necessity, but this busy work drops away as your offensive options increase. This aspect is compounded early on by being able to pick up everything you can see (albeit with the restrictions a limited inventory). Underneath this lick of paint is almost entirely the same level design and object placement, but there are some added difficulties in actually spotting items in the much busier environments. Gone are the primitive blocks of colours and blocky enemies, replaced with a far more detailed and contemporary aesthetic that breathes a whole new life into the world of Citadel. The first thing players will notice is the Unreal Engine 4 graphical update. Instructed to remove SHODAN’s ethics settings you are then drugged and the screen fades to black, only to wake up in the Capital’s medical bay and have to contend with robots, mutants, and the psychopathic SHODAN herself. Immediately you are rudely interrupted by armed security and ‘persuaded’ to break into the settings of SHODAN, the AI of the Capital space station. After exploring your apartment you click on your laptop and start to hack into Tri-Optium systems.

The cinematic opening of the original is present and correct, although here you immediately get to take control of your unfortunate hacker protagonist.

System shock 2 hacker build