System Shock Series

Agreed - it's great that we can talk about these games in the present tense, all thanks to Nightdive's stellar work.

I always turn the music off in SS2. Rave music doesn't really work with it for me

Of those 2 screenshots posted, I think SS2 looks better. Just more natural and spooky. I have a lot of affection for the dark engine anyway because of Thief

I think SS2 has quite a strong Star Trek look to it. The SS remake (haven't played it) looks a lot more stylised and cyberpunk to me

That last sentence sums it up perfectly I think.

I love the low-polygon look of the maps in SS2. Those angular environments really sell the visual design. That said, I've always thought enemies looked a bit crappy.

That and the game really needs to be somewhat rebalanced. As it stands, Marine is easy mode, Navy is medium, and Psi is hard. Too many of the high-tier weapons required massive amounts of skill points just to wield, and then were more or less useless. Same for too many of the stats, skills and perks. Even a first time player could tell which skills/perks were merely a waste of cyber modules.

i also want to point out, the SS1 remake works because it modernizes the look of the original SS1 while staying somewhat true to it (and even then, I think the original looks and plays better in several ways). They couldn't just use the same look for SS2.

I was delighted to find the severed head for which I'd been looking - a horrifying sentence, in any other context - and jettisoned Beta Grove into the inky blackness of space.

Turns out you don't need to (and, indeed, can't) jettison Alpha and Delta Groves, so the next 20 minutes or so was time wasted.

The game is determined to make me complete Storage, as it turns out there's some C-4 on said level, which I'll need to use shortly. Great! Flying robot assholes, here I come.

The wobbly guards and way they move slowly and flip around when they're searching for you feels like such a part of the atmosphere of the game. You would absolutely lose that by updating the graphics. Same with all their little grumbles if they redid the sound

But equally, you could say that's the difficulty levels. Low, medium, and hard.

Similar to most modern games really.

I'm just playing devil's advocate, and I can tell you that even though I'm drunk and it's late, I am absolutely starting a new character tonight!

Absolutely, it's like a time slice of gaming. You just wouldn't want it any different.

I think that is one of the untold beauties of this game if you've played the original, and Newcomers will probably be put off hence the remake demands, which I can understand too, but since I played it originally, I need that og experience.


Nostalgia, it seems, is real after all.

Yup, still playing an hour or so later. It's superlative!

I asked Phoebe how she'd describe the Engineering area in System Shock. "Ruff!" she replied helpfully.

I'm sorry - that was terrible.

(It's a hard level, is the point I'm trying to get across.)

Shield?

Well, paddle my buttocks and call me Katie - I had no idea.

Thanks for the tip!

You’ve pretty much caught up with me. I finally grabbed a bit of time on it last night though so I’ve just got said numbers and made my way to the reactor. You’ll need plenty of environmental protection down there Uly. Sadly my session was cut short as it crashed and I couldn’t be bothered to fire it back up again.