System Shock 1 vs 2 - Which is better and why?

[Maggot]

All you do in SS1 is lean in narrow mazelike corridors and shoot enemies standing in place in the foot. I was told this game was amazing and I got memed as the cybernetic modules that were hyped over SS2 is shit like a headlamp and a rear view mirror.

 

[Tweed]

Although if I remember right, the first game was a bit easier in terms of death which I don't like. I think you could barely lose because of respawning infinitely, and with a fair amount of energy and health too. SS2 either added the cost to respawns or balanced it better so that I felt like dying was something I really needed to be scared of. Also ammo and gear in general was a bit harder to come by so you had to be really careful and less gung ho which was exciting seeing as enemies could kill you easily.

I didn't like the 'builds' thing though because they just felt under developed and a bit pointless. Although I only tried playing as a full gun focused build and as a full hand ball thing build. The latter kinda sucked because there were only a few things it could do so I felt like the points would have been better spent in something else. Generally I think games should focus on one all encompassing and fun build, and only go with multiple builds if they are super rich and can have a big talent tree full of varied things that are all thoroughly play tested. Which SS2 was miles from.

Besides that I don't have much preference between the two. The second one is obviously better in terms of UI, graphics, and some other stuff. But the first one is easily playable nowadays with various mods and tweaks. I think I enjoy it more overall.

Death was fast and loose with Shock 1, but combat was a lot more intense too, they expected you to take cover and be careful. Every time you died it would spawn more enemies to make up for the free energy and health. It could get to the point where you could wake up with a hopper shooting you inside the restoration chamber if you didn't stay on top of things and resources were finite.

You can have an all encompassing fun build in Shock 2, it's called being a melee OSA build, stupidly overpowered.

 

[ciox]

When comparing the games' depth and abilities, it seems like a lot of people neglect SS2 had psi powers, and exactly how many, like half of Ultima Underworld's spells got crammed in there, and during beta they even had more, like powers to create light or to levitate.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I see anvi hasn't learned a thing since he made those handful of posts that earned him all his tags.

 

[anvi]

I see anvi hasn't learned a thing since he made those handful of posts that earned him all his tags.

I played these games when they were new about 20 years ago. System Shock I replayed more recently but it wasn't that memorable anymore. You need to play modern games and see how more advanced things are now. You can't live in the past and then cry when someone doesn't obsess over basic old junk.

 

[anvi]

The first one was better because it was the first, and was way ahead of any other game at the time. The second one loses a lot of points because it is no longer original and was no longer wildly advanced compared to the competition. Also the first game had grenades which I don't think the second game had. Or if it did, there were fewer. Or something. Same with ammo types. The first one just seemed to have a bit more depth because of anti personnel ripping up zombies but bouncing off robots, and armor piercing vice versa. And emp fun, and whatever else. SS2 streamlined things a bit and it bugged me.

Actually, it's System Shock 2 that has the anti-personal and amor-piercing ammos. SS 2 also has grenades but you need a grenade launcher to shoot them.

It was still slightly streamlined compared to SS 1 though.

Pretty sure you can throw the grenades by just clicking them somewhere on the screen.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I played these games when they were new about 20 years ago. System Shock I replayed more recently but it wasn't that memorable anymore. You need to play modern games and see how more advanced things are now. You can't live in the past and then cry when someone doesn't obsess over basic old junk.

You got hammered because you were talking out of your ass about things you don't know anything about, while claiming that you did.

Even if that was all due to you talking about things you did 20 years ago, it gives you no excuse to badmouth others to try to cover up for your own mess.

 

[anvi]

I played these games when they were new about 20 years ago. System Shock I replayed more recently but it wasn't that memorable anymore. You need to play modern games and see how more advanced things are now. You can't live in the past and then cry when someone doesn't obsess over basic old junk.

You got hammered because you were talking out of your ass about things you don't know anything about, while claiming that you did.

Even if that was all due to you talking about things you did 20 years ago, it gives you no excuse to badmouth others to try to cover up for your own mess.

Nah I got tags by a whiny bitch mod who couldn't handle that I didn't like his favorite 20 year old game. And I do know about it, I played all the games.

 

[Thane Solus]

both are great! i treat them as two different games with similar mechanics.

 

[RoSoDude]

Every time you died it would spawn more enemies to make up for the free energy and health. It could get to the point where you could wake up with a hopper shooting you inside the restoration chamber if you didn't stay on top of things and resources were finite.

Source on this? From everything I've read, only certain enemy types in SS1 will respawn in each level (e.g. only humanoid mutants on Level 1), and ONLY when their populations drop below a certain threshold, at which point a bunch of them will immediately spawn in. This is unlike in SS2, where there's an automatic respawn when each enemy type drops below a minimum threshold in addition to an ambient respawn chance below a maximum threshold. If SS1 had enemy respawns triggered whenever the player revived at a Cyborg Conversion Chamber, that would be much more interesting and balanced -- as it is, they function as less insane lemming rush/health regeneration stations a la Bioshock's awful Vita Chambers, as well as teleportation devices to get around the map faster. Granted, if you don't know the above fact about enemy respawns, the illusion of an ever-repopulating threat can keep you from wanting to use CCCs that way, and the fact that there's only one per map (and many of them don't revive you at full health) counts for something.

I'd love if anyone has anything more concrete on this -- I've just gone off what I've been able to find in forum posts and videos, as well as my own anecdotal experience. The now-released source code presumably holds the answer.

 

[Average Manatee]

I don't think CCCs cause respawn. I think there might be some small amount of respawn when you re-enter a level after leaving. Level 3 (IIRC, the dark one with invisible mutants) always seems to have new spawns every single time I go through. If the instant respawn of stuff whenever you drop below X per level was the only respawn creator you'd expect them to be spawning before your eyes as you kill one or two to traverse between elevators yet that doesn't happen.

 

[RoSoDude]

I don't think CCCs cause respawn. I think there might be some small amount of respawn when you re-enter a level after leaving. Level 3 (IIRC, the dark one with invisible mutants) always seems to have new spawns every single time I go through.

Yeah, that's the one area that always challenges my assumptions on this, though there were rumors circling around that the old Enhanced Edition had a bug that caused much more frequent respawning (I'm skeptical). When I first played, I actually thought it might be tied to revives as well, since there were always so many while I was exploring the area, no matter how many or few I seemed to kill. But that might just be how the numbers are tuned, I'm not sure.

 

[Tweed]

Source on this? From everything I've read, only certain enemy types in SS1 will respawn in each level (e.g. only humanoid mutants on Level 1), and ONLY when their populations drop below a certain threshold, at which point a bunch of them will immediately spawn in. This is unlike in SS2, where there's an automatic respawn when each enemy type drops below a minimum threshold in addition to an ambient respawn chance below a maximum threshold. If SS1 had enemy respawns triggered whenever the player revived at a Cyborg Conversion Chamber, that would be much more interesting and balanced -- as it is, they function as less insane lemming rush/health regeneration stations a la Bioshock's awful Vita Chambers, as well as teleportation devices to get around the map faster. Granted, if you don't know the above fact about enemy respawns, the illusion of an ever-repopulating threat can keep you from wanting to use CCCs that way, and the fact that there's only one per map (and many of them don't revive you at full health) counts for something.

I'd love if anyone has anything more concrete on this -- I've just gone off what I've been able to find in forum posts and videos, as well as my own anecdotal experience. The now-released source code presumably holds the answer.

Only anecdotal, I could be going out of my mind, but I was encountering more and more enemies as I died. Like hoppers on the reactor level and so on. I thought for sure the classic version of Shock did this as well, but now I'd have to go back and check.

 

[Maggot]

Made a little mod for SCP that brings back some shit they took out of SS2 for flimsy reasons.
https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=10531.0

 

[anvi]

The first one was better because it was the first, and was way ahead of any other game at the time. The second one loses a lot of points because it is no longer original and was no longer wildly advanced compared to the competition. Also the first game had grenades which I don't think the second game had. Or if it did, there were fewer. Or something. Same with ammo types. The first one just seemed to have a bit more depth because of anti personnel ripping up zombies but bouncing off robots, and armor piercing vice versa. And emp fun, and whatever else. SS2 streamlined things a bit and it bugged me.

Actually, it's System Shock 2 that has the anti-personal and amor-piercing ammos. SS 2 also has grenades but you need a grenade launcher to shoot them.

It was still slightly streamlined compared to SS 1 though.

I'm sure the first game had all that too though. And you get grenades from early in the game and can throw them manually. It felt like a more advanced game. I think the only thing SS2 had that the first one didn't was the class selection bit at the beginning and the leaning over ledges thing which I doubt anyone ever used anyway. I still like the second game but it bugs me that everyone raves about it because they never played the first game. The first one is the one that deserves the respect and the glory. Also anyone who plays the second game before the first is missing out on the huge reveal.

 

[anvi]

Why would disagree maggot? SS1 did everything first, you need to respect its authoritah.

 

[Maggot]

I'd say SS1 is advanced, especially for its its time, but not more advanced than SS2. I can't inject myself with speed, set myself on fire to destroy everything around me, then run around so fast I kill myself crashing into walls in SS1. SS2 handles the moment to moment stuff much better imo thanks to less hitscan spam, better ai, and enemy design. Makes me wonder how the remake is gonna handle all this stuff because they're no way they can get away with just copy pasting the enemy behavior of the first game. Also poking around through the editor a bit was a real eye opener on how deep SS2/Dark Engine can be and what you can do with it.

 

[anvi]

It is way more advanced than SS2 for its time. SS2 is bound to have a few more tricks, it came so much later.

 

[Maggot]

I don't think "more advanced for its time" is a metric worth using. Especially since the games are only 5 years apart and SS2 is already 20 years old.

 

[anvi]

It is totally worth using. 5 years is a lot in gaming but especially at that time. SS1 was like it came from the future. SS2 only gets all the glory because a few older shitbag millennials caught the tail end of a great era in gaming so played that and pretend like they are connoisseurs. But it was the first game that they missed, that deserves the credit. SS2 just redid it with a few new tricks. But it also lost some things too like the weird VR cyberspace thing and probably a bunch of other things.

 

[DraQ]

SS1 is so much more competently designed and richer game overall, that it isn't even funny, but OTOH SS2 owns it hard in terms of atmosphere, plus all resource management mechanics and soundtrack adding into it.

 

[Master]

I would say its the other way around, SS1 has better atmosphere, but ss2 better almost everything else. But i played 1 just a bit...

 

[adddeed]

I installed the SS1 enhanced eidtion from Steam and man is it good. High resolution, mouse look, tons of options and gameplay is so smooth now.

 

[anvi]

It is the better game, everyone who says otherwise is clueless.

 

[Master]

Ss2 at least has actual inventory. Afaik ss1 has just a Fallout 3 and Mass Effect style list.