Enlarge / Dark corridors, cyberpunk lighting, low ammo, mutated humanoids: same as it ever was.

Nobody was expecting to see a PC demo for the System Shock remake this week, least of all me. I've been waiting to revisit Citadel Station and its malevolent AI since the project's announcement nearly seven years ago. Having spent a couple hours in the first level, I'm certainly impressed but curious about some of the decisions and focus areas.

If you played and loved the original, this demo, and likely the full game, is almost certainly worth your while. You can punch 0451 into the medical storage locker like it's 1994 again, but this time at modern resolutions and frame rates, using far more comfortable controls, even a gamepad. You can blast and pipe-bash enemies, but they aren't Wolfenstein-era 2D sprites anymore. And, of course, you can play the game on Steam, GOG, or Epic, rather than having to find an ancient CD-ROM.

There are some new conveniences, like an entirely overhauled interface with better shortcuts for secondary items, like grenades and stim patches. But the beats of the story, the puzzles and enemies and traps, the very core of the innovative, quirky game is still there. You can still spend far too much time meticulously organizing your inventory and collecting scrap for junk credits, while supposedly in the midst of a humanity-endangering crisis.