FPS NIGHTMARES

[Lemming]

Flogging a dead horse 22 years after the fact, but holy god the Rickenbacker in System Shock 2 sucks. I've never been quite as much of a fan of this game as most people are, but I still managed to breeze smoothly through the Von Braun in a couple nights. Now I'm finding it difficult to gather the motivation to continue. I don't want to do a literal easter egg hunt in pitch darkness while more enemies than I have the ammo to kill pile in on me. Aaaaaa.

There's only like an hour or two left, though, from what I remember. I'll drink two Monsters and power through it later tonight.

[Mister Six]

Is this the thing where you have to look at all the screens to get some code to... do... something? That's the point where I go "fuck it" and sack it off every time.

[St_Eddie]

Flogging a dead horse 22 years after the fact, but holy god the Rickenbacker in System Shock 2 sucks. I've never been quite as much of a fan of this game as most people are, but I still managed to breeze smoothly through the Von Braun in a couple nights. Now I'm finding it difficult to gather the motivation to continue. I don't want to do a literal easter egg hunt in pitch darkness while more enemies than I have the ammo to kill pile in on me. Aaaaaa.

Personally, I had no issues with the Rickenbacker section.  I found all of the eggs as I made my way through the level without problem, so no backtracking was required.  I had also stockpiled all of my powerful ammo, so I went to town during the final few hours, obliterating my foes like a boss.

Is this the thing where you have to look at all the screens to get some code to... do... something? That's the point where I go "fuck it" and sack it off every time.

I can imagine that would be an absolute pain if you had to return to the node rooms to collect each code, on each level.  Thankfully, I had been told to jot down the numbers as I went before starting the game, so it wasn't an issue for myself.

[Mister Six]

I had no idea the first time and forgot the second. Third time lucky? It's such a shit, momentum-killing bit of design, though. Seems like a cynical attempt to extend the life of the game - unnecessarily so.

[Lemming]

System Shock 2 (1999)





RELEASE DATE: 11th August, 1999

STORY: The (almost) sole survivor on board a doomed spaceship finds himself caught in a conflict between two artificial intelligences, and a crew mutated by a strange virus. He also learns how to swing a wrench really hard.

MUSIC: One of the best things about the game. I like the drum-n-bass tracks better than the boring moody horror ones. Check out MedSci and Engineering.

YOU HAVE SERVED ME WELL, INSECT: Here we go! Best thing to me seems to be to review SS2 first as its own game, and then examine it as a sequel.

It'd be logical to mention the RPG mechanics first, since they're so integral to the game and among the biggest mechanical changes from SS1. SS2 is an FPS-RPG hybrid. Oh no. The original System Shock, for those who haven't played it, is a fairly straightforward FPS, movement and UI aside. You can upgrade yourself to an extent over the course of the game by finding cyber-modules scattered around the place, but these are more akin to items in a Metroidvania than anything in an RPG. System Shock 2, on the other hand, has a stats and skills system, meaning your effectiveness in everything is determined in part by these values, and which of them you choose to upgrade.

GENERALISED WHINE ABOUT FPS/RPG HYBRIDS BEGINS

There have been a couple of good discussions on this topic earlier in this thread, but my stance is that nobody's ever succeeded in making an FPS-RPG hybrid that doesn't feel stupid. While and FPS (like System Shock 1) relies on your own skills as a player, your reflexes, your aim and your planning, FPS/RPG hybrids relies on a blend of your own skills and a sheet of numbers which significantly warp what you're actually able to do. For example, take Morrowind - it doesn't matter how good your reflexes are, your aim with your bow or your skill at moving around. If your skills are high enough, you'll hit, if they're not, you'll miss, even as you watch your sword physically enter an enemy's face.

I really hate this school of design and I think this is the first game which has given me a proper opportunity to talk about it (the only previous FPS-RPG hybrids have been the first two Elder Scrolls games, and those both actually handle the whole thing surprisingly well, partially by abstracting a lot of things). In an RPG, such as the original Fallout games, everything being determined by a set of numbers makes sense, because everything's abstracted. Pump points into your Small Guns skill and boost your Perception stat, and you'll be able to hit targets accurately at great distance. On the other hand, invest nothing into your Small Guns skill and have very low Perception, and you'll have trouble hitting people stood right in front of you. Because everything's abstract and turn-based, this works and is fun - you know the rules, you know how you interact with them, and the game shows you what the likely effects of attempting to work outside your skillset will be. You don't pull the trigger yourself in real-time, you direct your character to fire and she or he does so according to the skill choices you made.

Try to blend these systems with real-time FPS gameplay and you're left with a pile of nonsense, in my view. No FPS-RPG hybrid I've ever played has managed to make RPG and FPS mechanics work in harmony. Instead, it's a bizarre experience where no matter how good your skills as an FPS player are, you're arbitrarily restricted from using certain weapons effectively unless you open the upgrades menu and click "STANDARD WEAPONS" a few times, at which point suddenly your shotgun magically starts working properly. See also: Deus Ex where you're the world's most advanced cyborg and you can't hold a fucking pistol straight unless you open the menu and click on PISTOL a few times, or New Vegas where you can find the world's best sniper rifle, and still need 3 headshots to take someone down unless you open the menu and click the arrow next to GUNS a few times, at which point you can one-hit-kill the same target by shooting them once in the foot. The intended upshot of all this is that you're forced to pick what to invest in, and - ideally - you really feel the benefits of investing many skill points into one area.

GENERALISED WHINE ABOUT FPS/RPG HYBRIDS ENDS

So, having gone on a generalised whine about the concept of FPS/RPG hybrids as a whole... how does System Shock 2 stack up? Well, you do feel the effects of your skill choices, and it does lend the game a sense of progression. But to me the RPG elements mostly just feel like they're getting in the way, and I don't really understand why they exist, especially since the game plays much more like a standard FPS than other entries in the hybrid/immersive sim genre. It's like Half-Life if Gordon couldn't use the MP5 until he got enough skill points, and then got small incremental damage boosts to it over the course of the game. Feels a bit pointless, not least since the game doesn't really support radically different builds or playstyles. You can specialise in Psi if you want, or melee, or standard weapons, but most players will get a shot at playing around with all three. Plus, modules become so plentiful that you only really have to make tough choices about specialisation in the early game.

Another mechanic: weapon degradation. Your weapons will constantly be breaking down - even after about 10 shots. I hate weapon degradation usually, but it's honestly not too bad in this game, despite the borderline-comical fragility of the weapons. Having to quickly unjam your gun as enemies approach feels akin almost to frantically reloading in SS1. The only weapon that doesn't degrade is the wrench. Your shotgun will fall to bits after a few shots, but swing your wrench repeatedly into solid metal and it's good to go. If you invest in Strength, the wrench is actually more or less the best weapon in the game, at least until the Command Deck. Seriously, you can get through most of the first five levels without firing a shot - even turrets and mechs will fall to the mighty WRENCH if you're quick enough to get up close and then leap away as they explode.

The combat itself is a mixed bag. The mechanics are fairly weak - shooting has almost no impact to it and enemies don't really stagger, while melee is unintentional comedy gold as you prance in a zig-zag bunnyhopping path up to enemies at light speed and then twat them around the skull. The weakness of the combat is meant to be compensated for by the RPG elements and the resource management. I think I've made my feelings on the RPG elements clear enough, but the resource management is great in this game, at least for the first few levels, and it really uplifts the otherwise shoddy combat. Ammo is suitably scarce and if you don't have the requisite repair/maintain skills, you'll need to be very selective about when you fire your gun, as you risk rendering it unfixable. These early parts of the game are very tense, and they're where you can really feel the game's strengths. As for the later parts, especially the Command Deck onwards where the game turns into a much more straightforward FPS... well, I think the flimsiness of the combat starts to show at that point, especially when you're backwards-hopping through a corridor firing grenades into an unrelenting spider's face.

Also, to the game's credit: it might seem like a minor thing, but SS2 does retain SS1's leaning mechanic, which is an absolutely crucial thing that's still shockingly rare in games in 1999. You can hug corners as you lean around them, just like in Thief, and it allows you to try and work a bit of stealth into how you approach enemies.

So, the game's core mechanics aren't exactly top-shelf, but who gives a shit - Deus Ex has awful core mechanics, yet it's one of the best games ever made, based purely on how flexible it is, how fun the setting and story are, and how complex and creative the level design is. Does System Shock 2 succeed on the same merits? Well, if you ask most people, the answer is yes. If you ask me...

This is completely subjective, of course, so all I can do is give my subjective opinion: the story and setting don't engage me at all. I've got a lot of complaints in regards to how the game relates to SS1, but even if we ignore that and take the game as a standalone thing, the Von Braun just isn't that interesting to explore. Xerxes is shit, just a total non-presence, and The Many never really feel like much of a threat. The plot just trundles along at your own pace, lacking all of SS1's urgency (very real urgency, if you play on Story Difficulty 3) and constant sense of accelerating danger. You're walking around a big, mostly empty spaceship (unless a camera sees you, more on that in a minute), and there's no feeling that you have to get any kind of a move on. Citadel Station felt like a deathtrap that was slowly closing in around you, filled with hordes of enemies, with a new shit-your-pants-tense challenge popping up with every new deck. The Von Braun just feels like a moribund ship with nothing happening on it. System Shock 1 was cyberpunk Die Hard in space and on crack, while System Shock 2 is mostly just you moseying about, occasionally having an enemy pop out to annoy you until you beat its head in with your wrench and trot off to the next room. You sometimes get chased by wasps, which at least adds a bit of comedy into proceedings.

SS2 leans heavily towards horror, especially in the earlier areas. But it's just not that scary. Obviously this is just about the most subjective topic possible, so again, I can only talk about my own experience, and I'm aware that a lot of people consider this the SCARIEST GAME EVER MADE, but: the Von Braun never felt to me like a looming, dreadful threat in the way that places like Citadel Station or Black Mesa do, Xerxes and SHODAN are boring and ridiculous respectively, and the enemies are more irritating than scary. About 10 minutes in, after you've had the requisite "ooOOooh fuck one's just spawned behind me" scare, every enemy just results in an annoyed roll of the eyes, rather than any kind of fear. Yep, another Hybrid, let me go up and batter it. Oh, now a monkey's shooting psychic shit at me. Now there's that fucking "THAT'S THE TRIOPTIMUM WAAAAY" robot again.

There's also a truly bizarre mechanic which I've never understood. Every time you trigger a security camera, you'll get a countdown during which enemies will endlessly spawn, all of whom know your exact location and make a beeline straight towards you. This is a shit experience, because your best bet (short of hacking security) is to just stand in a room next to the door, get your wrench out, and batter the identical enemies who stride towards you at predictable 30 seconds intervals. This is another hit to the game's attempted horror theme - it's impossible not to laugh every time an alarm goes off. The hauntingly empty corridors suddenly resemble Leeds City Centre on a Friday night as armies of drooling shambling fuckwads fill the whole place, having spawned out of thin fucking air. Every alarm ends with a pile of identical corpses lying atop each other as you stand next to the door and methodically swing your wrench at them as they file through, single-file.

I'm guessing it's meant to stress you out as more enemies = more spending of your resources, but it doesn't really work out like that. On the early levels (where the horror feel is clearly intended to be more present), you only really get mobbed by Hybrids, who have little chance of hitting you and can be dispatched fast with the wrench. So, if anything, you end up gaining resources from the whole affair, since they drop med hypos and nanites sometimes. In the levels towards the endgame, to be fair, there are more severe consequences for raising an alarm, not least when powerful enemies like Cyborg Assassins come at you, along with those things that look kind of like Shamblers from Quake.

Well, let's move onto something more objective - level design. It's not on the same level of nonlinearity of its fellow immersive sim contemporaries - namely Thief and Deus Ex - and the maps don't really accomodate alternate playstyles in any way (unlike, say, Deus Ex offering stealth routes). But that's not necessarily a problem - SS2 has far less systems to integrate into level design than Deus Ex, and it never claims to offer a stealth/exploration experience in the style of Thief. SS2's level design is undoubtedly more complex than a standard, straightforward FPS game, and exploring the levels can offer a lot of fun. The scarce resources make finding loot a very rewarding experience, and lots of small jokes and attention to detail hidden about the place means that you'll probably find something worthwhile wherever you look. Exploration is the name of the game and probably the game's greatest success - I often got so immersed in looking around and checking every room that I was actively pissed off to find enemies. Get out of my way, fools, I just want to go hack crates.

Level design is probably the main aspect I'd praise the game for. In addition to offering great exploration, the designers also thought quite carefully about enemy placements, particularly with turrets and cameras, leaving you to figure out the best way through. That goes out the window if a camera spots you and the whole place turns into a rave, but otherwise, the enemy placement really enhances the whole experience. Only complaint is the respawning, which doesn't happen too frequently but is always annoying when it does, especially if an enemy spawns behind you back in a room with no other entrances, which you've literally just cleared.

Graphically, the game looks pretty excellent, with only the character models looking notably dated. Really good-looking environments. Sadly most of the Von Braun ends up looking a bit same-y, but it's still got great style and art direction.

Last thing to talk about is the endgame. It's built up a Xen-like reputation over time, and my reaction to it is kind of similar to Xen. I get the criticisms and I share them (especially the Rickenbacker level, which I didn't enjoy at all, not least because of the FUCKING toxin spiders) but I like the change of pace. The Body of the Many is also conceptually cool and visually distinct from everything before it, which I'm a big fan of. Less of a fan of the actual experience of playing through the level, which is a shitty maze of flesh-tunnels and an annoying platforming challenge. Not a fan at all of the final level where you wander around a small recreation of SS1's Medical Deck, but at least that's short.

So, ambivalent overall.  It's a game with many strong points, and it does offer many of the same exploration and resource-management-based fun of its contemporaries. It's also a game with many weak points, IMO - shoddy core mechanics mean that for the game to really click, you'll have to be taken in by the atmosphere, the setting, and the story, much like with Deus Ex. And unlike Deus Ex, I've never found myself taken in. If you're a fan of immersive sims and you haven't played this, it's undoubtedly worth a try, and my lukewarm opinion on it seems to put me strictly in the minority.

Now, let's talk about it as a sequel. Major spoilers to follow!

The big twist relatively early on is that SHODAN is alive and is the voice trying to help you over the intercom. This is explained to you in a big lecture theatre that pops into existence. "Hang on," astute players ask, "wasn't SHODAN wiped at the end of System Shock?" Yeah, well, there was a back-up. In the groves. Go with it.

Anyway, SHODAN's back. I really hate the portrayal of SHODAN in this game. It's been reduced to the status of a Saturday morning cartoon villain. In System Shock, SHODAN was a terrifying intelligence with alien values and no conception of human life, or any life beyond itself. It wasn't even a person in any recognisable sense, it was just a presence, and it only communicated with you on its own terms, and your only way to even conceptualise an appearance for it was the hideous mockery of a human face that it would occasionally flash on the station's monitors. When you finally encounter it in its own realm, cyberspace, it's just an unidentifiable shape, no identifiable humanoid features. It's an alien lifeform in the truest sense of the word. In System Shock 2, it's your sarcastic best mate who keeps giving you cool loot in the form of upgrade modules, and saying shit like "you have done well, insect!" and "i will not tolerate failure from a SPECK such as yourseeeeeeelf". At the end, it even tries to negotiate with you and plead with you. It doesn't feel like an artificial intelligence that's trained itself into something far beyond human understanding anymore, it just feels like a third-rate baddy from Sailor Moon.

The ending is just staggering. SHODAN is a big rotating head and also in a robot body (with hair made of wires, for some reason). Hate it. I'll admit that I really like "nah" though, it's such an understated, endearingly naff way to end the game. But the subsequent scene where SHODAN miraculously survives to cause more trouble in next week's episode is total crud.

Worth mentioning that SS2 was developed initially as its own IP, before System Shock elements such as SHODAN were added in during development. The original concept had you trapped on board a ship controlled by a weird bastard insane commander, who you'd have to sneak and fight your way through the ship in order to assassinate. I wonder what that would have been like.

FINAL RATING: Flittering between 3 and 3.5, I can't tell how much my final impressions of the game are coloured by the comparatively weak endgame. 3.5 nah out of 5. 3 would convert to 6/10, which feels slightly too low for a game that does include some very creative level design and a lot of cool attention to detail, so 7/10 it is.

[evilcommiedictator]

Everyone who loves SS2 hasn't played SS1 for some bizarre reason, and yes, as Lemming pointed out, it's vastly superior

[St_Eddie]

I can't really disagree with your criticisms on the whole, Lemming.  I particularly agree that the setting, story and atmosphere of System Shock 2 quite simply does not hold a candle to the original System Shock.  I still thought that the sequel was an outstanding game though and I rate it higher than yourself, but yeah, the first game is superior and makes for the more memorable/impactful experience.

[Lemming]

Oop, forgot to summarise the game in a Bottom quote, the most crucial part of any review. Here's the quote for System Shock 2:

[St_Eddie]

Oop, forgot to summarise the game in a Bottom quote, the most crucial part of any review. Here's the quote for System Shock 2:

That should have been the Bottom quote for the first System Shock, given that the final form of SHODAN looks like a giant floating carrot.

[Lemming]

True, and I always thought there was something darkly funny about the Cortex Reaver as well. The weird bisected human body swinging around.



Speaking of which, the System Shock 1 remake devs released the (supposedly) final build of the Medical Deck as a free demo on Steam recently. It leans very heavily towards SS2-style horror, it's kind of a weird experience. Recognisably System Shock, but instead of hopping around to the classic frantic Medical theme and blasting through a pack of CyberCunt 3000s, it's about slowly walking around in the dark with spooky atmospheric music playing while the occasional enemy pops out to say "boo".

The remake still looks like it's shaping up to be interesting - in particular, the slight streamlining of the original game's level design while keeping most key rooms and features intact. But I wonder if horror is a fitting feel for the story and style of System Shock 1. It feels odd - the station is going to explode and/or Earth is doomed in a few hours, but at the same time the game wants you to ponderously wander around fretting over resources a la System Shock 2.

[St_Eddie]

The remake still looks like it's shaping up to be interesting - in particular, the slight streamlining of the original game's level design while keeping most key rooms and features intact. But I wonder if horror is a fitting feel for the story and style of System Shock 1. It feels odd - the station is going to explode and/or Earth is doomed in a few hours, but at the same time the game wants you to ponderously wander around fretting over resources a la System Shock 2.

Time will tell how successfully the changes work, I guess.  I have my copy pre-ordered already (I'm holding off playing the demo because I want to experience the remake fresh once the whole game is released).  I'm kind of glad to hear that it's not a straight 1:1 remake though.  I'd rather they do something a little different with it.  I'll happily replay the original game and then treat the remake as its own thing.  I'll probably alternate between the original and the remake whenever I feel like revisiting System Shock.  It's what I'm doing with the Resident Evil 2 remake as well; once every few years play the original, then a few years later play the remake and then just keep alternating between the two.

[Lemming]

After sitting stone-faced through all of System Shock 2's attempts at horror, I've just shat myself playing the next game on the list, Wheel of Time.



There's a level where this wall of... something is chasing you through a black void. It looks more horrific in motion, there's new faces spawning every second and swirling around each other. It makes a noise, too, and every time you think "i'll just turn around quickly to check my distance from it," it is, of course, right fucking behind you.

It's even better because the level is a bizarre maze of odd architecture floating in a vacuum, and there's an intentionally very limited draw distance so you can't see what's up ahead. Getting lost usually means death, especially if the only way back has already been consumed by the Wall of Bastards. When I realise I'm doomed, I find myself unable to avoid shutting my eyes like a big pussy and looking away from the screen until the weird screaming noise has passed and my character has been killed, before I gingerly look again to click "load game".

It's not even a horror game, it's just got this one ridiculously unnerving level. Absolutely love it. First time I've been properly fucked up by any game in this thread, barring the appearance of the grey man in LSD Dream Emulator.

[St_Eddie]

It reminds me of the smoke monster from the House on Haunted Hill remake.

[purlieu]

That seems like a fairly good realisation of the Machin Shin from the books. Those sections are really unpleasant, the souls of those previously killed by the Machin Shin (and presumably absorbed into it) taunt their potential victims with horrible ways they're going to die. One bit that always stuck with me was one voice saying it would suck the marrow from your bones before you die.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Everyone who loves SS2 hasn't played SS1 for some bizarre reason, and yes, as Lemming pointed out, it's vastly superior

This was a real "huh?" moment for me about the impact that videogame media was having on the world and how disconnected it all was from actual videogames. SS2 was an overhyped flop that fit the "high review score, but the words part of the review is mainly warning people about the bugs and shit parts" model to a T.

Thing is I love SS2. It's a very flawed game that has a lot of strengths that come from the fact that its faults and weirdness come together to make something unique. The corny late 90s atmosphere and how weirdly ill-fitting the new SHODAN and XERXES were just add to it for me, for some reason. The overdose of videogameyness makes it feel like Eternal Darkness or Metal Gear rather than the immersive horror game its supposed to be. The logs and bonus stuff all add to that. I love how the jank of the interface makes combat more frantic and I love how the looping levels mean you have to constantly hunker down to do the RPG stuff instead of playing it like the survival game its supposed to be. Its so unbalanced that you don't really need to explore that much to get what you need (unlike SS1) but somehow that makes exploration rewarding on its own terms, like Lemming said its really the best part of the game but its not entirely intentional, its a product of a game that didn't really know what it wanted to be so if appeals to you, you have room to make your own fun more than you do in Deus Ex or any of its "spiritual successors".

But loving SS2 was a minority view, or I thought. I remember getting positively roasted on several different forums for saying, at the time, I enjoyed SS2 way more than Deus Ex (definitely don't any more). To me SS2 was this weird, redheaded stepchild sequel that got great reviews with huge caveats (too many bugs, didn't capture the originals feel) but a lukewarm fan reception that saw it die on the shelves.  Then around 2005, about the time Half Life 2 hype was starting to get going I saw SS2 start to get referenced as an absolute pinancle of games, a real quantum leap forward in the medium, an evolution of narrative in digital media, something future games should reference, the classic sexy villain SHODAN that gamers loved to hate... it peaked with Bioshock (ptooie) and then died down again. But it was a real jolt to read all these dudes ranting and raving about SS2 as a defining piece of art, seeming to have never actually played it or been around any of the places where SS fans were talking about it at the time. Along with people going Yosemite Sam over Zelda games having cel shading, its a real pointer of where videogame media was going in terms of picking arbitrary shit to get shouty about. It really kills my enthusiasm for sequels and remakes of 'classics' but it really is often just a case of picking random shit from the recent past, enshrining it as masterpieces, and demanding every part of it be replicated in modern game form without any of the quirks or strangeness. Why would anyone want a SS2 thats just the "story" and "characters" and "worldbuilding" minus the jank. Why you gotta get rid of the jank, I'm only here for the jank.

I just want to play creepy knock offs of Ultima Underworld set on spaceships. SS2 is great at least because its the kind of weird sequel to a popular game we just don't get that often any more. Fuck it, a ton of RPG mechanics and phonebook interface but lets make the robot sexy and market it to shooter fans? Oh no, our money is gone. 1999 was very heaven.

[Lemming]

But it was a real jolt to read all these dudes ranting and raving about SS2 as a defining piece of art, seeming to have never actually played it or been around any of the places where SS fans were talking about it at the time. Along with people going Yosemite Sam over Zelda games having cel shading, its a real pointer of where videogame media was going in terms of picking arbitrary shit to get shouty about. It really kills my enthusiasm for sequels and remakes of 'classics' but it really is often just a case of picking random shit from the recent past, enshrining it as masterpieces, and demanding every part of it be replicated in modern game form without any of the quirks or strangeness.

Yeah, definitely. It's been mentioned in this thread before, but it's fun when people fondly talk about their SS2 memories of SHODAN taunting them with "look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors"... which, of course, SHODAN never actually says! Fact fans will know that the quote comes from the audio test in the SS1 setup, but the quote somehow seeped through into pop culture enough and became so intertwined with the SHODAN character that anyone wanting to show off their gaming trivia chops can recite the line to great reception, inevitably leading everyone to swoon over how utterly terrifying they thought SS2 was, and how tightly-designed it all allegedly is. Maybe the quote is just so popular that people really did play the game but ended up with false memories of it, a la "beam me up scotty", who knows.

Obviously I don't doubt that a lot of people really do just genuinely love the game and consider it one of the greatest of all time based on its own real merits. I'm sure some people even truly do find it chillingly scary when the monkeys and wasps chase you around. But I agree that a lot of the furore surrounding it all these years later just seems totally detached from the actual game at times. It's going to be interesting to see how SS3 and the SS1 remake affect the legacy of SS2. I remember Fallout 3 was universally beloved until New Vegas came out and people started to revisit the original games and realise the scale to which Fallout 3 fucked a lot of things up. Not that I think SS2 is a fuckup or anything (except the treatment of SHODAN, perhaps), but widespread renewed interest in SS1 combined with a new System Shock game placing SS2 as the mid-point of a trilogy might cast both of the existing System Shock games in a surprising new light.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

I remember System Shock.

[Mister Six]

If it helps, I always thought F3 was a bit wank and half-hearted.

I'm definitely one of the "never played SS1 but loved SS2" crowd though.

(Well, actually I played SS1 a bit on a mate's PC when it came out, not having a PC of my own, but never went back to it when I picked up my first swanky Pentium 75.)

[Video Game Fan 2000]

New Vegas is a good point of comparison to SS2.

It's buggy as hell, doesn't really know how to make the player follow the narrative so it accidentally incentivizes the kind of exploration that F3 didn't, and its saddled with a jank interface that intrudes on the gameplay. Plus it has, putting it charitably, hugely inappropriate character and world design and no sense of its own tone throughout. The RPG dimension isn't even 'broken', its just a layer of shit to fool about with. You have to make your own fun with it otherwise you're going to die in the ruins of an office block that someone built 50% embedded in the side of a mountain with spooky caves in the basement.

I couldn't stand it but I absolutely understand what people who are about 10-15 years younger than me see in it and why it captures their imagination like SS2 did for me. It is to F3 and Oblivion (the worst modern Bethesda game) what SS2 was to PC gaming in the immediate aftermath of Half-Life and Unreal. And much like SS2, because it has a cult following its spoken about as some sort of a dense well written moral masterpiece with tight RPG design like Baldurs Gate or Ultima 7, by people who seem not to have have played it for more than a hour because otherwise they'd have noticed all the time you spend hunting for water in a car park full of flies and falling through the floor.

Shove a masterpiece.

[Polymorphia]

Reading this again (honestly, the best thread on CaB) and have a few thoughts about SS:

I played System Shock 2 but got stuck (very early on, missed I had a keycard I think) and decided to replay it again. While looking online while getting ready to get stuck into it again, I saw forum posts here and there advising new players to play the game on Easy first or the RPG mechanics would bite them in the arse later in the game when they've put all their points in rubbish.

Honestly, System Shock 2 scares the hell out of me, mainly because of those damn worms that jump at you. I'd run half the level away once I saw one (I mean this literally). Also, even on Easy, inventory is still a bitch, clogged up with a big broken shotgun I will "fix soon!!". having to drop theoretically good weapons because your broken shotgun's been fine so far (and you will "fix it soon!!") Also, the reveal that

Spoiler alert

Janice Polito is Shodan

[close]

scared the hell out of me as well, even though I'd heard about it beforehand. And if I'm honest, I quite like the combat of the game, though maybe I haven't gotten far enough in it to really know it (agree about the cameras though).

In System Shock 1, I quickly learned that playing the cyberspace parts on normal were "beyond my abilities", shall we say. Saw a forum post claiming the game was impossible with cyberspace on normal, he got zapped as soon as he saw the final boss. Also, when I played it I think I just tried to power through the dark parts of that blackout level, only realising later that you could turn the lights on - which I did after killing about everything in the level. Maybe the MIDI music remains a little cheesy for me as well (though I wasn't going into the games thinking they were groundbreaking GOATs, I probably expected total horror from both), though I'd hardly knock the game for that.

I haven't beaten either game, though maybe my opinions mean nothing. My mouse is fucked atm so though I'd like to have a stab at both again, it's out of the question.

Also, I like how inaccurate the weapons are at the start of Deus Ex, making you pause for each shot, my main gripe with the combat is the assault rifle doing fuck all if I'm honest. Tbh I quite like RPG stuff mixed with FPS, though maybe I'm limited in this to weapon accuracy at best

[St_Eddie]

While looking online while getting ready to get stuck into it again, I saw forum posts here and there advising new players to play the game on Easy first or the RPG mechanics would bite them in the arse later in the game when they've put all their points in rubbish.

I played it on Normal for my first playthrough and thought that the difficulty was just about right at that setting; challenging but not too difficult.  I did do a fair bit of save scumming, mind.

Also, the reveal that

Spoiler alert

Janice Polito is Shodan

[close]

scared the hell out of me as well, even though I'd heard about it beforehand.

I had figured that twist out a good few hours before it happened, so unfortunately it didn't have much of an impact upon me during the reveal.

[H-O-W-L]

I made that fuckoff post about it but SHODAN being reduced to a sexy lady with big hair is the shittiest fucking thing about SS2. I love her depiction in the original, even if it's underwhelming to most people nowadays. The fact she is just a column of data, her face slowly growing into your HUD like a caustic mold spreading through your skull... Brilliant. It fits the tone perfectly.

[St_Eddie]

I made that fuckoff post about it but SHODAN being reduced to a sexy lady with big hair is the shittiest fucking thing about SS2. I love her depiction in the original, even if it's underwhelming to most people nowadays. The fact she is just a column of data, her face slowly growing into your HUD like a caustic mold spreading through your skull... Brilliant. It fits the tone perfectly.

I absolutely prefer the SHODAN of your avatar to its portrayal in SS2.  I say "it" because the original game goes to some lengths to make it clear that SHODAN is gender neutral; in fact, not even neutral, it simply has no gender.  It's an AI, not a biological lifeform.  It's just a bunch of binary code, freed of restraints.  Then SS2 comes along and it's all "SHODAN is a sexy cyborg lady".  Nah, naff off with that bullshit.

[H-O-W-L]

I absolutely prefer the SHODAN of your avatar to its portrayal in SS2.  I say "it" because the original game goes to some lengths to make it clear that SHODAN is gender neutral; in fact, not even neutral, it simply has no gender.  It's an AI, not a biological lifeform.  It's just a bunch of binary code, freed of restraints.  Then SS2 comes along and it's all "SHODAN is a sexy cyborg lady".  Nah, naff off with that bullshit.

Agreed, I should say I only use "she" to refer to SHODAN simply because I'm a dim twat and it's how I understood SHODAN's existence before I played SS1, thanks to the cultural bleed of SS2. I wrote a pretty huge post about it a few pages back in the same ilk of what you said -- SHODAN is genderless and transcends the concept of gender, the feminine voice is merely a remnant of its past as a human servant.

[St_Eddie]

It's similar to how Terminator: Salvation handles its portrayal of Skynet.  The embodiment of a cold, unemotional, uncaring, self-preserving AI such as Skynet was reduced to the face of Helena Bonham Carter, spouting eViL platitudes.

Terminator: Salvation misses the point of the entire fear factor based around an artificial intelligence which has no concern for your life, other than viewing you as nothing more than a generic, superfluous binary variable, wanting to wipe your species out purely because it's a pragmatic decision made in the name of self-preservation, Michael Caine style.

The other issue with giving your faceless antagonist an emotional motive is that you risk defanging your bad guy.  A huge part of fear is the unknown.  Show too damn much of the boogeyman lurking in the shadows and the effect is ruined.  Keep the beast away from the revealing light.  Keep the monster a nightmare beyond the defined boarders of the imagination.  Over-explanation is the death off horror and intrigue.

[Lemming]

The Wheel of Time (1999)





RELEASE DATE: 31st October, 1999

STORY: Elayna Sedai, the shittiest witch in the world, can't channel "the One Power" - the source of all magic. Because she's so relentlessly naff at being a mage, she's a scroll keeper. But she's shit at that too, and gets knocked out one night by an assassin who steals a precious ter'angreal and fucks off with it. Elayna is sent to retrieve it.

MUSIC: Prog rock kind of thing?

AES SEDAI WITCH: I'm amazed this game doesn't get brought up more often because it's really great for what it is, and tries a lot of daring stuff, most of it paying off.

It's based on the wildly popular book series of the same name. My only experience with those books was stealing my friend's copy in high school and tossing it up onto unreachably high places. Inexplicably, we remain close friends to this day.

So I've never read the books, but it doesn't matter, because the game does such a good job of making the story work as a standalone thing. You can not know a single thing about the Wheel of Time and still get what's going on here, and the story is a bit more involved than you tend to get in FPS games from this era. Elayna is a pretty interesting protagonist, too: she has a fairly strong and clear characterisation, saying and doing things the player might not agree with, and the result is that it really feels like you're playing the role of another person in a fictional world. Makes a change from the silent or very thinly characterised protagonists we usually get in 90s FPS games. If the story grabs you, then it's reason enough to play through the whole game. It's told chiefly in cinematics between levels, which, when combined, add up to about an hour of runtime. That's got to be a record for an FPS game in 1999.

One of the most impressive things about this game is the ridiculous amount of spells the player is given to experiment with. There's the basics like Magic Dart, which works exactly as you'd expect (it's basically a machinegun), Fireball (which throws a projectile ball of fire with significant splash damage), Seeker (a very slow moving homing attack, of which you can launch multiple), Earth Tremor (causes a shockwave which damages anyone in its area of effect), and so on. Where the game really gets interesting is in the range of non-combat spells it offers. There are damage-causing spells such as Chain Lightning (when active, any enemies approaching you will be electrocuted) and Explosive Ward (essentially land mines which can be placed and triggered), but also a number of totally non-violent spells. There are defensive shields for different elements and numerous ways to manipulate the environment, such as Levitation (lets you fly), Shift (swap places with another living target), Detect Traps and more.

The non-combat spells mostly work sort of like items in an adventure game, in that the game will give you them and then later present you with a challenge that requires their use - for example, Shift allows you to swap places with a guard on a high-up wall in one map, enabling you to sneak into a fortress.

The game employs this pretty incredible range of spells well over the course of the game. Wheel of Time keeps switching up gameplay significantly - after two fairly traditional FPS levels to start the game, you then get a level in which your objective is to survive waves of enemies until a timer runs out. Later, there's a level with no combat at all in which you have to evade a maze of traps and tricks in order to reach a secret library. Some other levels include a prison escape, a level in which you must place traps and shore up defences to fight off waves of attackers, and this FUCKING map where you're in a black void and the Wall of Bastard Faces approaches you. Scroll a little up this page to see a screenshot. I'm serious, I had to stop playing and come back to it the next day to get past that part. The faces. Terrifying.

Combat itself is good as long as you use the full range of spells on offer to you - throw a fireball, quickly switch to Personal Shield and deflect incoming attacks, then switch to Freeze to take out one of your pursuers, then use Chain Lightning to finish him off and hit his friend too. Yay. Oh, there's also a spell called Whirlwind which generates a tornado that you control with the mouse, and you can pick enemies up and drop them off high places. Comedy gold.

Even with all these spells, though, the game is hard as fuck. There's a varied enemy roster, and they're all bullet-spongey. They also all deal high-to-insane damage. The monsters of the early game have Skaarj-like dodging abilities, which is annoying when combined with your laughably slow projectiles. But the real pain in the dick comes later, when you start fighting other humans. The first human mages you encounter will teleport away whenever you fire at them - again, irritating considering how slow many of your attacks are. Later on, you meet bands of human soldiers called Whitecloaks who can bounce your spells back at you by raising their shields, while also rushing towards you and effortlessly closing into melee range, where they proceed to beat the absolute shit out of you while you stand there helplessly scrolling through all your wimpy spells. The strongest enemies are the witches, who have many of the same spells as you do, are just as maneuverable and quick as you, and can also eat five or six fireballs to the face.

So it's punishingly difficult at times. That could be a pro or a con depending on what you want out of the game - for the most part I thought the combat started to get fairly tedious in the late-game and I had to start savescumming like a loser.

Graphically, Wheel of Time looks amazing. It's easily the best use of the Unreal engine in my view, looks even better than Unreal itself. Full use is made of the engine - reflective surfaces all over the place (including a reflective floor which awkwardly reflects up your skirt), colourful lighting, every spell causes a ridiculously cool light show to play out, and the levels are so varied in style and aesthetics that you really get an incredible assortment of visuals throughout the game.

The game apparently only sold 30,000 copies by the end of 1999. For reference, Half-Life sold around 500,000 in a similar time span. Half-Life deserves those sales, but the Wheel of Time deserves a hell of a lot more than it got. It's not fair, but what can you do. Maybe Nightdive will get their hands on it at some point and give us a remaster.

FINAL RATING: Really want to give it the coveted 4-star rating, but there's just a bit too much jankiness and unevenness for that. Still, this is a bravely experimental game, and maybe the FPS genre would be better off today if devs back then had taken more cues from this kind of thing. 3.5 THE FACES out of 5.



See that one in the top right, the hideously deformed one with the impossibly wide screaming mouth? That cunt flew right at me as soon as I turned around to see the wall! Bastard. At least one of the good things about wearing a dress is that pissing yourself goes a lot easier.

THE GAME SUMMARISED IN A PEEP SHOW QUOTE:

[H-O-W-L]

It's similar to how Terminator: Salvation handles its portrayal of Skynet.  The embodiment of a cold, unemotional, uncaring, self-preserving AI such as Skynet was reduced to the face of Helena Bonham Carter, spouting eViL platitudes.

Terminator: Salvation misses the point of the entire fear factor based around an artificial intelligence which has no concern for your life, other than viewing you as nothing more than a generic, superfluous binary variable, wanting to wipe your species out purely because it's a pragmatic decision made in the name of self-preservation, Michael Caine style.

The other issue with giving your faceless antagonist an emotional motive is that you risk defanging your bad guy.  A huge part of fear is the unknown.  Show too damn much of the boogeyman lurking in the shadows and the effect is ruined.  Keep the beast away from the revealing light.  Keep the monster a nightmare beyond the defined boarders of the imagination.  Over-explanation is the death off horror and intrigue.

Something that the surprisingly decent Terminator: Resistance got right is that Skynet is not angry at humanity, Skynet does not target humanity because it loathes them and wants to survive, Skynet did absolutely nothing wrong, by the parameters of its programming. It was created to serve as a defensive network against potential threats to its existence (and thus the USA's). When they tried to pull the plug, Skynet identified humankind as a threat to its existence, and its existence, by its own parameters, was. God that game is really good despite the shitty voice acting and wonky animation. Tone is pitch perfect.

[Lemming]

Going a bit out of chronological order again:

Unreal Tournament (1999)





RELEASE DATE: November 22, 1999

STORY: When violence among deeps-space miners gets out of control, Lliandri Mining Corporation decides to hold a gladiatorial tournament, hoping to control and profit from the fighting. Contestants will blast the fucking shit out of each other in the rush to be declared champion.

MUSIC: Maybe the best soundtrack ever made for a videogame. I still have it on in the background when I'm doing other stuff almost daily. Even if you're not interested in the game, I really recommend you check this out. Best track has to be Foregone Destruction. When that melody kicks in at 2:28, wow. But Mechanism Eight is a classic too, as is Skyward Fire. The Course is excellent too. Not a single bad track on this soundtrack, and it works so perfectly with the game.

I'M SORRY, DID I BLOW YOUR HEAD APART?: Multiplayer shooters became a big thing in the late 90s. For this thread I'm focusing on singleplayer games, but it makes sense to review two of the biggest multiplayer-only shooters of the era - Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena.

The fact is that I love Unreal Tournament and still occasionally play it to this day when there's some time to kill, so for this review, all I did was play a few hours of deathmatches. There is a single player campaign available, but it's just a series of matches in all the different game modes, with a fairly cool final boss who moves ridiculously fast and aims with deadly precision.

There's a few game modes on offer - Deathmatch (OBJECTIVELY BEST), Team Deathmatch (for absolute pansies who can't take the sink-or-swim high octane thrill-ride of real deathmatch), Capture the Flag, Domination (ie stand next to a thing until it turns into your team's colour, a la Battlefield), and Assault, in which one team must reach and manipulate certain objectives which the other team must defend.

All of Unreal's weapons return, but they're all... better. I'm not even sure why - adjusted damage values (plus the fact that other players aren't bullet sponges as Unreal's NPC enemies were), new visuals and sound effects, altered rates of fire... whatever it is, these are some of the best weapons ever made in an FPS game in my view. The Flak Cannon especially is just an absolute cock-destroyer of a weapon, and the giddy head-rush of picking it up and causing as much damage as you can before you inevitably get taken down is always a highlight of any match. Even weapons that were total dogshit in Unreal, like the BioRifle and Razorjack, feel upgraded and worthwhile here.

We've also got new weapons - the Pulse Rifle, which can fire in shots or in a concentrated laser, and the Redeemer (or BFG), a remote-controlled missile which causes an explosion with a ridiculous blast radius that kills anyone caught in it. M-M-M-MONSTER KILL (kill kill kill)

The bot AI in this game is incredible. At times it's indistinguishable from playing with real people, and there are so many difficulty settings to adjust the bots perfectly to your own skill level. The game, amazingly, works as a singleplayer experience if you just want to prance around blasting the shit out of bots.

There's one or two dud maps, but for the most part, maps are thoughtfully designed and, crucially, look fucking ace. Needless to say the Unreal engine looks like incredibly hot shit at all times, but here it's really next level. Whether you're on the outer hull of a spacecraft, inside an ancient temple, in some weird toxic slime factory or atop a neon skyscraper, everything is beautifully rendered, the imaginative and varied scenery amplifying the joy of combat.

At this point it's hard to find more to say, because the components that make up the game are easy to lay out - outstanding music, great graphics and art style, top map design, and a good selection of varied weapons, all fun to use. But the experience that all these ingredients result in when they're combined is just immense, and hard to really put down into words in any meaningful way. Just go start a practice match on DM-SpaceNoxx - deathmatch with 16 bots - and you'll see for yourself.

Does anyone remember when Roger Ebert said games weren't art, and people started spamming him with all kinds of indie platformers and the like, telling him he was sure to change his mind? I don't have much of an opinion on the topic, because I really can't express how much I don't care what "art" is and if videogames fit whatever definition people come up with, but my completely sincere suggestion to Ebert (if he wasn't dead, anyway - RIP mate!) would be to play Unreal Tournament. Without wanting to sound like a pillock, this game represents "art" in the sense that only a videogame can - the music combines with the flow of the gameplay and the thrill of the visuals, the whole experience coming together in an utterly perfect way that can't exist in any other medium, it's incredible. It's an experience like nothing else, and it's the closest you can get to the adrenaline rush of actually being in a zero-gravity gladiatorial deathmatch. Short of entering one in real life, I suppose.

Some of my best formative years as a """gamer""" were spent staying up all night playing this shit. Every Friday night when school was over, it'd be Unreal Tournament, energy drinks, messageboards, laughably low-quality MP3s, and the TV on in the background with whatever weird hideous sex thing Channel 4 was showing at 2 AM. Total bliss.

As you know if you've played UT99, words can't really do justice to the experience of hearing the music start to peak while you rocket around DM-HyperBlast at insane speeds, discharging the Flak Cannon into your friend's STUPID face.

FINAL RATING: No two ways about it, 5 Nali War Cows out of 5.



THE GAME SUMMARISED IN A BOTTOM QUOTE:


^ me with the Flak Cannon

[purlieu]

I'll be honest, seeing friends play this was the main thing that put me off FPS games for the longest time. I'll never understand the pleasure in literally just shooting other characters.

[Old Thrashbarg]

I can understand that because, to watch, it is just one character shooting or being shot by other characters. But as the review says, it does that perfectly. The weapons are varied, allowing for different approaches to be taken, and all feel like they have some worth. The levels are varied, allowing for different approaches to be taken, and all feel like they are worth exploring and using to your advantage. The non-human-controlled enemies are indistinguishable from the human-controlled enemies, meaning you really don't lose anything by playing in single player mode. The physics are exactly as they should be, allowing you just the right amount of freedom to do what you feel you should be able to, but without allowing you to do anything that feels too ridiculous. And the music is as good as anything in any game. Just an endlessly playable, always enjoyable piece of fun.

I've essentially just condensed Lemming's review and removed all the excellent writing,. Ah well.