If it’s a world based on her writing, in System Shock stylee, I doubt very much it’s going to be any more positively depicted than The Plan in A Mind Forever Voyaging.
The preview in GI leaves no doubt about that. Mind you, there might still be room for Randian heroics and whatnot, but there is no question the whole premise is put in question by the disastrous state of affairs you enter at the beginning of the game. I don’t think the goal is a return to the Atlas status quo, although I wouldn’t be surprised if that were a (qualified) option for an ending.
When someone asks what my favorite game of all time was - it’s an easy answer… System Shock 2. Take Half-Life 2 and DOOM3’s creepiest levels - combine them, and they’re still not 1/10th as scary as SS2. Brilliant story, great design, insanely scary sound effects, great voicework… ahhhh, brings back great memories of being scared shitless.
I wanted to love SS2, but it’s gameplay design was so horribly, obviously broken that I couldn’t.
Read the article yesterday. Color me unexcited. Levine spouts his usual “emergent” mantra and then proceeds to cite how one mod might make an enemy turn against a friendly, how you can hack things, be a warrior, etc. Nothing really new or exciting there, IMO. And the upgrade mod choices bring no tension from player decisions because all choices are freely reversable, at least as currently envisioned by those interviewed. I don’t know, the entire thing sounds like an attempt to revisit a SS/Deus Ex clone.
I don’t know if I’m inviting a rant, but elaborate please?
No rant. I was a huge SS fan and bought the sequel the day it came out. But I played as a marine and the weapon degradation and respawn rates turned it into more labor than fun. The game just felt unbalanced and broken to me, and it took too much stubborness to plow on through to the end for it to be enjoyable.
Perhaps the decision that although you have gone through hard training and are a decorated soldier, you cannot wield a shotgun. Or any other weapon except for the handgun, and a pipe wrench.
Or that your abilities is tied to how you spend the “cyber modules” you find all over the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker. Which is in itself an oddity, since you receive information that you have undergone unauthorized modification. You are unique, and one wonders what all those cyber modules was used for before you woke up. Not to mention the terminals used for “upgrading” your skill set, and those giving you special abilities.
Or perhaps the decision to go with respawning enemies. You weren’t really given any explanation to how a section that you just had cleared, with no visible other access, could have been repopulated with mutated humans. Breaks the immersion, they say.
Or that the replicator isn’t capable of making psi-hypos (mana potions), but the revive camber restores you exactly as you were when you imprinted, psi-hypos and all.
Or perhaps that the best weapons is an ordinary assault rifle and a pink tree branch.
I bet he’s talking about decaying weapons.
… edit: ya, I guess he was. Didn’t realize the window was stale :-\
Not to rain on your rant – I understand I’m just plucking out one little bit of your post. I read some explanation that this was to give the ships a more populated feel – rather than be attacked by a crush of crew all at once. Of course, that explanation might have been total bullshit.
And to John Reynolds: Levine called Bioshock a “spiritual successor to SS2.” So, why be surprised when the gameplay is similar? Similar is what SS2 fans are hoping for – and apparently they’re the target audience.
Respawn rates plus what I perceved to be a clumsy inventory interface made me dislike SS2. I didn’t spend that much time playing it so don’t have a particularly strong opinion, but I gave the game a couple hours and decided it was not for me.
I believe read that too. I can understand their thinking beind it, but I do feel that some places should have been of limits for spawn. Had the spawning occured near the main elevator or somesuch you could give the apperance of new enemies a reasonable explanation.
Smack, smack, free shotgun shell. What’s the big deal?
The game is much better when you disable the weapon degredation. It’s an ini file setting, because post-ship they realized that that mechanic sucked and anyone who wasn’t a masochist hated it. Also, I didn’t mind the respawning guys much, as it gave me a few great moments. 99% of the time though, respawning is a Bad Thing™, like the final boss fight. God that sucked.
The whole last level is absurd. I played the game through about a year ago on realistic without saving (except the autosave at the start of one of the decks, since the respawn point is like 10 minutes in and I didn’t make it) and when I got to Xen, I mean The Many, I just started quicksaving. The instant rumblers is just icing on the ridiculous cake.
Unless you are referring to Shodan, who IIRC is a pushover.
Pushover enough that I didn’t consider it part of the fight, but more of the denoument, yes.
I didn’t mind The Many, but the absurd respawning on that last big fight was absolutely painful. It took me a while to figure out the perfect strategy of “run, fire three times here, shoot one thing here, and then kill the baddie”. I hate when I have to refine a ridiculous strategy through repeated failure.
BTW, is any of this bioshock info online? I wouldn’t mind reading about it, and I won’t have a chance to go look for a mag until the weekend at the earliest.
System Shock 2 just sort of fell apart at the end I think. Von Braun and Rickenbacker, golden. The Many was just a trial-and-error headache. My armchair design would have had the Many be more of a breather, a slaughter that’d make the player feel both powerful and increasingly bad about it as Shodan exhorted you on her little genocide task–then the final showdown against Shodan be less of a denouement and more of an actual showdown.
Still, I didn’t mind so much as the road up to the falling-apart point was so engaging. I fiddled with the ini file to slow the absurd weapon rusting speed to a reasonable crawl and throttle back the respawn rate as well, and hit a happy medium with both with some fiddling.
When I played it with repeated saving I didn’t notice the difference, but if you’re trying to ironman it, the Many is quite a shock. I couldn’t even begin to do it without saving.
SS2 kind of fell apart a bit in the third act, but that last level (the “System Shock 1 level”) brought it all back home for me. All sins were forgiven at that point.
If you use that gun that freezes things in place on the respawning enemies and just leave them there, they don’t respawn. It’s still annoying because you have to keep re-freezing them and the gun takes up a huge amount of space in your inventory, but it’s easier than trying to kill the rumblers over and over again.