* Dungeon Hack
I'm not really sure /how/ I started playing "Dungeon Hack"; one moment
I was scrolling through my collection of DOSBox games, the next moment
I was realizing that I had just spent several hours touring through
one of the game's procedurally-generated labyrinths.
* System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Remaster
Don't look at me like that. I know I said that there was no way in
heck I was gonna buy this game day one, but c'mon. It's me! It's
System Shock 2! There was a sale! There was no reasonable chance I was >actually going to wait.
It's the first day of a new month, and according to the schedule we're supposed to have a new "What Have You Been Playing" thread. Well, far
be it from me that I might disobey a schedule! Let's begin the thread!
Superbrief
---------------------------------------
* Warhammer 40K: Space Marine II
* Dungeon Hack
* Warhammer 40K: Boltgun
* System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Remaster
Maximum Verbosity
---------------------------------------
* WH40K: Space Marine II
This is another of those games that I end up disliking even while
admitting there's nothing actually wrong with the game; it's just a
title that doesn't suit any of my tastes.
My three primary issues with "Space Marine II" can be described as
problems with it conceptually, in its implementation, and its
technical aspects. Only one can, perhaps, be laid at the feet of the developers. The others are problems of my own making.
Conceptually, I'm just bored with the setting. Not so much the
grimdark fantasy-future of Warhammer 40K, but the tiresome 'noble
stoic' stereotype hero who endures the hardships of combat and doubt
of his comrades while remaining steadfast to his goals. It's a
character that has been done a thousand times before in video games
and while "Space Marine II" doesn't do anything wrong with him, it's
also doesn't do anything new. The protagonist is an incredibly dull
character and his story arc lacks any surprise. He clunkily stomps
into battle, mowing down enemies whilst endlessly proclaiming loyalty
to the Emperor, and never, ever doing anything wrong. He was such a
tediously unoriginal character I marveled that the voice-actor could
stay awake saying all those cliched lines.
The implementation of the game was, I think, extremely well done...
but it is a game designed around co-op gameplay first and foremost.
Yes, you can play the game solo but it lacks that spark that makes the
game fun on its own; it depends almost entirely on the interactions
with other players to provide that. The levels are beautifully
detailed but are incredibly linear and don't have any really
interesting moments on their own; it's just an endless series of gated
arenas with dozens of enemies that need to be chopped and shot to
pieces. The weapons --balanced for multiplayer-- lack the impressive destruction that makes you personally feel powerful. And does every
shooter these days have to involve blocks and parries and melee? Can't
I just sit back and shoot things? If you like this sort of gameplay,
it's very well done. Me, though; I just wanted a shooter.
The technical aspect was the sound. Visually the game is fine; the
netcode seemed fine; the framerate was good. But the sound seemed simultaneously muted and with too much bass; I kept fiddling with the
sound levels trying to find some balance that didn't make me feel like
I was watching the game from the back row of a very large auditorium.
Maybe this was a fault with my hardware but it felt like the mixing
for this game was all wrong. It really weakened the overall
experience.
Ultimately, I didn't have much fun with this game. It didn't offer me
the sort of gameplay I enjoyed, and the depictions of the lore and
story were tiresome. Throw in the weird sound issues and the whole
game felt a lot poorer an experience than it probably was. I can't
fault the developers; I think they captured the feel of the franchise
well, the game is well-balanced for co-op gaming and (sound problems
aside) the game was technically well made. I just didn't like it.
* Dungeon Hack
I'm not really sure /how/ I started playing "Dungeon Hack"; one moment
I was scrolling through my collection of DOSBox games, the next moment
I was realizing that I had just spent several hours touring through
one of the game's procedurally-generated labyrinths.
"Dungeon Hack" was SSI's attempt to wring out whatever lingering value
there still was in the ancient "Eye of the Beholder Engine" and
--given the sort of game it is, and the age of the technology-- it's
actually sort of impressive what they managed. It's just a shame the
game isn't any fun to actually play.
Of course, I may just be saying this because step-based dungeon-crawl
games aren't my thing, but I don't think that's the only reason. The
dungeons are incredibly dull; they're just a series of long mazes with
little variety to the rooms. Your quest is to get to the bottom of the dungeon (anywhere from 10 to 25 levels deep, based on how you
customize your run) but there's little consistency or story to the experience. It's mostly a matter of endurance... both in terms of the resources of your character, and your own patience.
It doesn't help that the loot is so unexciting. Or maybe it's not;
it's sort of hard to tell since the game does nothing to tell you if
that new sword you picked up is more or less effective than your
current weapon. I suppose if you were really into the game you could
make a list of stats, trying to figure out what that ioun stone does
or how the turquoise potion effects you (based on guesswork and what
little hints the game provides) but I just wasn't invested enough in
the game to even try. So I chugged potions willy-nilly and if those
rings I wore did anything beyond make me look pretty, I've no idea.
But the real insult was when I finally killed the end-boss (who was,
as far as I could tell, completely undifferentiated from any of the
other monsters) and my only reward was a spot on the top-ten score
board and a brief, unsatisfying cut-scene. No opportunity to identify
my loot, or reuse my character for another run; just
wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am and dumped to the DOS prompt.
As early '90s technology, "Dungeon Hack" was moderately impressive.
But as a game it was incredibly tedious and disappointing. I don't
know how I ended up playing it, but I hope I don't ever do so again.
* Warhammer 40K: Boltgun
I wasn't really expecting to play this game so soon after working my
way through "Space Marine II", especially since the biggest problem I
had with /that/ game was how tiresome I found the entire Warhammer 40K aesthetic. But seeing as I had "Boltgun" on my hard-drive already,
what was I supposed to do: not play it?
"Boltgun" is... well, it's fine. It's a retro-themed 'boomer-shooter'
style FPS set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and it plays pretty
fairly to all those themes. If any one of those three genres interests
you, you'll probably get a kick out if "Boltgun". It's a well-made
game, and it suffers in my eyes only because I'm /tired/ of those
tropes.
But I think I would have enjoyed "Boltgun" more if its level design
was just a bit better. The game struggles here in two areas. First,
it's that visually the game just isn't very appealing. If Quake was
too brown, "Boltgun" suffers from being too red; the rusty steel
panels are reddish, the lava is reddish, the sand is reddish. Nor is
it helped that there isn't much variety; it's all the usual
industrial-future motifs that have dominated sci-fi shooters for
decades. Even so, "Boltgun" pushes the envelope with how little
variation there is in the levels; it's almost got "Halo" beat for
re-using assets and rooms.
More, though, is the old-school design where you're constantly moved
back and forth across a level looking for keycards to unlock the next
gate. Again, this is just the game being true to its boomer-shooter
genre, but the keycard-door trope was abandoned for good reason; it's extremely tedious. Too often I was bouncing through a level hoping it
would finally, inevitably end rather than caring about the mission
itself.
Still, the game does some interesting things within its
retro-limitations; even with its pseudo-VGA visuals it actually looks
quite good in parts. Nor will I fault the game for its gun-play; the
weapons are fun, have some good variety, and there's a good number of enemies. There are numerous secrets to discover, and they're all of
the "useful pick-ups" variety rather than collectibles that exist
simply to be collected.
No, like I said, there's no fault with the game itself, especially if
you enjoy its chosen style. If I had less fun with it than I should
have, that's on me for playing a game I knew wasn't suited to my taste
at the moment.
* System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Remaster
Don't look at me like that. I know I said that there was no way in
heck I was gonna buy this game day one, but c'mon. It's me! It's
System Shock 2! There was a sale! There was no reasonable chance I was actually going to wait.
That said, was it worth it? Well... no, not really. Don't mistake me;
"System Shock 2" is an excellent game, and this remaster doesn't do
anything to change that. It's 95% the same game as came out in 1999,
with some of the rougher edges smoothed away. If you loved the
original game, this one is just as fun. If you've never played the
game before, you might as well get this one.
But if you're a fan of the games and already own it, either on CD-ROM
or via digital download? There's really no point to this remaster.
Oh sure; it's a bit easier to get running on modern hardware. Not that
was really a problem with the 1999 game, but the widescreen support is
nice. There's better support for mods. The developers added
achievements and a 'vault' full of old videos and concept art for
people interested in that stuff.
But visually? The game is /barely/ improved. The models are a bit
better, but they still have that weird angular look that was common to
Dark Engine games (even though the entire game was ported to
Nightdive's Kex engine). The textures are obviously AI-sharpened and
the lighting is maybe improved? But unless you do a direct comparison
between the old game and this remaster, you'll probably not notice. It
looks like its 1999 counterpart, warts and all. It's not bad --the
original's graphics more than got the job done-- but it still looks
like a game 20+ years old.
There are a few things I didn't like. They took out the hack to
disable the weapon degradation. I always hated how guns in "System
Shock 2" broke after firing them a dozen times; originally you could
edit a config file to minimize this annoyance. That's gone now. The developers also added a really annoying head-bob animation too;
fortunately, you CAN disable that, but it shouldn't have been included
in the first place. The game also moves a lot faster and more smoothly
than the original (which used frame-locked key-framed animations), so
the monsters run at you at lot more quickly than I'm used to. I don't
think it improves the original's pacing. But these are all minor
gripes.
No, the biggest problem is that the game costs $30 USD and you can get
the original from Steam or GOG for $6... and the difference between
the two just isn't enough to justify that price difference. Like I
said, the remaster is probably the version to pick if all other things
were equal... but ultimately the two versions are just too similar and
that 500% price hike is pretty significant. Given that, I'd be hard
pressed not to recommend people to just get the cheaper version.
You'll have just as much fun and won't see much difference.
Anyway, I've got rumblers on the Rickenbackher waiting for me to shoot
them (or maybe its virtual assassins on the Von Braun?). Slaying
awaits no cyborg.
---------------------------------------
Alright; that's done. Tick-mark that off the schedule. That was fun;--
let's do it next month again. I'll just write it into the calendar.
You can count on me to remember!
But wait... we're not really done yet. Because while I kept to the
schedule, we still haven't heard from what you did this month. So tell
us all about it, guys and gals:
What Have You Been Playing... IN JUNE 2025?
What Have You Been Playing... IN JUNE 2025?
* System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Remaster
There are a few things I didn't like. They took out the hack to
disable the weapon degradation. I always hated how guns in "System
Shock 2" broke after firing them a dozen times; originally you could
edit a config file to minimize this annoyance. That's gone now. The developers also added a really annoying head-bob animation too;
What Have You Been Playing... IN JUNE 2025?
Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> writes:
* System Shock 2 25th Anniversary Remaster
There are a few things I didn't like. They took out the hack to
disable the weapon degradation. I always hated how guns in "System
Shock 2" broke after firing them a dozen times; originally you could
edit a config file to minimize this annoyance. That's gone now. The
developers also added a really annoying head-bob animation too;
They *added* head-bob? In my recent playthrough I found the game really >looked like you were rolling around on a bent unicycle. I thought it
silly and also that's just how you rolled in the '90s :) But maybe that
was included in the fan patch I used? I noticed some things were changed
that didn't need to be changed which is my usual beef with fan
patches. OTOH, the original's rampant respawning was really low but I
thought it was due to the easy difficulty level I chose.
Or how is it in "vanilla" SS2, is it safe to visit med/sci (surgery) and >hydroponics (convenient charging station right next to the elevator)
when you're working on the upper decks, operations and recreation? Or do >enemies just keep on respawning there?
* Outlaws
Technically, the 2004 inXile game would be better described as reboot,
as it utilized nothing of the original game other than its name.
Although even that is dubious, as inXile didn't own any of the rights
to the original, so it's more of a "completely different CRPG that
just happens to share the same title".
What Have You Been Playing... IN JUNE 2025?
I've been distracted as well as having sleeping issues lately, so no real game progress. I did start The Invincible at month's beginning but didn't get far.
rms
Doh, forgot Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. That unimpressive I guess,
What Have You Been Playing... IN JUNE 2025?
* Outlaws
Outlaws in an awesome game, I've played it through a few times. You
don't mention the soundtrack, which is simply magnificent
Is the headbob not toggleable in the settings?
If it cannot be turned off somehow that makes the remake and absolute NO
for me.
Hunt Showdown : 1896
Doh, forgot Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. That unimpressive I guess,
 O no! I hated BL2 but thought I'd at least install it again to try
the TTW DLC, and maybe the standalone game too. Oh well
Hunt Showdown : 1896
My disappointment never ends that this title has no singleplayer mode :(
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 546 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 154:44:32 |
| Calls: | 10,383 |
| Files: | 14,054 |
| Messages: | 6,417,848 |