What is everyone's opinion on the System Shock games? I ask since I finally beat them back to back as I wanted to finish and have a fully formed opinion on two of the "greatest games of all time".
Well, I can honestly say SS1 > SS2. No question, SS2 is a vastly inferior game compared to 1, from it premise, to its mechanics, to it laying the foundation for the Bioshit games, and so forth. Just my observations comparing the two:
<SS1 starts you out as a "weakling hacker" who already knows how to fire a gun and jump from large heights
>SS2 starts you off as a "soldier" who, regardless of what branch of military you train in, is a complete dumbass who can't use a gun and has weak endurance, because muh RPG stats
<SS1 gives little direction in where you need to go outside of journals, notes, and audio logs that it expects you to read on your own
>SS2 constantly has NOT SHODAN barking in your ear on what exactly to do next, then rewards you with cyber modules for your doing what you're told like a dog
<SS1 levels felt like smartly designed places, like there is logic to where things are placed and where rooms go
>SS2 levels are mishmashes of corridors that often blend together. Body of the Many is also fucking bad start to finish
<SS1 had a nice mix of cyborgs, robots and occasional monsters that you could actually KILL on nearly every floor, besides the invisible monsters on the elevator deck
>SS2 has fucking re-spawning monsters, mainly for you to farm nanites from. Too bad it's always fucking zombies that are tedious to fight
>ALSO FUCKING SPACE MONKEYS fuck this wasn't funny or clever in the medical floor, and it was fucking aggravating seeing them on other floors
>SS2's finally poor recreation of SS1 Citadel station and final boss fight reek of Levine's pretentious bullshit that would give way to Bioshit Infinite.
>SS1 had midi music that didn't quite scare you but it was at least disarming in how upbeat it was compared to the horrors around you. SS2 just has generic techno music that tries to be intense but fails
In short, fuck System Shock 2. Ken Levine was always a hack even before he shat out Bioshit.