I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the pumping techno music! Seriously, any tension SS2 might've had was instantly erased by the freaking deathmatch music.
I played through System Shock 2 relatively recently and I did not find it different enough to warrant the rage over Bioshock. Eternally respawning enemies - check. Revival stations - check. Paranormal powers - check. Hacking - check. Only things really different were the skill and inventory systems. I wouldn't call the changes consolish (Oblivion is consolish and even that's got skills and inventory), I'd call them FPSish.
So turn it down to where it's a faint whisper, or even not there at all.
And if I turn down the gamma, it'll be darker than Doom 3. Thing is, the developers put it there for some reason. Unless they had no idea what they were doing.
You do realize that on modern hardware old games need to be reconfigured and tend to look over saturated on LCDs? Hell, I generally turn the music off in every game I play. Unless it's a phenomenal soundtrack, such as Arcanum, I don't listen to it.
The music does enhance the heart pumping factor of alerts on high difficulty levels however.
I've never been as panicked playing a game as I have being on Deck 6 and triggering an alarm. Hell just unscripted encounters with random zombies as they grated out "KIIILLL MMMEEE," would scare the fuck out of me if they startled me.
Where Bioshock would attempt to frighten you with a scripted encounter with some splicers that got boring the second time you watched it, System Shock 2 had systems in place that if you fucked up it would have you by the seat of your pants without a heavily scripted encounter.
You should play a game that's actually scary. Like Silent Hill. Games where I can just resurrect and go back to circle-strafing and bonking clumsy zombies over the head with a wrench aren't very intimidating.
You should play a game that does scripted atmosphere right, play Thief. Creepy tricks that only work if you don't expect them.
Also if it's too easy for you, play on a harder difficulty level, and play further into the game, I'd like to see you take out some turrets with that clunky wrench.
The stat system itself was heavily dumbed down, to the point where you could do pretty much everything at once equally well. In system shock you could be the Psi Guy, the Tech Guy, or the Shooty Guy, or a mix of two of them, if you tried to do all three, you were screwing yourself over most times. In Bioshock, you can do everything. And very little challenge is derived because of that.
The interface itself was very consolized, managing your inventory in SShock was a challenge and help promote realism and atmosphere, in Bioshock you end up looking like every other FPS hero, carrying a rocket launcher, 22 rockets, a machine gun, 13 clips of ammo for it, a pistol, 22 clips for this, SMG, 25 for this, a camera, 10 grenades, a massive wrench. In SShock, 2 of those alone would fill your inventory, and forget about a psy amp to work your powers. Things also had durability, which prevented you from getting too used to any one gun.
I still wouldn't call it consolized anymore than I would call Doom, Quake or Painkiller consolized. It just got more FPSish.
Fine do you want me to cover controls on the PC then? How about the shitty DX10 implementation?
THE SHOCK GAMES WEREN'T MEANT TO BE LIKE THAT. THEY WERE MEANT TO EVOLVE FPS GAMEPLAY AWAY FROM THAT, SAME WITH DEUS EX AND THIEF. INSTEAD THE CONSOLE DEVS, REALIZING THAT INVENTORY SYSTEMS DON'T WORK WHEN YOU HAVE TO MAKE THEM LIST BASED, DECIDED TO CUT OUT A REALISM AND DIFFICULTY ENHANCING ELEMENT. DOOM AND QUAKE GAME'S WERE SHITTY, THEY WERE THE FIRST GAMES TO COME OUT IN THE GENRE RUSH, AND WERE PRIMARILY TECH DEMOS, MEANT TO SHOWCASE WHAT COULD BE DONE WITH THE NEW GENRE. It wasn't until you had deus ex, system shock, and thief, that you saw games start to gravitate away from the linear levels, and arcade style gameplay that were common in them, and start to focus on meatier elements. Things like, level design, pacing, actual game systems beyond shooting, AI. They were drawing on the innovations of another genre that's declined since consoles bled over, the RPG.
The FPS in those games was no longer a defining genre, it was a gameplay element. Bioshock and games recently basically took a shit on all that and said, "We're gonna go to the doom/half-life method of linear levels and gameplay from the eighties.
Before you say that half-life innovated, tell me how, it's doom with more plot explanation and PLATFORMING, and because it was so popular, that is what caught on.
What is the plot of Doom, doom marine arrives on mars, mars is infested with demons, kill all demons. Plot to Half-Life, Freeman arrives, 10 minutes later, resonance cascade, base infested by
demonsaliens, kill all
demonsaliens. The only difference is that now, you have to escort the fucking
keysNPCs to the door they open.
Excellent level design now means making it pretty. Excellent gameplay now means either shitty cover systems, or gameplay lifted from the eighties. Excellent writing now means Fallout 3.
The only thing that's really improved, is the graphics. Yes the thing that REALLY doesn't matter, AT ALL, has improved.
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Topic: Bioshock: Infinite (aka Project Icarus) (Read 22302 times)