I played through Epic Mickey 2 with my girlfriend, AMA
why
It’s got coop and we like to play coop! It’s not terribly terrible. It’s more like, just unpolished. The design of it is okay, the execution not so much. It just ends abruptly and awkwardly and that combined with everything else makes me think they just ran out of time. If that’s because of unrealistic expectations that were out of his hands or if he mismanaged I can’t say.
Warren Spector has gone on record saying that it was one of the most rewarding games he ever worked on because of the reception it got from kids. May he be happy with that. But it certainly isn’t his masterpiece or even “good work”, I guess. Not that he has anything to prove to anyone anymore! He’s made his mark. But yeah, he loves that game with an unjustified passion…
System Shock 1 or 2 required playing at this point? Just always missed em
I’ve played most of the successors, hugely into Deus Ex and loved Prey
I think it was dess or Daphny?
1 is fantastic and hugely influential by 1994 standards but it’s both not that playable by 2019 standards and barely got a complete, accessible release in the first place (sort of like troika games if they preceded being able to download mods and patches, except if they didn’t even have mouselook or voices for three months after release when the publisher had already written them off as a loss).
the remake will be interesting but I don’t think it’s even as timeless as e.g. star control 2 because so much of what it’s doing was so new rather than feeling and reading particularly well
2 is totally obsoleted by prey though
2 has the strongest horror elements in any immersive sim and several of my favorite levels (3 of the roughly 8, 9 levels are excellent); ducking into supply closets to mix science projects is a real highlight.
Sound design is outstanding and I think they pulled off ‘narrative through voicemail’ better than anyone before or since (progressing body horror is real fertile ground for this).
I’m sorry this is only true if you think system shock’s legacy is “storytelling through audio logs” and I feel like that’s just a littttttle reductive
the game is flawed for sure but most games that take influence from it miss the point imo and I feel like it still has something to say in 2019
I do, actually, and I’d like to have that argument!
I think most of the games that think they’re providing open-ended scenarios through immersive sim elements are really pretty trivial examples thereof
original sin is a better successor to ultima 7 than any first person immersive sim is to looking glass stuff and I think that’s an actual limitation of the genre, not just modern game design
system shock 2 pioneered other forms of storytelling and I still feel like it’s atmospherically effective in a way that most games to this day are not
I also haven’t played it in ages so I could play again and change my opinion idk
The sound design of System Shock and Thief both are still unparalleled even today and it’s baffling as to why.
it’s true, I feel like I have to absolutely strain the limits of my hearing to be able to infer anything from audio cues or trust them over my other senses in modern titles whereas it’s plain as day in those
SS2 legitimately gave me the creeps when I played it with headphones some years back. I actually only played like two hours of it and quit. I don’t remember if it was because it was so scary or because I didn’t want to put up with the game’s bullshit. I give it credit for its atmosphere either way though
it’s because they are relatively minimalist and sparse. sound design in so many videogames is just throwing as much atmospheric bullshit in as possible at any given time. these games have the guts to be silent occasionally. pretty much every sound means something specific to the game and that makes it much more immersive than just random ambient humming in 3D space.
something I really admire about both RE7 and RE2 2019 is their use of sound design. it’s so effective and thoughtful in a way that you rarely hear these days.
yeah I was just about to start shouting about RE7 in VR again with people mentioning sound design and horror but I figured I already did a lot of that in january
every named npc I killed and consumed the ghost of in os 2 showed up in the next chapter alive and well
i…i still think system shock 2 is good…
Prey is the only modern successor to System Shock 1. Everything else was a followup to SS2 which is why it sucked