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

System Shock 1 vs 2 Which is better and why?


  • Total voters
    175

Master

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 19, 2016
Messages
1,160
The only sucky thing about SS2 is how shooting the cameras does nothing. You destroy them in 1-2 shots and then what? Well nothing, theyre gone. So why are they even there? Luckily theres a mod that makes them tougher and spawns hybrids upon destruction so it balances out.
:littlemissfun:
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,539
Location
Nottingham
Hated all the Bioshock games, way too easy & most your time was spent on the hunt for loot etc.

With that in mind, are either of the System Shocks worth playing now?
 

Colour Spray

Educated
Joined
Jul 7, 2017
Messages
91
Bioshock felt like a step down if you'd already played either, so I'd say so. All tension evaporated when you realized that you would infinitely respawn on death, so you could just zerg anything, and the options available to you felt a lot more limited in general. Some decent water effects, though, and a submarine city is a pretty evocative setting; you'd have to give it that.
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
He's responding to your absurd logical jump and false attribution of retarded thinking to others.
There's no jump, the logic is very simple. There are two possible interpretations of "Nobody old enough to have played SS1 when it came out would prefer SS2".
1) People who played SS1 first and SS2 later prefer SS1. This is well-documented cognitive bias and isn't really worth talking about. That's the "nostalgia" part.
2) People over 35 who were actively gaming at the time of SS1 release prefer SS1 to SS2. But since both groups (i.e. over 35 and under 35) play the same game, this preference obviously isn't informed by something inherent to the game, but by extaneous factors. Hense "historical importance" part.
Unless you're somehow implying that people over 35 have better taste, but this is very easy to disprove. Someone who was actively gaming in the early 90s had his preferences informed by the then-dominant cultural trends. On the other hand, someone who didn't start gaming until much later, but played a sufficient amount of games from early 90s is much more concious about his choices, as he's going against the dominant cultural trends.

Roxor's "counterexample" has absolutely zero to do with any of that.
Good FPS or survival horror is better than shit RPG.
The latter is not an upgrade to the former.
Sweet oranges might be better than sour apples. But for someone who's allergic to oranges the choice is still pretty obvious.
Besides, as an RPG SS2 isn't anywhere near bad.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.
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No, the mistake was asserting that I communicated that SS1s merits were entirely due to nostalgia and innovation circa 1994 alone, in a wholly transparent attempt at manipulation.

Retarded thinking.
 
Joined
Jan 7, 2012
Messages
14,152
SS1 is better for first games, but has no replayability. When you've already experienced the level design and plot, it turns into a poor DOOM clone with hitscan enemies everywhere. SS2 is kind of crap when you take standard weapons but subsequent playthroughs that aren't Assault Rifle try-harding are significantly better.
 

Doctor Sbaitso

SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS.
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Grab the Codex by the pussy Serpent in the Staglands
I wasn't talking about what you meant, I was talking about what you said - which are two entirely different things.

You assigned motivation to my words and presented the implied meaning as argument in support of your views. When that was dismissed, you suggest I am missing something and re-assert that my words directly communicate the motivations you assigned to them in the first place.

This is boring.
 

Severian Silk

Guest
SS1 is better because it's not minimalist. Minimalism is almost as bad as grimdark.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DraQ

Arcane
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Oct 24, 2007
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Chrząszczyżewoszyce, powiat Łękołody
Good FPS or survival horror is better than shit RPG.
The latter is not an upgrade to the former.
Sweet oranges might be better than sour apples. But for someone who's allergic to oranges the choice is still pretty obvious.
To eat a delicious sweet orange provided it has been rolled in slightly rotten bits of a sour apple? Makes sense.
:hearnoevil:
 

Ash

Arcane
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
6,235
But technical aspect aside, the groundbreaking vision and execution of SS1 is so much grander. It's a very mature, sophisticated, monocled cyberpunk, sharp and savvy as a nanoblade. In comparison SS2 is just a glorified B-movie zombie slasher with jump scares. And sure, more stats..

Look at you, hack. Don't make me laugh. The execution is
rating_shit.png
in many respects. Shock 2 is the true monoclist :obviously:
The King of Immersive Sims.

Between Shock 1's controls, near inconsequential respawn chambers, unfulfilled Cyberspace execution, level design that drops in quality by deck 4 if not before (see: repeating tiled mazes with absolutely nothing in them of interest whatsoever, not even visual. Doom did mazes better, for an appropriate comparison), and being an FPS where ammo and health conservation does not play much a role, I'd say Shock 1 isn't even that great a game. A landmark title, innovative and good, yes, but not among the best (like its sequel).
 

Dev_Anj

Learned
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Jan 14, 2015
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I can make a retarded oversimplification of System Shock 2 too. Between the bad balance, boring RPG elements, meh guns, corridor heavy level design, very predictable story, goofy enemies like cyborg assassins and monkeys, and ending levels that are lazily designed, System Shock 2 is not that great a game.

See what I did thar?
 

ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,279
DraQ, it seems you're forcing certain comparisons to make SS2 look bad IMO, like with the hardware/implants thing.

The thing is, SS2's designers knew that they were cramming back in all the Ultima Underworld complexity that was deliberately taken out of SS1, with the stats and spellcasting and that there wasn't room to keep everything in there like SS1's hardware, so a lot of the SS1 hardware stuff was spread around the game instead of staying in one place, like you don't need Skates when you have speed hypos to inject, and you don't need a Flashlight hardware when you can light up the area with the laser rapier.

To give you an example on why some might think SS2 is better, here's what your options are when dealing with radiation in SS1 vs SS2, in SS1 you can wear the hazard suit hardware and use the detox patches you can find in the world, in SS2 you can choose to buy extra rad hypos, you can wear a hazard suit whenever there's radiation around, or you can use the Rad Shield psi power, or raise your Endurance stat via cyber modules or with the EndurBoost implant, or use the Psi Power that raises your Endurance stat since if you reach END 8 you are pretty much immune to radiation.

Another aspect is that where you lose abilities like jump jets you also gain new ones in their place like teleportation and creating physical forcefields. If you missed grenades being more complex the devs still made an effort to fill that gap by giving you proximity grenade ammo for the launcher that can be set off later and psionic land mines, the complexity is roughly the same it's just not concentrated in the same way.


I don't think you can put down SS2 so easily by trying to compare 1 and 2 in super specific aspects like the cybernetics or the combat loadouts, it doesn't work that way because the games are just too complex, especially 2 as I've just shown.
As far as game feel not related to balance issues, my main criticism for SS2 vs SS1 isn't the complexity, it's that you can very subtly feel the stink of what would lead to BioShock 8 years later, with the small but noticeable increase in cutscenes, scripted monster attacks and hand-holding.
 

DraQ

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goofy enemies like cyborg assassins
Given that they are near identical to SS1 cyborg assassins (pretty much the only difference is that SS1 version had slightly different headgear, no-glow shurikens and also used rifles) - no dice.
SS2 story also wouldn't be bad if not for the self-inconsistent premise.

DraQ, it seems you're forcing certain comparisons to make SS2 look bad IMO, like with the hardware/implants thing.
IMO there are two ways of looking at SShocks.
From pure player POV they are quite an even match, maybe even with SS2 being slightly superior.
The (few) things SS2 does right - the atmosphere and mechanics reinforcing horror elements mostly - are simply *that* effective and the few areas where it actually expands upon SS1 (anything scarcity related, hacking in-world objects, psi, active security, even research) don't hurt either.

From development/design excellence POV SS1 simply leaves SS2 in the dust.
There is simply no contest here, folks doing SS1 were cramming tons of complex interlocking mechanics (in the time when popping monsters in simple raycaster engine was seen as state of the art) along with advanced tech in a single game and made it all work together while keeping the game cohesive and playable. In comparison SS2 is an awful hackjob, already behind its time technologically, tripping all over itself in terms of half its gameplay elements and failing to implement even some of the cooler tried and true mechanics from its prequel (in SS1 they rendered multiple viewports and implemented dynamic lighting and some limited sprite filtering on hardware that today amounts to a toaster, in SS2 they couldn't figure out which alpha blending mode to use for lazors to avoid them sucking visually). It's a miracle SS2 works AT ALL as a game, never mind working as well as it does.

The thing is, SS2's designers knew that they were cramming back in all the Ultima Underworld complexity that was deliberately taken out of SS1, with the stats and spellcasting and that there wasn't room to keep everything in there like SS1's hardware, so a lot of the SS1 hardware stuff was spread around the game instead of staying in one place, like you don't need Skates when you have speed hypos to inject, and you don't need a Flashlight hardware when you can light up the area with the laser rapier.
Except hardware in SS1 was cool, SS2 stats are at best just plain, at worst fundamentally misdesigned.
The fun thing about skates wasn't that they made you go fast, but that they completely changed how you moved while also making you go fast. Most of the things - hardware, weapons and explosives had controls that could be tweaked to alter their effects - from power sliders and overload button for energy weapons, to timers on explosives to different modes for hardware. Meanwhile in SS2 rapier didn't even use charge despite being energy weapon, working instead as a slightly more powerful, slightly longer wrench, didn't actually burn targets contrary to its '?' description, but instead dealt somewhat enhanced damage to those particular enemies that you'd rather prefer to keep away from your face while they explode and that should take reduced damage from anything that mostly cauterizes organics. And there few actual places where you'd even need a light source in SS2, despite using much more powerful engine and lighting system, so yeah, glowy rapier is sort of cool except it's nearly useless and as a weapon it's both worse and less distinct than its SS1 counterpart.

To give you an example on why some might think SS2 is better, here's what your options are when dealing with radiation in SS1 vs SS2, in SS1 you can wear the hazard suit hardware and use the detox patches you can find in the world, in SS2 you can choose to buy extra rad hypos, you can wear a hazard suit whenever there's radiation around, or you can use the Rad Shield psi power, or raise your Endurance stat via cyber modules or with the EndurBoost implant, or use the Psi Power that raises your Endurance stat since if you reach END 8 you are pretty much immune to radiation.
So you can mitigate or endure radiation in 3 more excitingly mutually redundant ways? How about you keep your fucking +1END amulet and give me back my fucking jetpack?

Another aspect is that where you lose abilities like jump jets you also gain new ones in their place like teleportation and creating physical forcefields.
Except teleportation doesn't expand traversable level area in any way, it just allows quick return to previously visited location and physical forcefields, while cool are very expensive to cast and so mostly used for soma transference cheese.
In jetpack VS teleportation case it's exactly like saying that Oblivion improved over Morrowind because even though you lost levitation, you gained fast travel - fucking yay.

If you missed grenades being more complex the devs still made an effort to fill that gap by giving you proximity grenade ammo for the launcher that can be set off later and psionic land mines, the complexity is roughly the same it's just not concentrated in the same way.
The complexity is not even close. Proximity grenades are just weaker grenades that can be used to create (lousy) traps. In SS1 you could create traps with anything - proximity, time or manually triggered (with guns), you could lob grenades with varying strength and at varying angles including around the corners, perpendicularly to your facing, you could adjust timers, you could form chains of explosions, you could even leave live explosives bobbing in the air in grav shafts.

That's the main difference between SS2 and SS1 - SS1 allows you to mix and match mechanics to your heart's content, allowing you to sculpt your own custom solutions to in-game situations, while in SS2 individual mechanics are streamlined, spread apart, prevented from interacting and centred around codified, canned solutions. Being able to mitigate radiation in roughly the same way with either suit, or PSI or +END (or +END from PSI, or +END from implant, or +END from hypo) doesn't expand the game in any meaningful way. Being able to roll through irradiated area on rocket-boosted skates simultaneously wearing eviro-suit, and slicing bots with laser rapier while hopped up on reflex patch OTOH does.
That's frequent trap of mindlessly adding RPG elements - by slicing the available solution space it streamlines the experience and guides it towards codified premade solutions along the lines of "if stealthy, seek vent shaft to crawl through" we've seen in DX:HR.
 

ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,279
IMO there are two ways of looking at SShocks.
From pure player POV they are quite an even match, maybe even with SS2 being slightly superior.
The (few) things SS2 does right - the atmosphere and mechanics reinforcing horror elements mostly - are simply *that* effective and the few areas where it actually expands upon SS1 (anything scarcity related, hacking in-world objects, psi, active security, even research) don't hurt either.

From development/design excellence POV SS1 simply leaves SS2 in the dust.
There is simply no contest here, folks doing SS1 were cramming tons of complex interlocking mechanics (in the time when popping monsters in simple raycaster engine was seen as state of the art) along with advanced tech in a single game and made it all work together while keeping the game cohesive and playable. In comparison SS2 is an awful hackjob, already behind its time technologically, tripping all over itself in terms of half its gameplay elements and failing to implement even some of the cooler tried and true mechanics from its prequel (in SS1 they rendered multiple viewports and implemented dynamic lighting and some limited sprite filtering on hardware that today amounts to a toaster, in SS2 they couldn't figure out which alpha blending mode to use for lazors to avoid them sucking visually). It's a miracle SS2 works AT ALL as a game, never mind working as well as it does.

Kind of disagree on the visual aspect, it always looked the best to me of all the immersive sims in the 1998-2000 era, compared to Deus Ex that came out a year later SS2 still has more complex terrain and much higher object counts, along with far better lighting that has no staircasing effects, it feels a lot like modern games in how much object detail there is. AVP2 is a pretty acclaimed game that came out about a year and a half after SS2 and it has very low object detail and bizarre gaffes like using a low-res low-fps flipbook animation for an iris door that fills most of your screen, and other cheapness characteristic to LithTech that I can't recall right now, basically there's many flaws in games of that era that you don't see in SS2.

I think SS2 was still notable for being completed in a very short time frame, development started in late 1998 and they were working concurrently on features like multiplayer which took a lot of time from development of the game proper, they still did an amazing job with their time and had tons of allnighters and 18 hour workdays which seem sadly characteristic of really good games.

Except hardware in SS1 was cool, SS2 stats are at best just plain, at worst fundamentally misdesigned.
The fun thing about skates wasn't that they made you go fast, but that they completely changed how you moved while also making you go fast. Most of the things - hardware, weapons and explosives had controls that could be tweaked to alter their effects - from power sliders and overload button for energy weapons, to timers on explosives to different modes for hardware. Meanwhile in SS2 rapier didn't even use charge despite being energy weapon, working instead as a slightly more powerful, slightly longer wrench, didn't actually burn targets contrary to its '?' description, but instead dealt somewhat enhanced damage to those particular enemies that you'd rather prefer to keep away from your face while they explode and that should take reduced damage from anything that mostly cauterizes organics. And there few actual places where you'd even need a light source in SS2, despite using much more powerful engine and lighting system, so yeah, glowy rapier is sort of cool except it's nearly useless and as a weapon it's both worse and less distinct than its SS1 counterpart.

Psi Powers are still configurable just like hardware was though... you not only have your Psi stat, but you can overload them at an increased energy cost with this http://shodan.wikia.com/wiki/Recursive_Psionic_Amplification or at the risk of hurting yourself with the hold overcharge mechanic.
Weapons have their firing modes which include inefficient overloads for the energy weapons, it's very close which is my point.

So you can mitigate or endure radiation in 3 more excitingly mutually redundant ways? How about you keep your fucking +1END amulet and give me back my fucking jetpack?

There's nothing redundant about it because there's at least 2 clearly distinct ways to play, one where you religiously wear the envirosuit and take more combat damage from not being able to use proper armor, and the one where you use high endurance to shrug off that restriction and plow through hazards while wearing your favorite combat armor. This is what makes a game replayable.
And for the record SS2's "+1 amulets" and other +1/+2 bonuses can be pretty sweet because the effects of stats ramp up at the top end, you gain a lot more damage from strength being at 7/8, a lot more speed from agility being at 7/8, a lot more hazard resistance from endurance being at 7/8, etc...

Except teleportation doesn't expand traversable level area in any way, it just allows quick return to previously visited location and physical forcefields, while cool are very expensive to cast and so mostly used for soma transference cheese.
In jetpack VS teleportation case it's exactly like saying that Oblivion improved over Morrowind because even though you lost levitation, you gained fast travel - fucking yay.

You can climb forcefields to get to high places just fine though, it's not even particularly difficult, like in the rickenbacker gravity pit where you can reach normally unreachable areas and skip the girder puzzle

Even teleportation is no slouch since it can get you back through suddenly locked doors or other obstructions that can't be flied or jumped over, which no jetpack could get you through.



The complexity is not even close. Proximity grenades are just weaker grenades that can be used to create (lousy) traps. In SS1 you could create traps with anything - proximity, time or manually triggered (with guns), you could lob grenades with varying strength and at varying angles including around the corners, perpendicularly to your facing, you could adjust timers, you could form chains of explosions, you could even leave live explosives bobbing in the air in grav shafts.

That's the main difference between SS2 and SS1 - SS1 allows you to mix and match mechanics to your heart's content, allowing you to sculpt your own custom solutions to in-game situations, while in SS2 individual mechanics are streamlined, spread apart, prevented from interacting and centred around codified, canned solutions. Being able to mitigate radiation in roughly the same way with either suit, or PSI or +END (or +END from PSI, or +END from implant, or +END from hypo) doesn't expand the game in any meaningful way. Being able to roll through irradiated area on rocket-boosted skates simultaneously wearing eviro-suit, and slicing bots with laser rapier while hopped up on reflex patch OTOH does.
That's frequent trap of mindlessly adding RPG elements - by slicing the available solution space it streamlines the experience and guides it towards codified premade solutions along the lines of "if stealthy, seek vent shaft to crawl through" we've seen in DX:HR.

I would never argue against this fact that you have a few uber complex aspects in SS1, I'm familiar with how complex games can get, see Laser Squad where you could set grenades to last several hours, and on certain terrain tiles you could choose whether to hide the armed grenade as a surprise or leave it out in the open as a deterrent.
What I'm saying is these two games are very close in complexity, with the complexity in the sequel spread out in ways that may be difficult to remember in a pinch, and that the developers were more aware of SS1's complexity and how to bring it into the sequel than you give them credit for.
 

JayQ

Literate
Joined
May 22, 2018
Messages
6
I beat SS1 last week (was blown away) and immediately embarked on SS2 this week and about 10 hours in. I had never played either of them, I'm 35 years old and have been a gamer for decades, currently in the process of playing for the first time old games regardless of type that are considered classics, or at least influential or ahead of their time. This year so far I've beat Strife (wow), Syndicate (good but repetitive), Grim Fandango (abolutely fascinating but had to hint some puzzles), Dungeon Keeper (hard as balls) and a few others. Up next after SS2 are Realms of the Haunting, Dark Forces (which I did play on release but can't remember anything of it) and I guess Syndicare Wars.

On to System Shock.

So far I love both games fairly equally, maybe with a slight edge to SS1. Not sure if nostalgia comes into play here as I'm playing both games for the first time back to back, but nice pixel art invokes good memories in general.

I feel like I would not have enjoyed SS1 as much without the mouselook of the Enhanced Version. Nightdive really killed it with this release, and after Strife and SS1 I'm a fan of what they do.

On the whole, so far, SS2 makes me feel way more vulnerable which I like more than SS1. The cameras in SS2 also actually matter which is good.

Visually, both games are about equal. SS1 is fucking beautiful and the lighting is just amazing, SS2's visuals (I'm playing it with the high res mods "starter pack" that everyone has and were recommended by GOG, nothing that alters gameplay) are also beautiful but the isolation doesn't come accross the same. You are most definitely alone in both games, but you feel damn far from home is SS1's Citadel because the Von Braun with is clean walls and nice kitchens somehow feels more livable than a lot of Citadel and it's claustrophobic spaces filled with pipes and wires and amazingly busy yet decipherable style. It does depend on the level you're at though, but I wanted to FLEE Citadel, not just clean it up. If I could clean up the Von Braun and stick around for eternity while I drift into space aimlessly I feel like it's not a bad deal. I'll probably change my mind as I'm early-ish in SS2 though. The enemies are still much creepier in SS2 than SS1. The atmosphere is just different. SS1 made me feel like Aliens, SS2 makes me feel like Event Horizon if that makes sense. It's hard to pick which one I like most.

But then, disappearing corpses is SS2 is problematic for me, so I give a slight edge so SS1 for visuals. I'm petty like that, but whenever I backtracked to the reactor level I enjoyed seeing dead hoppers all over the place in the corridors leading to the surgical table, as well as the dead invisible mutants everywhere on level 3. Fuck them, I enjoy seeing their corpses.

I did not use walkthroughs for System Shock 1 at all, and after a few hours of play, figured out that this was going to be BIG, so I kept a notepad nearby for cliffing my map notes, logs and tasks as well as narrative cues. I did not end up in a state of "wtf do I do now" very often, and when I did I usually went over my notes once more and figured it out. I also let the game run it's own pace and clue me in when it mattered. If there was a door I couldn't open or a device I had no idea what to do with (like the relay analyzer), I would put a note on the map and get back to it later and sure enough, it would come into play at some point. The pacing of SS1 is one of the main things that blew me away, because you will figure it out if you pay attention to the environment and logs. If not now, later. Explore methodically, leave yourself map notes and revisit your logs/notes regularly. So far SS2 seems easier on that front with auto PDA notes, but I'm not knocking it for that, as it's essentially saving me some "work" and it's looking like the concept will be roughly the same. After grim Fandango and SS1 I could use a break honestly. The one door I didn't get around to opening was the Security level lock on the reactor floor. Thought about it after I beat the game.

Voice acting for the logs seems a liiiittle more believable in SS1.

However, there are things from SS1 that could've been ported directly to SS2 with little to no modification that would've made the game better in a variety of ways, according to anyone, but especially me :

1. The automap. Typing your own notes on the automap is an overlooked or underappreciated feature (in any game, frankly) that contributes to immersion. If SS2's automap simply allowed this it would've been better. I also like the automap from the first one better because you paint it as you go, making it much easier to know where you have been and where you haven't been. Opening a door, walking through it and having a large swath of the map instantly show up whether you have been there or not is confusing to me. If I could put notes on it like "Needs exploring", this would not be an issue. The map icons in SS2 are a good thing, obviously.

2. The interface and controls of the enhanced edition of SS1. Please extinguish your torches, at least momentarily. I will however deliver this speech standing on the unlit pyre, so do keep your lighters nearby for when I'm done. I really fucking loved SS1's enhanced version interface, mechanics and controls. It's the best of both world in terms of coping with the original idea of the game, but also in terms of usability and immersion, and I think it could be made modern again and here's why : Your gun is active and follows your cursor even when mouselook is off. That means you can manage your inventory and solve puzzles while keeping an eye out for threats and dealing with them as well. In SS1 you select the flechette with splinter ammo, open an access pad, position your field of view to cover your back, select weapon info on the HUD screen that you don't need for wiring or node hacking so you can reload, and get on with the puzzle while being able to defend yourself. That was immersive as hell in a "keeping an eye open" sort of way. In SS2 you cannot do that. If you click in the 3D view it exits the inventory mode, which is great in itself, but also limiting. Yes, I just said SS2's interface is LIMITING compared to SS1. You can set me on fire now.

3. Hand grenades. Not even going to extrapolate too much. Throwable things that explode exist, have them in your damn game, even though throwing grenades in SS1 was random at best, I don't see a good reason to omit them from the second game.

4. In SS1 you're a hacker with a couple upgrades that can pickup any gun and use it. In SS2 you're already a soldier but can't use some guns right away because of skills. What kind of training do these soldiers get? This is one thing that would've served SS1's narrative better than SS2 in all honesty.

On a random note I think the delivery of cyber modules is an annoying gimmick. I do not particularly enjoy being baited into doing tasks in this way and I wish they would've found a better way to write this mechanic into the game that didn't make me feel like a dog being rewarded with cookies if that dog was battling humanity-ending entities. I'm your only hope, the stakes are high as shit, so let's cut the crap and give me all the fucking modules you have right now. I'll find the rest on my own. The acquisition of modules could've been written into the game much, much better.

I do not mind the respawning enemies in both games that much. These places are big, and even though you are functionally exploring every corridor of them on a tactical level, they are abstractly scaled down because it's a game and respawning enemies could come from places where the game doesn't need you to go. It doesn't break immersion for me, at least not in the SS games.

As far as RPG elements go, SS1 doesn't have than many of them, but I felt a strong connection to the hacker. In SS1 you pickup something, it's a thing. You whip it out or plug it in and use it. In SS2 you pick up numbers. Mostly. I don't have a preference for one or the other. I didn't use a lot of these systems at all in SS1 apart from lantern and shield every now and then, and didn't use drugs, but I appreciate the creativity that went into putting them in the game and their effect for those who wanted to use them. SS2 definitely feels more RPG-ey than SS1. I don't think I will use these complimentary systems more in SS2 than I did in SS1, but it seems like they are way more important in SS2 so I might get around to them more this time around.

All in all so far I rate these games about equally using the Enhanced version of SS1 and high-res visual mods for SS2. Both games stand on their own even if experiencing them today. SS2 is definitely more accessible and less abstract in it's controls, but it's not objectively worse than SS1 overall, although I feel like so far I may end up enjoying SS1 the most by a tiny margin because of primarily the writing/voice acting and other details that I found extremely compelling, although surviving on the Von Braun is a much more tense affair for me, and I look forward to playing a round of SS2 exactly as much as I did SS1.
 
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given its age and scope, ss1 is one of the best games ever. but daaaaaamn, it aged baaaaaaad. there are some unforgivable sins of youth, due to the time is was born, controls, interface, graphics, even the fonts. it's like one of those mosaics from 1200 still lacking perspective, you can see the huge effort but they still are an eyesore.
ss2 is a "drier" experience, more focused, lost something like cyberspace and some of the coolest gadgets, but in its essentiality it's still largely enjoyable. and easily improved and updated with mods.
and medsci. holy scream of fear medsci.

 

ciox

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 9, 2016
Messages
1,279
SS2 lets you type on the automap, you have to place a navigation marker first, by hitting "N" I think, then select it.

The discussion about interfaces is interesting, too bad we know how that discussion ended as far as the actual developers are concerned, with inventories and stat screens that either pause the game completely or just don't exist anymore.
 

Ash

Arcane
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Oct 16, 2015
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It is to a degree. Cyborg conversion chambers require activation first, and the medical beds require notable backtracking, during which you may run into some respawned enemies. It's not Bioshock levels of bad. Shock 2 handled these things much more sensibly though.

Combat is abuse-able with lean, and in general isn't that great, but isn't terrible either.

Level design I consider a bit of a mixed-bag, with lots of identical looking hallways without much of note in them, but this isn't always the case and there's plenty creative areas.

Generally lots of valid though exaggerated points, but it's still a legendary game.
 
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