So, System Shock 2....oh the horror!

[Jasede]

This is somewhat related- I remember I was once doing the cargo section - you know, two big cargo-rooms that you get through by passing narrow corridors - and in one of the corridors there's a little side-path where you can hack a computer or find some loot or something; I remember I once turned my camera to face towards that and BAM, some exploding protocol droids teleported in behind me DooM Nightmare mode style.

 

[J_C]

I really don't get your claim about respawns ruining the game. It's a survival-horror RPG/shooter. The limited resources available in the game would be less meaningful if there were a finite number of enemies. With infinitely respawning enemies, you can't just sit around forever; it forces you to make progress through the game, otherwise eventually you'll have no way to fight back. The idea of not knowing when and where you're going to get attacked is also very compelling and really ratchets up the tension.

Oh come on, you know that one can achieve that survival horror feel without respawing elements. Just think any survivor horror, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Amnesia. Some of them has some respawing, but not as bad as SS2. The thing is, this doesn't increase the tension to me. When I'm treading through an unknown area, I feel that tension, because I don't know what is waiting for me there. But when I discovered the area, respawning enemies don't do anything for me, because I anticipate them, I know what will come at me. I'm not feeling the suspense, just some annoyance, when I have to backtrack for some stuff, and I am slowed down buy these fuckers.

I'm also much more powerful know, so these hybrids don't pose a challange, again, they are just slowing me down. It would be much better, if there were only a few respawns, but those would be powerful enemies, enemies that I have to look out for.

 

[mindx2]

You know you suck when a a guy without hands thinks your complaining is painful.

What?

 

[evdk]

I'm also much more powerful know, so these hybrids don't pose a challange, again, they are just slowing me down. It would be much better, if there were only a few respawns, but those would be powerful enemies, enemies that I have to look out for.

Their challenge is to deplete your resources.

 

[J_C]

I'm also much more powerful know, so these hybrids don't pose a challange, again, they are just slowing me down. It would be much better, if there were only a few respawns, but those would be powerful enemies, enemies that I have to look out for.

Their challenge is to deplete your resources.

But they don't do that. I kill 90% of them with melee attacks.

 

[thesheeep]

Or Psi.

 

[Crispy]

How about you just shut up and finish the game?

While I appreciate the fact that you've almost done so thus giving you the right to bitch about this one aspect of the game, I don't feel like you've done enough to simultaneously praise what has very widely been viewed as an otherwise excellent game. Is the respawning really that much of a dissuading factor to your loving the game for all the good things it does?

So far almost everyone has agreed that the manner in which the respawns pop is rather retarded. 90's game is 90's game. I could similarly rail on Wiz8 (I'm currently about half-way through a run of it) for its infuriating level-scaling, for its absolutely brutally unforgiving spawning during overland travel, and for quite a few other undesirable aspects of it, but I refrain from doing so because I recognize a truly great game when I'm playing one.

I don't mean to compare the two games, but when judging something like System Shock 2 if the main point that you choose to make about it is that OMG THE RETARDED RESPAWNS then I have to question your judgment about such things.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Heh... @Crispy calling out @J_C for bitching...

You did rail on Wiz 8:

Holy crap why did I try going into the SE wilderness and banging my head in mega-ffffuuuuu instead of heading to the Mt. Gigas caves?

My guys are all currently level 12-13 and clearly I was in the wrong area. Now anything I come up against in the caves stands no chance and I'm advancing at a nice pace.

Also, man the swamps sure ramped up their difficulty quickly. Some Dreadmares utterly rofl-stomped me before I remembered to head back the the Umpani base instead.

I really hate level scaling.

 

[Karellen]

I wasn't really bothered by the respawns for the most part, and since they also drop stuff, there's a kind of balance in that fighting isn't a crippling waste of resources so much as a slow, steady trickling drain. And yeah, it's basically necessary to make proper use of the resource management elements of the game, though it might have been more elegantly realized. That said, I want to point out that you can absolutely do good, tense Survival Horror without respawning enemies, as is evidenced by the early Resident Evil games, which are all kinds of wonderful.

There's a lot of things that make Resident Evil work so well, but one of them is that you don't have an almighty wrench to rely on; there are very few situations where you wouldn't want to use a gun, and since enemies never drop anything, the game is rigged so that it's strictly advantageous not to kill enemies to preserve your resources. Combined with some multiple routes, especially in the first game, and the relative slowness of the zombies, there's a lot of places where you can avoid enemies - and sometimes you have to, at least until you've accumulated some extra ammo. The first game especially is a beautiful piece of game design; it does a grand job building situations where you have to weigh whether it's better to risk being able to run past an enemy versus spending the ammo. This gives it a very slow, creeping pace and where every encounter and every shot feel like they matter, and much time is spent looking at the map, figuring out which rooms are worth clearing and which you can avoid visiting again.

This sort of deliberation is something I never really encountered in System Shock 2, where you basically always kill everything you come across one way or another; if you wanted to be mean, you could argue that the respawning enemies are something of a bandaid solution to the fact that there's rarely any meaningful way to avoid enemies, to prevent you from getting the total satisfaction and sense of relief from having fully cleared an area, and to force you to push forward to accumulate stuff. That's fair, but while the resource management does do its job on a strategic level, the individual encounters sort of blur together, which does limit their impact. This, together with how linear System Shock 2 actually is, makes the actual gameplay a somewhat rote process, really. All in all, it feels to me like RPG elements, and the abstraction they require, may not be an ideal match for survival horror, which I think is more about slow, tense moment-to-moment gameplay. That may be why the first System Shock always felt a more palpable and thoughtful game to me than the sequel.

 

[Infinitron]

All in all, it feels to me like RPG elements, and the abstraction they require, may not be an ideal match for survival horror, which I think is more about slow, tense moment-to-moment gameplay. That may be why the first System Shock always felt a more palpable and thoughtful game to me than the sequel.

I'm not sure how this follows from everything you said before it.

 

[Crispy]

You did rail on Wiz 8

Bitch, please. I practically came on myself several times in that thread praising the game.

 

[Gurkog]

Sad to say, but I think Dead Space out SS'ed SS 2. Although, the sequels to Dead Space suck ass and are not worth playing.

 

[evdk]

Sad to say, but I think Dead Space out SS'ed SS 2.

I played that. I also spent most of that time commenting how SS2 did everything better. Finally I just reinstalled SS2.

 

[Karellen]

All in all, it feels to me like RPG elements, and the abstraction they require, may not be an ideal match for survival horror, which I think is more about slow, tense moment-to-moment gameplay. That may be why the first System Shock always felt a more palpable and thoughtful game to me than the sequel.

I'm not sure how this follows from everything you said before it.

Ah. It's a bit of a non sequitur! Well, here's how I see it: System Shock 2 is a vastly smarter and better designed game than the popamole of today, but the thoughtful aspects - the character building and the resource management, in particular - take place at a pretty abstract level that, from time to time, feels distanced from the actual "reality" of the game. The thing is, even though the game mechanics work as a system, they ultimately come across as sort of arbitrary and incongruous with the setting and atmosphere of the game. Well, to me at least. Still, in System Shock 2 the enemies appearing every once in a while out of thin air feels not so much like something that's part the world, but rather like a simulation of the abstract notion of a dangerous spaceships where resources are running out. This sort of thing doesn't bother me at all in dungeon crawlers and RPGs, but in a survival horror it's like seeing the strings the puppets dangle from.

System Shock 1, although its design isn't as spartan as that of Resident Evil, is still a leaner game which feels more like the real thing, for a lack of better word. Of course, the other major difference is that SS1 is a lot less linear, which always makes a gameworld feel more like a real place; that, more than anything else, gives the game this sense that you're actually wrestling for the control of the station, since you're doing things semi-independently rather than following orders. The exploration happens in a more organic, emergent fashion, based on what you're able to survive, rather than arbitrarily through the character system locking you out of stuff. Of course, I played System Shock 1 ages ago, and I'm almost certain it hasn't aged very well, so this might just be nostalgia speaking; I'd really have to play it again to see if there's such a big difference. But still, SS2 has this vague sense of artifice about it that weakens the experience for me, even though it's an admirably designed game that works well, all things considered.

 

[Crispy]

^^

Well thought-out post right there.

 

[AstroZombie]

Hey guys, it is that time again. I'm playing through SS2 now, I'm somewhere near the end I guess, but I'd like to share my thoughts so far.

So...honestly, this game is almost unenjoyable. And very enjoyable at the same time. Enjoyable, because it has great atmosphere, a nice setup, Shodan obviously, lots of weapons, psi powers and other stuff to gather. I like the level design, and that blood pumping, yet so frightening techno music. Oh, and hearing Stephen "Garrett" Russel in a different role, but with the same voice was a very strange experience.

But it is almost entirely ruined by the constantly respawing enemies. SS2 is worst than any other modern popamole game in this regard. And if you think otherwise, then you don't know what you are talkig about. Seriously, they spawn in front of you from thin air, they spawn again and again behind you. And because the game is quite hard, you can get a lot of damage from enemies you don't even see, because in one moment they are nowhere to be seen, but suddenly they are hitting you from behind. Sometimes I was strafing during a gunfight, and I didn't notice that a spider or some robot spawned behind me, and killed me. I was near ragequit at that point.

The weapon degredation system is hit and miss. It was enfuriating in the beginning, because you couldn't fire 5 bullets without breaking your gun (literally). Thankfully you can wack the enemies to death with your melee weapons. Oh, melee hit detection is shit. And the repair skill is shit, because even if you upgrade it (alongside with the maintenance skill), you barely repair your stuff. Later in the game it wasn't a huge problem, because I found a lot of repair tools, which maxed out the weapons durability, so they didn't brake too much.

I will finish the game of course, and although I'm happy that I've played it, and was a good experience, it won't be on my best games list.

:flameshield up:

 

[Correct_Carlo]

Ah. It's a bit of a non sequitur! Well, here's how I see it: System Shock 2 is a vastly smarter and better designed game than the popamole of today, but the thoughtful aspects - the character building and the resource management, in particular - take place at a pretty abstract level that, from time to time, feels distanced from the actual "reality" of the game. The thing is, even though the game mechanics work as a system, they ultimately come across as sort of arbitrary and incongruous with the setting and atmosphere of the game. Well, to me at least. Still, in System Shock 2 the enemies appearing every once in a while out of thin air feels not so much like something that's part the world, but rather like a simulation of the abstract notion of a dangerous spaceships where resources are running out. This sort of thing doesn't bother me at all in dungeon crawlers and RPGs, but in a survival horror it's like seeing the strings the puppets dangle from.

System Shock 1, although its design isn't as spartan as that of Resident Evil, is still a leaner game which feels more like the real thing, for a lack of better word. Of course, the other major difference is that SS1 is a lot less linear, which always makes a gameworld feel more like a real place; that, more than anything else, gives the game this sense that you're actually wrestling for the control of the station, since you're doing things semi-independently rather than following orders. The exploration happens in a more organic, emergent fashion, based on what you're able to survive, rather than arbitrarily through the character system locking you out of stuff. Of course, I played System Shock 1 ages ago, and I'm almost certain it hasn't aged very well, so this might just be nostalgia speaking; I'd really have to play it again to see if there's such a big difference. But still, SS2 has this vague sense of artifice about it that weakens the experience for me, even though it's an admirably designed game that works well, all things considered.

I actually think this line of argument can work as a fundamental critique of many games/genres, not just RPG/survival horror. There's almost always kind of a disconnect between the more abstract gamey elements of a game and immersion into the inherent "reality" of its universe. Of course, part of the reason we play games isn't just any sort of sense of "immersion," but also precisely for those gamey elements, so this isn't always a critique (games don't always have to be immersive to be good). Plus, you kind of learn to compartmentalize stuff after a while, divding games between their abstract elements and their more immersive elements (like, "Yeah, the universe is in peril, but I'm going to spend 4 hours killing random animals to increase my STR stat from 10 to 11!").

But, yeah, I agree that this effect can be magnified and particularly distracting depending on how certain games implement their gamey elements within their universes and it can be ESPECIALLY distracting when it comes to survival/horror (which I think relies more on immersion to achieve its effects than other genres). I don't understand why people say they are scared by SS2, for example, just because I was always too aware of the system of things to ever be immersed enough to be scared or surprised. When hearing a monster I'd immediately just think "OK, how can I deal with this situation while expending the least amount of resources." And once I became aware that monsters respawn I started expecting them, so was never surprised.

It's why "Amnesia" was such a breath of fresh air as its whole design goal was to try to completely eliminate any sort of abstract systems or gamey elements and focus on pure immersion. By the end of Amnesia I was aware of its mechanisms enough to not be taken in by it as much, but holy fuck, those first few hours were unlike anything I'd ever played before---just immediate and visceral to an extent that it probably made me forget I was playing a game for longer durations than any other game I've ever played. Not that every game has to do that (I don't demand immersion from, say, a strategy game or even most RPGs), but it's definitely a novel experience when a game is able to pull it off so well.

 

[Gurkog]

The respawn booths in SS2 kill the tension, for me. I would rather have some sort of healing resource that I have to manage instead of respawning like a mole to be popped.

 

[St. Toxic]

SS2 is worst than any other modern popamole game in this regard.

Nah, World of Warcraft is worst. Those mobs just keep coming back. I mean, at least you can actually stop terrorists from respawning by running past them in CoD.

 

[Correct_Carlo]

teh ironing being that it completely fucked this up with the lazy ALERT MUSIC-HIDE AND LOOK AT WALL-WAIT FOR SILENCE AND GO traffic lights system.

Music's maybe less defensible (although I thought it worked enough that I barely noticed), but I don't think the mechanics of the way the monster works is immediately apparent, so at least for me, it was able to seem surprising for the first portion of the game (it helped that I bought the game on release and knew next to nothing about it going in, too). Once you realize its patterns, though, it does become less effective and I generally think that Amnesia's one major flaw is that, despite being pretty short as it is, it's still too long. Ideally, I don't think a game like that should ever stretch on to the point that you can start seeing the gears behind its system on your first playthrough. 4 or 5 hours tops would have been ideal, I think, with more limited use of the monster after his first appearance.

 

[Absalom]

Also, I never noticed the enemies re-spawning. How much time do you faggots spend faffing about?

 

[Haba]

Yup.

I used my guns when necessary, I went and completed the mission. I had fun.

You dumbfuck meleeing the enemies, revisiting every corner fifteen times. And then complain that the game isn't fun.

I WONDER WHY!

 

[Rostere]

There sure is a lot of whining going on about respawning here. I've never been bothered by respawns in SS2. Understand it as a game mechanic and it will be fine.

Though I must concede that it is true that the small enemies have fucked-up hitboxes, I usually just used guns on them (almost) all of the time. Also, it's kind of immersion-breaking that weapons break all the time at the start of the game but other than that it's a great game mechanic when you get used to it.

 

[Gregz]

Fuck this thread, J_C you are a douche, SS2 belongs in the library of cRPG masterworks.

 

[J_C]

How about you just shut up and finish the game?

While I appreciate the fact that you've almost done so thus giving you the right to bitch about this one aspect of the game, I don't feel like you've done enough to simultaneously praise what has very widely been viewed as an otherwise excellent game. Is the respawning really that much of a dissuading factor to your loving the game for all the good things it does?

So far almost everyone has agreed that the manner in which the respawns pop is rather retarded. 90's game is 90's game. I could similarly rail on Wiz8 (I'm currently about half-way through a run of it) for its infuriating level-scaling, for its absolutely brutally unforgiving spawning during overland travel, and for quite a few other undesirable aspects of it, but I refrain from doing so because I recognize a truly great game when I'm playing one.

I don't mean to compare the two games, but when judging something like System Shock 2 if the main point that you choose to make about it is that OMG THE RETARDED RESPAWNS then I have to question your judgment about such things.

Hey, chill out, I'm working on finishing the game. And for the record, I never said that it is a bad game. Even with the respawning, I enjoy the game, and with its level design, atmosphere, weapons and stuff, I like it. I just criticized one aspect of it.