You would probably need a team with the same size and skills as BM to pull off a successful SS2 remake in all its glory. And you would also need to find someone with exceptional sound design skills to recreate the creepy atmosphere. And you’d probably need the next 5 years up your sleeve to pull it off. Good luck and all that.
I know, and knowing me it’ll probably fall on on its face within weeks. But I might try it anyway.
Although SS2 is a bit smaller (in scale) compared to HL1 and less diverse qua levels too.
Well if you’re talking about what “you and I” perfer for video game settings, then it’s all about your taste.
Personally I prefer something with a new setting versus something that has been a lot more.
A to-be perfect underwater city that was destroyed because civil unrest turned into a civil war.
or
A space ship that became infected because of alien eggs.
Anyway, like I said. It’s all about taste I suppose. I just thought it was silly to call the game boring because it wasn’t your preferred setting.
I disagree with the setting of Bioshock being boring, I thought it was quite imaginative and well conceived. It’s just that when you play BS after playing SS2 you see how derivative it is in almost every aspect, and how they’ve dumbed it down to the point where you can barely call it a role-player anymore. If you look at BS as a shooter though, then it works fine.
tired SS2 but yeah that didnt work out havning an XP and all. I also own Bioshock, Im so lost in that game I just quit playing it for while, need to get back to it.
Same goes for playing SS2 after SS1. I’m firmly convinced that the streamlining of RPG elements wasn’t what plagued Bioshock, but rather a totally unconvincing narrative which was forced in (yes I went there), removal of backtracking and failing as a shooter.
Granted, SS2 didn’t have the best shooting mechanisms either but somehow they felt more in tune with the whole “oh my god he’s not dead with two shotgun blasts because my weapon is falling to pieces oh god it may jam anytime now” sentiment. As for the backtracking, call me stupid but I actually enjoyed chemical hunting for research (which at least made sense in SS2) and cowering in elevators, not really knowing where I should go to find that damn code/card/whatev’. The narrative element is more subjective, but I thought that the audio logs made a lot of sense and were actually interesting in System Shock, reinforcing the atmosphere if the player went to the length of finding them all, instead of being an obligatory major narrative device for a story I don’t want to hear. Ken Levine needs to grow up.
now look what you’ve done i’m getting offtopic as well > 
anyway, System Shock 1 4eva >:[
Unfortunately all you said was “sucks sucks sucks” without any reason. Honestly I’ve always felt Bioshock added to what System Shock would’ve been in more modern times.
The audio logs for both games where cool and had interesting stories to them. The combat in bioshock feels a lot more fluid than System shock. (probably because it’s newer.). Bioshock added almost all of system shocks gameplay mechanics which isn’t a bad thing because System shock did great with them.
See, I don’t get how they’ve dumbed it down, Are you referring to it being easy or something? I mean the whole point of the game was to be a role player shooter, that what it feels like it is to me.
What shops sells it anymore? And online it costs about £180 gbp
Because this is not a Bioshock thread and I don’t want to shit in this one. I’m not going to try to convince anyone either, people who get what I mean will do just that, the others won’t care about what I say.
I can assure you that this is not a shared sentiment.
I’d like to draw people to Yahtzee’s commentary on Bioshock…
Zero Punctuation, Escapist
I haven’t played BS and I probably won’t since it sounds like it’s missing most of the bits that made SS2 fun, and hasn’t add much. Sure it’s going to look pretty, but that just doesn’t fly with me. I don’t care about pretty games with the depth of a spoon. I prefer the 8-bit games that actually played well.
I enjoyed my run through of SS2 though I haven’t finished it yet. From a remake point of view, the mapping should be a tad less work since the whole of the ship is revisited so many times over the course of the story (door jams, ceiling collapses, or watnot and you have to journey to mt doom and back just to restore the status quo). Of course you’ve got more of a job of keeping the levels the same since a lot of things line up with the levels above/below, and I don’t know about you, but it would bug me if things we’re in the right places, and of course you’ve got a pretty fixed shape for the whole thing. As for remaking it, I was considering it myself, but would have probably gone for Source. That may be just because that’s all I have experience with… that said, if you went that way and started making it yourself, gimme a shout - I’m still a little noob, but am working on expanding and improving my abilities.
I found System Shock 1 to be more immersive than SS2. I dream of doing a remake of that, but using the original level geometry and sticking with 2d sprite enemies. Just upscaling the hell out of all the textures and adding parallax mapping and dynamic lighting. It would be neat n.n
And it’s an excellent shooter.
I’ll play SS2 eventually. I love old classic games. They run extremely well on my PC and there’s almost always a modding community to make the game look less like shit.
there is a team trying to remake SS1 on the SS2 engine. SO theyre making an old game on a less-old-but-still-old engine.
and IMO Bioshock is not an excellent shooter. It is a generic shooter with a good setting. Other games (like the half life games) have a much more interesting array of weapons, more strategies and viable tactics with each weapon choice.
Bioshock had a few interesting enemies, and a few boring ones. It had some boring guns that got a little better when the ammo types were used, but still bland in comparison.
System Shock 2 wasnt a great shooter either, however the different character choices and customisations make for an experience that is more than just gunplay. Of course, none of this takes into account plasmids or psi poweres, which add some depth.
Many aspects of gameplay have been either dumbed down severely or completely removed. The entire character creation possibilities are totally removed in Bioshock. In system shock 2, you only have limited cyber points, which you will need to spend across a wide variety of skills, from hacking, to weapon types. As a result, in a playthrough of System Shock 2, you are destined to find weapons you cannot use, some items that will be almost useless to you, and different gameplay styles based on your character.
In Bioshock, any player can wield any weapon, hack everything, use all the plasmids and effectively do anything. This means that there are far less approaches to similar situations, as the developers have had to take into account everything in order for the game not to be too easy or too hard for everyone. In a game like System Shock 2, developers can place areas or obstacles that specifically benefit a certain build, forcing other character builds to adapt in this situation. Add in OS upgrades, researching, softwares, and all of the technical skills and it makes for a huge area of gameplay effectively cut from Bioshock.
There are dramatic aspects like the one above, but there are also other small aspects of gameplay that have been dumbed down significantly. I will list some examples below.
Hacking: In bioshock, hacking is a certain difficulty and is effectively a fancy game of pipes. Add in the fact that you can effectively buy your way through any hack, and this whole gameplay elements becomes far too easy and far too user friendly - every turret might aswell be hacked since it is so damn easy and has no real downsides. In System Shock 2, hacking is dependant on the difficulty of the object, your hack skill, your hack software, and your Cyber Affinity. As a result, hacking varies in efficiency and difficulty based on character type. Also, there is no way to bypass a hack by paying the machine a certain sum of money (or in this case, nanites). In the Bioshock pipes game, a bad square is a bad square, in System Shock 2, an ICE node (equivalent to the insta-alarm squares in Bioshocks pipe game) is deeper than just “dont click”. In system shock 2, an ice node will only trigger the alarm if the node turns dark (IE, that square was not succesfully hacked). This means that an alarm can be succesfully hacked even through a red square. As a result, hacking in System Shock 2 requires alot of thought - both in character development as well as in risk taking. In bioshock, a game of pipes gets pretty damn boring after a while.
Next up is the plasmids/psi skills. In Bioshock, the character is forced into the role of a Weapons class with Plasmids in a supporting role, as they are not useful enough to be used on their own, and they can use every weapon. In System Shock 2, while this is a valid path, it is dangerous, as the player will never be truly good with weapons OR psi, making him vulnerable. System Shock 2 also offers the ability to become a purely psi character, which at first is quite difficult and unfair, but can develop into a VERY powerful class by the lategame when tier 5 abilities start coming. There are psy skills for everything, from dazing your enemies, to hacking psionically, to making a giant ass energy sword, to shooting a fireball - its all there.
As it stands, everything in System Shock 2 is a choice - Every aspect of Character Development is at the cost of another piece of development, as there are only so many cyber modules. A character that is good in Weapons and Armor will quite often have to sacrifice either technical skills or psi, and some other weapon types. In Bioshock, the entire game is effectively planned and laid out for you, you just have to play through it.
So basically they dumbed it down because they tried to make it a different game? The weapons and upgrading them + different types of ammo was cool. Plasimds + weapon combination if how the game supposed to be. Character wasn’t supposed to be ever customized because of the story.
Customizing weapons, Plasmids, Tonics(I think thats what they are called…) was enough customization for me. According to the devs when they did some play testing a 50% of the playtester didn’t understand/figure out good combination for plasmids and certain weapon types. If you use just a gun through the entire game you’ll be servery hindering your progress.
I haven’t gotten around to play System Shock 2 yet, but I think Bioshock’s weakest part was definitely the actual gameplay and shooting. The shooting was just very empty feeling, and was no fun to use. It was actually really ineffective in most cases and using electric with the wrench was almost always the better option. (Although obviously a grenade launcher on the bid daddy’s was better than a wrench)
Also, when the first plasmid combined with the beginning melee weapon is one of the most powerful (if not THE most powerful) combination in the game there’s a bit of a problem…
No they tried to make the same game, just better… except they tried to do it by gearing it to the console 'tards (referring to a specific subgroup of console gamers, not calling all console gamers 'tards) and thus dropping all the features that they would find confusing or not be able to use or would give up and cry if they encountered it. These are also most of the things that made the original interesting and fun. As a result, people that liked the original were bitterly disappointed. Given the choice, I would rather pay £40 for SS2 than BS.
Oh, and some of the things that were ported straight from cyberpunk to steampunk just make no sense.
…amongst other things
I can explain that!..
…it’s a video game. :meh:
Have you even played SS2? Everything in Bioshock is a disturbingly dumbed down form of what appears in it. They’ve taken out pretty much all of the character development that makes SS2 interesting and replayable, and instead swapped it for some upgradeable powers and weapons that you distribute points into. With the character system in SS2, you could tailor it to fit your playstyle, eg A Hacker/Tech character, or a pure Psi character, whereas in BS you have access to all the classes at the same time. I think if they had kept the same level of depth and complexity of SS2 and tried to market it to a present day mainstream audience many people would be turned off or confused by it.
I hope Bioshock 3 at least tries to be more like an RPG. A level up system would be nice, similar to Fallout 3 but less broken. So when I hack something or kill shit, I’m actually building my character, rather than just wasting ammo or hack darts i[/i]
Regardless, Bioshock 1 and 2 are still great games, even if they aren’t over complex RPGs.