System refresh

Familiar, but new: that’s the mantra Nightdive Studio has adopted for its remake of PC classic System Shock. The prospect of updating such a seminal work must be a daunting one, but CEO Stephen Kick is making all the right noises. Its concessions to modern design feel eminently sensible, the original’s awkward user interface reworked to more closely resemble its beloved 1999 successor. Yet Kick is also keen to preserve the original’s feel, refusing to budge on its lurid palette while getting out of the player’s way after early tooltips and control explanations so that we can figure out the rest ourselves. And there are just enough changes to the original that those who know it inside and out will find themselves wrong-footed from time to time – you are, after all, being toyed with by a malevolent AI. SHODAN, it understands, should still have the capacity to shock.

Those joining Keoken Interactive for its journey to the red planet, meanwhile, may find a more challenging ride than their previous trip to the Moon. Deliver Us Mars eschews the trend towards frictionless exploration by giving protagonist Kathy Johanson a pair of pickaxes. As you drive them in, you must clutch the triggers to sustain your grip, releasing one and stretching an arm to find another spot to dig into. Rather than leaping, Nathan Drake style, between clearly marked handholds, the scrape of pick on rock (not to mention the vertiginous view) adds real tension and drama to these perilous climbs and descents.

There’s more scratching at the surface in Pentiment, built within Obsidian by a tiny team led by Josh Sawyer and Hannah Kennedy. As an artist investigating a murder in 16th-century Bavaria, you’ll uncover plenty of secrets

and suspects, the game letting you choose who is punished without ever revealing whodunnit. It’s rich in the kind of moral ambiguity that has become the studio’s stock-in-trade, yet in its unique setting and presentation it offers something delightfully different. Familiar, but new.