“The thing that eventually just made me sick of the game was the combination of constantly degrading weapons with constantly respawning enemies. That got old very quickly, and completely destroyed what would have otherwise been a pretty decent FPS/RPG hybrid with a great sense of creepy atmosphere.”
Well, uh, turn off the respawning and turn off or lower the weapon degradation? Just a thought, it takes about 5 seconds to do it. Seems worthwhile to try that option rather than decide it ruined the game permanently or something.
Yeah, those are in the game in order to enhance the sense of stress, so that you care about each shot fired and have an overwhelming sense of desparation.
In retrospect, though, it’s way too hard & frustrating for average players… we should have added a “Shocked” mode for veteran players that is kind of like the current mode, and made the default much more friendly in those regards.
I just recently played this game for the first time. Great game overall, and the graphics werent that bad with everything cranked, including AA.
The degrading weapons thing was the worst, but the patch allows you to fix that easily. The repops I didnt find that bad either, I left those on. It made backtracking a whole lot more exciting. I hate the freaking spiders though…
Playing this game in the dark, with headphones on, is the way to go. I almost leapt out of my chair a few times.
System Shock 2 is a great game, no question, but going full psi is really the only way to beat it without cheating and turning off either respawning or weapons degradation. I don’t even see how the Body of the Many level is possible without full invisibility for basically the entire thing, which is a tier five skill.
The more I look at these models, the more I think that they are somehow going to detract from the feral, alien atmosphere of the first game. They are certainly impressive, but I’m still not sure they “fit”. I’ll have to give them a shot when they are released - perhaps in game they will seem more coherent within the universe.
We had a lot of debate on how “sexy” the midwife should be (ie, should we show tits, etc.). At the time, EA was (puts fingers together) “this” close to cancelling the game because it had an M rating and it was right after Columbine. So we decided to play it safe.
Apparently they were more aggreived by the handful of suicide scenes in the game than anything else…
Playing without psi is quite possible if you have high maintenance skill (hacking helps as well). I’ve played through it two times with a navy character without changing respawning or degradation. Having both on added greatly to the atmosphere of the game - I never felt safe anywhere.
Me, too. I did the game full-psi and suffered greatly through the engineering levels. However, the endgame was practically a cakewalk once I got there. :-)
I beat the game without cheating or turning off respawning or the weapons stuff as a Marine. I did it before that junk was patched in. It was nowhere near impossible at all. Obviously, I picked up some Psi powers along the way. Body of the Many was hard and I think I hit a FAQ for those things flying around after the teeth that were tough to kill, but otherwise, even Shodan wasn’t so hard that I felt the game was impossible.
I don’t have much time to get into the discussion at the moment but let me just say that I’m saddened that this game is often held in higher regard then the System Shock 1. SS2 was good, but not as good as the original IMO.
Heh - it actually worked in a sense at first, since it added to my sense of fright, which was cool. I was all like “okay, totally crapping my pants now, please give me a good weapon now”. When the stress kicked in, my response was “no, really, give me a weapon that won’t break, for chrissake!” Then I sort of gave up.
I’d rather be creeped out by great sound and nasty monsters than get stressed out by gameplay elements that cause the difficulty to skyrocket.
It’s really cool to know that my two biggest complaints happened to be addressed in the patch. The thing is, I never had a technical problem playing the game, therefore I thought SS2 had no need of a patch. All my complaints were design issues that I figured would not be addressed. I guess I’ll have to revisit it so that I can nitpick all the other stuff, now that I won’t be so preoccupied with bitching about the respawning. ;)
The problem is the same one you face when you play thief. The game goes against conventional FPS design where the goal is to leave no enemies alive. Half the time in system shock you are best off running like hell.
And E3 was right after Columbine. The people at the show were given a directive to demo the game without ever using any guns. Apparently, they got real good at using the psi-amplifier…
Naturally, I would too. So I guess what I’m saying is:
great atmosphere + great gameplay = ideal (Deus Ex and the NOLF series come to mind as RPG/FPS hybrids that I found vastly superior to SS2)
great atmosphere + pretty good but not quite top-notch gameplay = great (Undying)
great atmosphere + bad gameplay = okay (SS2)
Now that I know the patch addresses my two major complaints about it, I’ll probably be able to put SS2 in the same category as Undying.
My comment on the creepy atmosphere of SS2 wasn’t meant to imply that atmosphere > gameplay by any means. Rather, atmosphere > bad gameplay.
The much ballyhoed “fix” for weapons degradation works like shit. I’ve tried it. Your weapons still degrade, and at a much faster rate than what the patch and readme say they should post patch.
I agree. Bad gameplay. Great atmosphere. But really, really, really contrived gameplay. If they want desperation, then don’t have guns that break like they’re made out of plaster. Limit the ammo. Oh, wait a sec, they did that too. So not only were your guns pieces of shit, but there was an ungodly paucity of ammunition onboard a military ship. Fuck this.
