System Shock 2 Should I play it ?

**warning spoiler alert** **warning spoiler alert** **warning spoiler alert**

O.k i'm up to the bit where you find out politio is actually shodan, and it plays that scene where the four walls turn into her face (deck 4 @ about 6 hours in). I'm playing it purely at night, with the lights off and on headphones, with all the graphics and sound mods. So this is my view from there.

It plays very well, your never felt feeling lost and there's always somthing keeping stuck to your seat. There's real incentives to explore absolutely everything. The interface works well, as does the psi improvements.

Now having said that it is by far not 'the best game of all time', when playing it now for the first time. It feels like a standard shooter with some rpg elements. The story is medocre and feels like it's been done before (maby because doom 3 ripped it off) and trust me when i say it's not scary, as it really isn't - resident evil or silent hill - now they truely are scary. The atmosphere isn't great either. Half life 1 (of the same era) has it beat hands down in combat and enemy ai - though i realise this is an rpg too.

Just looking for a reaction from you people that class this game as one of the best, as obviously i don't agree. Maby it's like final fantasy 7 - i class this as the best game ever made, and would reccomend it to anyone and everyone, but maby it's just nostalga from playing it when it first came out...
 
Last edited:
I think the "scary" aspect is more that it is quite disturbing. Hearing the stories about the crews minds being infected, the monkies becoming intelligent etc. More psychologically disturbing rather than slasher-style shock stuff.

As a film analogy I'd say it is in the same vein as "Don't Look Now", whereby your trad scary film would be Scream.

It was the monkies that got me. When you're low on health and you have a pack of psychopathic gibbering monkies chasing you down *shudder*

:D
 
I'd just repeat the 'how can you judge a game when you're playing it 9 years late' argument. Play Half Life 1 now and the atmosphere just doesn't work because visually the game looks so dated. What used to be a scary looking monster in 1998 looks laughably lacking in detail now, even cartoon-like. Imagine trying to convince a 16 yr old kid today that Space Invaders was a great game (it was, but oh boy does it suck now). Try to convince someone who has never played it that Resident Evil 1 is still scary now - you'd be laughed at.

As for whether SS2 is a good game, you're welcome to your opinion of course, but you must see it has more gameplay layers than an average shooter. The best thing about games like SS2 is they give you many more options than just the 1-9 guns and they make you think about how to play the game. There's your base stats, your weapon skills (in 4 categories), your psi abilities, your hacking and engineering skills, weapon maintainance and repair, weapon modifications, different ammo types, research, OS upgrades, the implants, plus there's all the thousnds of objects the game has. You don't get any of that in a regular shooter, and the only game that had tried to do any of that stuff before SS2 was SS1 (which wasn't an RPG but shared much with SS2).

As for the story feeling like it's been done before because Doom 3 ripped it off, it's not SS2s fault you're playing it after games that ripped it off, and if you're listenning to the logs (you really need to, the whole backstory is in there) the story is only vaguely similar to that in Doom 3.

Also SS2 has more advanced AI than HL. In SS2 enemies aren't initially aware of you and they can lose track of you and have the abilitiy to search for you, whereas in HL enemies are always aware of where you are. The marines in HL seem to be quite clever and use cover, but they're just moving from pre-definied point to pre-defined point. The cover locations are just set on the map, and since they have no relation to where you are they can often mean the marines takes cover in stupid places. I've seen a marine run right up to me, crouch next to me and slowly turn round in a circle while I shot him.
 
Last edited:
Goldfingers, its just an age thing. I still class it as one of the best games ever made because I (well, the community) are judging it based on its era.

Obviously it wont stand up to it now - and its one of the reasons I'll never play it again, because its going to be dissapointing. Same with Deux Ex, still top of my chart but it probably doesn't stand upto modern games.


I still rate SS2 over Bioshock - play them back to back now and its obvious which would win, but in the scope of their era, SS2 > Bioshock. Doom3 relied on making you jump, SS2 just builds an atmosphere you could cut with a knife.
 
Matmulder said:
Goldfingers, its just an age thing. I still class it as one of the best games ever made because I (well, the community) are judging it based on its era.

Obviously it wont stand up to it now - and its one of the reasons I'll never play it again, because its going to be dissapointing. Same with Deux Ex, still top of my chart but it probably doesn't stand upto modern games.


I still rate SS2 over Bioshock - play them back to back now and its obvious which would win, but in the scope of their era, SS2 > Bioshock. Doom3 relied on making you jump, SS2 just builds an atmosphere you could cut with a knife.
Click to expand...

I see what you mean and absolutely agree. If system shock 2 was made today with the technology available now it would blow any game out of the water. But right now it just dosen't stand up:( Which is a shame as i really wanted to enjoy it, as i'm such a fan of sci fi. I guess it's because fps's rely so heavily on graphics and effects....
I would still say bioshock is a phenominal game, but in a very different way - so i can see why fans of system shock don't enjoy it.
Anyways gonna play it though to the end for the sake of it, if anything.
 
I actually did play SS2 (and loved it as much as ever, although I realize that may be part nostalgia) just before Bioshock was released, and I think that's partly why I found Bioshock so dissapointing. Just shows graphics aren't everything. I found Bioshock a pale immitation.
 
Last edited:
Fantastic game. In fact the makers of Bioshock should do a System Shock 3 with a similar theme. In which you can choose a different branch of the armed forces and get different skills accordingly.
It would be awesome with today's graphical technology.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom