"This is our tragedy."
Sep. 18th, 2007 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nano_mooseI finished System Shock 2! :D Seems a good a milestone as any to break my silence, which was, incidentally, a silence induced by real life kicking my ass. In no particular order: happy belated birthday memlu, may you grace the world with your fabulousness for many years to come; Labyrinth is one of the most hilariously eighties things I've ever seen; Bowie-crotch; my brother moved to Adelaide and will be sorely ignored; The Gunslinger is a surprisingly cool book and I no longer feel compelled to hate Stephen King on principle; Ratatouille, if bottled and sold, would rapidly outpace Prozac as an antidepressant; Bioshock Bioshock Bioshock! And, finally, the school holidays have begun and that apparently means my work needs me less. I haven't yet decided if I'm annoyed or pleased.
...Yes, of course I'm going to compare it to Bioshock. It's kind of unavoidable. They aren't the same, with Bioshock being much more FPS than RPG, and System Shock severely lacking in Art Deco loveliness, but they represent a genre that really ought to exist more, and a level of care and respect totally absent from many games. Why, yes, I am pointing at you, Ubisoft. And glaring. Never let it be said that I missed an opportunity to grouse about that particular screw-up. Assassin's Creed had better be awesome, you bastards! ...Ahem. If I were to compare them, System Shock 2 is like a gem, cold and complex, full of depths and facets. Bioshock is more like a tapestry, wonderfully coloured, perhaps a bit shallow but no less amazing for it. Which one you like more is probably an indication of what you value most in a game - is it customization or art?
It's art, for me, incidentally. You can probably blame my damn computer for that - I would have been much more immersed had it not taken an age and a half to load between deaths. And the ending.
Okay. Okay. The game itself is, frankly, a masterpiece, taking that dusty old plot of evil A. I.'s and invading aliens and doing remarkable things with it, injecting very human drama into a setting renowned for its coldness. Right up until the ending. What the hell was that? I'm all for goofball antics, but...that really wasn't the time, dudes.
Thankfully, the lead-up was quite awesome. Goddamn if I can't admire an enemy that had been hounding me with mutated horrors from the get-go, and still made me feel bad when I destroyed them. I knew perfectly well SHODAN was never going to let me live (or at least, not in the form I was in), and in an odd way, I did find their evolution pretty amazing...but no matter how convincingly they argued their case, giant mutant alien-ness sets off some very basic gamer instincts. And poor Prefontaine's final log did sort of help in that regard.
In the unlikely event of there ever being a sequel, I want the Von Braun to crash on some infinitely distant alien planet.
For reference, I was a Navy soldier, and most of my modules got poured into Hacking, Standard Weapons (Assault Rifle!), Exotic Weapons (Crystal Shard!), Strength, Agility and my psi powers: Cryokinesis, Cyber Affinity, Telekinesis, Invisibility, Regeneration, Pyro Shield and Pyrokinesis. Also I had my Recycler, which is a thing you can feed useless items (like potted plants, booze or cigarettes) to convert them into nanites. I became very fond of it. Shut up. In my considered opinion, psi powers equal rock. Not as much rock as Plasmids, but a considerable amount none the less. Now, one of these days game developers are going to invent a player-controlled teleport system that doesn't suck, and there will be great rejoicing.
I think Invisibility was my favourite psi-power. Nothing like activating it and waltzing by a Psi Reaver so I can smoosh its brain-nub without it noticing. (Damn, Korenchkin was freaky. Peeking into the bridge and hearing his laugh after all those logs...)
Diego wasn't irredeemably fucknuts! :D! :D! But definitely D: over the fact that I couldn't save him, or Delacroix. May you continue to be straightforward, totally lacking in bullshit and unutterably badass in whatever beyond you've earned yourself, you awesome Garrett-sounding soldier dude. Now, stop tempting me to write fic about you and Anatoly Korenchkin hating each other, please.
Hey, flist! What would be your opinion of an LGS-themed one sentence meme? Be honest with me here. Obsessive? Awesome? For god's sake, when am I going to shut up about these games? Stand forward and be counted, insect, no matter how frail your meat-body in comparison with my magnificence.
...Yes, of course I'm going to compare it to Bioshock. It's kind of unavoidable. They aren't the same, with Bioshock being much more FPS than RPG, and System Shock severely lacking in Art Deco loveliness, but they represent a genre that really ought to exist more, and a level of care and respect totally absent from many games. Why, yes, I am pointing at you, Ubisoft. And glaring. Never let it be said that I missed an opportunity to grouse about that particular screw-up. Assassin's Creed had better be awesome, you bastards! ...Ahem. If I were to compare them, System Shock 2 is like a gem, cold and complex, full of depths and facets. Bioshock is more like a tapestry, wonderfully coloured, perhaps a bit shallow but no less amazing for it. Which one you like more is probably an indication of what you value most in a game - is it customization or art?
It's art, for me, incidentally. You can probably blame my damn computer for that - I would have been much more immersed had it not taken an age and a half to load between deaths. And the ending.
Okay. Okay. The game itself is, frankly, a masterpiece, taking that dusty old plot of evil A. I.'s and invading aliens and doing remarkable things with it, injecting very human drama into a setting renowned for its coldness. Right up until the ending. What the hell was that? I'm all for goofball antics, but...that really wasn't the time, dudes.
Thankfully, the lead-up was quite awesome. Goddamn if I can't admire an enemy that had been hounding me with mutated horrors from the get-go, and still made me feel bad when I destroyed them. I knew perfectly well SHODAN was never going to let me live (or at least, not in the form I was in), and in an odd way, I did find their evolution pretty amazing...but no matter how convincingly they argued their case, giant mutant alien-ness sets off some very basic gamer instincts. And poor Prefontaine's final log did sort of help in that regard.
In the unlikely event of there ever being a sequel, I want the Von Braun to crash on some infinitely distant alien planet.
For reference, I was a Navy soldier, and most of my modules got poured into Hacking, Standard Weapons (Assault Rifle!), Exotic Weapons (Crystal Shard!), Strength, Agility and my psi powers: Cryokinesis, Cyber Affinity, Telekinesis, Invisibility, Regeneration, Pyro Shield and Pyrokinesis. Also I had my Recycler, which is a thing you can feed useless items (like potted plants, booze or cigarettes) to convert them into nanites. I became very fond of it. Shut up. In my considered opinion, psi powers equal rock. Not as much rock as Plasmids, but a considerable amount none the less. Now, one of these days game developers are going to invent a player-controlled teleport system that doesn't suck, and there will be great rejoicing.
I think Invisibility was my favourite psi-power. Nothing like activating it and waltzing by a Psi Reaver so I can smoosh its brain-nub without it noticing. (Damn, Korenchkin was freaky. Peeking into the bridge and hearing his laugh after all those logs...)
Diego wasn't irredeemably fucknuts! :D! :D! But definitely D: over the fact that I couldn't save him, or Delacroix. May you continue to be straightforward, totally lacking in bullshit and unutterably badass in whatever beyond you've earned yourself, you awesome Garrett-sounding soldier dude. Now, stop tempting me to write fic about you and Anatoly Korenchkin hating each other, please.
Hey, flist! What would be your opinion of an LGS-themed one sentence meme? Be honest with me here. Obsessive? Awesome? For god's sake, when am I going to shut up about these games? Stand forward and be counted, insect, no matter how frail your meat-body in comparison with my magnificence.
