Mod News System Shock 2 Rebirth beta pack 1 released

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: System Shock 2

For those still playing <a href="http://www.irrationalgames.com/shock2/">System Shock 2</a>, but don't care much for the old and blocky graphics of the title, <a href="http://perso.wanadoo.fr/etienne.aubert/sshock/sshock_rebirth.htm">System Shock 2 rebirth</a> has a treat for you! They've just released the first part of their graphics update for the venerable sci-fi shooter/CRPG, which you can now download.
<br>
<br>
<div align="center"><a href="http://perso.wanadoo.fr/etienne.aubert/sshock/sshock_rebirth.htm"><img src="http://www.rpgcodex.com/images/screenshots/systemshock2/tiny001.jpg" height="150" width="200"> <img src="http://www.rpgcodex.com/images/screenshots/systemshock2/tiny002.jpg" height="150" width="200"></a></div>
<br>
<br>
I think this is the first time I've ever used the <i>Mod News</i> category, but I think it's a worthy first, don't you?
<br>
<br>
Thanks to <b>Kyote</b> of <a href="http://www.rpgplanet.com">RPG Planet</a> for the word.

 

[EEVIAC]

The only changes I really notice are in the crew - the hanging body is still lingering in my mind, the expression on his face. The mod is worthy if only to get people playing SS2 again. I'm enjoying it much more this time around, maybe because its been so long since I played a really good FPS.

 

[Rosh]

Outstanding. Going to check out how it works in a little bit.

 

[Section8]

heh. The midwives are topless.

 

[Greenskin13]

heh. The midwives are topless.

They're still pretty ugly.

 

[Jed]

I tried to start SS2 three times, and I just got murdered everytime within the first five minutes by those psychomonkey things. I tried it on "novice," even. Games shouldn't be so hard that you die repeatedly and become frustrated before you become invested in them.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The monkeys were annoying and could drain your health very quickly if you're not careful, but I don't recall them being THAT deadly. Could you kill them with ranged weapons?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I remember getting my ass kicked by them when I first played it as well. I don't like monkeys.

 

[EEVIAC]

heh. The midwives are topless.

Every female crew member I've seen has a boob popping out.

 

[Jed]

The monkeys were annoying and could drain your health very quickly if you're not careful, but I don't recall them being THAT deadly. Could you kill them with ranged weapons?

I tried, but didn't hit much...then always soon ran out of ammo...

 

[Zetor]

Yeah, the monkeys were a PITA. The key was surprising them -- whenever I heard the 'ook ook', I immediately hid and crouched, trying to deduce where it was coming from, then either sneaking up on the bastard and smacking it with a crowbar or shooting it with two shots from the pistol. They were the only enemies I used pistol ammo on as well until deck 5 or thereabouts, ammo is very scarce. After I researched the monkey brain, it only took one shot IIRC.
Closing in was a good tactic too vs most enemies in the early game. The monkies' scratch did pretty laughable damage compared to the cryokinesis attack and if you crouched next to 'em, you didn't have to aim with the crowbar to hit them. Same with shotgun hybrids: if you were in their face, they couldn't hit you. Midwives were a bit more tricky, but a few laser pistol shots took care of 'em most of the time.

-- Z.
Edit: yeah yeah, I meant "wrench" instead of "crowbar". Hey, you try posting something right after you wake up, in a foreign language to boot.

 

[axel]

heh. The midwives are topless.

I'd hit it... with a jet pack.

 

[Section8]

It's kind of nifty as a graphical enhancement, but after a little while I found I barely noticed it. It's interesting to note as "pretty gameplay distracting the player from the lack of graphics" as opposed to the all too common inverse.

 

[EEVIAC]

SS2 is definately the benchmark by which Doom 3 will be judged on. Like Section 8 says, its easy to overlook the fact that graphics are nowhere near all these next generation FPS. The game is that good.

As nice as new skins and meshes are, nothing has been done with the audio (probably because there doesn't need to be) - its the best audio I've heard in a game in recent times, and adds as much to atmosphere as virtually any other part of the game. Monsters groaning "kill me," or "I'm sorry," is more disturbing than anything RWS could ever dream of.

 

[Section8]

Use of audio is something that kind of gets taken for granted when it comes to game production, ie, "we'll throw in a bunch of placeholders for the foley and VO crews to rerecord when we're close to gold."

It's a powerful tool though. It's something completely inobtrusive that happens while the game is continuing and the player can usually absorb input from both visual and audio sources, much more readily than they can assimilate multiple visual sources. So it can set a mood by just being there in the background (in the form of music, or ambient sounds) or it can be used to achieve more, like feeding the player plot while they're playing. If you dig even deeper, you could even pump out a lot of audio layers to saturate the player and make them feel ill at ease, or simply to disrupt any rythmic actions on the player's behalf.

In some respects, audio is even better than visual, in the same way a book is superior to a movie if you've got a vivid enough imagination. Positional audio around the player causes the player to consider more than what is presented to them directly on the screen, and pre-recorded audio from past or future events also fuel the imagination beyond any kind of graphical quality.

 

[HanoverF]

I never got SS2 cause the first one gave me motion sickness :/

 

[EEVIAC]

It's a powerful tool though. It's something completely inobtrusive that happens while the game is continuing and the player can usually absorb input from both visual and audio sources, much more readily than they can assimilate multiple visual sources. So it can set a mood by just being there in the background (in the form of music, or ambient sounds) or it can be used to achieve more, like feeding the player plot while they're playing. If you dig even deeper, you could even pump out a lot of audio layers to saturate the player and make them feel ill at ease, or simply to disrupt any rythmic actions on the player's behalf.

There's a part near the end of Von Braun where they do just that. There are multiple voices, from memory things like "your flesh betrays you," "join us," - lines characters have actually said throughout the game. As for "disrupting player actions" it succeeded admirably. I was pivoting and holding in different directions trying to work out the source of the voices. Its especially disturbing when you lean down to hack a crate, only to hear a voice, or several, and go on a quick scout of the area just in case there are more beasties.

Its genius when you think about it, they don't even need to add content, the player is so scared he runs around frantically looking for it.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

SS2 is definately the benchmark by which Doom 3 will be judged on. Like Section 8 says, its easy to overlook the fact that graphics are nowhere near all these next generation FPS. The game is that good.

I dunno, I think Doom should be the benchmark for Doom 3. System Shock 2 didn't really scare me. It annoyed the hell out of me, in fact. I don't find things like extremely limited ammo to be scary. I find them to be incredibly annoying. In Doom and Doom 2, you had plenty of ammo, assuming you weren't a complete dumbass, but it still managed to scare the hell out of me. I also don't like things like the radiation maze in System Shock 2. Propetual damage areas aren't cool, especially when you make mazes out of them.

There were other things that annoyed me, like the robots that could 180 on you if you started smacking them from behind. They move slowly, but somehow, they can turn on a dime.

Reloading when you run out of a type of ammo was flawed as well. You have other ammo for that gun, but because you're out of that type of ammo, reload doesn't work.

I'm not saying it was a horrible game, but there were quite a few things in it that I didn't care much about.

 

[Rosh]

I've been playing through again with the new meshes, and they are a nice addition. I particularly like the bomber and the new assassins. They look much better and add to the atmosphere than the others.

As for ammo... (Caution, some minor spoilers in the below)

More skill = more damage, less ammo needed. Most of the time I'd only need one shotgun blast to kill any of the hybrids.

When you get to your first energy weapon (Engineering), then you really have no business whining about little ammo. To buy the one level of energy weapons to use it is negligible, the small bit for repair, and as you get more cyber-modules, then the power capacity goes up, along with modifying it. Going past 4 (or even 2) is a waste of cyber-modules as the EMP rifle isn't worth it at all and you can hold off on the laser sword for the exotic melee weapon, the shard, at EW1. Before then, there's no enemies you can't knock dead with a wrench or shoot 2-3 times to kill with a pistol, or go through and strip off that one round remaining in those broken shotguns. After awhile, that adds up. Not to mention, you can also buy more ammo. Unless you're shooting around like crazy and not taking advantage of rechargable energy weapons, then yes, you will run low on ammo. When you get to using your energy pistol, you can rack up a LOT of ammo all around. This game is hardly Recycled Evil.

It's also nearly impossible to go through the game on one "path type", strictly. OSA will need some tech and weapon skills, mostly more on the tech side. Navy has a good advantage in starting with tech, they can research, modify, and do much more that with the 15% OS upgrade for ranged damage, you're doing quite good. Marine is good with weapons and can go towards more technical. So far, I've got a squid (navy) that can use the assault rifle (best staple gun in the game), most other weapons (working on HW6), the annelid gun, can do basic repair, can maintain his equipment, can do some midifications on some equipment as well (using the F-Es on the trickier ones), has the best hack skill available, a nice rounding of stats except for psi (and that's not even using the booster-recycler bug). Not even 2/3 of the way through the game yet.

And Prov, that "radiation maze" part was pretty minor. I could understand the frustration if it were huge, but it's not that big. You have plenty of rad hypos by then, plus you can find a hazard suit in there, and you can also enable the mini-map or look at the big map to get through there. Basically, it was nothing big, just a few passageways of where the radiation got into the coolant. It wouldn't have as big of an impact if it was just a small corridor with a little green would it?

It's still quite far from some "mazes" I could mention...

 

[Rosh]

Appears editing messages has been disabled, and I had wanted to warn about spoilers in the above...

 

[EEVIAC]

*may contain slight spoilers* - just a warning.

I dunno, I think Doom should be the benchmark for Doom 3.

As much as I'd like that to be so, everything I've read from iD points towards a game that is Doom in setting alone. SS2 didn't so much scare me but disturb me. More tension and discovery than thrills, listening to what were ostensibly ghosts on the PDA and piecing together bizzare events.

And while we're mentioning problems with SS2, the ending was a huge anticlimax for me. After strugling against the odds over how ever many levels of malevelonce, in a somewhat intelligent game, I'm confronted with the the most hackneyed Hollywood nonsense as my reward.

 

[Zetor]

I think I've read about this in an interview or post mortem... IGA / LGS was going to put in a longer / better ending originally, but they couldn't get it together by the deadline, so they went with the "Nah" ending in the end. Wonder what the other ending would've been like...

-- Z.

 

[Section8]

Yes, the ending was balls, but nearly every time I've finished it I've jumped right back in at the start so I barely notice. My biggest irritation with SS2 is the respawning enemies. They're somewhere between necessary evil and game-breaker. I'll admit it would be kind of dull to be able to backtrack without any fear of attack, but when hybrid after hybrid comes from the same door again and again it spoils things a little.

 

[Platter]

As I was playing the Doom 3 alpha I was thinking they must have been taking inspiration from SS2.
I'm not saying it was done as well, just that they seemed to be going for the same type of feel.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, what would have been better than simple respawning would be some sort of generator. Have a machine bit thing that converts dead humans to the twisted things we see in the game. Have drones that gather bodies. Even if it doesn't follow reality, where every member of the crew is accounted for in terms of making enemy offspring creatures, showing the process of making the enemies from the crew would have been far better than just spawning enemies from no where.

I think seeing twisted dead cyborgs harvesting crew corpses would have gone a long way toward making the atmosphere scarier as well. I mean, you know it's going on because you can see the results, but seeing a creature dragging a dead crewmember down the hall towards a harvesting machine would be really, really creepy.. Especially if it was done all over the ship.

As for the size of the radiated maze, the Electric Floor Door Maze in Fallout 2 was smaller, that didn't make it suck less, did it?