Niborius on 17/8/2020 at 08:46
Yes, you read that right. After exactly 21 years of its release, I'm touching System Shock 2 for the first time. I'm really loving it so far, much more than I thought I would. The graphics actually dated very well in my opinion. I love the atmosphere of the game.
I like that some game mechanics feel familiar because of the amount of hours I put into Thief.
I'm currently in the engineer rooms with the big elevators and the security robots all over the place.
Who played it back in the day when it was released? What was the game like back then? And are there others around here who like me played it many years later?
D'Arcy on 17/8/2020 at 16:40
I didn't play it exactly on the day it was released (my computer wasn't good enough to run it) but I played it more or less a year after it came out - when I got myself a mighty Pentium III.
I assume that by 'engineer rooms with the big elevators' you are referring to the Cargo Bays.
Pyrian on 17/8/2020 at 17:40
I played shortly after release. It was actually my first mouse-look game, which I found amazingly intuitive. ...I got stuck for several hours in the Cargo Bays because there's a door with a broken lock that just opens automatically when you approach, but I thought the broken lock meant it wouldn't open and didn't approach it.
Niborius on 17/8/2020 at 17:47
Quote Posted by D'Arcy
I didn't play it exactly on the day it was released (my computer wasn't good enough to run it) but I played it more or less a year after it came out - when I got myself a mighty Pentium III.
I assume that by 'engineer rooms with the big elevators' you are referring to the Cargo Bays.
I remember the times with the Pentium 3's, I was like 4 years old then haha (I'm 25 now).
Yea that's the one. On the map it was named engineer rooms but in the notes they called it Cargo bays I think. Or maybe I just didn't see correctly.
@Pyrian
I was stuck for a little bit at the exact same door. I went to the door a couple of time but was surprised that I couldn't open it every time. Then I just walked closer one time by accident and it opened lol!Made some more progress now. Restored the elevators and made my way to Deck 3.
The amount of times this game made me jump in my chair already. Doesn't help that most of the time I play it late in the evening without any lights on.
heywood on 17/8/2020 at 19:42
Since you already got past that, I won't bother with spoilers.
Assuming you're talking about the entrance to cargo bay 1, I got stuck there too. I recall going back down to the lower level and into engineering control hoping to find a back door into cargo bay 1. I was going to smash the wrench against the door out of frustration when it just opened.
Anyway, I played the game right when it was released. It ran quite well on a system with a Celeron 300A oc'd to 450MHz and dual Voodoo2 SLI cards. Even back then, the organic NPC models looked a bit primitive compared to the games I had been playing over the previous year such as Q2 MP, Unreal, SiN, and HL1. But the ship design and graphics were good and it had the best lighting I had seen in a game up to that point (I didn't play Thief until after). Nowadays, I think the Von Braun holds up well. It looks less dated than the environments of HL1. SS2 was also the first game I played that supported Aureal A3D, which meant more to me in this game than the graphics.
I started on hard difficulty as a Navy character and took the cyber training mission instead of the weapons training mission. So dodging all those protocol droids was a real bear. I remember getting to a point about mid-game where I was basically out of everything and gave up to play something else for a while. When I came back to SS2, I started over on normal difficulty and put a lot more thought into my choices, like getting Energy 1 and the laser pistol as soon as possible to conserve ammo. It still seemed like a hard game, but in an enjoyable way. Subsequent play-throughs have always been on hard difficulty. I found a couple of character builds that make the game relatively easy, but as long as I avoid making the same choices and try to do something different with my character, it can still be satisfyingly difficult.
SS2 also has my favorite RPG progression system. Playing SS2 and Deus Ex kind of turned me off to leveling systems.
Starker on 18/8/2020 at 02:00
I played it a few years after it came out, but it kind of blended in with other games of the time, as many of my favourite games came out right at the end of the millennium and in the following years in the early 2000s. I remember I was somewhat disappointed that the narrative didn't even come close to holding a candle to Silent Hill games and that it wasn't quite as immersive as Thief in its atmosphere. But I did like it a lot for the survival horror aspects and all the systems you could play with.
SS1, on the other hand, I played quite a while after and it took a couple of tries to get past the controls and the interface (the mouselook mod did a lot of legwork there), but I think I've actually come to appreciate it more than the sequel even. I think the game holds up better as a whole and I like that SHODAN is way more menacing.
heywood on 18/8/2020 at 14:13
I agree with you that SHODAN is a much better villain in SS1. But the gameplay in SS2 is much better IMHO, except for one particular level that should have been binned and redesigned from scratch.
Also, I was one of those people who always struggled with the keyboard controls in SS1. I played the game several times in the late 90s and 2000s, but would always give up after a while because the camera and movement controls never stopped being tedious no matter how long I played. And the maze-like level design seemed to exacerbate the difficulty. It was hard to get into the game when I was spending the vast majority of my mental effort just to look and move around.
Things might have gone differently if I had played it before discovering mouselook + WASD. But I was unable to play SS1 when it came out because the system requirements were so steep. By the time I finally got a computer that could play it, which was in 1997, I had discovered Quake, and mouselook, and that spoiled me forever. So I didn't really enjoy SS1 enough to finish the game until after the mouselook mod came out.
bjorkbom on 19/8/2020 at 12:06
I remember it very well. Got the PCZone issue with a glowing review, great-looking review that really sold the game, even had a breakdown of the Gamepig. Downloaded the demo overnight on modem, played it for a few days and uninstalled it in wait of the release, but couldn't get it out of my head and downloaded it overnight again. :bored: Obviously got it on release. The Voodoo2 wow-factor always belonged to first time playing Unreal, but this was really up there with the Dark-engine atmosphere. And SBLive EAX in SS2 with headphones was that one moment for sound in games.
Only got to SS1 about two years later, and for some years still considered it superior, but over time I'd say that has evened out. They're different enough. It'll always make me miss cyberspace in SS2 and how you're more of a primitive cyborg, lumbering controls and all in the first one. Never tried mouselook, but maybe next time. It's been a while. Back to SS2, it wasn't until the 3rd or 4th way through I touched PSI, but since always go for bits of it. And now The Infinite mod adds in cyberspace nicely enough!
chk772 on 19/8/2020 at 21:40
I played it very late after release. Jolly good ride though. One of the absolute best in terms of atmosphere. Quality soundtrack. Way ahead of its time, just like Deus Ex. Unfortunately, they don't make intelligent games like that anymore. Or let developers and artists dwell in such a creative freedom. It's all about the production costs. Understandable, considering how much more effort it is to make games these days. Unfortunately, but, that's how it goes. Just like with movies, strict cookie-cutter approach.
ZylonBane on 20/8/2020 at 01:53
Quote Posted by chk772
Unfortunately, they don't make intelligent games like that anymore. Or let developers and artists dwell in such a creative freedom.
SOMA would like a word.