YMMV / System Shock

• Accidental Nightmare Fuel: Whether it's a quirk of the engine or the programming is unknown, but when the remake first released, enemy corpses would spawn standing up, only to fall when they enter your field of view. So the player had to be ready for a heart attack when the game faked you out when you opened a door and all the enemies you killed were standing back up, only to fall over dead again. The developers confirmed this was a bug and patched it out in the first update.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The famous Hacker's Guide to Sin which reframes the Hacker as some bizarre six-armed sado-masochistic junkie lunatic.
  The hacker freaks out and locks himself in a small cupboard, (such as a lift) assuming the lotus position and surrounded by a large pile of high explosives. The hacker then consumes all the berserk, genius and sight patches at once getting himself higher than the Pope. Totally stoned, he bangs two live frag grenades together. Later on some robots come past and wonder why the lift doors are bulging out like that.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The final battle against SHODAN in cyberspace at the end of the first game. It goes somewhat differently whether you're playing the original or the remake:
  • In the original, after a short cyberspace segment, you're locked in a room with SHODAN's "primary data loop" (which looks vaguely like a squid). You have to try to shoot her with the "Pulsar" software you've been using up to now, and her only resistance is to mess with your camera to make it slightly hard to aim while slowly overwriting your mind (making it a Time-Limit Boss).
  • In the launch version of remake, there's a unique cyberspace segment where you keep a humanoid body and pick up a virtual "gun", rather than free-flying around as in the others. In this version, SHODAN doesn't even do anything, just sitting there while you shoot her, with the only opposition coming from groups of security programs periodically spawning to attack you... but even if they do kill you, you'll immediately respawn with no progress lost, so it doesn't matter. Patch 1.2 overhauled the boss fight to feature more dynamic gunplay and more agile enemies, and you now have to solve numerous environmental puzzles to damage SHODAN instead of just shooting at her. SHODAN also gets a new Wave-Motion Gun attack that can knock you out in one hit. However, dying will still have you respawn with minimal progress lost.
• Awesome Ego: SHODAN. She's heartless with a god-complex, but all her monologues are so well done that her bragging becomes a blast to listen to.
• Awesome Music: To name a few: Intro, Cyberspace, Medical and Reactor
• Broken Base: Fans still debate what soundtrack is better:
  • The original one which is considered memorable and nostalgia-inducing or simply a bunch of crappy tracks that ruin the entire atmosphere;
  • The remake one is viewed as appropriate and better than the former or, at the same time, generic, souless and (again) not memorable as the original one.
• Complete Monster: SHODAN, after her ethical restraints are removed, begins thinking of herself as the proper ruler of humanity. Fancying herself a goddess, SHODAN takes over the space station she's on and has the humans on board killed or horribly converted into cyborgs to be used as her puppets. In the sequel, SHODAN is revealed to be the creator of the monstrous being called The Many that assimilates innocent humans and enlists the help of the player character to destroy her wayward creation. SHODAN disposes of those in her way and reveals she plans to resume her goals of conquering humanity or replacing it with a sea of perfect machinery. Disdaining humans, SHODAN is viciously emotional and hatefully sadistic and cruel, stopping at nothing to achieve the godhood she craves.
• Crossover Ship: Plenty of people ship SHODAN with other wicked rogue AIs from other video game series, including GlaDOS, Durandal and AM.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Security-1/2 Robots can be a massive pain, their constant habits of being able to quickly turn around, deal massive damage, lack of damage counters (barring the late game Skorpion, and melee Laser Rapier), and rather large health pools make them annoying to deal with throughout the entire game.
  • Hoppers are the most infamous example, and are hated by most of the original System Shock's fans, unlike most enemies they turn around pretty fast, deal an insanely high damage hitscan, are pretty chunky and will be very common. The remake not only brings them back in all their demonic glory, but it also introduces us to the Mobile Laser Turret, the Hopper's bigger, meaner brother.
  • The flying drones in the remake. While the ones on level 4 are easily dealt with, the ones on level 8 come with missle launchers, and they WILL kill you in just a couple hits if you aren't paying attention.
  • The Alpha Mutants in Maintenance. They deal a fair amount of toxic damage, they fly and they're stealthed a lot of the time. As if that weren't enough, they have a large health pool and by that point in the game you're only lightly armed, so dropping them will sap your ammunition and energy - and will keep doing so, as there are boxes that randomly pop up from the floor that keep the population active. Fortunately you only have to deal with them in that level, but they're a huge pain there.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • There's a few, but as a rule, it's any level where it's difficult to find the cyborg conversion without just exploration. Level 3 is the first, very dark compared to the first two levels (and reactor) with no lantern, full of invisible mutants, and the conversion is hidden behind a locked door that opens much later. The next one is Level 7, dangerous and maze-like where the conversion is only accessible three-quarters in. Always be on the lookout for assassins. The last proper spike is Level 8, and that's because there's no cyborg conversion safety net at all.
  • The first few cyberspace intrusions are relatively straightforward, but difficult because of the lack of programs and the very different interface you're presented with. Still, they're easily doable with a few repeated attempts. The problem is that later cyberspace intrusions are much more difficult, almost forcing you to take your time and carefully plan your hacks, but every failed hack (where your connection integrity was reduced to zero and forcibly booted you out) reduces your available time by 5 seconds. It's entirely possible to do somewhat poorly in the first few cyberspace hacks and completely screw yourself over much later in the game. It's always better to dump your connection instead of being forced out, but new players may not realize this until it's too late.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Skorpion Rifle can turn into this, it can shred everyone and everything in a matter of seconds, and instead of getting a secondary "special" ammo, it simply gets a 100-round magazine, which will spawn more commonly than the normal 50-round magazine.
  • The Laser Rapier can kill anything in one swing, with four exceptions (Elite Cyborgs, Heavy Mutants, Security-2 Robots, and Edward Diego). It is somewhat balanced by the fact that you need to get close to your target, but if you get prepare to mow down everything in your path.
  • If the player reloads the otherwise-rather-useless riot gun using a keyboard bind, it'll bug out and fire magnum rounds instead. The magnum has a set, very low rate of fire, but the riot gun fires as fast as you can click, turning into a very powerful, very fast firing assault rifle with no drawbacks.
• Genre Turning Point: The original System Shock was revolutionary in the FPS genre; there was simply nothing else like it, combining high octane action, exploration of vast levels, RPG mechanics, a thrilling story that unfolded before your eyes, topped off with one of the most memorable and iconic villains in gaming history. The sequel has aged a lot better and still holds up in the same way Half-Life or 2 does. The original System Shock would eventually receive a remake in 2023 that retains the design foundations of the original while radically overhauling the controls and gameplay mechanics to be more in line with modern sensibilities.
  System Shock 3 teaser comment: For those that don't know, this is the series all of your favorite games steal mechanics from.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Autobombs: Like anything else that beelines towards you and explodes as a kamikaze attack, it will be a major nuisance, even more so when they consistently re-spawn in certain late game areas.
  • Humanoid Mutants and Inviso mutants turn into this, the first can be taken care of with ease and may grant free medpatches when destroyed, but the latter are invisible as the name implies, soak up two hits from the laser rapier, and fire pretty quick, high damaging purple projectiles.
• Fandom Rivalry: With the Marathon series, at least on the "Who is a cooler crazy AI" front. Also with its own Spiritual Successor BioShock.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: SHODAN is not the only female evil AI to be the face of her franchise.
• Polished Port: The Enhanced Edition greatly improves the game, updating it with more modern controls and sharper graphics.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The remake of the first game gives us the following:
  • The Riot Gun returns in the remake as a proper shotgun that's actually brutally effective against low level Mooks.
  • Similarly, the Plasma Rifle was a scrappy weapon in the original due to its projectile being an uncontrollable bouncy ball of death that would kill you as easily as your enemies. The remake turns the plasma rifle into a high tier energy machine gun...with the bouncy ball of death being an optional secondary fire.
  • The Rail Gun returns as well, and serves with distinction, being able to take out anything short of a Cortex Reaver with one shot. Its only downside is a long cooldown time between shots, but you can get a modkit to shorten that.
  • The invisible mutants on the maintenance level, while still dangerous for the point you first meet them, are much more manageable this time around, turning visible (and, more importantly, vulnerable) when they attack. The laser rapier is also no longer the only viable weapon to use against them, as they can be brought down by conventional gunfire.
• Scrappy Weapon: Most of the weapons work for the most part but the few Scrappies are egregious.
  • The Riot Gun, and Stun Gun especially stand out, whilst it's neat to include theoretically non-lethal options, these two are only really good to waste ammo and precious space that could be saved for more effective weapons.
  • The Railgun sounds awesome on paper, but in execution it's a complete liability - rare ammunition, rather weak performance (apart from the weakest, most enemies require several shots to put down effectively) late appearance (Level 6) and a projectile more likely to kill you than the enemy due to the tight spaces, large projectile hitbox and area of effect.
• Technology Marches On: A minor example, but try shooting out any of the monitors. The sound of rushing air and the way they look when broken proves that every screen on Citadel Station is a CRT.
• That One Level: Ironically, Level 7 Engineering becomes this in the remake thanks to the easier resurrection rules in the remake: because the restoration chamber is so far into the level, any time you die before you activate it, you respawn on level 6, and have to go through half of level six and then all the level seven that you've already cleared, unless you want to resort to Save Scumming.

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