FPS NIGHTMARES

[St_Eddie]

I was almost warming up to Guidebot before that subway mission. The little bastard bumped into me and sent me into trains so many times that I started gunning him down just for catharsis.

Guidebot?  CockeyedSnot, more like.  Oooooohhh.

[purlieu]

Pretty sure this would have taken about six minutes to make even in 1999.

[St_Eddie]

ST_EDDIE'S ONGOING MISADVENTURES IN CONFUSION ABOARD CITADEL STATION: PART 2

A System Shock Playthrough

After a further hour of play, I am slowly but surely getting more of a handle on how the interface in this game works and the finer points of gameplay.  I've had my first few taunting messages from the big bad bitch herself; SHODAN (the antagonist AI in control of Citadel Station).  Very creepy.  SHODAN's plan has been revealed; she intends to fire Citidel Station's laser beam at Earth, wiping out the cities across the globe and using the mutagen which she has developed to rebuild humanity in her image (so basically what's she's done on Citidel Station itself on a much wider scale).  The plan of defense on my end is to raise the station's shields, manually fire the laser, causing the beam to hit the shield and destroy the laser itself as collateral damage.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Well... I've got to make my way around the station's levels to acquire access codes and enable different systems first.  Oh and there's also the small matter of taking down SHODAN herself and blasting my way through several million of her Cybercunt 3000 minions in order to reach her.

Not much else to report at this stage, other than to say that after successfully destroying the computer nodes on level one and fully exploring said level's map, I was ready to advance to level 2 (research).  I opened the elevator door and hoped on inside, only to be greeted by some chirpy elevator muzak being piped in through the speakers!  I wasn't expecting any humour in this game and after the incredibly tense, disturbing and often frustrating opening few hours, I genuinely let out a laugh at this unexpected but welcome bit of lightheartedness.  With a smile beaming across my face, I hit the elevator button and proceeded to move up to the research deck.

However, I nearly jumped out of my skin when the elevator doors reopened after making my ascent and I was greeted by six or so Cybercunt 3000s, stood directly in front of me, inches from my face, as I remained trapped, unable to push past and escape from my tiny little elevator space.

The gaming equivalent to this.

I panicked like crazy, firing whatever weapons I had on me, until they ran out of ammo but I was too panicked to remember to reload, so I instead switched weapons and repeated the process until I ran out of guns to fire and resorted to hitting the last few bastards with a metal pipe.  Eventually, all the Cybercunt 3000s were dead in a bloody heap on the floor and I stood there, with my health on critical, still stood in my tiny little elevator space and with the muzak still being piped in.  I should have known that the game was setting me up for a jumpscare with that chirpy, deceptively relaxing elevator muzak.  That's some brilliant game design and it's sure to be a gaming moment which stays with me for the rest of my days.  This game is getting good.

Now it's time to explore Level 2: Research...

[I.D. Smith]

This is a genuine question: is that Kate Winslet? I'm pretty sure the answer's no as I guess round that time Titanic would be out and by that point she'd cost megabucks to hire - too expensive for a games company back in the day when games companies weren't the huge, rich studios they are today - but despite that she looks the spit of Winslet to me, to the point I can't be sure it's not her.

EDIT - Apologies, I just realised this had already been discussed a number of pages back, where it was confirmed it wasn't Kate Winslet.

[Lemming]

The System Shock "ooh shit there's like 20 mutants right there" elevator jumpscare is indeed a classic. Not least because, if I remember right, the game gives you a few grenades just before that point, meaning that stupid players like me will panic and throw a grenade at point-blank range, doing as much damage to themselves as to the mutant swarm.

Also love the comedy of the elevator music playing whenever you happen to stand in the elevator, meaning that if you get dragged out of the elevator and pushed back in during combat, the music schizophrenically switches between the moody tense music of Research and the chirpy elevator theme during the fight.

[St_Eddie]

Also love the comedy of the elevator music playing whenever you happen to stand in the elevator, meaning that if you get dragged out of the elevator and pushed back in during combat, the music schizophrenically switches between the moody tense music of Research and the chirpy elevator theme during the fight.

Well, I know what I'll be doing next time I load up the game; purposefully walking back and forth between inside and outside of the elevator, causing the music to go all bi-polar.

[Lemming]

Going out of chronological order just because I've played some of these non-chronologically, but never fear, I'll circle back around to LEGENDARY titles like Kingpin soon.

Medal of Honor (1999)





These aren't my screenshots. There was no real way for me to screenshot my TV screen, so these are just pictures from the internet. Not the usual stratospherically high quality you've come to expect from FPS NIGHTMARES, I know.

RELEASE DATE: October 31st, 1999

STORY: Big swinging dick perfect-hairline superman Jimmy Patterson has been chosen to join the OSS, the American secret service! Now the tide of war rests entirely in his hands. He's the only person to contribute to the war, seriously.

MUSIC: Really good soundtrack. I dunno if the music was meant to be dynamic or what, but somehow, the slow, suspenseful music always played during heated gunfights, while the loud heroic themes always seemed to blare out when nothing was happening and I was just walking through an empty space. I thought this was hilarious, so the game gets points just for that.

ALAAAAARM!: I have to talk really briefly about how absurd it is to make a game based on WW2. Of course, I covered WW2 GI not long ago, but that was so abstract and naff that I didn't bring this point up.

What the hell was anyone thinking making a game based on World War 2? Okay, a grand strategy game I can understand, where you just sort of look at a world map, fine. But putting you in the role of a soldier who's placed into recreations of real-life conflicts for a fun-packed shoot-em-up romp? The fuck? It's a terrible idea. Six years of brutal, grinding, nightmarish hell, one of the worst moments in humanity's history, condensed into three or four hours of heavily sanitised gaming fun. Also enjoy the multiplayer, where you can play as a fucking SS officer and shoot the crap out of your friends, who are represented by French resistance fighters. It's not only a shit idea for any whiny quibbles I might have, it's also a shit idea because it's so boring, to me at least. Up until now, FPS games have had a ludicrous amount of creativity, taking us into space, into hell, into underground research facilities, into the far future, into fantasy worlds... but over the course of the first decade of the 21st century, we're going to see some of that creative spirit lost and replaced with an endless parade of real-life wars, forced to replay the same few scenarios from WW2 and the Middle East over and over again.

Medal of Honor kind of gets away with it, because it's so fucking stupid. Take a listen to the intro movie here if you want to learn about how Hitler turned Germany into a "farshist juggernaut", leaving it to "Win-ston Church Hill" to "stoke the fires of freedom long enough to stay alive and save the world." The game has all the qualities of a shitty action film, with swirling heroic music blasting out every five minutes, one of the most laughably ultra-sanitised depictions of violence ever, and German soldiers with accents so fake that half of them inexplicably sound like Manuel off Fawlty Towers - who isn't even German. It's impossible to take the game seriously, which works in its favour.

Just look at who you're playing as, too. Jimmy Patterson. Would you just listen to how the briefing guy jerks him off. YOU'RE THE BEST PILOT, MARKSMAN, AND INFILTRATOR WE'VE EVER HAD, EVER. STRAIGHT As IN ALL SUBJECTS, AND THE WORLD'S GREATEST AEROSPACE ENGINEER. WE NEED PEOPLE LIKE YOU, JIMMY. I LOVE YOU. Presumably the part where the briefing guy launches into a soliloquy about the sheer length of Jimmy's absolute monster cock was cut for time. This is the least relatable character I've ever played as in an FPS game, which is amazing considering I was playing as a fucking Xenomorph not long ago, and a robotic rabbit some time before that. How am I meant to relate to Jimmy Patterson. I went to a former polytechnic after failing my A levels, and I'm a slightly overweight crossdresser who has to rely on £5 wigs from Amazon. I can't relate to this fucking man. Oh, and by the way, he's famous or something because the entire German army knows him - when a guard sees through your disguise, he'll invariably scream "I KNOW YOU! YOU ARE JIMMY PATTERSON! ALARM! NEIN!" That's how much of a big deal Jimmy is. Some of the briefings are laugh-out-loud funny and I don't know if it's even intentional or not - there's a great one where, after you infiltrate a bunker, the mission briefing says that the German army erroneously reported that a huge allied force was attacking the base, because your one-man assault was so devastating.

So, I played Medal of Honor on an actual PS1. That's right, actual hardware, a first for FPS NIGHTMARES. This is because the aiming only really works on a controller - thumbsticks move the player (but it's fucking weird - left thumbstick moves you forward and backward but turns left and right, while right thumbstick strafes left and right but looks up and down. the fuck?). The shooting is the strangest part. R1 changes the thumbsticks to a cursor mode, and you become immobile as you move the cursor around the screen. It sounds terrible but after five minutes of adjusting, it's actually very functional and works great.

The combat is a lot of fun, odd though the controls are. Weapons feel distinct, with the M1 Garand (WHICH YOU CAN RELOAD!!!) being great for long-range targets while the MP40 is better for wasting all your ammo in a desperate spray of gunfire. The shotgun is ace and grenades just go comically wrong every time. You're best off always aiming for the head, which is pretty fun to do given the way the cursor system works. There's locational damage and enemies react to being shot in the limbs and torso and such, which is useful because given the relatively slow pace of the movement and shooting, you really need to be able to stun enemies to avoid being shredded to pieces.

Levels are reasonably varied and memorable. The first mission is a simple trek through hedgerows, a city and finally sewers, but after that things get interesting. The second and third missions both have segments where you're disguised and must aquire papers to show to guards so they'll let you proceed. These "stealth" levels are actually not bad at all, rare for an FPS game. Mainly because the game understands that you're probably going to get caught and gives you just enough ammo to fight your way out and/or shut the alarm off, if you conserve ammo carefully.

Being a console game, you can't save anywhere. This ends up working out well for the game - levels are just about short enough that being killed doesn't induce the dreaded "fuck it not doing all that again" reaction, and learning level layout and enemy placement is part of the fun. It can get very tense when you're on low health and nearing the end of a level.

As for enemy types, it's all just generic guys. Maybe the higher-ranking enemies have more health but don't quote me on that. They do have different weapons at least, so you sometimes get surprised by an MP40-wielding goon who'll stun-lock you in a glorious haze of bullets. There's also attack dogs, who are just as fucking HORRIBLE in this game as they are in every other game they show up in. Game developers should be banned from putting big scary German Shepherd dogs in games. "The sort the Nazis used to chase Steve McQueen - they're trained and very right-wing." When one of these fuckers rounds the corner and hurls its hideously-distorted low-res polygonal body at you, you might as well just shut the PS1 off then and there. Terrifying.

By the way, the back of the box claims that this is "the ONLY game that lets you take on Nazis in World War 2". That's not remotely true at all. Maybe it means the first FPS game - but astute FPS fans will know that Wolfenstein 3D and WW2 GI already came out by this time. Maybe Wolfenstein doesn't count as World War 2 since it's some kind of alternate reality. That leaves us with WW2 GI. Hmm. Maybe you weren't fighting Nazis in WW2 GI. They were all conscripts who were either ambivalent or actively hostile towards Nazism, ideologically. Whereas everyone you meet in Medal of Honor is a dedicated Nazi, making the claim on the box true. There you go. Except the tagline on the back of the box is "FIGHT WW2 FOR THE FIRST TIME" which is demonstrably wrong. Fuck it.

FINAL RATING: Solid for what it is. 3 Daintily-Held ID Papers out of 5.



THE GAME SUMMARISED IN A BOTTOM QUOTE:

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

If you think the rank and file dogs are freaky, just wait until MoH Underground introduces dancing dogs.

[Wonderful Butternut]

Ah... the grandfather of the paranoid white bloke 'modern warfare' shooter.

By the way, the back of the box claims that this is "the ONLY game that lets you take on Nazis in World War 2". That's not remotely true at all. Maybe it means the first FPS game - but astute FPS fans will know that Wolfenstein 3D and WW2 GI already came out by this time.

Forgetting about Wolf 3D is not exactly a small oversight on their part. Maybe they meant "the current generation game on sale that let's you take on Nazis."

[evilcommiedictator]

However, I nearly jumped out of my skin when the elevator doors reopened after making my ascent and I was greeted by six or so Cybercunt 3000s, stood directly in front of me, inches from my face, as I remained trapped, unable to push past and escape from my tiny little elevator space.

The only real place that it's feasible to use the bezerk patch too

[St_Eddie]

ST_EDDIE'S CONCLUDING MISADVENTURES IN CONFUSION ABOARD CITADEL STATION: PART 3

A System Shock Playthrough

I spent the last few days completing the game.  My final thoughts are that the first half is fantastic (once you get over the ridiculously steep learning curve) but that the game takes a nose dive in quality during the second half (around level 5 or 6).  Once you reach the halfway point, the objectives become tedious and dull (run here, flick this switch and then backtrack, flick another switch and then go back to the first switch and activate the lever then go back to... oh, fuck off).  Also, all too often the player is left without a clear idea of what it is they're exactly supposed to be doing next.  I had to resort to using a walkthrough a fair few times during the second half of the game.

There's also an issue of vital buttons blending into the background textures, meaning it's incredibly easy to overlook that tiny little button that you need to press to advance, resulting in wandering around a massive level looking for a clue that isn't there.  Also, fuck the designers for hiding a necessary radiation suit beneath a pile of debris (no different looking to the thousand other piles of debris you encounter throughout the game).  That was one the times I had to resort to a walkthrough.  The solution to acquiring the radiation suit?  Shoot the debris!  Literally the only time in the entire fucking game that you're required to do that.  What were they thinking?!

This game also has the dubious honour of joining the original Resident Evil as a game where I conserved ammo to the extent that by the time I reached the end, I had a full arsenal of incredibly powerful weapons with virtually limitless ammo... which I never used.  Curse my natural need to be overly-cautious.  This game would have been so much more entertaining and so much easier if I'd known that I could have actually switched from my pea-shooter without fear.

Oh and I have to talk about the "ending".  The whole game you're taunted by SHODAN.  She's your arch-nemesis and I was champing at the bit to finally confront her and take her down (a SHOWDOWN with SHODAN, if you will).  What actually happens?  You enter Cyberspace and encounter this weird abstract shape and you shoot it and suddenly a cutscene kicks in with your character back on Earth (how?!) and the game tells you in a couple of sentences that you won.  It doesn't even feel like you confronted SHODAN.  I wasn't even aware that I was battling SHODAN!  I wasn't even aware that I had defeated SHODAN!  I thought that the cutscene was a gameover screen, given how abrupt it was.  I mean look at this.  State of it!  There's no final dialogue from SHODAN or anything.  The game just unceremoniously ends.  I mean, what the actual fucking fuck?!  That's genuinely the single worst ending that I've ever encountered in a videogame.

Sorry, I'm ranting because I've literally just finished the game and I'm pissed off about it.  What a rip-off.

With that out of the way, there are many things to admire and respect about this game.  It's clearly an immense achievement for the time in which it was made and released.  I had a blast during the first half and I could have forgiven the frustrating second half if only the final boss and ending had been worth a damn, but alas.

I'm going to give this game two scores.  One from a historical perspective and one from an objective perspective of how the game holds up in 2021.

Historical rating = 8/10  I want to rate it higher really but even taking the game's age into account, there are just a few too many issues to rate it higher than 8.  It's a high 8 though!

2021 rating = 6/10 Slightly above average on the whole.  Perhaps the one thing I love more than any other in this game is the world building.  I found myself imagining how it all went down on Citadel Station, prior to the player character awakening.  The game drip feeds you little bits and pieces via the audio logs and its marvelously engaging and riveting.  Also, the core gameplay mechanics (again; once you get over the steep learning curve) are solid.  If only the game had maintained the pace of the first half and had an actual ending then I easily would have given this a 7 or 8.

FINAL THOUGHT

Salt the fucking fries?  Never mind salting the fries and your wacky experiences as developers.  Give me a fucking ending next time.  Well, pissed off.  System Shock 2 has a lot to amend for, I'm telling you!

[MojoJojo]

Edit glitch

[St_Eddie]

Having completed System Shock, I went back and re-read your review, Lemming and whilst I don't rate the game as highly as yourself, I do absolutely agree with your overall thoughts.  A couple of responses to your review here...

This is something that's meant to feel like it could be fully real (even if there are still a lot of twisted corridors and rooms that are downright inexplicable).

The sometimes nonsensical layout of the levels does actually get an in-universe explanation in one of the audio logs around halfway through the game; SHODAN has been rearranging the various decks to better serve the mindset of her own logic circuits and her Cybercunt minions.  The result for the remaining survivors is a hellish and incomprehensible labyrinth of technology.  I thought that was a fantastic touch on the part of the game designers.

System Shock also includes puzzles. I'm shit at them. Connecting wires and circuitboards to bypass doors or bring systems online is common, and I didn't have a fucking clue what I was doing at any given moment. The wires need to be put in the correct orientation and then the correct socket, I don't know.

Interesting.  The puzzles were the one setting I had on maximum difficulty and they never presented a problem for me.  I was able to solve each of them in around 5-15 seconds.  I guess that's my love for point & click adventure games coming through.  I only used a single logic probe during the entire game and that was due to a time sensitive situation (blowing up the relay - if you don't solve the puzzle in 3 seconds flat, you die in the explosion).

[Lemming]

I spent the last few days completing the game.  My final thoughts are that the first half is fantastic (once you get over the ridiculously steep learning curve) but that the game takes a nose dive in quality during the second half (around level 5 or 6).  Once you reach the halfway point, the objectives become tedious and dull (run here, flick this switch and then backtrack, flick another switch and then go back to the first switch and activate the lever then go back to... oh, fuck off).

There's a mid-game lull (I never liked the level with the botanical gardens too much) but personally I think there's a great payoff from the point where you overload the reactor onwards. The descent into the batshit-radiation-levels reactor followed by the escape pod sequence followed by the race to get to Security before the station explodes, hounded all the way by Cybercunt Elites, and then the desperate fight up the tower to reach the bridge (complete with the crazy battle against Diego right underneath the bridge's slowly-powering engines) is such a brilliant chain of events that I can just about forgive the weaker parts of the mid-late game. I also quite like the late-game level where you have to place the charges on the antennas, it all clicks together when you reach that central room and realise that the map is divided into four quadrants.

There's also an issue of vital buttons blending into the background textures, meaning it's incredibly easy to overlook that tiny little button that you need to press to advance, resulting in wandering around a massive level looking for a clue that isn't there.  Also, fuck the designers for hiding a necessary radiation suit beneath a pile of debris (no different looking to the thousand other piles of debris you encounter throughout the game).  That was one the times I had to resort to a walkthrough.  The solution to acquiring the radiation suit?  Shoot the debris!  Literally the only time in the entire fucking game that you're required to do that.  What were they thinking?!

Oh god yeah, I remember this. On one playthrough I legitimately couldn't find the radiation suit at all and ended up trying to survive the reactor core by just injecting about twenty detoxes into myself in rapid succession.

It's funny how many old games require you to shoot or interact with a prop or piece of scenery only once during the whole game, with every other instance being non-interactive and no indication of what to do. It's the bane of a lot of the games in this thread.

Oh and I have to talk about the "ending".  The whole game you're taunted by SHODAN.  She's your arch-nemesis and I was champing at the bit to finally confront her and take her down (a SHOWDOWN with SHODAN, if you will).  What actually happens?  You enter Cyberspace and encounter this weird abstract shape and you shoot it and suddenly a cutscene kicks in with your character back on Earth (how?!) and the game tells you in a couple of sentences that you won.  It doesn't even feel like you confronted SHODAN.  I wasn't even aware that I was battling SHODAN!  I wasn't even aware that I had defeated SHODAN!  I thought that the cutscene was a gameover screen, given how abrupt it was.  I mean look at this.  State of it!  There's no final dialogue from SHODAN or anything.  The game just unceremoniously ends.  I mean, what the actual fucking fuck?!  That's genuinely the single worst ending that I've ever encountered in a videogame.

I actually like the final boss! The screen glitching out and a terrifying sinister-looking SHODAN starting to fill up your entire view, pixel by pixel, is a nice idea. Especially since, when it renders fully, you instantly die, as if SHODAN somehow fried your brain through the cyberspace port. Plus, on normal or high cyberspace difficulty, the fight is fairly frantic - SHODAN moves around a lot and evades your attacks, and  the risk of getting brain-fried is very real.

The build-up to the final confrontation is decent too, where you retrieve the Almighty Thing from the corpse of the TriOptimum agent in the cage, which will allow you to face SHODAN.

The end cutscene is definitely quite abrupt but the chain of events always felt logical enough to me - with SHODAN stopped, you're in command of the bridge, so you can stop it from flying you away into deep space, and Rebecca's agents can come and rescue you. She and the team of experts were still in contact with you on the bridge, but SHODAN was blocking their signal ("nobody on Earth can help you now"). Also, that music is mint.

The game still escapes the "Most Sudden Ending Of 1994" award thanks to TES Arena, which ends with the villain's face exploding when you touch a jewel (which has only been mentioned once before), and then a guy you've never met shows up to tell you you're in charge of everything now. Still makes me laugh.

I only used a single logic probe during the entire game and that was due to a time sensitive situation (blowing up the relay - if you don't solve the puzzle in 3 seconds flat, you die in the explosion).

MAKE YOURSELF COMFORTABLE, HACKER. STAY A WHIIIILE.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Hate guidebot so much and never even seen it or looked or interacted with it once.

[St_Eddie]

I actually like the final boss! The screen glitching out and a terrifying sinister-looking SHODAN starting to fill up your entire view, pixel by pixel, is a nice idea. Especially since, when it renders fully, you instantly die, as if SHODAN somehow fried your brain through the cyberspace port. Plus, on normal or high cyberspace difficulty, the fight is fairly frantic - SHODAN moves around a lot and evades your attacks, and  the risk of getting brain-fried is very real.

The pixels slowly building into the face of SHODAN might have had an impact on me if I hadn't defeated the giant carrot thing before the face had formed.  All I saw was a scattering of grey pixels obscuring my view, I never saw her face or anything remotely resembling it.  Hence, I had no idea it even was SHODAN.

Ultimately though, my main issue with the boss is the lack of personification.  Throughout the whole game, the big bad AI has been given a face and voice to taunt you with.  It's goading the player into wanting to destroy the damn psycho bitch and to see and hear her reaction to you for doing so.  The one time during the entire game where you absolutely needed, wanted and would have actively welcomed to see and hear that evil AI's thoughts and you get zip, zilch, nada.  Some kind of dialogue during the final showdown (or heck even the final level - there's literally one short sentence from SHODAN at the start of the level and that's your lot) would have gone a long way towards making the final confrontation a lot more satisfying.  Any kind of dialogue would have done.  Just something!  Instead, you just get the silent nondescript giant floating metallic carrot!  It's infuriatingly anti-climatic, or at least it is in my opinion.  I was owed some kind of emotional payoff for all the shit I went through to beat the game, dammit!  Not just a few token words about turning down a job and remaining a hacker and a message about salting the fries.

Having said that, the more I think back on the game (and after a night's sleep), the more I'm enamoured towards it.  I suspect that a future replay will strengthen my love for the game (and that I actually want to replay it at some point is a good indicator of quality).  As it stands, I will increase my score from a 6 to a 7...  actually, no; 6.5!  I just cannae forgive that ending.

[bgmnts]

Endings are hard, to be fair.

[St_Eddie]

Endings are hard, to be fair.

Meh.  I'm not willing to forgive a terribly disappointing ending because the writers found it too difficult to come up with a satisfying one.  It reminds me of when filmmakers moan about criticism of their failed film and say "but we worked so hard on it!".  Yeah, and?  Why should that affect my opinion of your commercial release which I paid money for?

[Lemming]

If you ever replay it, try with the time limit enabled. Everything's twice as tense when you've got a clock permanently ticking down in the top right corner, and if you start to run out of time towards the end, it's one of those rare moments where a videogame actually gets your adrenaline pumping for real.

I wonder how they'll handle the finale in the upcoming remake. The cyberspace sections seem a little more Descent-like, so there's potential for something like an elongated dogfight with the SHODAN carrot. There's a few other things they could do to give SHODAN more of a presence on the Bridge level too - I always thought it'd be cool if SHODAN opened all the airlocks and/or shut the life support off, forcing the Hacker into yet another desperate race against the clock, and it'd give it a reason to keep taunting you as you fight towards the central control room.

Also, I forgot if it's ever made clear what the Isolinear Chipset you recover from Rebecca's agent's corpse does, but it'd be a satisfying ending if it restored SHODAN to factory settings or something. There'd be something very cathartic about hearing SHODAN revert to the standard monotone un-sentient voice and mindlessly obeying as you order it to stop the bridge, and restoring the ethics protocols would let the Hacker finally set right his mistake (too late to save the hundreds of people who died, but it's something).

[St_Eddie]

I forgot if it's ever made clear what the Isolinear Chipset you recover from Rebecca's agent's corpse does...

Yeah, whatwasdatallabout?

...it'd be a satisfying ending if it restored SHODAN to factory settings or something. There'd be something very cathartic about hearing SHODAN revert to the standard monotone un-sentient voice and mindlessly obeying as you order it to stop the bridge, and restoring the ethics protocols would let the Hacker finally set right his mistake (too late to save the hundreds of people who died, but it's something).

That's a great idea.  The only issue I see is that it may negate the plot of System Shock 2.  It may not though, to be fair.  I haven't played it yet.

[Mister Six]

That's a great idea.  The only issue I see is that it may negate the plot of System Shock 2.  It may not though, to be fair.  I haven't played it yet.

You could have Shodan firing off a probe containing a copy of its consciousness, revealed in a post-credits scene.

[evilcommiedictator]

Isolinear chipset is explained a few times in the logs by the Trioptimum agent serving as Diego's secretary

I have with me the isolinear chipset the resistance has been working on. It contains a program which will temporarily paralyze SHODAN long enough to find it and kill it. The only catch is that I have to get through the defenses to level 9, the bridge, and then break into the computer room to install the chipset. Once that is done, I will have to find the cyberjack to SHODAN's lair.

To be fair, a lot of the logs you kinda gloss over, and if you don't pay attention when you need codes from them, it's not fun. It was the 90s.

[St_Eddie]

Isolinear chipset is explained a few times in the logs by the Trioptimum agent serving as Diego's secretary

Oh!  I never listened to the audio logs for the last level.  I had a habit of amassing the audio logs and listening to them en masse at the end of each level.  Never got the chance to do that for the last level because I was too busy bumming SHODAN CARROT in the gob.

[Lemming]

Playing Kingpin, met the average FPS fan in-game.

[St_Eddie]

I'm holding off replaying Kingpin (a firm favourite of my adolescent years) until the remastered version comes out.  The developer recently announced that it's been delayed...

Hey everyone!

I want to give you all an update on KP Reloaded, and why it's taking so long.
Early this year we revealed the game, with the goal of releasing the game this summer.

However, some major changes have happened during development, which is why we've decided to delay the game.

We decided earlier this year to change our approach to the Remaster. As you all know, the original source code for Kingpin no longer exists, so our original plan was to "Recreate" the game in a modern engine (The same approach Nightdive uses for their KexEngine games).

However, during this, we quickly realized that in order to get the game to Feel 100% like the original (Including the fantastic path-finding for AI, etc.), a better approach would be to reverse engineer the original game and engine completely, essentially re-creating the missing sources from scratch.

We've been hard at work on this for the majority of 2020, and are finally at a stage where we're almost done.

Alongside the programming side of things, we're also close to being done with re-creating every texture in the game from scratch, in high-resolution. No AI Upscaling here!

In January we're entering the next stage of development - Putting it all together, which is at the point where we'll finally be able to share more videos, gameplay, screenshots, and open up the closed-beta.

Stay tuned everyone! Kingpin is coming!

Sincerely,
The Kingpin: Reloaded Team!

Now that's the kind of delay I can get behind; one which will likely result in the best possible experience.

Now that's the kind of delay I can get behind.  Sounds like it will ultimately be for the best.

Playing Kingpin, met the average FPS fan in-game.

Takes one to know one!

[St_Eddie]

In other FPS news; I've started playing System Shock 2 and it's absolutely mindblowingly good thus far!  Of course no sooner have I started playing the sequel, having just completed the original (Enhanced Edition), do the developers announce that the long delayed remake for the first game and the remaster for the sequel will be getting released with the next month or so.  Sake!  Still, I suppose that I'd rather experience the games as originally presented (interface enhancements and mods aside).

[willbo]

I really liked Dredd Vs Death, despite it getting meh/bad reviews from everyone at the time. I loved the arcade "stay alive as long as you can" levels and played them for hours. They had a really cool laser quest feel.

[AsparagusTrevor]

I'm holding off replaying Kingpin (a firm favourite of my adolescent years) until the remastered version comes out.  The developer recently announced that it's been delayed...

Hey everyone!

I want to give you all an update on KP Reloaded, and why it's taking so long.
Early this year we revealed the game, with the goal of releasing the game this summer.

However, some major changes have happened during development, which is why we've decided to delay the game.

We decided earlier this year to change our approach to the Remaster. As you all know, the original source code for Kingpin no longer exists, so our original plan was to "Recreate" the game in a modern engine (The same approach Nightdive uses for their KexEngine games).

However, during this, we quickly realized that in order to get the game to Feel 100% like the original (Including the fantastic path-finding for AI, etc.), a better approach would be to reverse engineer the original game and engine completely, essentially re-creating the missing sources from scratch.

We've been hard at work on this for the majority of 2020, and are finally at a stage where we're almost done.

Alongside the programming side of things, we're also close to being done with re-creating every texture in the game from scratch, in high-resolution. No AI Upscaling here!

In January we're entering the next stage of development - Putting it all together, which is at the point where we'll finally be able to share more videos, gameplay, screenshots, and open up the closed-beta.

Stay tuned everyone! Kingpin is coming!

Sincerely,
The Kingpin: Reloaded Team!

Now that's the kind of delay I can get behind; one which will likely result in the best possible experience.

I hope they include an option to make the character textures wobble like jelly, for an authentic experience.

[Lemming]

That's just the ultra-realistic attention to detail - literally every male character in the game has the same overweight character model, so you're just seeing their flab jiggling.

[St_Eddie]

As I play through System Shock 2, a few of the developer's influences are very clear...

* The opening to the game is a direct lift from Half-Life, as the player arrives at their destination on a tram.

* The opening cutscene seems to very much have been inspired by Paul Verhoeven's satirical corporate adverts in RoboCop and in particular Starship Troopers.

* Whilst exploring the Von Braun, I came across a very familiar looking sign.  It was the laser sign from John Carpenter's first film Dark Star!