Caltrops - System Shlock 2





	[quote name="Mischief Maker"][quote name="Universal Plan B"][quote]Thief introduced the concept of sound design being more important than graphics for atmospheric effect. And in my opinion, the biggest fuckup this game made was not the skill system, but rather using the thief engine with the thief AI and making the enemies UNAVOIDABLE.[/quote]Thief did sound, but SS2 took it to a different level. In Thief you used sound to navigate the game. In SS2 you did a bit of that, but the game also used sound against you as the main weapon to frighten you. A psy ops can learn invisibility without too much hassle. Then you can sneak past whatever you want, and not even have to find a shadow to hide in. I'm pretty sure there are people who beat the game without killing any of the standard monsters. There are special dudes you have to kill like the end boss and the ninjas with keycards... Other than that they're all avoidable.[/quote] I'm now assuming you never played Thief because the haunted cathedral was scary as fuck and one of the main reasons I was so looking forward to SS2. Part of that fear came from the knowledge that if you were spotted, you were fucked. Part of it was the excellent sound (especially if you had an A3D card.) The other reason is the essential core of thief's gameplay, which is sitting in a safe spot then OMIGAWD! MOVE MOVE MOVE! DON'T LET THEM SPOT YOU!!! Whew! Doing that in a haunted spaceship would have ruled. Instead the enemies move like Thief enemies, get suspicious and search like Thief enemies, but it's inevitable that you're going to have to bash their heads in so the suspense is gone, replaced by a battle of you and your abstract stats verses the zombies' abstract stats mediated by how diligent you've been in playing nursemaid to your inventory. [quote][quote]While, in theory, adding skills should give a FPS the "escalating power" feel of RPGs, in practice all those skills do is make you really bad at everything until you save a zillion experience points to finally make the game control like a regular FPS. A stumbling crawl towards competence. As I said in another forum, DX1 is actually <B>more</B> enjoyable if you use the cheat that raises all your skill levels to maximum. Besides SS2 and DX1, skill levels were only used in, what, Daikatana?[/quote]So what about the standard method of escalating power, which is that you don't get the good guns until the next to last level. I recall seeing complaints about <i>that</i> concept here as well. As some other asshole pointed out in the nethack thread, do you just want to play with cheats? Should the game be a singe level 1 with a BFG?[/quote] First, let me congratulate you on resisting the impulse to say that I should go back to quake because the game is too hard/brainy for me. Now hold on to your monocle, because the main reason I don't like SS2 is because it's <U>too easy</U>! The thief engine is based around carefully avoiding conflict, it fails miserably at actual combat. Once you get your repair skill high enough to keep your equipment from melting and once you get your weapons skill high enough so you can actually shoot your guns, the game is a cakewalk. Big brown monster at 12 o'clock? Load your anti personnel rounds and click it as it rushes straight towards you until it dies. Same for big grey monsters except use armor-piercing. All fear for your own safety boils away and about the only thing left maintaining your interest is picking up the message logs and piecing together the plot. The main thing that kept me going was the question of what evil thing Shodan was going to <B>do</B> to you once the many were eradicated? And the final answer after hours of plodding combat and keycard-searching was so mind-bogglingly stupid it was like a deliberate "fuck you, thanks for all those hours of your life!" from the game designers. [quote][quote]Degrading weapons is just irritating. I can't think of any game ever which would become funner/scarier if you caused the weapons to fall apart after 10 shots.[/quote]I don't think it was about scaryness primarily. It was more about forcing the player to make decisions. That's what SS2 did more than any other FPS before or since, and the thing that has been copied the least. Everything from the obvious decision of what RPG stat to increase to the subtle decision of weapon choices. That's one of the reasons that it was a deep game, besides the stuff like story and level design.[/quote] That's not depth, that's a cheap trick to increase replayability. My recent experience with Deus Ex was a blast because every time I encountered a problem, I had <B>options</B> I could pick from to surmount it. Would I use an air vent to sneak past? Would I hack the security system to make the turrets perforate my foes? Would I use a valuable GEP round and risk alerting the whole base? I can't imagine how much the game would suck if every time you encountered an obstacle, the air vent was your one and only option. As for "choices," there's nothing more fun than playing through the whole fucking game only to discover at the very end that you made the WRONG choices. I played a haxor, but upon seeing just about all the turrets I hacked get wrenched to death by a steady stream of respawning zombies I switched my emphasis to becoming a sniper. I was cutting through the game like a hot knife through butter with that skill set. Then I got to the many brain. Specifically the many brain protected by an unlimited number of instantly respawning bullrushing monsters. How could my "pick 'em off from a distance" tactics for which my character's stats were tailored succeed in this situation? Answer: they couldn't. I had to use the god cheat. Apparently if I was psychic I could have used the invisibility spell to avoid them, but then I would have been fucked when it came time to take on shodan in her wacky wonderland tron battle because I wouldn't have any hacking skills to use on the terminals controling her rainbow shield. Now maybe it's just because I prefer the mindless blastfest of half-life over more cerebral plot-driven faire like DOOM, but that sounds like fundamentally broken design that contributes nothing to the game which was already fucked to begin with with its inappropriate engine and shitty plot. Then again I'm the kind of guy who thinks rosebud was a symbol of a lost and irretrievable childhood innocence that was more dear to Kane than all the wealth and power in the world instead of a stupid sled, so what do I know?[/quote]