My problem with System Shock 2 was that I played it after Thief, and I knew it was the same engine. SS2 has great audio and monsters, but it pales next to Thief’s. And Thief’s sneakery meant you were actually scared of getting caught and killed by said monsters, whereas in SS2 you can’t really sneak much.
I have literal imprints in my mind of being chased into the central shaft elevator by Cyborg Midwives and praying the doors closed before she started clawing my face off. Seeing them running at me as the doors take too long - HURRY!!!
Before DOOM 2016, id released a string of turkeys all the way back to 1999. Seventeen years without a hit. Rage was mediocre, nobody cared about Quake Live, and DOOM3 was deeply disappointing. DOOM 2016 development was deeply troubled, and they restarted the entire thing at least once. All signs pointed to another crappy game.
And yet… DOOM 2016 was perfect.
Close, but no cigar.
Quake Wars: Enemy Territory is wonderful. And yet the only one out of that list of yours that’s no longer for sale.
I’m not sure what point I’m trying to make here other than that I’m pedantic.
I found both the Shock games to be terrifying. The sound design was incredible and at the time the Von Braun felt like a real place. Shodan has to be one of the great antagonists in gaming.
My biggest fear is that SS3 won’t secure a publisher due to a combination of Night Dive’s upcoming Shock 1 remake and Prey’s poor sales.
You guys saying System Shock 2 wasn’t scary have forgotten about the pipe hittin’ cyber monkeys. Those little sons of bitches were terrifying when they swarmed you.
id didn’t make that game, Splash Damage did.
Enemy design in that game. They just knocked everything out of the park.
I hate hate hated those little b#stards…cowering in a dark room, heating their chattering getting closer and closer…
Mind you I cowered from the mutants at the beginning as well…”it burns”…I did a lot of cowering in SS2.
Showing remakes of SS1 monsters in a supposed SS3 seems like such a bizarre choice. The first time I saw this video I thought I was watching the latest teaser from Night Dive.
Except the teaser from Night Dive is better! Bad timing.
“It’s going great,” he said. “We’re talking to a lot of partners and we have a lot of interest. We don’t have a deal right now, but luckily OtherSide is flush enough that we’re funding ourselves and can continue to do that for quite a while. Let’s see what happens.
“We need somebody to say, ‘yeah, let’s talk deal terms’ and we’re in that kind of discussion with some folks. But we’re not quite finished yet.”
Spector added that he can’t rule out the possibility of OtherSide self-publishing the immersive sim, however that’s a scenario he’d like to avoid.
“The reality is, OtherSide is a company of developers who want to develop games,” he explained. “We don’t particularly want to be a publisher."
I have a distinct memory of playing System Shock 2. In one of the lab rooms I hacked a turret. I left and came back sometime later to discover the turret was now damaged, and there was a shattered window where the turret must have fired at something, and only that dreadful feeling that whatever came in here didn’t die and was still out there to get me.
I remember when I first discovered that I could input text onto the map. It was a glorious discovery. I ripped the audio of the radio squelch heard at 2:15 and still to this day use it as my notification sound on my phone.
I never actually finished SS2 because I got such an uncomfortable feeling of fear every time I tried playing it. I felt so weak and vulnerable.
SS2 was pretty damn good at creating that sort of paralyzing dread that is so hard to do. And it did it with some pretty hoary and even by the standards of the time crappy graphics. They did use the visuals they had though quite effectively. I still found SS1 more satisfying overall, but then, that was a real ground-breaking game.
No game has ever done that to me again. I miss that feeling when playing a game. I finished it though and it was amazing. And terrifying.
I feel like I was in another dimension than you guys. Thief was the real scary one with its incredible audio – SS2 was the cheap (and horribly balanced) imitator using the same engine.
