System Shock 2 - on GoG for Valentine

[John]

I found them really....twitchy?

For lack of a better word. Loose. Not precise.

Really easy to aim all over the place.

Not trying to troll, I actually want to play both these games, since they're supposed to be classics.

I haven't played the SS2 re-release yet (I'm at work), but do you have a DPI-variable mouse?  That might help with the twitchiness of DX if you have, say, a Logitech G500.  Throw it into a lower DPI mode and see if that helps.

[MeshGearFox]

If you've never played this game, people, you should.  It is awesome.  Here's a review:

http://www.rpgfan.com/reviews/systemshock2/System_Shock_2.html

I have never played this game.

Are the controls better than the original Deus Ex?

I have tried multiple times to get into that game, and I just can't get beyond the controls.

If you found the controls twitchy, it's probably either an in-game setting or a system-wide mouse setting.

http://www.gog.com/forum/unreal_series/mouse_acceleration_in_unreal This might be relevant, though. Deus Ex was Unreal engine, and SHOULD have comparable control configurations.

Also sometimes if you play games that don't natively support widescreen in a widescreen resolution, you get bizarre input lag/input inaccuracies.

[Annubis]

I just had a 5 hour multiplayer session with one of my friend. It was so much fun!
0 crash, 0 glitch
Beautiful~

[Kevadu]

SS2 had multiplayer?!  Seriously?  I had no idea...

[Annubis]

2-4 players co-op

[PaleRobbie]

Loving it so far!  There's some rough edges here and there, but overall this game has aged remarkably well.  It's especially interesting as someone who never played it before but loved both Bioshock 1 and 2 (still think Minerva's Den was the best version of Bioshock). 

[MeshGearFox]

By the by:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/system-shock-rebirthhigh-poly-pack

and

http://www.moddb.com/mods/shtup-system-shock-2-texture-upgrade

If you want the game to be really pretty.

---edit---

Okay, tried playing this with SecMod 2.8 a bit, since that rebalances some of the skills/includes mods that fix various other things. Downside is that it randomizes loot somewhat, possibly introduces some crashes, and makes the...

Anyway, as a survival horror game, System Shock 2 works great. It's the skill caps as bars-for-entry that bug me, and I'm concerned this'll eventually drive me away from DX:HR as well. Bugs me in New Vegas too (HRR NEED 50 TO PICK THIS LOCK). I'd /much/ rather prefer a system where hacking something at a low skill level was harder, but I don't like having to have minimum skill levels to hack certain boxes/user certain items/being told I can't do something not based on my personal skill level as a player but because of some arbitrary number.

That kind of behavior makes sense in more abstract, turn-based RPGs, where your stats define everything about your character -- and it's fine as a gameplay mechanic in those cases. But when skills/stats are just being used as lock/key puzzles, in a game that isn't otherwise to abstract, it's... akin to a QTE in terms of how it throws you against the artificial mesh of game and being forced to do what the game wants you to do, instead of letting the player come up with a creative solution. Press X to not die! Invest points into X to not die! It's the same thing. There's no room for problem solving there, you either have the skill level or you don't.

---edit2---

In SS1, hacking stuff was this... 3D Descent like minigame, and doing electrical fiddling involved solving different kinds of puzzles. In SS2, hacking's pretty much just a dice roll.

[PaleRobbie]

I can certainly see a lot of the complaints you bring up, Mesh, especially the hacking minigame.  I'm just loving this game's atmosphere and sense of place far more than anything else I've played in a long time.  The Von Braun feels alive and full of character.  This is the reason I loved the Spencer mansion in the original Resident Evil and Rapture in Bioshock.  The Ishimura was the closest thing to a living world since, but even that felt cold and sterile compared to the eeriness of the Von Braun.  

[Taelus]

I can certainly see a lot of the complains you bring up, Mesh, especially the hacking minigame.  I'm just loving this game's atmosphere and sense of place far more than anything else I've played in a long time.  The Von Braun feels alive and full of character.  This is the reason I loved the Spencer mansion in the original Resident Evil and Rapture in Bioshock.  The Ishimura was the closest thing to a living world since, but even that felt cold and sterile compared to the eeriness of the Von Braun. 

Well, in the Ishimura's defense, it WAS cold and sterile. Until the hit shit the fan.

[MeshGearFox]

Ooookay, replaying this. Hacking still pisses me off, by the way, but ADaoB looks like it re-balances a LOT of the weapon imbalances, without affecting the core gameplay too much. Mostly drops the minimal skill level needed to use them. Not sure what it does for psionics or some of the other skills, though. SecMod is probably actually neat if you install it correctly, although the remixes make it more like a Master Quest variant and probably intended for a second playthrough.

http://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=4447.0 I'm going to recommend everyone grab and install the 9 mods listed here (plus Vurt's water, from the forums). ADaoB needs a new game to work, afaik, but the other graphic mods should be able to be dropped in at any time.

I would avoid the mod manager. That broke my game. Just dumps everything in the permanent mods folder in the main SS2 directory. Install SHTUP first, then all the other audio-visual mods, and then ADaoB last, afaik.

If you got the gog version, you made need to reinstall it using ss2tool to make it mod-ready. Not sure. There are instructions on those forums.

[Annubis]

So I finished my playthrough of System Shock 2.
No bugs nor crashes. It's been so long since (since single core computer)
I seriously love the game's atmosphere. Even if I've played it oh so many times, I'm still paranoiac as I go through the corridors.

A tip for everyone else playing. The elevator is a safe zone that follows you for most of the game. You can drop items in it and use it as a storage.

[Annubis]

Listening to the podcast; for anyone who wants to play this in multiplayer: download Hamachi.
Hamachi solved the problems I've had with playing with others.

https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/download.aspx

(For people who don't know, Hamachi creates a VPN network between multiple people making it seem like everyone is in a LAN)

[Taelus]

Listening to the podcast; for anyone who wants to play this in multiplayer: download Hamachi.
Hamachi solved the problems I've had with playing with others.

https://secure.logmein.com/products/hamachi/download.aspx

(For people who don't know, Hamachi creates a VPN network between multiple people making it seem like everyone is in a LAN)

You're a gentleman/woman and a scholar.

[PaleRobbie]

Just finished it, and my only real complaints came at the end.  There were some silly jumping puzzles and you can end up completely fucked before the final area if you didn't use all of your money to buy ammo.  Starting another playthrough with the mods suggested above and they certainly make a very positive difference (I also turned off weapon degradation so I don't have to worry about it anymore).  Gotta say, I see why everyone speaks so highly of SS2.  Great stuff!

[Annubis]

As a long time fan, I'm really happy that the game is finally getting played. Back in the 2000s this was so obscure almost no one played it.
I always felt this was really a shame as the game did almost everything right; a bit as if Chrono Trigger was an obscure game that almost no one played.
I hope GoG and Night Dive made a shit ton of money, because to me, they deserve it.

Also Rob, what do you think of the spiders ;)