enversi on 9/7/2001 at 07:19

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There's a difference between a mindless shooter and a fun shooter. Degradation is good, but not if it happens every ten minutes. Personally I have not been trained in any military fashion, but am perfectly capaple of picking up almost any weapon and pulling the trigger. I may not shoot completely straight, but I can make the attempt. There doesn't have to be an ungodly abundance of hypos, but a little more than a piddling would be nice. And I am aware of the ability to change the respawn, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. There are things that make a game challenging, and then there are things that make a game annoying. IMO those things up there fall into the latter category. However, the game still has enough going for it to keep me playing.

MDA on 9/7/2001 at 15:49

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...but they still seem to have great difficulty kneeling and shooting at you. I had an MIB drop into a vent shaft with me, kneel, and then sit there and not shoot while I reloaded my weapon. I presume that's b/c his head was blocked from view. Do AI characters only get to half crouch? Fortunately, I could see his chest just fine. :) I tend to overexploit vents and crawlspaces because of this. Its cheating, but I'm a sneaksie coward who strikes from the shadows.

What's up with the basement of versalife? - I can snipe a couple of guys from the vents, wait for the alarms to shut off, then wander around in the open and no one can put two and two together.

There were a huge number of places in the game that could have used a security bot or two on patrol, I expected to find more in ductwork, especially considering humanoids can't crawl in after you. That's more level design than AI, though, and just my opinion to boot.

I'm enjoying Deus Ex more, mostly because my old heart can't stand the HUGE fear factor in SS2. 20 minutes of playing and I have to go for a quiet walk somewhere well lit, just to calm down. If I were 16 again, my opinion might be different.
Some of the little philosophical debates inserted into DX1 appealed to me as well. I like my fun with a little highbrow intellecual flavor thrown in.a cold beer or two never hurts, either :) Newspaper clippings, book excerpts, NPC dialogs, all made DX1 more interesting - the logs in SS2 were great - but they all seemed directed at increasing the suspense, it just didn't work as well for me, I wasn't really INTERACTING with anyone but SHODAN. DX at least gives the illusion of interacting with others.

DX isn't really the game SS2 should have been, SS2 appeared to be exactly what it was intended to be. Really, really scary. I just don't like it as much as DX.

SneaksieDave on 17/7/2001 at 20:27

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I tell ya! :) I'll never understand when people say they hated the respawning and wanted/needed it removed. It gives such an improved atmosphere, makes the place feel so much more alive and active, as opposed to "clearing a level" where you can just run blindly back through over and over - which we have to do in such a game, and would be very boring. Also, it adds some strategy. If you don't KILL something, it doesn't respawn, right? So if you're low on ammo, or a foe is particularly tough, don't kill it! Get past it another way. Sneak. Distract. Invisibility. There are tons of options.

And if people are saying the game was too hard because of lack of ammo or money and too many respawns... jeez, I just don't get it. By the time I was 3/4 of the way through the first time, I was a freaking WALKING TANK. I was primarily Psi, with secondary tech and weapons. There was nothing I couldn't out-battle, sneak around, or otherwise outwit. A German TANK I tell ya!

All in all, I just gotta say - Shock 2 is one of the best games ever made (can't wait for SS3!).... and I'm playing DX right now, and it's pretty damned sweet so far, too. ;)

Tamarelle on 18/7/2001 at 20:53

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Hi, I'm a noob, been posting some in the SS2 forum, which, as I said there, is ALONG WITH DEUS EX, my TWO favorites games of all time. :)

That's why I find all this discussion so interesting, if you don't mind my 02. :) I mean, I see a lot of discussion juxtaposing Deus Ex and SS2, but perhaps underpinning everything here is the tacit understanding that we all love these TWO games because their similarities?? :)

I played Deus Ex first, and it was through Deus Ex, (which finally ended my love affair with Half Life btw)..... and in Deus Ex I was just KNOCKED OUT but all the THINGS I could do!!...jaw dropping storyline and I must admit, I had a little crush on the utterly stoic JC Denton and got <BLOCKQUOTE><FONT size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, sans-serif">Spoiler:</font><DIV STYLE="background-color:#000080"><FONT color="#000080"> a few tears as he was dealt three pretty bad hands in the end. </FONT></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE>

As far as scope, I did everything from fumble my way through underground sewers, cope with the terror of a cyberpunk Manhattan and kind of got a laugh at the "Ton" hotel which was so tongue in cheek.. tried to save an unkown soul in a forlorn apocolyptic gas station in the desert.... dodged soldiers and sailors on huge ships and amazing underwater research facilities.... absorbed the sights in Hong Kong.... .. I could go on.. (but I will spare anyone who may miraculously still be reading this LOL).... (I will say that Paris was kind of badly done... downtown Daytona Beach reminded me more of Paris than this did... :)..

It wasn't until I was almost done with Deus Ex and really DREADING the time that would come when I would have to bid farewell to JC Denton.. that a former boyfriend put me on to SS2... I bought it, for $9.95 at Amazon.com I think it was, and remember thinking "yeah sure, this is an OLD game, how good can it be?"....

.. from the moment I put that CD in my trusty PC I was slackjawed in amazement. The graphics are gorgeous in their own right.. HAS THE INTERIOR OF A SPACECRAFT EVER BEEN GRAPHICALLY DEPICTED SO BRILLIANTLY IN ANY GAME, MOVIE OR BOOK???? I mean the textures, the consoles with their LED Green outputs, ...... I mean what a ship the Von Braun is!! So vast that a RAIL SYSTEM is constructed to get back and forth between the COMMAND AREAS????..

Wow!! .I've been trying to decide which game was better ever since.... The only thing I've come up with is... hats off to the men and women who toiled to bring us such innovation and wizardry :)..

Some day, those games will be looked up as works of art, I think.. :)

Anyway, sorry to run on like this... I guess I was just moved when I saw you dudes who obviously love MY TWO FAVORTIES GAMES..

Cheers!!

Tamara :)

Tamarelle on 21/7/2001 at 03:51

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You haven't met my dog :)

He's WONDERFUL.