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ToxicFrog posted:The recycler is actually one of the few things that's new to the remake; SS1 had lots of random garbage lying around but it was solely there to enhance the vibes (and show off the physics engine). The original also didn't have vending machines or weapon upgrades. Well dang, now I'm out here googling to figure out what's an updated reskin of the original game and what's a whole cloth addition. Which inadvertently lead me to realize that the use of 0451 in Deus Ex was itself a reference to 451 as a door code in OG System Shock. I always thought DX was the progenitor. My whole world is turned upside down.
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Jul 10, 2023 16:08
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Well I'm in the minority of people that don't mind the Body of the Many. The first playthrough it completely rocked me because I had spec'd myself as a weakling hacker. After that I always made sure to get proficiency in rifles and come with enough AR ammo and everything else I might need. I've never gone too far down the psi route in SS2 because it's a pain to manage and swap powers, but I imagine it also makes things easier in the BotM.
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Jul 10, 2023 16:09
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Mike the TV posted:Well I'm in the minority of people that don't mind the Body of the Many. The first playthrough it completely rocked me because I had spec'd myself as a weakling hacker. After that I always made sure to get proficiency in rifles and come with enough AR ammo and everything else I might need. I've never gone too far down the psi route in SS2 because it's a pain to manage and swap powers, but I imagine it also makes things easier in the BotM. Hah, I had been reading all these posts and thinking that SS2 holds up really well for me but now you reminded me of the psi power interface. Ugh. Yeah, I would really like to see that remade lol. I am kinda ambivalent about the BOTM but I always preferred to play with at least a couple good weapons, so it was never too bad for me. Still would love to see it redone, though.
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Jul 10, 2023 16:15
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Arc Light posted:Well dang, now I'm out here googling to figure out what's an updated reskin of the original game and what's a whole cloth addition. More games use it than you'd think. Even Thief 2 uses it in the bank level - https://web.archive.org/web/20180322081041/https://www.greywool.com/azal/First_City_Bank_and_Trust/Strange_and_Unusual/
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Jul 10, 2023 16:17
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Tortolia posted:I would still say that Prey is better since it's based on two decades of enhancements to the genre design, but as someone who Kickstarted SS2023 and had basically written off that money I've been extremely pleased with it. Hoping Nightdive takes a crack at a remaster of the second game. Also it’s not made of cubes What I’ll say about SSR is that it is shows the game to be a precursor to the modern immersive sim rather than an actual one. A significant precursor, but an adulterated FPS all the same. Citadel station does not feel like a place, it feels like a series of Doom levels, and not even very good ones. It does not remotely compare to Talos One. At the risk of making ppl mad I’d say that Duke Nukem 3D is as much of a modern immersive sim as SS1, if you don’t care about audio logs. The first porno theater level feels more like a realized locale than basically any SSR level
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Jul 10, 2023 16:45
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Prey cannot be an immersive sim because you never pay strippers
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Jul 10, 2023 17:13
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Strippers are in the 2nd level of D3D not the first. PREY’s strippers are in the mysterious dark spot beyond the Talos radiation shield and no one has gotten there yet. Also when you throw cash at them it turns out to be a stack of mimics
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Jul 10, 2023 17:19
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You cannot romance a mimic 0/10
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Jul 10, 2023 17:30
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Basic Chunnel posted:At the risk of making ppl mad I’d say that Duke Nukem 3D is as much of a modern immersive sim as SS1, if you don’t care about audio logs. The first porno theater level feels more like a realized locale than basically any SSR level Honestly, I'd agree with this. Duke Nukem 3d was a surprisingly excellent game in regards to having alternate pathways, a variety of tools for solving problems, and combining them with levels it tried to make feel lived in to some extent. I saw a lot of folks putting Cruelty Squad in the immersive sim bucket recently and it has a more modern take on the same level-based approach to things, too.
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Jul 10, 2023 17:32
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It's a weird distinction to make considering System Shock is like, what, the third ever immersive sim? It's a sci-fi dungeon crawler with gestures towards being believable even if it doesn't truly attain realism. Its contemporaries are Doom 1&2, which struggled to portray anything more complex than a box-filled warehouse in terms of recognizable, realistic spaces. Duke 3D is something of a relevant stepping stone due to its map design, but it kinda critically lacks a lot of the other elements of an immersive sim.
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Jul 10, 2023 17:34
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Both DooM and SS1 were trying to be more of a dungeon crawler style of game than a fps (which hadnt been "invented" yet) or an imm sim (also not a thing yet). While Duke 3D felt like it was trying to be a (good) DooM clone/FPS.
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Jul 10, 2023 18:59
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Yeah all I’m saying is that SS1 and Prey aren’t really comparable — and that even if you scaled the criteria to things that SS1 actually attempts, I still think Prey is better in those respects. The updates of gameplay to SS1 in the remake are pretty conservative, though Nightdive was actually going to do more before the neckbeard crowd shut them down when it was announced. Obviously, I wish they’d changed more. Prey vs SS2, now there’s an interesting comparison. I think there’s an argument to be made that SS2 would actually benefit more from the light touch used for SSR — the “friction” (to use a term people throw around a lot re: the most ambitious immersive sim yet made, Tears of the Kingdom) and difficulty are what made it really memorable, but there’s always such a thin line between friction and imbalance. SS2 had the flaw common to most every classic tabletop and CRPG: It gives you several build options but punishes you for pursuing the really interesting ones. Tbqh I think if Arkane had been given the time to meaningfully implement the survival mechanics into the main game, Prey would have fully been what SS2 aspired to be. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jul 10, 2023 |
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Jul 10, 2023 19:16
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I feel like we're being a bit harsh on SS1. Remember SS2's chapel in the ventilation ducts? Deus Ex's bustling Hong Kong market? most immersive-style games come undone at some point it's very inconsistent, the art and tech are too primitive and ultimately it was not its main design goal but SS1 does make a good effort at designing specific rooms and areas to feel functional - the shuttle bays, the reactor, the maintenance-level ducts, the halls and corridors that loop around rooms rather than simply fractalising into mazes. plus there's something to be said for its plot objectives being a step above red-key-red-door
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Jul 10, 2023 19:37
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I mean there are red keys and red doors. Also the levels really do sprawl
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Jul 10, 2023 20:06
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Yeah but notice that SS's levels sprawl - in a cylindrical shape that roughly matches what the size of the exterior should be. Looking Glass cared enough about the immersive properties of the level that they constrained the shape and size of each floor to what Citadel's outline dictates it should be. Given the level design techniques of the day, obviously it falls flat on looking & feeling like a real place, and given that the remake wound up taking a traditionalist approach, it has the same limitations as a throughline (though I do agree, I liked what I saw in the approach they were taking that was a bit more interpretive). I think it's also worth remembering that a lot of SS1's reactivity at the time was in a different format than modern immsims take. Later entries do this via systemic interactions, which SS1 has but in a limited way. SS1 instead wanted SHODAN to feel like a reactive adversary with moments like Nice Jump Human, Welcome To My Death Machine, planting the C4 on the relays, etc. While it worked at the time, I don't think it stands the test of time quite so well.
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Jul 10, 2023 21:09
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Basic Chunnel posted:Yeah all I’m saying is that SS1 and Prey aren’t really comparable — and that even if you scaled the criteria to things that SS1 actually attempts, I still think Prey is better in those respects. The updates of gameplay to SS1 in the remake are pretty conservative, though Nightdive was actually going to do more before the neckbeard crowd shut them down when it was announced. Obviously, I wish they’d changed more. Id say Prey is much better too. And at the risk of sounding like a neckbeard, a lot of the stuff thats good in the SS1 remake was in the enhanced edition of the original game, and some of the stuff they added to the remake feels worse than the original. The SS2 tetris block inventory system is a good example, it kinda feels jammed in there and is actually more limiting than the original where you can carry infinite medpatches and ammo, and more weapons as well. Recycling stuff felt like busywork (especially combined with the tetris block SS2 inventory), and its required to upgrade your guns, whereas in the original you could "upgrade" a gun by essentially finding a better version of it. It is a nice way to stay up on medpatches, but since the vending machines run out you still end up traversing all the decks to find some if youre low. Dyz fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jul 10, 2023 |
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Jul 10, 2023 22:44
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I don't hate the tetris inventory but I agree that it feels very limiting compared to SS1. SS2 limits how many guns you will realistically have because you don't specialize in everything, but SS1 expected you to have most of the arsenal at any given time and to use weapons until you found out what you liked. In the remake, you're so tight on inventory space so often that trying things out is disincentivized, and you can only take a handful of weapons at once.
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Jul 11, 2023 00:22
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Yeah, the player has actually gotten heavily nerfed in the remake and combat is a lot harder: - inventory tetris sharply limits how much stuff you can carry around; the original let you carry 8 weapons, 13 "misc items", and infinite patches, grenades, and ammo - using patches, medkits, and batteries now takes time - arming and throwing grenades also takes time, and they can only be thrown in timed mode unless you use the GL (which takes up a large chunk of inventory) - respawn points respawn you with much less health, so you're more likely to die again trying to recover from whatever situation killed you in the first place Enemies also seem to be beefier in general, and some weapons like the Magpulse have been severely nerfed, but even without those changes "you have limited inventory space" and "using explosives and medical supplies is no longer a free action" combine to make it a lot more punishing than the original. And yeah, I'm not a fan of recycling, although I did get some pleasure from taking everything in Diego's office, recycling it into credits, and using those to buy ammo to shoot him in the face with. Overall, I enjoyed it a great deal, but it's not flawless. Arc Light posted:Well dang, now I'm out here googling to figure out what's an updated reskin of the original game and what's a whole cloth addition. I did a big comparison here. I was only halfway through the game at that point but nothing I encountered later contradicts it. quote:Which inadvertently lead me to realize that the use of 0451 in Deus Ex was itself a reference to 451 as a door code in OG System Shock. I always thought DX was the progenitor. And in SS1, IIRC, it was a reference to the LGS office access code, because the guy who set it up was a Bradbury fan.
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Jul 11, 2023 04:08
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To be fair, if you were to play the *original* ss1 with the old controls and no mouselook idk whether it would be easier or harder than the remake. It would certainly be a lot slower though. And I would never subject myself to that.
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Jul 11, 2023 04:59
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Basic Chunnel posted:Yeah all I’m saying is that SS1 and Prey aren’t really comparable — and that even if you scaled the criteria to things that SS1 actually attempts, I still think Prey is better in those respects. Next you're gonna tell me Doom 2016 is better than Wolfenstein 3D.
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Jul 11, 2023 10:47
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Dyz posted:To be fair, if you were to play the *original* ss1 with the old controls and no mouselook idk whether it would be easier or harder than the remake. It would certainly be a lot slower though. Until this year I had only ever played SS1 using the original controls, and even with the original controls on combat difficulty 3 it is significantly easier than the remake.
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Jul 11, 2023 12:01
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Now we just need the Ultima: Underworld remake to be announced 
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Jul 11, 2023 12:19
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Arx Fatalis / Liberalis is right there. Unless we want a remake of that too, which I'm all on board for.
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Jul 11, 2023 12:35
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Serephina posted:Arx Fatalis / Liberalis is right there. Unless we want a remake of that too, which I'm all on board for. Arx is the Prey to UUW's System Shock -- clearly inspired by it but not the same thing. And I gotta say, while I played and enjoyed UUW1 (and even had plans to LP it here, many years ago), the controls and UI are even more dated than SS1 and I bounced off it a few times before really getting into it. Once I got over that initial hurdle it was great, but I think it and Strike Force Centauri would both benefit a lot more from the remake treatment than SS2 would.
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Jul 11, 2023 12:52
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Angry Diplomat posted:Now we just need the Ultima: Underworld remake to be announced What do you mean, we got that
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Jul 11, 2023 13:18
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They went back and fixed a lot of the stuff that was wrong with it at release but I still wouldn't call it, like, good. Unfortunately.
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Jul 11, 2023 13:23
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Twobirds posted:What do you mean, we got that Not like this. Not like this 
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Jul 11, 2023 13:49
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Thinking about it more, I think if Arx Fatalis is the Prey of the UUW lineage, Underworld Ascendant is the Bioshock.
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Jul 11, 2023 14:13
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John Murdoch posted:Next you're gonna tell me Doom 2016 is better than Wolfenstein 3D. Yeah but if you upgraded Wolfenstein 3D to original Doom you'd have an argument on your hands.
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Jul 11, 2023 16:15
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ToxicFrog posted:They went back and fixed a lot of the stuff that was wrong with it at release but I still wouldn't call it, like, good. Unfortunately. If not good, would you call it worth trying for $4?
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Jul 11, 2023 18:43
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ToxicFrog posted:Thinking about it more, I think if Arx Fatalis is the Prey of the UUW lineage, Underworld Ascendant is the Bioshock. That's deeply, deeply unfair to Bioshock.
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Jul 11, 2023 20:59
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Twobirds posted:If not good, would you call it worth trying for $4? John Murdoch posted:That's deeply, deeply unfair to Bioshock. It's definitely a more polished, professionally assembled game than UWA, but there are lots of highly polished AAA games that suck on toast. ToxicFrog fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 21:19
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this guy really didn't like the would you kindly twist
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Jul 11, 2023 21:42
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Bioshock has a bunch of issues with it but I would say they're quite prey-like issues. The combat is quite clunky, but you're mostly supposed to rely on combining psy powers to become effective, and that's true of prey too. Just shooting stuff doesn't really work great but you can become an absolute death machine with the right powers. The setting is interesting, the narrative I think is interesting too in the worldbuilding sense, the actual technically required plot is a bit meh but so is prey's, the real meat is in the story around the story.
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Jul 11, 2023 21:49
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Lt. Danger posted:this guy really didn't like the would you kindly twist That's actually one of the parts of the game I would say is good! If the game has a redeeming feature I think it's probably that. My complaints are mostly about the incredibly ham-handed efforts to introduce a "meaningful moral choice" element in the form of "do you murder the adorable little girls or...not do that", the absolute dogshit final levels (which they clearly realized were bad because they tried, and failed, to justify it in-game), the lacklustre final boss and ending, the lack of flavour text for items or research results, the profusion of doors that arbitrarily unlock themselves only once you have a quest log entry explaining why you might want to go through them, the comparatively small and linear levels, and the fact that the broad strokes of the plot are a lukewarm rehash of SS2. I might have been kinder to it if I were approaching it as an ambitious but flawed FPS rather than as the spiritual sequel to SS2 that they explicitly marketed it as, but I suspect most of the things that bothered me about it would do so through either lens.
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Jul 11, 2023 22:35
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Lt. Danger posted:this guy really didn't like the would you kindly twist That was the best part of the game and if it had ended shortly after that I would have had much better feelings about it personally. There's still, like... a third of the game left after that, though. It's not Alien:Isolation bad in terms of seriously overstaying its welcome, but it had an uneven buildup, a wonderful climax and then an extended wet far for quite a while longer imo Hey speaking of which does Alien Isolation count as Immersive Sim? Obviously its cross genre, but it DOES have "4510" as an important doorcode so it probably considers itself at least adjacent. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jul 11, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 22:41
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I mean there are some elements of immersive sim in A:I, but immersive sims, like roleplaying games generally, have O positive blood where design is concerned. I wouldn’t call it an immersive sim per se. There’s obviously a heavy emphasis on place — like any good modern IS, its visual designers (if not the level designers) went HAM. There are interesting ways the AI can behave (it has justly praised AI!), but at least on my playthrough(s), emergent systems and level interaction beyond noisemaker distraction hasn’t been emphasized. Even that one bit where you use the floor to electrocute immortan joes is more like an adventure game puzzle than even the most rudimentary Bioshock “use fire to melt ice” systemic interaction. Still better than Amnesia, though. All that might just be a function of how being spotted by the alien sans a flamethrower / lucky Molotov toss is guaranteed death in almost every circumstance. If there were more ways to delay attack or even juggle the thing, you could make more noticeable use of, for example, the cool-seeming big red buttons that lock doors behind you. Basic Chunnel fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Jul 12, 2023 |
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Jul 11, 2023 23:32
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Yeah I wouldn't call A:I an immsim for the above mentioned reasons, but I think it's at least adjacent to one. Compared to something from Frictional like SOMA or what have you, it has a much heavier emphasis on systems. Ultimately it's willing to discard systems-based approaches at key junctions to make the game happen though, where I think true immersive sims won't. Sometimes A:I is forcing things to happen because it's a horror game and wants you to be afraid, whereas that kind of thing is fairly rare in a game like Deus Ex or Prey, which are perfectly happy for you to miss cool or climactic events because it's more important for the player to be in the game system loop than for a cinematic moment to happen. That said, I think the way it gates level progression behind tools, the way that objects interact with the world, the Alien's AI in normal play conditions, and a few other things all feel like strong systems-driven approaches to a game. You could probably make an immsim out of A:I if you reworked things.
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Jul 12, 2023 02:54
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WebDO posted:Please keep us apprised of your progress and enjoy. It's a wonderful experience for Yu So I beat it last night. This game fuckin' rules. Crazy how I missed it, but just a lot going on the past few years and so many games out there. I first did the Get in Alex's escape pod and say bye bye ending, which was hilarious, but it really started to make me think about what was going on. Though from very early on, I found that I wasn't trusting January, so I wasn't sure where things were going. I didn't install any Typhon Neuromods for my entire playthrough. At some point, I'll do another one on a higher difficulty and use those heavily. Seriously, god drat. Game is good.
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Jul 12, 2023 14:06
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Marklar posted:I didn't install any Typhon Neuromods for my entire playthrough. At some point, I'll do another one on a higher difficulty and use those heavily. I also avoided that on my first playthrough, but after a couple more runs where I played every single mod for good measure, I really only use a couple of Typhon neuromods regularly. The tree that allows you to regenerate up to 25 health every time you're injured is an absolute game changer, and ditto the mimic ability, but most of the others can be ignored if you're good at stealth and/or have fully upgraded guns.
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Jul 12, 2023 14:15
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