November Modern Community Playthrough - System Shock 2

[Shadow Kisuragi]

BUT EVERYONE IS SO EXCITED

[GrayGhost81]

Would you kindly relax?

[bombatomba]

[img width=600 height=367]http://cdn.foodbeast.com.s3.amazonaws.com/content/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/taco-bell-cinnamon-twists.jpg[/img]

Step away from the twists, gentlemen.

That being said I was aware of a twist (too many podcasts), but have forgotten it.  I've finally set up a low-end gaming laptop so that I can play this as well as an oddball PC RPG (maybe for review) at home and work.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

*shrug* I'll go back to lurking and reading. I was enjoying the conversation, and it was nice to see people excited. The last time I heard people talking about System Shock 2, I was just starting High School, so it's nice to see people re-experiencing it and being in the dark about it.

[GrayGhost81]

Why don't you play it with us?

[Shadow Kisuragi]

The only time I use a PC outside of work is for RFGeneration and school work. I don't even have time to play my Xbox One these days.

[bombatomba]

I haven't edited controls this much since I first played Half Life.  I am also sincerely surprised by the RPG inventory management aspect.  Hearkens back to an earlier age, me thinks, when you moved the mouse freely in the window and hold a button and swung to attack.

On a different note I official hate the crappy keyboard on my cobbled together laptop.  Almost ready to pull the hard drive on it and try another laptop. *sign*

Anyways, I'm about to choose my class and I have no idea.  I think it's easy to infer what each military branch will focus on, but I need to do a bit of reading first.

UPDATE: Everyone seems to recommend the Marines first, so naturally I will start with the Navy.

[Fleach]

I went with Marines because they're bada$$! Just kidding, I just liked their logo the most.

[GrayGhost81]

Week two checkpoint is up. Again, take your time. If you're not having fun take a break, or better yet, stop playing. Life is too short.

[bombatomba]

I've hit the week one goal (after about an hour) and am moving forward with the week two goal.  Not really sure what is going on, which is by design, I think.  Noting the resemblance between Xerxes (pic in the Med Stat area of the game).

The enemies remind me a bit of the Shibito from Siren.  Not only are they very talky, but fighting them with a melee weapon is nearly the game.

So far this game is a lot of fun.

[Disposed Hero]

I've hit the week one goal (after about an hour) and am moving forward with the week two goal.

Geez, you're progressing a lot faster than I did then.  I don't remember how long it took me to hit the first checkpoint, but I'm at the second checkpoint now and my save file says I'm just under 10 hours.  Of course, I'm extremely thorough when exploring areas and looking for items, so that's definitely inflating my time.  Not to mention running all over the ship looking for chemicals to research new items.

I chose Navy as my starting class since most sources I read suggested that.  Choosing Navy gives you a bonus to your Tech skills, while Marines gives you a bonus to weapon skills.  OSA is for Psionic players.  Unless you plan on playing mostly Psionic, you really can't go wrong with either Marines or Navy.  The three missions you choose during the tutorial portion of the game affect which skills you start with.

[Fleach]

Things are a little quiet in here. How's everyone doing?

[Disposed Hero]

I finished System Shock 2 last night.  As great as this game is, I'm really glad that it's over.  The feeling of constant tension caused my nerves to be pretty shot by the end of the game, and I don't think I could have taken much more of it.  With most horror games, after a while you figure out where the safe zones are and generally have a good idea of when you're safe and when you're not.  With this game, I NEVER felt safe.  I always felt the need to check my surroundings before sorting through my inventory, using upgrade stations, etc.

I played on Normal difficulty for most of the game and didn't have too much trouble (except maybe at the beginning when I was still trying to figure the game out), but I did have to dial it back to Easy for a couple of minutes during one section towards the end.  Generally, as long as you save often, you'll be alright.

I'm not sure if I was just dragging my feet while playing, but my total game time according to my save file was right about 16 hours.  A lot longer than I expected, but like I said before, I'm very thorough when exploring areas and looking for items.  I was also pretty cautious when exploring areas, so I was probably moving through the game pretty slowly.

It feels good to finally cross this game off my list.  I've been aware of it for a really long time, maybe since it was released, but just never got around to it.  Good luck to the rest of you guys that are still playing.  You're gonna need it....

[bombatomba]

Finally picked up SS2 again and progressing over level 4.  Final time for week one was 4.5 hours (an hour was a slight exaggeration), and most of it was literally me wandering around going, "Where is *insert place* again?"  First thing I noticed was that I can no longer just use my trusty wrench, as a there are too few places to hide and ambush.  Oh, well. It was too overpowered anyways.  The shotgun stinks in comparison. I found a laser rapier (or something), but I need level 4 energy weapons to use.  I think I'll save that for exotic weapons, though.  I also noticed that if you pick up an enemy's weapon you can unload the round in the chamber and keep it.  To think how many shotgun rounds I'd have if I'd noticed that earlier...

Disposed is totally right about the saving.  Though, if you played FPS games from around this era I imagine you already know this.  Me, I sometimes press "Atl-S" entering into every new area.  I really hate those vita chamber-things.

[techwizard]

finally started playing this tonight! it's complicated but awesome so far. i feel like the game does explain everything well enough, you just have to do a lot of reading to understand it all. hovering over things in the menus helps a ton, and hovering over your stats during basic training helped me decide what to pick for career and missions. i went with Navy because it seemed to be the most balanced overall, OSA sounded interesting but a guide said it was the hardest path so i avoided that. marines sounded easiest but i feel like i would regret the lack of hack/modify/whatever skill points.

it's really, really creepy the way the enemies talk, never played anything like this before.

how do you know what deck you're on? i made it to the medical area past that bulkhead that brings up a loading screen and an autosave. it looked like maybe the science area was deck 2 and medical is deck 1 based on the numbers in the bulkhead, but i'm not really sure if that's what those mean or not.