Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN JUNE 2025?

On Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:04:42 +0300, Anssi Saari
<anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> wrote:

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.

To be honest, I didn't go back to the original to compare, but I don't
have any real memories of headbob in the original, and the head-bob in
the new version was incredibly jarring and noticable. Whether they
just cranked it up, or maybe the smoother gameplay made it more
noticable I can't say. But I rushed to the settings to disable it
before I vomited all over my keyboard from the effect.

>
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?

I haven't gotten that far* so I can't say for sure, but it does seem
as if the respawning has been dialed down a bit. I remember in the
original zombies spawned incredibly fast on the medical deck, and I
smashed a nearly endless parade of servo-bots on the
engineering/shuttle deck. But in the remake I only saw a handful.


(I'm probably not going to finish the game. Not because of any problem
with the remake, but because I've replayed "System Shock 2" so often
that there are no surprises left for me; I know where the goodies are,
I know where the monsters are hiding, I know exactly where to go and
what to do to solve the quests. And because the remaster is so tame,
it's not like I'm going to see anything new if I persist at it. So if
I keep playing, it'll just become a tedious slog through territory
I've crossed way too many times. Since that's not the sort of
experience I want to associate with "System Shock 2", I'm probably
going to stop playing. But in five or ten years, after some of my
memories about the game fade, I'll give the game another shot... and
odds are I'll be playing the remaster when I do it)

* Outlaws
>
Yes, the 1997 Outlaws. Waited for a sale since $6/€6 seemed oh so
steep. Or more realistically, I wanted to finish the other Outlaws, Star
Wars Outlaws, first.
>
I didn't play this back in 1997 but for the time it feels surprisingly
advanced. I mean, sure, the graphics are just awful but it has the
rudiments of more modern games. Then again, the naughties was an awful
time for PC gaming, too many games were just badly ported from PS2 or
Xbox0.
>
But this has features. Houses have windows you can shoot through, some
of them even have breakable glass, cover is there even if crude, sounds
fade with distance, there are dark areas and you have a lantern to light
them up, with limited oil capacity. There's a remarkably useful map,
even though it's 2D and this is definitely 3D, houses have floors and
stairs go up and down. The engine apparently can't do ladders so
there're some pretty weird looking steep ramps instead. Motion speed and
perspective seem a little odd, you move really fast and go really low
when crouching. Shooting enemies below you seems to work quite poorly
but at least shooting above you works fine and is much more common.
>
I tried some mods to increase resolution but unfortunately those didn't
work. As shipped by GoG the game defaults to nglide and a config prog is
included, another way to go is dgvoodoo2 which I understand maps glide
calls to directx. Some old guide from 2017 recommended v2.54 of that
with this game but I didn't find it anywhere and other versions had the
same issue as nglide, my mouse was restricted to top left quarter of the
screen if I tried to increase resolution. Also with the versions of
dgvoodoo2 the in-game graphics were a complete blinking mess. So
plodding on in unenhanced 640x480.
>
Gameplay then, it's pretty much straight up shoot everyone, find keys,
open doors, kill boss, rinse and repeat. Sometimes there are civilians
but shooting them or not shooting them doesn't seem to matter. The
game's a little weird like that. There's a sheriff's star pickup too but
picking it up doesn't seem to do anything.
>
Some puzzling but I think it's mostly on one level. Enemy motion and
shooting seems pretty random but I still got killed a lot at
first. Restarted with the easiest difficulty and now it feels too easy.
>
Restarted one more time as I missed a critical weapon pickup or actually
it's a scope for your rifle which is, if not quite mandatory, a major
pain if you don't have it. Oh well, that's some fairly unforgiving
design right out of the '90s. At least the levels aren't that long. I
think I'm over the halfway point so maybe four levels to go. Kind of
feels like I've had enough but I'll try to finish.

Ah, good ol' "Outlaws". 28 years on and it remains one of the best
Western FPS games out there. The engine was an updated version of the
original "Dark Forces" engine, and its cel-shaded art style hid a lot
of its deficincies.

The game suffered a bit more from coming out in that awkward period
between "Doom" and "Half Life". You can see aspects of both seminal
games in its design. On the one hand, you had the more realistic
gunplay and level, coupled with a more narratively-pushed mission
structure that harkened towards "Half Life". On the other hand, some
of the often stupidly mazelike levels, complete with "find the switch
to open some door across the level" puzzling, and the placement of the
enemies, felt like purest "Doom".  It was an odd mix that had problems
gelling together, and the game only succeeded because everything else
about it was so good.

Especially the music. You get a three Internet Points penalty for not
mentioning the awesome Sergio Leone inspire soundtrack. ;-)