the first person shooter game thread (eew fps)

[drauch]

Hmmmm, intriguing. I'd kill for another game like System Shock 2, and even Bioshock, really. I couldn't do Infinite. Too simplistic and easy, awful visuals and silly surroundings, heavy handed morals, and drab humor, just to name a few of the flaws that sorta irked me. I just want a dead serious game with immersion and exploration, dammit.

[Xyga]

I haven't been into the DOOM mods stuff for years but everything I've read in this thread made me want to play Brutal.

Now with all that splatter I think someone should do an Excaliborg mod (you know, Dokuro-chan's awesome magical spikey metal bat) so you could pulverize and - Pipiru piru piru pipiru pi ! - do it again for fun.
Voice sample included.

[lilmanjs]

So there must not be enough people pre-ordering this game because now they offer beta access to another game in the pipeline.
http://tinyurl.com/k82zcft

[Marc]

Slight reevaluation, given total dark, loud sound, and forgetting the name, Doom 3 is pretty entertaining.

[Edmond Dantes]

Hmmmm, intriguing. I'd kill for another game like System Shock 2

I'm prolly the only guy in the universe who would like to see SS2's story remade with SS1's gameplay.

System Shock 2... the story was interesting, but gameplay-wise its a broken down mess, that tries to be too many things and doesn't really pull them off. Most of its ideas simply don't work. It's one of those games where I constantly feel like I'm doing something wrong, and I just don't think that's how a game should make you feel.

....

In other news, decided to actually play Unreal again. I guess the mood just struck me at the right time. So far having fun, but lately have been gravitating more towards racing games and side-scrollers so I might take a break from FPSes. But I still need to beat Blood...

[BareKnuckleRoo]

System Shock 2... the story was interesting, but gameplay-wise its a broken down mess, that tries to be too many things and doesn't really pull them off. Most of its ideas simply don't work. It's one of those games where I constantly feel like I'm doing something wrong, and I just don't think that's how a game should make you feel.

Are there any specific complaints you have with the game? Because this just boils down to a vague "I didn't like it".

It's not the perfect game and certainly has some unusual quirks (you can boost your running speed high enough with stats + PSI + implants that you take damage running into walls, lol), but it's a fantastic game when you know more about what skills are useful and what aren't, or when you plan your upgrades in advance. Melee is what you should be using and investing in for a lot of the game cause even just the wrench is pretty badass with the appropriate stats/upgrades (Lethal Weapon is the recommended first upgrade in pretty much any game unless you plan on ignoring melee, it makes the pipe wielding guys go down in one hit).

See: http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/185706-syste ... faqs/41882 (best guide for the mechanics, it explains how bonuses work to stats, why the Crystal Shard is the best melee weapon by far, etc).

See also: A melee only walkthrough, also has good advice for upgrades and general strategies. Yes, melee only is possible, with preparation for a few of the quirkier areas like the last couple of bosses. http://tnt.freylia.net/ss2/

[drauch]

Yeah. I agree it's not perfect as far as gameplay goes--a bit stiff, maybe--but I definitely wouldn't consider it broken. Most FPS of that blossoming era had relatively stiff controls at the time.

[Edmond Dantes]

Are there any specific complaints you have with the game? Because this just boils down to a vague "I didn't like it".

It's been awhile since I played it and a big rant I had written is on a completely different computer, but to recall from memory...

I hated the RPG Mechanics. Needing to put skill points into "Shotgun" to be proficient with shotguns makes sense. Needing to put skill points into "Shotgun" to use the shotgun AT ALL... just seems lame and artificial. And this area is primarily what I'm talking about when I say the game makes me feel like I'm always making the wrong choice. First time I played, I got a shotgun from a dead enemy, but the gun was broken. So I restarted with a new character, and put points into my repair skill.. only to discover that I couldn't use the shotgun because you need points in that skill. For magic, this makes sense, but for weapons it doesn't. Overall, I preferred the more Metroid-esque "you get more powerful by finding shit and plugging it into your body" method the first game used. At least then, progression was clear.

I hated that on the "normal" difficulty, money is rare, and yet damn near everything requires it, including attempts to hack open a door. It's like grinding in NES-era RPGs, except at least in those, you were sure to get something when the monster died. In SS2, there's no such garauntee unless you're on the easiest difficulty.

I didn't like how respawning enemies worked, compared to SS1. In the first one, they tended to only respawn in areas you didn't presently occupy, so you could clear an area, solve the local puzzles (if any) and only encounter not-dead enemies in an area you hadn't seen in awhile. In System Shock 2, its totally possible to pay five chips to attempt to hack a door, only to have a dude with a brain tumor come around the corner and start whacking you. So now you have to get away from your hacking attempt (meaning you wasted some of your money BTW) to kill him, then try again...

Not to mention that "hacking" is just playing a glorified Tic-Tac-Toe where some moves are already wrong at the beginning of the match. I liked the puzzles from the original, with the crossing wires and figuring out energy flows and stuff. They made me feel like I was using my brain. In SS2, I feel like I'm just randomly clicking. And yes, I'm aware that a lot of side areas and locked doors are completely optional, but skipping them makes me feel like I'm missing something (yeah, I'm not normally a fan of western-style RPGs).

My last complaint was that the hypos were not as fun to use as the stimpatches were. The Speed stimpatch in particular had a neat effect of everyone else is slow, but you move at normal speed--which is a good way to convey "you're faster than everybody" as well as meaning it served multiple purposes, such as during timed puzzles. System Shock 2 replaces that with a hypo which simply gives your running a speed boost. No more slow-mo effect, and the new effect has limited uses compared to how it was originally. This is actually something I noticed in a lot of areas. In the first game you could lean wide and its uses were more versatile, in the second you kinda tilt your head sideways and there's no reason to really use it, and so on and so forth.

Ultimately, just it felt like the original System Shock had the better gameplay, and System Shock 2 had a lot of ideas that probably sounded good on paper but didn't really work in game terms.

[Ed Oscuro]

Yeah, I agree that the skill system in SS2 was contrived and restricting. PSI powers didn't get as nice a chance to shine, since (if my memory is accurate) it was hard to be proficient in PSI while also being proficient in more than a couple other attack categories - but too many of the PSI powers weren't useful (unless you were playing multiplayer and wanted to trap your friends behind a dozen force fields). There was a nice patch very late on (long after I had stopped playing the game from release) that introduced multiplayer and reduced weapon breakage, which was nice but didn't fix the core gameplay. It was also aggravating as hell to try and get loaded up with some of the high-powered weapons, where you had to deal with huge slot usage and also juggling ammo types which use too much inventory space (not so fun to try and get at least three different types of specialty grenade in your inventory all the time when some of them aren't very good for the typical situation you'd want the launcher in; but you pick them up anyway because there's just not enough ammo of the other types).

Looking Glass clearly didn't have the advantage of a well-organized code base. I read an anecdote from one of the developers that a fair amount of trouble was spent trying to stop the monkeys from parrying melee attacks...honestly, I almost rather wish that was left in there. On the plus side, there were many good things that came of the game's emphasis on "emerent behaviors" although there is essentially nothing in this area for the AI to use, and many of these behaviors are the result of random lucky situations, rather than systems you can consistently use. So it is nice to sometimes pull an attacking enemy over to an explosive barrel where they end up killing themselves, but that doesn't really work for the bread-and-butter gameplay. This was definitely one of the games which first aggravated my cautious nature (in single-player games...) leaving me stuck at the inventory screen and hiking back and forth to juggle items.

Overall though the game is still very interesting and does a lot of things that nobody else was even trying - even if I don't really care for the result as much as I'd like, I did play it quite a bit back in the day. I personally feel that something like Bioshock brings relatively little in comparison, and certainly I wish they had tried not so hard to console-proof the ideas of System Shock 2, but instead force the player to get really creative.

[drauch]

I'm genuinely curious: what FPS games do you guys like of that era? Problems with Half-Life, SS2... curious to hear, or are you both Build Engine or bust?

[Ed Oscuro]

I don't know who the two people are, but I'll clarify my own position: I recently played Blood 2 and sort-of enjoyed it. I enjoy playing bad games (at least a little). For me playing these things is almost a religious duty, even though quite often I feel that there is something lacking in the fun department. There are relatively few games which I find truly compelling (outside of score attack and run perfection games, which ideas aren't found in very many FPSes at all) yet I don't take this to be a sign that the FPS genre has failed to do what it set out for. It just has its own, necessarily narrow, goals. Personally, what validates a FPS for me is the sense of exploration, and the occasional moments where things come together in an impressive or fun way.

It is unfortunate that there is so much emphasis in many games on things that are entirely extraneous to the tactics and fun of playing a good game, like ammo / health pickup management (and games that have you run off to wall-mounted chargers, like the Marathon games, are no better). People decry recharging health as "dumb and consolized," yet it does not necessarily compromise the reliance of a player on skill and reflexes, and at the same time it eliminates a number of (by this date) extremely crusty and thoughtless old gameplay conventions. Personally, I rather like the various console-inspired systems out there that award small health nodules after cutting down enemies, and this is something that Brutal DOOM does (if only intermittently) with its bonuses.

In some ways, I think Half-Life is a reasonably good balance between difficulty and fun, while not forcing (or even allowing) some of the OCD behaviors to emerge in players. No secrets, and one armor type instead of three. There really isn't much to be gained by making ammunition for your primary weapons remain scarce throughout the entirety of a level - so your MP5 has in total 6 magazines worth of ammunition (if you've reloaded the picked-up weapon and found 25 more bullets to max your reserve). It's enough to go through a large section of gameplay without being forced to use specialty weapons for direct confrontations (as distinct from Blood, where I'm constantly risking death with the dynamite - I guess that could be a positive). Some games seem to want you to run out of ammunition quickly during a fight, and then be able to find more quickly without having to backtrack - but it seems that this is what magazine capacity is for anyway (since reloading is disadvantageous). Others allow you to just keep shooting for a long time, but will then penalize you terribly for being wasteful by simply refusing to drop meaningful resupplies (I think Blood counts - see what happens if you enter a level with a max shotgun ammo count and then use that while only picking up replacements for that depleted ammunition, and not changing weapon types).

Half-Life (and its sequel) are good in that they provide a variety of tools to do things, and then don't try to force the weapons to outshine the potential of the maps for being a source of interest. Perhaps the word is really "bland" but I think that there is a difference between having character, which the HL games certainly do, and then being overbearing. While I don't find the HL engine as engaging as I once did, it is flexible and balanced enough that it is relatively easy to create a variety of well-formed experiences with its map editor, after making only cosmetic changes. While that experience can get stale, it was a good setup which allows a running shooting game through very many different kinds of maps without becoming tiresome. There is nothing that prevents players from making tons of Blood maps, but I think the difficulty is harder to scale there, owing to the rather demanding nature of many weapons and the enemies. That said, both games are similar in some ways: There are difficult enemies, as well as lots of cannon fodder. However I do prefer Half-Life's headcrabs providing jump scares while not being deadly obstacles; Half-Life is nice in that bigger things = more deadly things. See how you fare if you ignore a possessed hand in Blood - I hate those things. Good concept but very tiresome.

[Limbrooke]

I'm genuinely curious: what FPS games do you guys like of that era? Problems with Half-Life, SS2... curious to hear, or are you both Build Engine or bust?

It's Thief or nothing. Unless you're referring to a different "era" in which case it's Quake or nothing.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I hated the RPG Mechanics. Needing to put skill points into "Shotgun" to be proficient with shotguns makes sense. Needing to put skill points into "Shotgun" to use the shotgun AT ALL... just seems lame and artificial.

Well, System Shock 2 isn't really a first person shooter. It's a first person survival horror with RPG-style character stat building. It's what makes it awesomely fun to replay over and over trying out different ways of investing your modules; you can't simply use all the weapons every single game, and you can't use them all at once at zero skill because it would render the importance of investing wisely negligible. Being able to make use of the scarce ammo you find it extremely helpful, and the stat building results in making choices like deciding between investing in more universal stat like Strength or Endurance versus investing in a specific weapon type to boost that type's damage and possibly get a new weapon so you can make use of its ammo you find (even if you can't use the ammo, you can always turn ammo into delicious nanites).

And this area is primarily what I'm talking about when I say the game makes me feel like I'm always making the wrong choice. First time I played, I got a shotgun from a dead enemy, but the gun was broken. So I restarted with a new character, and put points into my repair skill.. only to discover that I couldn't use the shotgun because you need points in that skill. For magic, this makes sense, but for weapons it doesn't.

This is only an issue that an inexperienced player would have on a first run. People who've played through the game would know that you can equip any weapon or armor (even while jammed/broken) to see if you can equip it or not, and that Repair is generally not that useful since the weapons you could get early you won't have much ammo for yet (not to mention the game gives you loads of Auto Repair devices). Modify is more useful since a few points lets you easily get the first tier upgrades for guns, and you can French-Epstein for the second tier ones. All of those shotguns the enemies drop are there to be unloaded manually for the ammo, they're not there for you to see as a Doom-style instant shotgun the moment you kill one of them. The shotgun's not even that good of a weapon, by the time you hit Standard 3 your pistol does almost as much damage (your wrench even more) and 3 more points gets you the most absurdly powerful weapon in the game, the assault rifle, that does ridiculous damage extremely efficiently using the cheapest ammo in the game.

As with any RPG with limited points to invest in skills, experimentation is what helps you find what's useful and what isn't. On Hard and definitely Impossible, specialization is more important, but the game is designed that even your starting wrench is good enough to get by in a pinch, so no matter how weird your point investments get, you should be able to beat the game. When you look at the possible stats you can invest in, it's pretty obvious that some of the skills are more specialized than the others, and getting something like Heavy or Exotic before the weapons are available is probably not the best investment.

Overall, I preferred the more Metroid-esque "you get more powerful by finding shit and plugging it into your body" method the first game used. At least then, progression was clear.

Basically, you like games where you're a walking, nigh-unstoppable god at the end in terms of power, with no thought to how you plan out your upgrades. This is not Quake 2 where you can pick up a Power Shield 1/4 of the way through the game and be indestructible for the rest of it. Do you know why the Metroid games are fun to replay? It's not because of their powerup system's linearity; it's precisely because the good games let you sequence break the shit out of 'em and ignore powerups the game expects you to have. Super Metroid lets you do some crazy things, many probably unintentional, and you can beat enemies at points when players are expected to have X weapon or item without needing that powerup.

The same thing makes System Shock 2 a wonderful game. It's freedom: the freedom to upgrade however you like. Sure, some of the upgrades are clearly more immediately useful than others, and some are flat-out useless (Spatially Aware OS upgrade is pointless if you are familiar with the game's map), but the freedom to develop your character and try out whatever skills you like even in more unusual ways is what makes this so much fun to replay, you can play it melee-only, you can make a sharpshooter, you can make a psionic who specializes in close range, you can ignore offensive skills and put skills into hack and PSI in order to be a pacifist who runs invisible past enemies... it's the same freedom that makes the good Metroid games enjoyable, and makes the super linear ones like Metroid 2 and Metroid Fusion less fun than the more non-linear ones where you can sequence break.

I hated that on the "normal" difficulty, money is rare, and yet damn near everything requires it, including attempts to hack open a door. It's like grinding in NES-era RPGs, except at least in those, you were sure to get something when the monster died. In SS2, there's no such garauntee unless you're on the easiest difficulty.

And this is a bad thing, why? SS2 is a survival horror game, it makes sense for resources to be limited because that's what adds to tension. If hacking were free, you could constantly disable security all the time, and it would render the penalty for failures meaningless. By making various actions cost nanites, you have to think about both what skills you invest in, and where you put your nanites to good use.

And quite frankly, it's super easy even on normal to grind a bit for nanites if you run out, which only is going to happen on Easy or Normal if you spend them constantly at unhacked replicators... Only one spot in the game requires a replicator purchase for like 200 nanites on Impossible I think? Also, don't forget, there's the Recycler, which basically lets you turn almost everything into nanites, including garbage items like potted plants. Didn't you find one of those the first time you played? I remember I didn't have any nanite trouble on my first normal run, and I didn't even get a Recycler I think until very late in the game because I wasn't investing in Hack. Are you sure you found all the nanites the game offered? There's a lot that require searching and climbing, like any standard survivor horror you need to explore a bit to find resources.

Having limited resources is what makes or breaks a game's challenge. If you have nigh-infinite health and ammo refills available (and with proper use of medical tables and resurrection stations, you might as well have infinite health, it's fun to try no-death runs though), it would destroy the tension the game is trying to make you feel (and frankly if you're not wasteful you can get to the end of the game with a boatload of ammo and hypos).

I didn't like how respawning enemies worked, compared to SS1.

This is one of the best features of the game. With all the backtracking you do, having enemies appear as actual random encounters is awesome in a survival horror, you are never really safe except in specific areas you know enemies don't spawn. I'm rather shocked you see this as a negative.

In System Shock 2, its totally possible to pay five chips to attempt to hack a door, only to have a dude with a brain tumor come around the corner and start whacking you. So now you have to get away from your hacking attempt (meaning you wasted some of your money BTW) to kill him, then try again...

Are... you seriously asking for the game to magically stop time for you and prevent enemies from attacking during a hack? It's a freaking survival horror game, I can think of several others where lockpicking attempts and such happen real-time and you have to actually plan ahead. If you don't take the time to clear an area and make sure you have breathing room before you make a hack attempt it's your own darn fault (and even then, hacking can be done fairly quickly with a decent level of skill).

Not to mention that "hacking" is just playing a glorified Tic-Tac-Toe where some moves are already wrong at the beginning of the match.

Agreed, it's a bit too simple.

The Speed stimpatch in particular had a neat effect of everyone else is slow, but you move at normal speed

System Shock 2 has multiplayer. Slow down time effects don't work so well in co-op multiplayer because you'd have to have it apply to all players. Movement speed is fairly helpful in some cases and is more of a true speed boost rather than a heightened reflexes thing.

In the first game you could lean wide and its uses were more versatile, in the second you kinda tilt your head sideways and there's no reason to really use it, and so on and so forth.

Leaning forward and side to side are actually quite helpful for peeking around corners and over balconies to take out cameras and turrets.

Ultimately, just it felt like the original System Shock had the better gameplay, and System Shock 2 had a lot of ideas that probably sounded good on paper but didn't really work in game terms.

Seeing as how several of your complaints are features that are actually what make it extremely fun for fans of the game, I'd say it's just a case of a great game that just doesn't line up to your tastes. It's nowhere near as bad as you'd like to make it out to be.

[Ed Oscuro]

I am not impressed by the argument that "only an inexperienced player" would have certain problems. A game's system should be transparent, or at least (if we are making the comparison to games based around "builds," like Diablo) there should be good faith that various upgrade trees will actually pan out.

Many don't. Why is there duplication of themes with Repair and Maintenance skills (and only one of these is useful), or with Modify and Research (and only one of these is worth dedicating actual points to; both are best served by using devices)?

Think about the weapon skills - it is a notable departure from games that simply limit the abuse of powerful weapons by limiting ammo availability. Instead, you have a very expensive lesson in terms of finding out how limited your choices really are:

Standard - good for most everything, but I hope you really like using the assault rifle and the pistol.
Energy - good for the laser pistol, and the laser sword if you are still obsessed with hitting things over the head
Heavy - lol, only good for the grenade launcher
Exotic - lol

And of course, it still restricts ammo availability severely for these weapons, and penalizes you severely with excessive space requirements.

As much as I have concerns about Blood's weapons, there's no argument to be made that they aren't varied, generally useful, and that the game mixes things up and lets you play. SS2's combat, on the other hand, really overstays its welcome when you spend so much time simply shooting and bashing things in the same way, and then bashing and shooting them to death much faster (the assault rifle is a DPS machine when fully upgraded) later on, but still with the exact same weapons.

All that said, I still love that Looking Glass "look" and I want to try playing the game again sometime with an emphasis on the good stuff and PSI powers.

You are definitely right about some of its good points - the randomly spawning enemies are a great touch. There is nothing like returning to a new area of Medical and then hearing some Many sputtering about. Oh, and fuck Tommy and Rebecca.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I am not impressed by the argument that "only an inexperienced player" would have certain problems.

Your arguments suggest you've not played the game that much either.

Many don't. Why is there duplication of themes with Repair and Maintenance skills (and only one of these is useful), or with Modify and Research (and only one of these is worth dedicating actual points to; both are best served by using devices)?

You are right that Repair is a bit crap compared to Maintenance. Maintenance is awesome because not only can you find working weapons and easily keep them maintained via tools as opposed to repairing them constantly, maintenance has the universally useful ability to permanently increase battery life on implants (and the powered armor), meaning you can go longer between recharges. Considering how awesome the dual implant OS upgrade is, Maintenance clearly is the winner.

However, you are absolutely wrong about Modify and Research and their similarities. True, one point of Research lets you examine and find enemy weaknesses if you happen to find the organs... but it takes a long time to Research at the base skill, and on higher difficulties, drops are much rarer, so you may not find those organs. Research's true power lies in the unique goodies you can get, particularly the implants. WormMind is awesome. Like, seriously awesome, even if you're not investing in PSI, it gives you an invaluable damage buffer. Research 3 means you can invest 2 points in it and use the implant to get it. WormHeart is more pricy at Research 5, but health regeneration + toxin immunity are pretty darn snazzy (just have anti-toxin because you get infected if it gets unequipped or the juice runs out). Research (if you don't find or miss the implant) also helps you get those things like the single-use healing/PSI recovery, and Research 4 (3 + implant) nets you one of the best weapons in the game, the Crystal Shard, which demolishes anything that isn't fully robotic (and does a fair bit of damage even then with Smasher because of how crazy its damage calculation is).

Energy - good for the laser pistol, and the laser sword if you are still obsessed with hitting things over the head

The pistol works well on overdrive with only one point, and the laser sword is okay, though most robots tend to explode... It's great with Localized Pyro PSI because you can melee them without taking incendiary damage. The EMP Rifle is the strongest weapon in the game, but it's limited only to robotic enemies. A lot of enemies won't be affected, but you can use a Crystal Shard for them and EMP the shit out of everything else in the game as it will tear up anything it can damage in seconds. it fucks up the final boss pretty fiercely, and you know those Cyborgs you keep running across that are annoying as hell? You can drop groups of them in seconds.

The real downside to the EMP rifle is that you need a Maintenance of 6 to maintain it, but it happens to be very durable and efficient with ammo, and Maintenance is pretty awesome anyways. Repair base skill needed is only 2, but it's tough to Repair... you could just keep Repairing it when it breaks if you really wanted to try avoiding Maintenance for some reason, as it's not going to break much over the course of the game!

Heavy - lol, only good for the grenade launcher

The Fusion Cannon's pretty awesome too, and is incredibly efficient with its ammo, but it's limited by how expensive it is to obtain and how late you can find them (the first one needs repairs, another is locked in a level 6 crate, another needs PSI pull I think, the repair one is easy enough to use an AutoRepair on). I usually invest one point to get the Grenade Launcher because the first modification's bugged damage boost (+100%) is too awesome to ignore.

Exotic - lol

Are you crazy? Most of the enemies in the game are squishy, and for only 1 Exotic + 3 Research invested, you can get the best melee weapon in the game plus some other snazzy implants! The Crystal Shard is fucking insane, I mean shit, just look at this:

The Crystal Shard has a weird quirk about it. First of all, it technically deals only 15 damage with Smasher, but the Crystal Shard deals both normal and Smasher damage with a Smasher attack (for a total 27). Second of all, you get *twice* your strength damage bonus to the Crystal Shard per swing

It's also the longest melee weapon and because it's level 1, you can invest more into exotic to boost the damage by up to 75%! It's absolutely ridiculously awesome, and pairs fantastically with an Energy build character.

The Exotic guns are far more wacky, but they're meant to be weird and awkward to use as they're completely alien weaponry. The Annelid Launcher is pretty darn powerful though, seeing as it fires homing missiles that will pretty much one-shot anything. If you invest in this, and take the time to stock up on worms, you can pretty much say "I Win!" when you're in the endgame section. PSI builds help with this as you can use PSI to duplicate your piles of worms.

Obviously, Impossible makes it harder to invest in the pricier equipment, but the game is designed so that even the level 1 equipment can be made seriously useful. I rarely go without a Crystal Shard just because they're so awesome.

SS2's combat, on the other hand, really overstays its welcome when you spend so much time simply shooting and bashing things in the same way, and then bashing and shooting them to death much faster (the assault rifle is a DPS machine when fully upgraded) later on, but still with the exact same weapons.

Then you should experiment with the more unusual weapons. They really are good, but they just require a bit more investment. By no means are they out of reach entirely though, especially on a lower difficulty like Normal, you can reasonably max out several of your weapon skills. EMP Rifle + PSI Build is even better in some cases than an Assault Rifle, as you can use Pyro for any squishies, Invisibility to run from anything, EMP anything that's remotely robotic... And EMP Rifles are easily recharged so ammo is never an issue, whereas to get the same damage against robots, you need to use AP bullets with the rifle. And those robots do tend to be ammo sinks...

The Stasis Gun is really the only one I'd say is never really worth it. It might be more helpful on co-op, but it's so much more expensive to use versus the Fusion Cannon that you might as well just save up for that, or just recycle the prisms you find for nanites.

Oh, and fuck Tommy and Rebecca.

That really was a horrible ending.

[Ed Oscuro]

My response can be pretty concise:

First, you have made some errors from reading things into my post that aren't there. I am not saying that research and modify are "the same." Rather, they represent an apparent duplication of themes - not as severe as repair and maintenance. The point here is that if you step back from the viewpoint of an accomplished player who knows the game in and out, you see that it doesn't transparently make sense that research would not allow you to unlock new weapon capabilities. I am personally willing to put in more time to try and learn new things about the game - however it has to be admitted that from a marketing standpoint that this is a weakness (moreso because many things are just useless).

Another problem, seen with research, is that many of the skills have no obvious purpose for max levels. I'm not looking for a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but having each skill or tier lead to something useful at the end seems good. I can't speak for Research explicitly, but the damage boost from Research is probably costing you skill points that could give you a better skill boost elsewhere.

Anyhow, about those pots of gold at the end of the rainbow: I agree that many people discount the crystal shard because "lol melee in endgame" - I thank you for pointing that out; many people don't play the game aggressively or intelligently, or try new things. There's nothing stopping people from using melee in the late game.

However, where I think you haven't realized you essentially agree with me is about your response on the various weapon categories near the end of your post. You have picked out the sole weapons from those tiers that are great. What about all the others? What about the huge point cost to make them usefuL?

Again, t's not flattering for SS2 in comparison to Blood, where there are a wide variety of interesting weapons and the incentive to use them all the time lets everything in the inventory shine. But of course many people discount the PSI powers out of hand. Really, SS2 has a lot of great content in comparison to many other games - but it also has tons of fat, too. The fat doesn't mean that the game is slim on content but it is still a weakness. No argument that it hasn't aimed high enough, though.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

\However, where I think you haven't realized you essentially agree with me is about your response on the various weapon categories near the end of your post. You have picked out the sole weapons from those tiers that are great. What about all the others? What about the huge point cost to make them usefuL?

I doublechecked my post; I actually specifically mentioned the usefulness of all of the game's highest tier weapons (A.Rifle, EMP Rifle, Fusion, Annelid Launcher). What do you mean by "What about all the others"? I covered nearly every weapon; the only two bad weapons in my opinion are the Stasis (ammo guzzler, no damage) and the Viral Proliferator (hard to use effectively, it fires shots that explode when you let go of the button, it's not bad but it can be awkward), and both of those are the mid-range weapons for Heavy and Exotic respectively. Even if you don't use them, putting points into Heavy and Exotic to further boost your Grenade and Crystal Shard damage is never a bad thing!

The Viral Proliferator can be pretty amusing on anti-annelid as you can tap the shot for instant melee range death blasts. But it will instantly kill you if you accidentally switch to anti-human and fire it off at close range, so if I'm investing in exotics it tends to be either for Crystal Shard buffing, or straight to the Launcher.

As I said, all of the more basic, low end weapons are useful, and get better with points invested as every point above a weapon's base use boosts its damage. The Wrench, Rapier and Shard are all great as melee weapons, with the Wrench and Shard being the standouts due to availability in the former, as well as pure damage in the latter. The shotgun is a good tool to have as an extra ammo source for less threatening targets (when I use one, I save it for turrets and exploding droids) but it's not all that damaging compared to what shotguns are in your average FPS/survival horror game, whereas the pistol tends to be better in dangerous situations even when you have a shotgun for those targets that you can use the specialized ammo on (AP rounds are even better than a shotgun against robots, HE rounds are better and more accurate than the shotgun's pellets tend to be). The pistol is a great all-around tool that shines even at only Standard 1. Really, the rifle is just an upgrade to the pistol, right down to using the same ammo.

The laser pistol I love. It's not terribly strong in normal mode, but the overcharge is fantastically efficient, so if you don't mind visits to the recharge station, it's great early on for taking out turrets and later for robotic enemies that would otherwise eat through ammo. It's also twice as durable as a normal pistol, so it requires fewer maintenance tools. It's not quite replaced by the EMP Rifle as you can use it against organic targets too if you're in a pinch, or if you want to try a purely dedicated energy build, but it's best saved as a backup when you can't hit them with melee attacks or something. It's also handy later on for when Midwives start showing up as their ranged attacks hurt, and if they're too far to safely run up to melee it's nice to have a backup. Carrying a pistol and EMP Rifle essentially gives you two power sources to draw from, meaning longer times between needing to recharge which is nice. One of the Marine builds lets you start with a Laser Pistol, I've taken this route a lot as getting one early lets you save up bullets for later down the road when you'll really want to have them for more dangerous targets (or just to convert them to nanites!).

For serious robotic threats, a standard pistol with AP rounds is still better at quickly dispatching enemies, but in situations where you're looking to save AP rounds for say, Cyborgs (because you don't plan on getting an EMP Rifle perhaps), the laser pistol is an efficient multipurpose ranged weapon. Getting Energy 1 just to use it might not be as worth it as Standard 1 for the regular pistol or Heavy/Exotic for their first tiers, but it can be handy to pickup a nifty battery powered sidearm if for nothing else than to have a ranged source of damage that doesn't take ammo and degrades quite slowly.

Am I missing anything else here?

[Edmond Dantes]

I'm genuinely curious: what FPS games do you guys like of that era? Problems with Half-Life, SS2... curious to hear, or are you both Build Engine or bust?

My favorite FPS of all time is Doom, and when I say "Doom" I'm including any game that runs on the same engine like Doom II and the original Heretic and Hexen (though Heretic II and Hexen II seem decent).

I'm gonna be gone for the weekend so I'll get back to BareKnuckleRoo when I'm not in a rush, but yeah generally I don't care for Western-style RPG mechanics and often prefer more linear/JRPG-style progression. Just I hate when games allow you to put points into Crabs when the game designers know damn well that most of the game is built around Lobsters.

Be back Sunday night or Monday!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Just I hate when games allow you to experiment.

Fixed that for you.

Not everyone is into hardcoded, hand-holding skill progression. That shit makes games boring to replay. It's the same reason why shmups with only one remotely useful shot type are lame, why bother trying the others out?

In your case though, you seem to think SS2 has only one 'correct' skill progression. It doesn't; the assault rifle may be the easy route and obvious choice, but there's plenty of equally useful weapons and ways to build your stats that can all be just as useful at completing the game, or may be less optimal but allow for more interesting and unorthodox strategies.

[Ed Oscuro]

I've been playing this again since immediately after making my previous post. I'm just on the verge of getting to the Command Center, at the point where I'm looking all over the place for the final sim unit module (yeah, that's backwards, but it's true). I had to replay about two hours because I again hit a bug (after all these years!) where my modules and nanites disappear and newly-found ones aren't counted. Surely, with all the stuff I've got the game would still be playable, but I'd rather not try that right away.

Good news recently: You can use SS2Tool and an unofficial "2.4" patch to get the game working beautifully on modern systems. Disabling vsync required some careful looking at the two config files (the interesting stuff is found in the secondary config file). What I changed to get the game to my liking was activating some previously commented-out values (by deleting the ; symbol):

vsync_mode 0 (I can't really see obvious tearing, and the usual analog RGB phase-related patterns I'm used to seeing in ZDOOM are nowhere to be seen, but I believe this made the mouse more responsive all the same)
use_hi_res_timer
(as an aside, I've been preparing recently to do some tests about switching Windows 7 over to use the modern high resolution timers by default; this is kind of a complicated subject which should be discussed some other time)
phys_freq 60
(I believe I lowered the value here from a default of 100; 120 might be a good value if you are running at 60fps; I also did not change the max fps value from 100 fps, though I perhaps should do that, but at the moment I'm not seeing anything that makes me think these settings absolutely have to be changed)

I think this may well be one of the foremost masterpieces of the PC gaming style of the '90s. The maps were designed brilliantly from many angles - lots of awesome detours and cozy corners (well, maybe not so cozy if you're claustrophobic) to sneak around into, and with the new rendering system blacks actually improve immersion more now. The 2D artwork assets are quirky but lovable even if they are obviously not up to modern standards, and I think that the various motifs seen in the textures still suit the game perfectly. But with the modern 32-bit color rendering, some of the ugly color blotches I'm used to seeing have disappeared entirely. The game still does give me headaches like something fierce - I think part of this is down to my refusal to use the scaled UI modes (I like my screen real estate) and lots of peering into dark places. But it is nice that everything is visible, without any of the faint tint in blacks I was used to back in the day playing this on CRTs.

Likewise I should say that the dynamic music system still holds up very well, and so do some of the static tracks, like the piece I never used to know what to make of - that quiet and moody piece with occasional piano in the Medical Crew Quarters. You definitely don't hear music like this anymore in current games, and I miss that.

Now, here's the interesting part: Gameplay. I started a game on Hard, not Impossible. It really doesn't seem hard to me. There are a lot of old tricks and intentional treats that I found or learned (mostly years ago) which can make aspects of the game much easier (for example, I have used maybe two or three maintenance tools so far - even before using the semi-secret unbreakable weapons with improved recoil statistics). Some of this stuff complicates appraisal of the various mechanics: I used to think that PSI pull was absolutely necessary to get some items - so far, I have found exactly two places in the game (an AP bullet clip, and a box of nanites) that I had to shoot off ledges, and everything else can be reached by jumping (or, in a couple very rare cases, leaning), except for one body and two cheap items in a small room that can't be entered. Some of this is the result of getting better - I recall spending a LOT of time when I first got the game trying to jump on a couple narrow beams in the rooms around the first cluster of upgrade panels, but this time I simply jumped out and mantled straight up. No problem at all.

But I am not so silly as to believe that because you can do things a certain way, that doing things a different way is impossible or wrong. The extremely melee-heavy play style I've adopted is probably as intolerable to many players as the thought of using PSI is to many refugees from DOOM. The game doesn't resent players trying to play in a straight FPS style - but it forces every player to make small concessions to its play style - even if just in small ways - to its world, rather than accommodating you with a generous stockpile of readily available ammunition. Probably the tone of the game changes as well - the game is not very scary when you are a knowledgeable (even if not "skillful") melee player.

Melee combat in this game, even without the Smasher O/S upgrade, never gets boring. In fact, I've noticed that in this late portion of the game, shotgun hybrids start running everywhere and will shoot almost before I can react, so a melee-only play style starts to get slightly more challenging (the damage is essentially a nuisance unless you allow yourself to hover below 10hp all the time). It only is "unacceptable" if you only accept no-damage runs, and areas with scarce cover make it hard to ambush enemies (there are a few of these). Enemies exhibit some pretty intriguing behaviors when they get close up, and it's unfortunate that most people online who have written about this game make uninformed statements like "melee against arachnids is not recommended" (all you need to do is back away from them while they move their legs and mandibles forward, and step backwards if they jump attack; dead simple) or "just shoot from a distance:" in fact most hybrids are very weak to being rushed, but obviously you open yourself to a counterattack (which oftentimes they won't even try to launch, depending on the distance). Wrenching worms and monkeys is awkward at best, yet consistently doable; I don't think it would be quite so interesting if you could just ninja-sprint everything. Overall, this game has much superior melee combat to Drakan: Order of the Flame, a game which is supposedly all about melee.

My play style has been pretty tailored to my obsession - collecting gigantic stockpiles of most spawned items. I don't know enough to pass any kind of verdict on other play styles, but I have some suspicions:

- Melee is challenging, fun, and actually not very dangerous against many enemies. In fact, large swarms of enemies are often less effective, because enemies won't intentionally attack their own ranks, and corners don't allow multiple enemies to face you simultaneously. You just want to be careful not to get poisoned by spiders. If an enemy gives up just 5 nanites, you've already paid your healing costs. Anything extra can go towards relatively rare encounters, or preparing for the endgame.

- Probably many people are most familiar with an ammunition-starved standard-and-heavy weapons-based playthrough, which will have a different tone. The unbreakable shotgun and assault rifle will help here, but in fact the shotgun is not such a good weapon. However, when you factor in time and the weapon degrading factor, the penalty of 300% ammo usage for 200% damage is not necessarily a bad tradeoff. The only problem is that again you may have to watch ammo usage. The assault rifle shows up pretty soon if you dedicate resources to it. Also, scavenging - especially popping out single shells from the broken hybrid's shotguns - is a drag, and exposes some of the UI's clumsiness.

I think one thing that happens commonly in the game is that people tool up for the squishy enemies in MedSci, and then don't know what to do when they get into the cargo bays with all the droids. (I use the elevators to crush the maintenance bots and any protocol droids I can trap, and run around knocking droid shipping crates to a sliver of health before sending the whole batch up in flames with two or three bullets). I don't know why this should surprise people, after the early part of the game where there are two turrets you have to sprint past to get to a battery charger (again, there's plenty of health to deal with this even on Hard, and you still can hurt the turrets badly with the explosive crates, or have them fight each other with hacking, etc.)

- PSI: No comments here, but my main problem with PSI is that I don't see any hotkeys for selecting powers (a Turok-style pie menu would have been a godsend here), and the burnout indicator really isn't well placed, let alone for 1920x1200 resolution. It should be right on the aiming reticle. Also, burnout itself is a pain to deal with when you already have to deal with movement and stealth. While I have kept myself going eating all the snacks and drinking all the liquids available for long stretches of time, losing the bubbly would not really be a big deal, given how common and cheap healing options are. Later on, you can buy a recycler and get some small use out of these items. When I noticed that just buying the final tier of PSI powers is over 100 skill points, I worried slightly less about putting points into other options.

I still think it is a fairly good idea to hang onto cybernetic modules until you have something you know you can use them for.

There is still an awful lot of fluff in this game - but that doesn't reduce the core competencies or amazing depth of the game in other ways. Take leaning: Leaning is often not useful. Ranged enemy attacks can still hit you, corners still block melee attacks while you lose the element of surprise against an enemy, and leaning throws off your aim. Instead, you should just move into corners so that only the corner of an aggressive object is available - for example, if you're hacking a turret around a corner or shooting a security bot. Nevertheless, leaning isn't useless, and money can't buy the happiness evinced when a group of friends scare each other or lean-dance in multiplayer. There are too many games which aim to meet low goals and execute perfectly; it's good to have games that aim high and perhaps don't get things perfect - especially when figuring out what the best approaches is a big part of the draw of the game.

Not everything has to be straightforward, either. With about 2 or 3 points of agility, you can strafe-run past protocol droids so they suicide bomb after you're out of range (though practically speaking you should be at a higher level to pull this off safely, since you can only run forwards).

Other things seem pretty straightforward.

Vending units: These are almost as bad as the one-armed bandits (which I love for being brutally honest with the player, rather than the "oh, if you have SKILL you can win" lie propagated by so many pachinko-inspired minigames, or stuff like the timed slot machines from Legend of Legaia). You get plenty of useful spoils from common enemies. I would mostly use the vending units for buying rare ammo, and stocking up on batteries before going to the Rickenbacker. Not sure if the recycler makes economic sense unless you are a recycling fiend. Trivia bit: So far the pool cues are the only things I've found that are three slots tall and which don't cause the recycler to drop straight into an inventory slot when used, so you can hear that beautiful little "boopding" sound - the same one heard in the welcome message from Captain Diego in the intro. Equipped implants do the same thing (speaking of which, I now realize my dual implant upgrade is now a wasted O/S upgrade slot...)
Repair: No real reason to use this on most weapons - there's at least three auto-repair modules in the first group of levels. There are unbreakable weapons, and plenty of weapons you can sacrifice. No points invested here. I did haul around the "love or money" lady's broken modified shotgun for a long time, but never got around to fixing it. Much better just to use the game's first working shotgun instead.
Hack: Considered to be a highly useful skill, but surprisingly there isn't must-have stuff inside the locked boxes (I pick them all anyway), though it will certainly help if you are going for resources-heavy combat (which means anything but melee only). There are a handful of cybernetic modules in locked-off areas, but most modules can be reached through hacking-free methods sooner or later. Hacking security isn't very useful, and I only ever do it to gain access to turrets - which themselves die off far too quickly for the investment. Still, all the small benefits add up, and there's surplus cybernetic modules to invest here and make your life easier.
Strength and Agility - about 3 points in STR and 2-3 in Agility makes life much easier - allowing competent melee combat, some tricky maneuvers, and just enough leap / falling distance safety to grab hard-to-get items, though I do have the suspicion that players who don't use a wrench and are very disciplined about their inventory use won't need strength much. Powered implants only help (and you can recycle those, too). Energy armor is great, which reduces the importance of the strength stat.
Maintenance - unbreakable weapons, the ability to sprint to a charging station, and a large number of repair tools reduce the utility of this greatly. Since the late patch from the original team, this has been somewhat less useful. However, I really do appreciate the extra energy capacity for my energy armor alone.
Modify - throughout the first group of levels, all I've needed is a level one modify stat, and that only because I made a mistake and upgraded the wrong Assault Rifle. There are at least three French-Epstein devices in this first group of levels.
Research - I like finding out stuff, progress bars, and fetch quests, so I got this to level 4 already. I don't know offhand if you can research all the damage bonuses at just level one research, but you want at least level one here.
O/S upgrades - so many terrible O/S upgrades. Even back in the day Tank and Naturally Able seemed fishy to me (I guess everybody tries Naturally Able out once, though). A mix of amazing upgrades and some really awful ones.

At worst, some of these things are implemented so that you don't need to invest cybernetic modules in them - but you wills till want to interface with the attribute, and be able to - even if it just means using French-Epstein devices and Auto-repair tools, for instance. At the same time some of these upgrade paths represent very interesting choices: Do you try to get by with items and blitz to some other upgrade path? Or do you invest in a host of skills that keep your current stuff in great shape, at the cost of being unable to quickly purchase new abilities?

Another thing that people might be confused about is the apparent time gap between finding some promising weapons (there's tons of Crystal shards starting around the halfway mark from the first batch of five levels, for instance) and being able to practically put them into use, if you go for a play style that balances different upgrade paths and doesn't just blitz to a specific weapon you want (the shard would be a great choice for this, of course). Even the laser rapier hasn't been feasible to get working with all the points I've been spending elsewhere (that becomes an exotic vs. energy weapons debate). However, this isn't a problem with the game - the anticipation of being able to deal with these interesting weapons later on, the research fetch questing, and the mythology associated with some of these items ("they're very fragile, but very sharp") is much more emotionally rewarding than the DOOM-style process of opening a secret door and finding a BFG ready for use. SS2 is a send-up of consumer culture, but that doesn't mean its designers don't live by the old adage "it takes money to make money."

After I finish the game up, I'll give it a break, so maybe it'll be a yearly thing. The next time I play I will try something different - possibly I'll go for a "routine" bullet weapons playthrough, but I would also like to do a PSI playthrough, playthroughs emphasizing different weapons for those abundant ammo types (slugs! prisms! grenades! worms...well, maybe not worms, I've only found 54 units of worm ammo so far), and variations on what I've been doing would be cool too - like a blitz to energy weapons and the rapier, or a blitz to the crystal shard (it sings to me). Various artificial challenges, like "what happens if I don't get any upgrades or spend any nanites after the rec deck" and "what happens if I just upgrade randomly" could be great fun too.

Addendum (!) - I didn't realize that the Crystal Shard only requires the level one Exotic skill. Like the grenade launcher and to a lesser degree the pistol, you can get really far with only a first tier investment, freeing up resources to go where you'd like. Crystal Shard's small investment outside Research is just another reason that a fair investment in Research might be a good idea.

[drauch]

I'm genuinely curious: what FPS games do you guys like of that era? Problems with Half-Life, SS2... curious to hear, or are you both Build Engine or bust?

It's Thief or nothing. Unless you're referring to a different "era" in which case it's Quake or nothing.

Was indicating 3D model FPS games around the time period of Half-Life and SS2, which I would consider Thief to be in. And yeah, big Thief fan as well. Was mainly curious due to the few complaints about Half-Life and SS2 that arose.

Was gone for a few days. I'm gonna have to read through this new discussion when I get the time.

[Limbrooke]

I'm genuinely curious: what FPS games do you guys like of that era? Problems with Half-Life, SS2... curious to hear, or are you both Build Engine or bust?

It's Thief or nothing. Unless you're referring to a different "era" in which case it's Quake or nothing.

Was indicating 3D model FPS games around the time period of Half-Life and SS2, which I would consider Thief to be in. And yeah, big Thief fan as well. Was mainly curious due to the few complaints about Half-Life and SS2 that arose.

Was gone for a few days. I'm gonna have to read through this new discussion when I get the time.

Half-Life to me is alright but not a huge and meat and potatoes type of game. Compare it to Quake and it's just a "move forward" experience which isn't to say I'm a fan of back tracking but you rarely pass through a similar area twice in HL (progress with a sense of purpose - nothing is wasted or overused). It's dynamic and yet at times feels a bit stale due to intermittent stretches of emptiness (the rail cars come to mind). Much different level/progression design from the id style. SS2 on the other hand is more strategic and methodical and progression through the game isn't a straight line which appeals to me.

Thief, and Thief 2 in particular are interesting in amount of variety bestowed upon the player to choose their path through a level. While it's not a single-run game spliced by loading screens like in HL, which was unheard of before, Thief took the tried and true old method and with a change of pacing made for me a very appealing game. In Thief you're given a great sense of freedom and mystery (in terms of designed secrets) while in Half-Life it's just follow the lines on the walls to your destination.

[BIL]

Fuuu... this is why BDOOM busted respawn ownz. E2M6 "HALLS OF THE DAMNED," the escape stairway out of the trick exit's ambush pit. Usually empty. This time around, the Caco that roams around that area initially respawned, and somehow got in there. Blindly ran around the corner straight into the bugger and got bit. Armor made it a startling but harmless "FFF" moment, but I've had runs where it'd have bitten me the fuck in half.


Unexpectedly encountered armed perp and was forced to immediately deploy deadly force.

There's always multiple little surprises like this in a Black Metal + respawn run. E2 works particularly well, with its tightly circuitous maps and propensity for narrow squeezes (E2M6 is the ultimate example - feels like the walls are closing in by the end, with that Time Release Baron Freshness and the constant lack of elbow room). Classic DOOM RNG plus BD gives the action a Metal Slug-esque shade of volatility. Most replayable.

[Ed Oscuro]

I was thinking of another way to easily compare the difference in styles, although I was thinking about DOOM, Blood, and SS2.

DOOM spreads challenges (monster battles) and pickups (health and ammo) both across space. The only thing that prevents each level from being a totally predictable, closed-off affair for the designer is the respawn system - dying takes you back to a default state, which is a huge "player potential performance delta" with having arrived fresh from the previous level with everything maxed. But there are ways around this: DOOM typically makes sure you have enough stuff to get through big battles, the episodes force you to start fresh, and many modern source ports have implemented an autosave function, since many mappers now design maps disregarding the default iD respawn, wanting to pitch the player into very tough battles from the map start.

Blood, following Duke Nukem 3D, mostly follows this rule but with some more open paths to each level end, and also there's the portable health kit.

SS2 mainly spreads its battles and pickups across time. Of course you may have to go very far sometimes to find enemies or items, but pitched battles against set enemies are relatively rare here. Small, random encounters are intended to keep you in a constant state of awareness, and to obviate one of the old problems of DOOM below Nightmare difficulty - looking around a portion of the level after it's been cleared out completely. But just as important is the ability of the player to carry gigantic stocks of health-charging items with them at any time - this makes fine-tuning the game much more difficult, since you have to try and envision target stock levels throughout the game, rather than being able to simply load up a level segment with a set amount of health and items and see if it feels too difficult or easy. Of course, with heat maps and some of the modern logging tools routinely used in the industry (i.e., by Valve Software), it should be somewhat easier to visualize these difficult problems.

[BIL]

GO DOOMGUY, YOU MUFT DEFEAT DOCTA WIWEY

HOW ABOUT NO, CUNT



Hokuto no DOOM is almost as good as FLAMECANNON DOOM. Also, DOOM Builder for hoovering up lame invulnerability spheres peppering the late game (replace 'em with captive DOOMcompatriots, way more interesting), adding DOOM II monsters, etc etc I dreamed about this shit in the 90s mang. ;=; (just like teh ROMZ)

[Edmond Dantes]

How the hell do you have 866% health?

[BIL]

The way of the COMPASSIONATE FACE-BREAKING FIST bestows power far beyond that of normal men, and even DOOMguy himself.

Did that the same way I make barrels materialise in my wake (DOOMerman) or forego direct engagement for the aid of summoned beasts (Alisia DraDOOM). DARK CONSOLE MAGICKS. Click the link for more hot infos. It's just the garden variety FPS console command stuff that's been around since at least the original Quake.

Honing my BDv19 enjoyment to a productivity-massacring edge, I'm increasingly interested in a Brutal Hexen. Provided it does for that game's lame-ass attempt at killer medieval gear what it did for DOOM's tired arsenal. I'm talking swords that spill a slaughterhouse's worth of guts on the floor with one stroke and flesh-broiling magicks that cauterise assholes shut. I want to launch an incandescent sphere of cracking hellborn death at a rampaging mob and have only red mist, raining entrails and the odd screaming double amputee left in its wake, BDBFG-style. Then go to work on those unlucky sods with BEEFCAEKORIZOR, my bastard zweihander broadsword.

edit: Needless 2 Say monsters would need a BD kick up the ass too! BD wouldn't be nearly as good without the hyper-bloodthirsty new monster routines.

[drauch]

Alisia DraDOOM!

So glad you told me about the fist combo. I love fuckin' bustin' in Pinky teeth and seein' 'em squirm as their buddies cower in line for a fist sandwich. So satisfying!

[BIL]

That's seriously the most satisfying punch sound ever, on the left hook - I wonder where he got it from? Sounds like a crate of prize cucumbers hitting a brick wall at mach 2.

[Edmond Dantes]

Just I hate when games allow you to experiment.

Fixed that for you.

Yeah, you kind of did.

Experimentation is all well and good, but the problem I've always had with skill-point systems is:

In your case though, you seem to think SS2 has only one 'correct' skill progression.

Yeah, that. Every RPG I've played that used skill points/skill specialization seems to always punish the player for picking the one the programmers didn't plan on/implement well. Like fantasy RPGs where you can specialize in staves, but swords are more plentiful and powerful so you might as well just stick to those. In System Shock 2's case, I strongly got the vibe that you have to be very specific with your character--if you wanna use magic, you have to put points into that and nothing else for example--and in that respect, it can almost punish you for experimenting.

As I said, I would love to see someone remake SS2's story, but in SS1's game engine. It's too bad there are no custom mods or game editors for the latter that would enable such a project.