Roachmojo on 2/9/2010 at 16:23
Never have I felt utter dread in a game like I have in System Shock 1 and 2. Incredible, palpable atmosphere, and just scary as hell. I loved the first one enough to pay $200 for an original, boxed, shrink-wrapped copy. :D
Dead Space is also quite scary. I'd rank it up there.
STALKER, and Stalker: Call of Pripyot are also very reminiscent of SS1 and 2 as far as atmosphere and feeling of isolation and dread. Quite unnerving at times. Right up there.
My current favorite, however, is Metro 2033. Jesus Christ that game give me the creeps. Extremely atmospheric and scary. Like I used to do in SS1 and 2, I will just sit there and be too scared to move, listening to some unseen horror grunting and moving around...absolutely stunning graphics when maxed out, and the game play mechanics are tops.
Bioshock was a cartoony consolitus insult. I forced myself to finish it and will never play the sequel.
SPG900NY on 23/9/2010 at 22:26
Looks like I'm going to have to track down Metro. Thanks for the tip. As for why I care, a full decade later this is one of the few games I've played over the years that made such an impact. The only other games I still follow even slightly for this long are Thief I and II, Battlezone 2 and although it's newer, I'll still install Half-Life 2 every once in a while off Steam to play a few hours.
I also only found out today that STALKER has that "STALKER Complete" add-on, and I'm jazzed to give that a try tonight after my toddler is asleep. :)
I'd say STALKER comes the closest to that feeling of unease that SS2 had.
SPG900NY on 23/9/2010 at 22:31
As for Bioshock, I loved it, but yeah, the interface was kind of klunky and I never found a need to really study it all that much. I just picked fire or ice and had at it, then tried to find the right weapon in the other hand for whatever I needed to do. Overall the game was easy (not a bad thing IMHO -- I don't have time in my life these days to spend endless tries on a scenario), and that led to just being able to kind of blast your way through it.
I did like the inventive solutions to problems -- I always love the ability to reprogram things to work against enemies (Deus Ex, Bioshock, SS2). But overall, I didn't really see Bioshock as the real descendant of SS2.
voodoo47 on 24/9/2010 at 13:31
Quote Posted by RocketMan
They don't give a shit about it anymore. It's not a critical component in their money making machine.
they still care enough to nuke any remake attempt within 3 days-remember that project that wanted to port ss2 to the doom3 engine?
..for me,its the depth that does the magic.tons of text to read,tons of stuff to think about,to figure out..
Qooper on 25/9/2010 at 19:12
I consider the System Shock series to be one of the best and most engaging, but explaining it is another story. Let's give it a go.
I'm a serious fan of cyberpunk, but that doesn't explain it. Tron 2.0 was cyberpunk in a very Gibson kind of way, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I did cyberspace in the first System Shock.
Could it be the complicated interfaces and complex tech-oriented game mechanics? I think that might actually be quite close. The reason why I'm depressed to see the state of gaming today is that games don't offer any real complexity anymore. Quite the opposite. Game companies aim to bring simplicity and shallowness instead of complexity and depth.
Modern games don't offer anything to me. But this morning I picked up System Shock 2 again and after a few fixes got it to work on my Windows 7. I was actually a bit surprised to experience the same kind of awe and excitement I felt approximately 10 years ago when I first played the game. And that is my main point. Not many things give that kind of joy to me, modern games the least. I crave and hunger for depth, complexity, full and rich worlds to explore, meaningful detail, things the player can discover, strange phenomena, mysteries and autonomous characters with well written things to say. And I like systems. Some kind of a rule set that makes a world tick in surprising ways. Like when they started talking about the 3-part ecology in BioShock I got really excited. When they took it out, I was disappointed. I of course realize the reasons for this stuff being absent in games today, so I'm not wondering why. I'm simply trying to answer the question.
Remember the lizard language in Ultima Underworld 1? That sort of thing is what I'm talking about. That's the good stuff.
Frictional Games are brave enough to hang on to the good old standards, even though it means they'll never have anything more than a tiny (and perhaps shrinking) fan audience. To anyone who hasn't tried their games and likes non-mainstream stuff: I recommend the first two in the Penumbra series and their newest title, Amnesia. Top of the line first-person horror adventure.
A small ad only adds a little spice to a post, don't you think? ;) Besides, this one was a good ad.
Sir_Knumskulll on 20/12/2010 at 13:57
I'll throw my 2 cents in as well as to why many still care so much for SS. I will limit my comments to SS1 or this post would be even longer.
Before SS1 came out, DOOM was the most popular first person game. Back then most of the games were also completely keyboard controlled. I remember wishing, while playing doom, that there was something better to do than just storm up straight into the enemies, shotgun blasting. Why was that the only way to accomplish anything? Why no traps, or grenades or sabotage or diversions? I voiced this to my friend and he told me about this game that he had read about in a French computer game magazine that was to come out in 6 months or so.
I was anticipating SS1 and bought the Floppy disk version the moment it came out! (on a side note, did anyone else think the intro scene music was somehow better, bass-ier, than the CD version?) At first I got really frustrated with the interface the the complexity of it all, as well as the vulnerability and initial impotence of the character. I think I shelved it for a few weeks before I got back into it.
But once I did, it was probably the most immersive computer game experience I have ever had! In 94 this game must have been a good 10 years ahead of it's time. Everything just seemed perfect. I literally wanted to just sneak into some crawl space and curl up and hide in the game. In real life I could only play for about 30-45 minutes at a time because I would become so tense that I actually started feeling physically tired. After a bit of playing at night I had to go downstairs and mingle with other people just to wind down again.
The whole experience of playing SS1 was kind of like reading a really awesome book that just sticks with you for the rest of your life. The whole experience became very personal too you'd find yourself thinking about the game or elements of the story while not playing or years after having played. And though many categorize this as a horror game, I don't know if thats applicable. SS1 was mainly a sci-fi cyberpunk title, SS2 was perhaps leaning a bit more towards the space horror category than SS1. SS1 gets very scary, but its scary because it's immersive and because the story is awesome (and SS2 took that psychological aspect to a new level!). But ironically in SS1 there are levels where you end up almost starting to feel at home as your abilities and confidence grow. So unlike in a horror game where maybe you only feel dread or tension, in SS1 you go through a gamut of emotions starting with utter fear and helplessness (in the first 20% of the game) and ending up somewhere with drive, purpose, ability and things to accomplish while still getting scared here or there.
Now, 15 years later, SS1 might not look like much and many of the elements that were completely revolutionary back then are commonplace now and of course the graphics are dated to the point of almost being unplayable. But its hard to find titles that are as complete as SS1 was.
When adjusting for the fact that came out in 1994, I think it was probably the best game of the sort ever made! One proof for that is that though I haven't played SS1 since the 90s, or SS2 in many years, I still find myself randomly searching online for System Shock and coming across and commenting on posts about why it became a small part of my life experience :D
DJShock on 17/3/2011 at 14:30
I'm guilty to I'm not as hardcore as most people on here last post i made was years ago and the only reason why I'm still here
I CAN'T ESCAPE IT! I thought I got rid of my CD long long ago but again it showed up out of no where like some weird voodoo black magic crap that won't go away.
On a serious note systemshock 2 deserves every credit it gets what a brilliant game I still believe to this day that the project leader was on acid when he came up with the idea.
I can see people are still moaning about rights and SS3 at end of day sorry lads but let systemshock R.I.P I'm sure some will agree it would take a great team with real passion for systemshock to make the third GREAT as the last.
ZylonBane on 17/3/2011 at 14:42
Are you as incoherent in real life as you are online?
DJShock on 17/3/2011 at 14:49
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Are you as incoherent in real life as you are online?
I'm English and from North and live in a tough neighborhood does that explain it for you ... you would find me confusing if your american.
Come on Zylonbane lad are you going to help an incoherent english lad get SS2 running on mac I know a brainbox like you could snap up a solution in seconds. ;)
FenrisUlf on 22/3/2011 at 00:19
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Not a bad thing if all you want is an engaging AAA survival horror game with an interesting and semi-intelligent story. I really, really like Dead Space for what it is.
If anybody's still expecting a mainstream title with the gameplay depth of SS1/2 married to a similarly cerebral storyline, that era's over. Development costs these days can't justify a purposefully higher barrier to entry. And EA's probably not the publisher to be looking at for it.
Let's get something straight though. Dead Space is NOT a Survival Horror game. It's just an achion game. Just another FPS. That's it. Nothing beyond that. There is no subtlety nor innovation to the game at all. Just run around shooting things. Maybe a better name is Space Action-Horror game.
