Mischief Maker wrote:

gives Thief a great big blowjob

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 too easy! 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 do 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.

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.

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 options 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?