SSR: System Shock Kickstarter

[674100d690709Nameless Voice]

I've already seen mods which increase the size of the recycler, allow you to stack recyclable items, or double the vaporise value to match the recycled-item value.

Not sure if any of those would help much.

[674100d690e92Xkilljoy98]

The new music is terrible overall.  The only one that is somewhat ok is Storage Combat's bass line, but none of it is fitting.  The whole game is re-toned just by the music.  It's just so boring.

The overall audio experience is the one area that is just unforgivable to me.  Sounds should have been mostly redone in enhanced high quality, preserving charm and style. Instead it's very different.  Sure the physics sounds are good such as the pipe, but every tech sound is entirely different and weapons too.  The tone and feel is different.  This doesn't sound like System Shock.

Yeah I agree, some songs are ok on their own but they hardly play and most are too quiet. Intro and Cyberspace songs are ok but sadly more subtle than the original so not as good. I like executives, I do wish the original was there but the new version still gives a sort of similar vibe to the original and you can hear it.

And the wrench. The fucking System Shock 2 wrench. If they'd made this a late-game easter egg or something like that, sure, whatever. But they straight give it to you halfway through the first level. It has better damage than the pipe, so unless I've missed something, there's literally no reason not to immediately toss SS1's signature lead pipe and slog through the rest of Citadel with the weapon from the wrong fucking game.

Yeah IDK why they gave it to so early, maybe it was meant to be a hidden easter egg, though it isn't hard to find.

[674100d691005Xkilljoy98]

Also if anyone wants to watch an Original SS1 Dev (Marc LeBlanc) play the remake here you go:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE4QpYacL37zF48n_NlqA9ARI6gxdSSCq

[674100d6914d9sarge945]

Hopefully a future patch will fix the dreadful state of the recycling system. Despite ripping off both SS2 and Prey, they somehow managed to come up with a system that's worse than both of them. It's like Night Dive intentionally engineered it to maximize tedium. You're either manually vaporizing every single junk item, or spending minutes loading the tiny recycler grid multiple times to empty out all your junk, then having an inventory slot permanently occupied by those ridiculous cookie-sized TriOp arcade tokens. Apparently in System Shock's future the debit card is a lost technology.

The even more ironic part is that this MIGHT have had some viable gameplay use IF the act of recycling left you exposed/vulnerable. But since you can clear floors to the point that respawns no longer happen, there's no issue at all with wasting time (unless you're on story difficulty 3, of course), so it's literally just tedium for no gameplay benefit.

At least in SS2 fiddling around with items constantly leaves you vulnerable to respawns, although even there it's nowhere near enough to impose real risk when doing so, which is why I made the deterioration mod, but here there's NOTHING

Also, the funniest part of your comment is that they DO have debit cards - you can put them in the ATM's and the ATM's will spit out TriOp coins 

[674100d69167cJudicator]

Yep, coins, but you need cards to swipe on doors to get those to open.
Many things in this game looks like make no sense at all or are there just for the sake of it.

[674100d691910la0s]

I wanted to wait for the next patch, but played a couple of levels (again). Also had a quick try with the easiest setting on "Mission" to test the waypoints, but never saw any. Are they not in yet?

Anyway I like the atmosphere, it does get to me, like the original, but it is not the horror-vibe, more a feeling of sadness or, how to put it, the feeling that something bad happened here. That what happened here was terrible, it is eerie.. maybe that is the best word. So kudos for that.

However something I noticed, maybe it is just me, but with the new art direction and arguably more Bioshocky/chunky look, I find medical and research hard to believe as livable spaces, I know it was labyrinthian originally but somehow I believed it a bit more, the contrast between the fidelity and the very boxy level design, kind of makes it harder to believe. Not extremely hard, but just a bit...

Another thing, and I might be in the minority here, but I'm.. not that into the cyberspace part. I know icemann loves it, but when I've noticed that when I get to a cyberspace jack, that is often the point where I save and leave the game. I find it a bit tedious. Funny how that is different. I could see myself setting it on the lowest difficulty setting in the future, to just breeze past that part, because I'm not having much fun there.

[674100d691a4aNameless Voice]

I think all the remakes had that problem, like even in CCP the extra fidelity of the SS2 engine drew attention to the nonsensical designs and layouts.  The higher resolution textures made you ask what the surfaces represented by those textures were actually supposed to be.

I feel that Night Dive did a pretty good job in that regard.

[674100d691dfbPacmikey]

la0sI think most agree cyberspace is kinda tacked on. If it was completely absent from the game I doubt many would mind. That's sad though cause it's kinda "the thing" with the original.

[674100d692071la0s]

Pacmikey
Ah okay, I actually had a feeling that I was in the minority. It also isn't bad it's just meh.. however I actually like that they tried something with it, and I do appreciate that the levels aren't as large and confusing as in the betas.

[674100d6924d1Xkilljoy98]

la0sI think most agree cyberspace is kinda tacked on. If it was completely absent from the game I doubt many would mind. That's sad though cause it's kinda "the thing" with the original.

I am in the minority but I loved cyberspace in the original, less in the remake due to the number of enemies sometimes and not sure about the look compared to the original but it is still mostly enjoyable

[674100d692631Pacmikey]

This would probably be a horrible idea but this is what I'd do personally.

Anyone here played Uplink? The 2000's hacking-simulator-simulator?

Scrap the whole 3D cyberspace Descent gameplay. Double the amount of hacking sections, except instead of a shoot em up it's Uplink. Access classified corporate access codes and clearances by brute forcing passwords and bouncing proxies, with a cool neural interface HUD. Now that would be cool.

[674100d692bb8ThiefsieFool]

I'm curious how did you guys handle the weapons situation? This version of the game is pretty good at making you adapt and leaving map-markered weapons behind, certainly on Combat 3. You can get pretty creative.

For me I skipped the Magpulse since it seemed to be nerfed this time around, and was spared some extra cyberspace in Med too.
Melee-wise I swapped the pipe for the wrench, then swapped that with the first rapier you can find, then very soon after decided melee was too janky and dropped all melee weapons somewhere around Storage, relying on Sparqbeam or Skorpion to kill cameras.
Shotgun I found pretty early and it didn't take long to use all the shells, found it a bit weak and it spent some time stashed, I didn't drop it again yet but it will probably happen after Engineering is done. Remember that Dragon's Breath shells continue to do damage over time, even after the flame effects have vanished, even with this 'trick' the gun is still pretty weak to me.
Once the Ion Rifle came around I dropped the Sparqbeam (and ignored other Sparqbeam upgrades) and even the Skorpion for a while, but it didn't take long for me to pick up the Skorpion again, as the game kept trickling teflon-coated rounds steadily.
I used the Ion Rifle like crazy especially around Storage/Flight Deck/Executive, revelling in the batteries I had accumulated up to that point, but the honeymoon was soon over. I almost ran out of batteries halfway into Executive and stashed the Ion Rifle there for a while, I didn't recover my battery stocks until very deep into Engineering as I found hidden battery stashes in Engineering with Sensurround, and also in Storage by spamming use on some of the 'garage doors'.
Magnum I found a bit late, probably the second Magnum you can find, so I had lots of ammo for it and it was never dropped, I probably wouldn't have dropped it even if it ran out, as it was very strong especially with headshots on big cyborgs, and it could save you when cornered.
Grenade Launcher I also found a bit late since it's in an obscure spot in Storage that needed a second visit, it was mostly kept stashed in Maintenance until big cyborgs and bots got very numerous around Engineering and then I never let it go, it was very useful in fighting Cortex Reavers and Diego by letting me trigger EMP explosions at just the right time and place. Its size is a little too big for what it does, but it's very useful at times.
I don't really carry gas grenades, launcher or no, their balance seems iffy.
Railgun seemed very useful and I never let go of it despite its size, even if I was down to just one slug left. Its ability to put some things down instantly was too good, up to Gorilla Tiger strength or maybe higher if precision shots work.

Upgrades were:
- Sparqbeam Cooling (found it very useful as you can do two Overload shots in a row)
- Skorpion Damage (inventory size increase is worth it IMO, just stash the gun when you're out of teflon)
- Magnum Damage (not sure what the laser sight does exactly, but it uses energy)
- Assault Rifle Autofire (probably the most "feel good" upgrade in the game)
- Ion Efficiency (delayed a bit since the Ion Rifle was still waiting in Executive when I found the upgrade)

The balance of having all upgrades cost 25 credits is quite incorrect, many upgrades are weak like the small clip capacity increases.

[674100d692f1evoodoo47]

Anyone here played Uplink?

I've actually created a small patch for it to make it playable on voodoo2/3 cards back in the day. yeah, wouldn't be bad.

now who wants to port Neocron hacking into Deus Ex?

[674100d69303cThiefsieFool]

These are all the mods in the game btw.

[674100d6934efPacmikey]

ThiefsieFoolI actually think the rapier is kinda OP. It deals a ludicrous amount of damage, and if you lose health getting in melee range you can just abuse the infinite respawning Jesus machine. Also infinite "ammo". I pretty much used it exclusively through executive.

[674100d693addsarge945]

ThiefsieFoolI actually think the rapier is kinda OP. It deals a ludicrous amount of damage, and if you lose health getting in melee range you can just abuse the infinite respawning Jesus machine. Also infinite "ammo". I pretty much used it exclusively through executive.

Interestingly, in the remake it seems less overpowered than in the OG. In the OG it was completely busted

[674100d693e0aicemann]

To the earlier comments:

The cyberspace for me, feels like old arcade gaming and Descent-style stuff. And the music rocks, so yeah I love it. If they made a game centred around just cyberspace I'd play it. Enemy variety, lack of path choices (though that improves as you proceed through the game) and tech upgrades are my main gripes with it.

Weapons wise (good post on that Thiefsiefool). I've found inventory space to be my main issue around holding onto weapons. Game really needs a Resident Evil style massive item container somewhere. I was using the Skorpion A LOT, until I ran out of ammo. Been using the laser rapier in times where I'm getting zerged by lots of enemies at once. Highly useful in those instances, or when I want to take out something fast. Does it in 2-3 hits generally of what I've encountered so far. I'd have farmed security bots for more ammo, but the remake cuts respawns to zero once you get security level to zero, so that eliminated that plan.

The magpulse definitely feels nerfed. I still have it in my inventory, but only used it at 2 spots in the game. First was just before the cpu cores on Medical against a security bot, and second was against the first Cortex Reaver battle. Felt very downgraded in the CR battle. OG game would take maybe 3-4 shots to take 1 down, where as I think it took something like 15-20 in the remake. How do other weapons fare against them?

Are the weapon upgrades random per play through, or fixed? I think there needs to be more of them, and would be better if there were 2 per machine. They have 2 slots but never have more than 1 with an upgrade. A waste of space if you ask me. Since I encountered the lag bug on Engineering I've been keeping watch of the bugs channel on Night Dive's discord, and it looks like more of the game is randomized compared to the original. For example the location of the damaged relay on Maintenance is randomized apparently. I don't recall that being in the original.

[674100d693f98Xkilljoy98]

There is a new trailer, showing off the scores and awards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbHgc3nVvZw

[674100d69419dAutz]

Xkilljoy98And its hilarious because the game is not a 10/10 and critic scores means squat. At least it could draw more publicity.

[674100d6942e6ZylonBane]

Hey, on Metacritic it's ranking almost as high as Deus Ex: Invisible War!

[674100d6943dbPacmikey]

Do people still care about critic reviews? I just have a couple Youtubers I consider trustworthy.

[674100d694519Nameless Voice]

For me: reviews, yes.  Scores, no.

I do find the user review positive/negative ratio on Steam interesting, but wouldn't buy or not buy based on it (some games I think are good are Mixed or worse.)


But I'm sure there's people who still care about those things.

[674100d694624icemann]

Reviews - Yes, though I take them with a grain of salt.

Scores- No. IGN ruined that for me long ago, giving 10/10 scores for terrible games.

[674100d694854sarge945]

Reviews - Yes, though I take them with a grain of salt.

Scores- No. IGN ruined that for me long ago, giving 10/10 scores for terrible games.

This is an excellent take, but has too much water, 7.8/10