catbarf on 13/9/2007 at 19:17

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Hi everyone, I just was able to buy another copy of SS2. I played it way back when, but lost the disc in an unfortunate accident (hint: it involved a 'disabled persons' car at the airport). Well, I decided to fire it up again- and I realized that I don't remember much from my first playthrough. I think the only explanation was that I was so traumatized by it, I didn't remember much :rolleyes:

But here's the thing- the scare is gone. I'm playing through it again, and while it feels almost like an entirely new game to me, I'm just not scared by it.

So, I'm going to restart it with a complete SS2-newbie (my good friend Randy, who has also played Boshock), and we're going to go through it on the default Hard.

Well, we did a test today. After a hell of a lot of wrangling around, we got it to work:

1. I connect to him through Hamachi
2. He disables his internet
3. He runs SS2 and hosts a game
4. He re-enables internet and goes to the 2nd host game screen
5. He quits his game
6. I host, he tries to join, he fails
7. He hosts again, I join.

And for some reason, we have to do all that every time to get it to work.

Anyway, we were running around and getting a feel for the controls. He didn't realize until 5 minutes in that he could change from the godawful standard keys, and set it to FPS mode. We ran into a small issue- I can't chuck more than one nanite at a time at him, by holding alt and then dragging the nanite onto him. Can anyone help?

Let me backtrack a little. We both decided to go Marine. We plan on going towards different classes as it goes on, but to start we went with the choices to give us each Standard +2 for 1st tour and Maintenance +1 for the third. I got the Strength for my 2nd tour, and he got Agility I believe. I plan on going for the Assault Rifle as quickly as possible, and I know I need high Standard and some Strength, so I'll be set- and a little extra Wrench damage never hurts. Oh, and yes, we saw the robot. Evidently the devs still had time with the motion-capture stuff even after doing the monkeys.

We run around, grab some stuff we find, I spend some nanites (er... cyber modules? I don't remember...) on Endurance. We got a psi-amp, although without any abilities it's pretty useless. We nailed the first two Hybrids, and noticed that they didn't respawn... until Randy triggered that first camera and all hell broke loose. He got killed, I finally managed to reset the security, and the Hybrids stopped spawning. I'm a little concerned by the fact that I watched them spawn in front of me- I thought the patch made that impossible. Oh well. This was just a test, so after we grabbed the log we ran up to the big door and saved, then quit.

Now, another game question. Is it that the Maintenance skill increases how much my maintenance tools fix things, or is it independent? And is Repair for fixing guns after they've already broken?

Cheers,
Ross

catbarf on 13/9/2007 at 23:53

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So, repair is used to fix broken guns, and things that start broken. I see.

That's good to know.

catbarf on 14/9/2007 at 03:27

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:eek:

Well, to tell the truth, this guy's a shooter and RPG junkie. Nothing scares him in the slightest. So, he really isn't losing any immersion.

Besides, I think I'd have difficulty getting him to play it any other way :p

catbarf on 14/9/2007 at 15:37

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Because the immersion is lost on him, and then the flaws of the game stand out. Especially the weapon degradation.

catbarf on 14/9/2007 at 17:34

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Sort of. He enjoys complex games but the scare is lost on him, and since he's got a bunch of other games he needs someone yelling at him to keep him focused :p

By the way, is there a way to toss like 10 nanites at a time? I can only do it one at a time by holding alt, and it's really annoying.