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[mono]

System Shock 2
TIGS Game Club April 2013

"System Shock 2 is an action role-playing survival horror video game for PC. The title was designed by Ken Levine and co-developed by Irrational Games and Looking Glass Studios. System Shock 2 was released on August 11, 1999, in North America.

The game takes place on board a starship in a cyberpunk depiction of 2114. The player assumes the role of a lone soldier trying to stem the outbreak of a genetic infection that has devastated the ship. Like System Shock, gameplay consists of first person shooting and exploration. It also incorporates role-playing system elements, in which the player can develop unique skills and traits, such as hacking and psionic abilities.
System Shock 2 received positive reviews when released, but failed to meet commercial sales expectations. Many critics later determined that the game was highly influential in subsequent game design, particularly on first person shooters, and considered it far ahead of its time."

- Wikipedia

In Game Club we pick a game for each month to play together and discuss. It's a perfect opportunity to play games you might have missed or go back and play it once again.

The game is around 16-20 hours long, but there is no need to finish it. If you have already played it and don't feel like doing a second playthrough you can still participate in the discussion.

Available at:

GOG.COM
GAMERSGATE.COM

Tips on good deals are appreciated.

[Fallsburg]

I got it last night and played a bit this morning.

I remembered reading about SS2 mods a while back, and decided to check them out.  The only one that I can recommend with no reservations is SHTUP, as it just replaces some of the textures with higher-res versions.  Beyond that, there aren't a ton that don't seem to start to make more drastic changes to the game.

[mono]

Thx! I'll start playing today.

[Rahrahrah]

Before heading out the door for the day, I installed and finished the training section.  Already looking forward to playing some more tonite on my return.

Excited??  Yes.

[mono]

Randomly respawning enemies is creepy.

[s0]

yes. i like how you're never "safe" in ss2. it really keeps you on your toes like very few other games i know. also the hybrids are creepy enemies imo.

[Rahrahrah]

Holy example of Second Game Theory Batman!!  This is so cool to see all the ideas I am familiar with implemented in varying better and worse degrees.  There are even chips, sodas, and vodkas laying about.  When I picked up Bioshock Infinite on ps3 and received the first Bioshock with it which I hadn't played in years, I was super excited.  Now, the first Bioshock will have to wait a few weeks while I dive into System Shock 2.  (I was just lamenting the fact that Bio:Inf. has no research, I already mentioned in some other thread no map, and most of the view box things in B:I seemed very lacking to me (art visually and what it had to say conceptually) with the exception for some reason I loved the one in Inf. that was just a view of the hummingbird flying and moving about.)

I really like the random junk all the enemies say.  I heard one say "Your song is not our song" or something really close.  Oooh.. so awesome.

I also appreciate all the audio logs.  Lots of tiny details in its story build bits.  Love it.

[s0]

i played ss2 after bioshock as well so i can relate haha

[mono]

Flanking and wrenching killer robots proved much more effective than using the shotgun, I wasted all ammo.

I'm probably more tense when playing this than the original Bioshock for some reason.

[s0]

original bioshock never felt tense to me at all tbh but i don't think it was trying to be. ss2 wants you to fear your enemies, bioshock wants you to kill them in weird ways lol.

also yeah remember that this is a SURVIVAL HORROR gam so conserving ammo is key

[saibot216]

Love to participate in the discussion. My brother and I played the demo when that came out. Eventually I got the game when I was in high school (so many years later) and played through the whole game a couple times. Once alone and once with a friend. It is so much fun with a friend.

[eigenbom]

Grabbed this from GOG yesterday and am loving it. I guess it got lost under HL and Quake etc. when it came out. Glad someone suggested it here as I feel I almost missed out on a vital piece of gamedev history, filling the gap somewhere between HL and DeusEx, and the progenitor of BioShock etc. Also the music is pretty great, I'm listening to the soundtrack now.

As for the game, I liked the '4 year' sequence at the start to choose your stats, but I mistakenly spent modules later on on PSI crap instead of beefing up my STR, so I can't wear this bloody armour I've been carrying around for ages. I'm not a fan of having to kill zombie telepathic monkies though, I cringe at killing animals in games, for some illogical reason, as killing virtual people is usually fine.

Interesting game, and dark. And the credits are pretty funny.

[SterlingDee]

I remember playing this when I was young - I found it really scary for some reason. Good game.

[Ben_Hurr]

yes. i like how you're never "safe" in ss2. it really keeps you on your toes like very few other games i know. also the hybrids are creepy enemies imo.

If you think that's bad, wait until you get to the cyborg midwives. 

[Rahrahrah]

As for the game, I liked the '4 year' sequence at the start to choose your stats, but I mistakenly spent modules later on on PSI crap instead of beefing up my STR, so I can't wear this bloody armour I've been carrying around for ages.

Me too... hrmm... art imitating life?!  I mean how did they know..

[saibot216]

yes. i like how you're never "safe" in ss2. it really keeps you on your toes like very few other games i know. also the hybrids are creepy enemies imo.

If you think that's bad, wait until you get to the cyborg midwives. 

Oh god, the midwives. It's the things that the hybrids and midwives say when they're just wandering around that is just so dang creepy.

[D-TurboKiller]

Well well, there's a lot of things I want to say about this game, if you don't mind me being really picky about it, but for good reasons. I played this to the very end a couple months ago, and despite my terrible memory I do remember quite a few things about it. This is one of my favorite games, so all the more reason for me to know exactly what's wrong with it!


I could talk all I want about the good points, but everyone knows that already and it's been done to death, so I'll do the opposite and become a picky bastard.
So, what exactly do I find "bad" about this game? Well...
(Bearing in mind I played this on Normal, by the way)

-The very beginning of the game, you're forced to make a couple of choices, such as picking a "faction" and perform different training each year, in order to actually proceed into the proper part of the game. Thing is, this is literally just stat changes, and doesn't really affect much else in the game, which makes this whole section kinda overkill, considering they could've just made a menu for this and start you off in the Von Braun. It feels half-baked, and I wish they could've done much more with it. Also, the tutorial feels quite unnecessary, considering how much the game explains to you as you progress.

-The atmosphere is the best thing about this game, and they really nail it during most of Von Braun. But the enemies? Not so much. I either felt pity (former humans now turned into murderous clumps of flesh), indifference (aliens & machines) or even the need to laugh (psi monkeys, hah). But hey, that's just me not being scared of anything ever.

-While the enemy's spawning system is pretty great, it does have its flaws. You can tell at many points in the game (even early on!) that it keeps spawning them over and over and over again, sometimes even out of dead-end sections which I KNOW were empty, and enforces you to either keep moving forward or hide somewhere they can't reach you. So much for exploration.

-You know, considering I specialized myself in ranged weapons and everything that could improve them, there sure was a LOT of ammo to find around the place. At the start you didn't have much, the middle was basically piles of ammo everywhere, and at the end you were desperately outta ammo! The end parts were especially awful, because I barely had anything to defend myself with since I was dry as hell on ammo... and I try to conserve it as much as I can, so only single shots and meleeing the weaker ones when possible!

-Researching is... pretty clunky, to say the least. The actual researching? It's fine by me. But gathering the materials? Hoo boy. I don't know what you folks did, but wherever I found a storage room, I brought every single material with me and back to the very first and most convenient storage, aka Medical, because hell no I don't want to go back because I'm missing this one particular component that I just happened to need at the time.

-This goes with the above point as well, because it's a shame there isn't no actual storage points you can access in the decks, as it would've been VERY handy. You wouldn't believe how much stuff I brought back to the starting point of Medical (where the upgrade stations are) just so I could use them later on or perhaps recycle them when needed.

-Backtracking is very much forced on you, and generally sucks to do (Engineering, final parts of Von Braun, etc). For example, having completely explored Engineering once, I was forced to go back there just for the main mission, but the game showed me literally nothing different in this section. What a real shame, there's so much they could've done with it.

-I didn't think I would have so much trouble with a puzzle as the picture puzzle in Recreational. I must've ravaged the whole deck in search for those picture frames, repeatedly switching around pictures until I found the codes, yet I was STILL missing a part of it! Eventually I just said "fuck it" and grabbed a walkthrough just to get the code.

-Everything after the Von Braun (and some of the final parts in Von Braun) just, well... they suck. You could tell they were really running out of dosh on these parts, because all of the sudden, that sweet balance was gone forever, and the game turned VERY linear on you, not to mention it rushed everything it could! The System Shock 1 reference was pretty neat, though.

-The final boss fight was disappointingly terrible (because no dosh at this point, of course). I really don't have to explain this one, do I? Also, dat terrible but comedic ending... "Nah."



That's about all the "bad" points I can think of at the moment. Fucking great game, regardless, and FAR superior to every Bioshock game.

Oh yeah, out of curiousity, does anyone know exactly what hacking the gaming device does? I didn't really notice a difference.

[saibot216]

My only complaint about the game is that if you put your stats into stats X and Y, you find yourself getting screwed over later in the game because you didn't have any points or enough points in stat Z. If that made sense.

[s0]

ya the stat system is a bit broken. even the devs admit it (iirc).

[mono]

I don't use Psi. Will that screw me over later?