System Shock 2?
- Thread starter amuasyeas
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As much as I absolutely love System Shock 2 isn't this kinda a pointless topic? Is there even anything to discuss?
Yeah. I got it of GOG a few weeks ago and am playing it cause nothing interesting's coming out.
Mostly doing a firearms/tech character, but weapon degradation is too fast IMO. Good thing I put points in repair...
Also, Navy FTW.
Mostly doing a firearms/tech character, but weapon degradation is too fast IMO. Good thing I put points in repair...
Also, Navy FTW.
I generally found Maintenance to be a more worthwhile investment than Repair. I mean, yeah... Repair lets you fix guns that have broken which is nice and all... but I'd rather use Maintenance to prevent them from breaking in the first place.FourCartridge said:
Anywho... I've always had kind of a hard time deciding which is better, Navy or Marines. One starts out better at tech skills and fairly average in combat, while the other starts out better at combat and fairly average with tech. Always saw it as two sides of the same coin, with the only big difference being how the very early Med/Sci and Engineering sections of the game play. On lower difficulties I definitely prefer to play as Navy, but for the highest I'd generally prefer to start as a Marine. Both good choices, though.
Too bad about the Psi-Op specialists. They really got the short end of the stick, what with the iffy resource management and abundance of mostly useless abilities.
Psi-Op can be a blast to play but only if you already know what you're doing, it's not a class I recommend to anyone just getting into System Shock 2 for the first time. For a veteran however it's quite fun and adds a whole lot of interesting new abilities to the mix.Tuesday Night Fever said:
You should consider giving it a try, watching someone else play a game rarely does it any justice and compared to most games from around that time System Shock 2 has actually aged quite well. I'd say even better than other famous games from around then such as Deus Ex or even Half Life.hazabaza1 said:
Especially worth trying if you're interested in the Bioshock games as it's basically their forefather and in many regards still did a lot better than it's descendents have.
It's definitely an interesting playstyle once you're familiar with the game, and I'm not saying I didn't have fun with it... but I just feel like it has too many drawbacks compared to Navy/Marines, relegating it to little more than curiosity or a challenge path of sorts. You're stuck dealing with a non-regenerative resource (with Psi Hypos being far less common than ammunition), abilities that can potentially damage you if charged too long (particularly nasty on the higher difficulties where your health pool is a lot smaller), if you don't charge abilities you aren't getting the most out of your limited resource, it has a lot of abilities that are incredibly situational if not outright worthless (like the one that pulls objects to you; in the entire game, the only time I recall finding something that was only lootable with this ability... it was pistol/assault rifle bullets), and its damage abilities tend to suffer the same problems that Energy Weapons and Exotic Weapons suffer from - they're too specialized.The Madman said:
I will say that the Psi-Amp melee attack is pretty sweet, though. Too bad it temporarily locks you out of the rest of your Psi abilities, though.
It's aged pretty similarly to Deus Ex in my opinion - that is, the levels and pacing are still brilliant (and SS2 has one of my favorite stories in video games, moreso than the rest of the Shock series easily) but the AI is terrible.The Madman said:
I backed myself into a corner in terms of leveling during my first playthrough, so I had to rely on my assault rifle and a complete lack of finesse toward the end. I'm gonna try to be a psy-hacker for my next go to make things more interesting
Well in System Shock 2 AI is less of an issue since the majority of enemies you're fighting aren't meant to be terribly smart to begin with. Maybe somewhere between zombies and stormtroopers as far as enemy fodder goes, whereas in Deus Ex you're meant to be fighting intelligent human opponents.Luca72 said:
But honestly the biggest problem I have replaying Deus Ex isn't the visuals or the gameplay or UI or anything like that. It's the voice acting and dialogue... oh god the voice acting is bad, and the scripts for some of the NPC are just cringe-worthy. In that regard at least System Shock 2 blows Deus Ex away.
Huh... I never bothered with Maintenance because the disposable tools are hard to come by, while I can just fix the jammed guns anytime I had the nanites. They also break down fast enough that I never considered it; I've been using the Wrench more often then I feel like it.Tuesday Night Fever said:
From my understanding, much of the Deus Ex voice-over cast were total amateurs. Like a "drag Bob from Accounting in to voice a character" sort of amateur. So when you travel to Hong Kong and Paris that's why the accents are so hilariously terrible, because it was just random people from around the office trying their best to mimic stereotypes.The Madman said:
And it's not like System Shock 2 didn't have its instances of dodgy voice acting. The audio logs from Security Officer Turnbull, for example, are pretty bad (especially the one you find right outside of the Med/Sci Sub-Armory door). It's just that there's a lot less dialogue in SS2 than DX.
To be honest, I think the dodgy voice acting of both games actually gives them some of their charm. I'm constantly flip-flopping back and forth between it and System Shock 2 as my overall favorite game.
With high skill in Maintenance you can nearly full-repair any weapon with a single tool. If you space out your repairs so that you get the most out of each tool, it's quite possible to go through the game gunning down enemies and never having to buy a single tool (assuming you don't miss a ton of shots). High Maintenance/Standard Weapons with an Assault Rifle is easily the best option in the game for damage output (especially since the Assault Rifle is effective against all enemy types with its standard, armor piercing, and anti-personnel rounds). Just don't use the Assault Rifle's alternate fire. Hell, that applies to most of the guns. Nearly all of the alternate fires are ammo inefficient and degrade your weapons faster.FourCartridge said:
That's the damn truth. And Deus Ex was actually trying to do something with it's dialogue too. But I just couldn't take the awful chinese/french accents seriously, or JC suddenly diving into a dissertation on the separation of powers with a random bartender. And neither ever doing an animation besides that little head shrug.The Madman said:
Come to think of, SS2 had some pretty lackluster voice acting. For some reason it didn't bother me though - the writing was generally pretty great, with mostly realistic reactions and motivations from the characters.
Anyone remember this? Still gives me shivers.
Hell yeah. That, and the audio logs regarding Nurse Bloom. Those were pretty unsettling as well.Luca72 said:
I've never played it before, but I bought it off GoG about a week ago and I'm planning on getting around to playing it soon. I know pretty much nothing about the game so I'll probably end up putting together a really poor character build.