I love Deus Ex a lot and I always felt remorse because of never having played the System Shock games, seeing as DX is often touted to be their spiritual successor, so I went ahead and gave them a try.
I was going to play System Shock 2 first as it's the one I've seen recommended the most and I've seen people say it's okay to skip the first one, but I tried to play them chronologically and played 1 first.
Holy fuck, Sytem Shock 1 is awesome in just about every fucking way! The music is excellent, the level desing is solid, the gameplay is fun, the story is interesting and atmosphere is great. I enjoyed it thoroughly and I really got into it. It's probably one of my favorite games now, even though I had a lot of problems running it. The game would hang after playing for a while and I had to restart the game.
So, after that I was really hyped to play System Shock 2… and it ended up being just about the opposite of what I was hoping it would be.
HOLY FUCK AM I MAD. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED
The music is terrible and forgettable, fuck I can't even remember if the game had music besides the first level. What the fuck happened with the guns?! Holy fuck, only a pistol for energy weapons? The same pistol you are given at the start of the game? Fuck you! There's that EMP gun, but it's completely useless for some enemies. The level design is all over the place. When you get to the Rickenbacker it's just utterly shit. The story was forgettable and even the fucking UI and voice acting were bland. Everything just falls apart when you get to the last levels, I almost didn't want to finish the game.
They just threw away every bit of originality and charm the first game had and came up with something that felt bland, uninspired, incomplete, and generic. It kind of hurt. I've loved games before and accepted that I'm not going to get any more of them again, but this actually upset me. It caught me with my guard down because of the age of the games and the reputation they have. I wasn't expecting this outcome. What do people see in System Shock 2?
I'm gonna go replay the first game to try to wash away the bad taste the second one left in my mouth.
You're gonna have to wash my cum out of your mouth too, fag.
Juan Ross
You're gonna have to wash my cum out of your mouth too, fag.
Thomas Edwards
Same issue here, I loved SS1, was completely underwhelmed by SS2, I got up to the deck GLADOS is revealed on and just lost interest.
Your shit taste is terminal I'm afraid.
Jacob Taylor
You're gonna have to wash my cum out of your mouth too, fag.
Benjamin Hill
I didn't really have a problem with them bringing back SHODAN, but they just didn't really go anywhere with it.
Austin Scott
How can I get SS1 running when i barely got 2 running
Julian Martin
I didn't leave because of that, I played for a while afterwards but just lost the will to keep playing. Combat was boring and as you said it just wasn't as engaging as SS1.
There's the Windows port by Night Dive on GOG which you can likely pirate easily. Alternatively I think I saw someone sharing System Shock Portable on the share thread.
Christopher Ross
I played System Shock 2 and then 1, but with a few years in between, after playing 1 I stopped swearing by 2.
Have you tried the re-release?
Brayden Watson
I'll grab the portable then, can't be bothered to pirate anything right now
Oliver Carter
Never mind the latter
Jordan Russell
You're gonna have to wash my cum out of your mouth too, fag.
Open the ISO with your preferred program (winrar works) and extract it somewhere.
Get DOSBox and mount the directory you extrated the CD into ("mount S: "). Go into the unit you mounted ("S:"). Execute /INST/INITIAL.EXE, configure the options and install.
Copy all of /CDROM/DATA into your installation directory's data folder, don't overwrite if asked.
Super dirty but I couldn't get it working in any other way.
Sebastian Moore
Thanks.
So I heard there was something wrong with the SS1 remake, anyone know what was it? OP are you excited for it seeing how much you shit on the 2nd game?
Chase Ortiz
why?
Michael Watson
Pirate System Shock: Enhanced Edition.
No muss, no fuss.
Nolan Powell
The remake looks like ass, the techno soundtrack is now symphony, it's visually a mess too.
Liam Parker
SS2 SS1 SS2 is still a fantastic game, but it "misses the point" by a mile and a half.
System Shock 1 is an exploratory, nonlinear cyberpunk romp through an orbital space station. It includes some horror elements and some concepts that are certainly horrible to think about [cortex reavers, body recycling etc] but it doesn't go out of its way to scare you. It has goofy cyberpunk enemies like flying mutants and giant ogre cyborgs. The music is funky and upbeat.
System Shock 2 is a horror game with stats, builds, and medium-depth RPG elements. At a glance they have the same gameplay, it includes even more resource scavenging, looting, and so on. But while SS1 is kind of like a Metroid game where you wander around until something happens, SS2 gives you clear-cut objectives that you HAVE to do. The music is atmospheric and reflects this change in philosophy
This sounds kind of patronizing but I think SS2 is better for a teenage audience who is just getting into these more 'complex' game types, and SS1 is better for an adult audience who's ready to grapple with the controls and graphics.
Robert Long
Skip all that and pirate the GoG versions. There's the Enhanced version that enables mouse look, and the Classic version with the original controls. No need to fuck around with that bullshit in
Looks like shit, worse soundtrack, ugly UI with this shitty standard Arial fonts and boxes you see in AAA games now that look less like an interface and more like an earnings report
Jeremiah Garcia
I haven't looked into it yet. I haven't heard good things about it, however. I can't say I'm hopeful given how little clue developers in general have these days.
Thomas Bennett
as long as it unzips the files most people don't care about its shortcomings.
Connor Collins
Nostalgic maybe but not ambient.
Chase Richardson
Probably some kid who still has it installed from 2002 and is too attached to nag screens telling you to buy it.
Cameron Thomas
7zip works with more compressed file types and is free as in freedom. Winrar is for people still using Limewire.
Angel Cook
Oh god why
Ryan Clark
A soundtrack more akin to the original soundtrack just wouldn't be taken seriously in today's game industry, gotta play that oscar bait card.
Is the original even really techno, some of the tunes have nice earthy beats to them. or maybe I'm remembering wrong.
Xavier Baker
I've played through 2 multiples times, but I've never actually played 1. I just don't have any desire to play 1 as long as it's tethered to DOSbox. Maybe one day we'll get a real source port. Maybe.
Andrew Williams
these are the people I speak of. they barely grok the concept of unzipping or compressing files and probably think themselves quite clever for being able to do it. of course they use winrar
Thomas Nguyen
OST sounds pretty techno to me.
Gabriel Barnes
System Shock 2 is awful compared to 1 but most people played 2 as their first and there's a huge nostalgia factor. I'm old enough to have gone looking for 1 when it came out based on posts on USENET. It was almost completely absent from US stores, was almost entirely in Europe. I found 1 copy in a Fedco and loved it. I pirated 2 over WWIV and was extremely disappointed. It was so bad it killed the series.
Christopher Peterson
Wasn't it because Looking Glass were already dying?
Ryan Torres
Don't play that remake, they're fucking it sideways.
Connor Reyes
Games moved between publishers back then just like now, but a really bad game would end that. Star Control 3 is a good example. It got glowing reviews
Levi Scott
I've used 7z for many years on my windows comps. Been using peazip at work just checking out alternatives. It's free not sure if open source or not but it's a bit prettier than 7z if that counts for anything and works fine.
I like em both. Played 2 first and I thought it really nailed survival horror conceptually. If you played one first I can get why you're pissed because the way crouching and peeking or whatever you'd call it worked perfectly and was silky smooth once acclimated and now it's just gone.
I'd love to see more FPS like this, with the scope of something like a la-mulana.
Jeremiah Campbell
The series died because the people who bankrolled it went bankrupt, funnily enough they went bankrupt after the launch of Thief 2 was very successful and midway through the development of Thief 2 gold, something to do with Eidos not paying them for Thief 2 in a timely enough manner, also a slew of bad games, or poorly recieved, I'm not sure which.
Many of them sound far away from my internal idea of what Techno is, but I just use Sandstorm as the reference for Techno for some reason.
Peazip is a fork of 7-zip, it has to be open source, I remember running into some whack bug that made it stall when decompressing some files, and it happened regularly so I went back to 7-zip.
Did you try Metroid Prime.
Grayson Morris
ye m8
Alexander Richardson
I don't agree at all.
They're pointless and only serve to camouflage how little content there is in the game. There are a grand total of two or three weapons per skill category. You can use one of them with no skill, and the other one requires max skill. What the fuck is that?
Doesn't System Shock 2?
What makes it more of a horror game than System Shock 1? Maybe there's something I'm forgetting. Anyway, I think SS2 tried too hard and didn't manage to scare me. While it's true that SS1 didn't go out of its way to be scary, the atmosphere just made me uncomfortable to navigate the decks and monsters coming out of nowhere managed to spook me well.
Samuel Bailey
ss2 impressed me with scares not so much on there being people hanging, or ghosties or shit popping out but I just dreaded going to new places wondering if I had the ammo to deal with it, if there'd be new enemies and whether or not they were easily killed with a melee weapon. It is linear, certainly, and I've never felt the urge to replay it due to this but I am itching to replay SS1 now that I'm thinking about it.
Luke Clark
Looking glass wasn't dying. It was sacrificed for dikatana
Ryan Rivera
The traps spread throughout the levels and SHODAN suddenly popping up in SS1 always scared the shit out of me.
Noah Thomas
That reminds me, they removed the secret doors for SS2. Oh, and cyberspace.
Jeremiah Reed
I feel you. The jump between the two games is too great. SS2 feels too floaty, too slow and and doesn't have anything memorable about it. I can pretty much recall everything about SS1 (music, level design, enemies, powerups, etc), but not a single thing for SS2.
James Jones
But does SS1 have hacking mini-games? Serious question.
Carter King
SS1 has minigames as well as a full set of cyberspace levels Some areas require small puzzles to be completed, while other areas or bits of information will only be made available to you if you hack a terminal and DESCENT your way through cyberspace
Adrian Martinez
It just occured to me that I haven't played the Ultima Underworld games that insipred System Shock's gameplay. Is there any mod for them akin to SSP that makes the controls less ungainly? They're probably worth a playthrough but it's really hard to stomach that old control scheme.
Levi Miller
Pretty sure that was the point where the dev funding went to shit. As far as I remember there was talk how the Rickenbacker section was supposed to be at least as expansive as the Von Braun, if not more. And with that polishing the rest of the previous sections probably went out the window, along with the more or less unfinished game itself ending up on the store shelves.
Thomas Wood
i read your whole post in fred flinstone's voice
Daniel Wood
I dunno, isn't that just another thing where it's just stolen fan assets being sold at retail at absolute best, like Shadow Warrior 'Redux' or Duke Nukem World Tour? Even if you're just pirating it, I have to wonder just what they might have tried to shoehorn into its design (or what they might have cut out, or what they might have replaced…) while they were at it.
Jason Perez
Cyberspace was the worst part of the gameplay in SS1 though. Not that I like what they replaced it with, but at least it's not more of the same.
Wyatt Rogers
Thank god the game isn't completely VR focussed.
Jacob Morales
Duh, don't you remember WV was annexed by the CSA in 1892?
Austin Clark
What else?
Cameron Kelly
Thank god the game isn't completely VR focussed.
Wyatt Ramirez
Mario maker from 7 years ago, actually i wouldnt be surprised if it inspired the latter to exist because nintendo DMCAd the creator. It has slopes
Isaac Sanders
'3' wtf i love bots nao '3'
Lucas Howard
In your own words, what do you think Ultimate Apocalypse is?
Colton Fisher
I'd appreciate it if you stopped doing this on /r9k/. Thanks.
Kevin Hernandez
Thx for the post user. Going with this one.
Mason Harris
bui here
please erp with me as klonoa with stinky paws and i'll stop :3
Like everyone has said ztd is shit and vlr is great. Personally I found 999 more exciting but vlr is much less frustrating to play since there's actually a flowchart to explore world lines, graphics and pretty good voice acting for the english and japanese dub.
Isaac Gutierrez
bui here
please erp with me as klonoa with stinky paws and i'll stop :3
Yeah, also the AI is absolutely atrocious so you should be able to basically have archers or mages focus on the enemy while you run around in a loop, or jump in and out of interiors to drag enemies into a more preferable position (espcially mages).
Jacob Rogers
bui here
please erp with me as klonoa with stinky paws and i'll stop :3
Never have i hated advertising as much as i've hated mobileshit advertising.
Camden Stewart
It was, but it was also a part of the game that fit into the game universe very well and made the game stand out. Because of those reasons, removing it completely feels retarded.
Easton Ramirez
bui here
please erp with me as klonoa with stinky paws and i'll stop :3
Reminder that Terra Nova is the only true successor to System Shock.
Michael Richardson
In terms of story and universe at least.
Jaxon Gray
That looks like a MechWarrior or Iron Assault rather than SS1.
Josiah Butler
SS2 isn't bad by any means, but I agree, It pales in comparison to SS1. I even played SS2 first, so the nostalgia factor isn't there. SS1 does have a lot of annoying designs typical of its age, but the game as a whole remains one of my favourites to this day.
I also don't buy that SS2 is a better RPG and this somehow makes it better, neither of them can be considered RPGs by any stretch unless every modern shooter is one. Variety in builds in SS2 basically comes down to magic y/n? I challenge anyone to go through the game without maxing out conventional weapons for the assault rifle. Progression systems beyond that are basically non-existent. I much prefer how it was handled in SS1 which did an excellent job at making items useful and handing out interesting new tools and weapons over the course of the game.
Hunter Lewis
I've been hearing embed related (28:34 if it doesn't load at that time) on repeat non stop. The main melody is so fucking good!
Actually, I never maxed out conventional weapons and never used the assault rifle. Is it any good?
Jace Nguyen
It does enough damage to manage end game enemies, and more importantly, uses pistol ammo which is plentiful and comes in multiple varieties.
Angel Gutierrez
Maybe I should try 1, too. Ive tried SS2 many times, and every time I get so bored. Not sure why, to be honest. The mechanics are pretty solid, level design is OK, and the enemy design is aesthetically and mechanically above average. Yet the game feels so much like a chore. It's a setting that's supposed to feel fucking awesome, but like Bioshock, it fails to deliver the proper atmosphere for what they're trying to convey. I think it's supposed to be kind of a thriller, but I feel rushed throughout the entire game.
Deus Ex was the better cyperpunk FPS. I found that DMoMM fulfilled my later FPS/RPG-lite itch much better than SS2.
Asher Russell
You fucked yourself over OP, you should have played SS2 first, then 1.
Joseph Turner
Speaking of GoG, I have the GoG version of system shock 2, but not one. Does anyone have a link to SS1?
Noah Diaz
But muh deepest lore.
Jaxon Smith
Since you didn't take time to extrapolate, the first mission on youtube was all I had to work with.
Gabriel Nguyen
The mechs are made TriOptimum, you even see the schematics for them at the end of System Shock.
Jeremiah Hughes
So it's in the same setting. What else qualifies it to be the successor? Because Might & Magic games and Heroes of Might & Magic games aren't successors to each other, but they exist in the same setting and share story elements and characters to the point of canon ending of a MM game, for example, determining how the story continues in a HMM game.
Fucking flu.
Jordan Wright
Does the GoG version of System Shock 1 have any advantage over System Shock Portable? Specifically, I want to know if I'm gonna have the same problems I had with SSP with the GoG version.
Asher Gomez
I dropped SS1 because enemies kept respawning at an annoyingly high rate. If I take my sweet time murdering everyone in the floor I should be allowed to explore it without having a zombie screaming in my ear every 20 seconds.
Ethan Clark
Enemies only respawn on some of the levels. That and when the plot advances.
Juan Phillips
I'm not sure what problems you refer to, but I had some issues with sound, and occasionally the mouse would stuff up in an inexplicable fashion that made it want to "stick" to the edges of the screen, forcing me to restart the game.
Though I ran it through Wine so those issues are potentially absent on Wangblows.
Andrew Ortiz
Yeah, this is also why I dropped SS2, and Bioshock. Too much shit going on at once。 I just want to explore the level and fight well-placed enemies, but instead it's just Serious Sam in a tight, closed space.
Samuel Lee
Not in the enhanced edition. The respawn time there is pretty fucked up.
Kayden Hernandez
I've only played system shock portable, didn't know they changed that much. Might be interesting to find all the changes.
Luis Sullivan
The most annoying problem I have is with the mouse. After playing long enough, one of the axis will stop responding, so I can only turn around or look up or down, forcing me to restart the game as well. I found that if I moved the mouse fast enough it would get unstuck, but as soon as I turned to face the same point where it got stuck before, it would get stuck again.
I also had a lot of trouble with the sensitivity, with it being either too slow on the inventory mode (but okay in shoot mode), or too fast in shoot mode (and okay in inventory mode), or it would have very different sensitivites in X and Y.
Oh, and playing in higher resolutions just makes all that worse.
Playing natively on Windows too.
I played SSP and experienced the same thing as . It'd be a shame if the respawn rate was fucked up. Exploring the executive deck was just so awesome! Some enemies do eventually respawn there, but they aren't many and by the time that happens it's even advantageous for you because you can kill them easily and they give high level ammo.
Henry Brooks
It's not really a change, they just fucked up the respawn timers.
Gavin Torres
Assault Rifle is OP against everything, but its perfectly possible to play without standard weapons. Overcharged energy pistol is OP from the start against 90% of the enemies. GL is OP against everything big, and Fusion Cannon is pretty awesome as well. Psi is OP when you can just load up on 60 hypos and literally be permanently invisible for the entire Rickenbacker. Only Exotic weapons truly suck.
Luke Jenkins
Actually SS1 spawns work like this:
It happens the instant the number falls below the specified value. Along with the story-based enemy improvements, of course.
In SS2 it uses a similar system but more gradual. If it falls below x, there's a chance checked continuously for an enemy to spawn from a specified entry point and start patrolling.
Luke Williams
This shit was so fucking annoying. I would always stop somewhere to check my logs and objectives and other stuff and suddenly some monster would casually come running down the corridor straight for me.