My System Shock 2 saga

[bergbros2]

I just got a new computer because I got tired of my old Dell Dimension Pentium II 300 Mhz crashing. Got a great deal on an HP Pavillion with a Pentium 4 Windows XP. I have been playing System Shock 2 on the old computer which was laboring even with a 32MB video card and 256K memory and was looking forward to having a smooth fram rate on the new computer. Problem was SS2 is incompatible with XP. So I reseached the poblem online and found out I need to do a a run command with a -lgntforce suffix next to it. It loaded ok and then after the main menu, the game froze and crashed. I then found out that there is a version 2.3 patch. Loaded the patch and it started t owork but froze again. Then, I went online and found out about an unofficial patch that makes the game run on the XP. Loaded it up and again it crashed. Then I found out that the problem has to do with the Pentium 4 chip and it Hyperthreading technology. Seems the SS2 engine does not like having 2 CPUs work at the same time which is what I am told HT does. So I had to ctrl+alt+del and get into the Set Processes function and Set Affinity to only one CPU. Bingo! IT finally works and I get to expereience the joys and terros of this truly outstanding game.

I am just amazed the lengths I had to go through to get this game up and running. I am also amazed that after Looking Glass went under there was a ton of unofficial resources out there and the huge efforts of others to fix the problem. I encountered Patches, FAQs, blogs, websites, and forums with threads 21 pages long dedicated to the problem. Shows how special this game really is. It is really challenging, scary and the atmosphere extremely immersive. The voice acting is truly outstanding and the storyline and how it was told was engrossing. I fell in love with the first System Shock and this one surpasses that game. If you can find both, play them. But, you got to do alot to get to that point.

[Shannon]

Yeah I really miss looking glass. I need to pick up that game again. I played up to a certain point and stopped.

[joeybastard]

One of the reasons I've never been a huge fan of PC gaming is the amount of tweaking I need to do on some games. Granted, 95% of my games loaded and worked fine from day one but that last 5% really pissed me off sometimes.

[hex65000]

System Shock 2 is an incredibly good title. The only real hangup is that it has aged poorly in a graphical sense. Having graphics on par with the PS1 or Saturn. But yeah, while very different, it takes elements of a FPS, RPG, and survival horror to make a rather impressive title. I never did finish it. It's bloody hard and there's so much to check out that you almost have to play it multiple times to take proper advantage of the stuff you find.

 

My problem is that I'm a decent FPS player in that I like to level an entire area and then go exploring at my leisure. You can't do that too much in this game, nor can you build your character up evenly -- as I like to do, I'm always the jack of all trades player -- This approach makes some elements of the game insanely hard; where specialization will prevail overall.

 

Hex.

[ Wonders where his copy got off too. It's probably hiding with my missing Mr. Driller. ]

[+remowilliams]

System Shock 2 was a hell of a game, absolutely one of my all time favorites. One of the few games that actually gave me the creeps playing it (watching the ghosts of the station inhabitants). It was a bit difficult, especially if you gave your character the wrong mix of upgrades.

 

While I'm thinking about my all time faves - god I wish there was a Bioforge 2

[Shannon]

Yeah I think when I last played it I did ALOT of research on what attributes I needed to play it in the manner I wanted. Because it is the type of game where if you make some "wrong" decisions it can be harder than it needs to be.

[Clint Thompson]

This is one of those games I've always wanted to play and was looking forward to on the Dreamcas (which of course was never to be).... I don't have a PC (mac only right now and probably for a long time to come) so I'm unsure of my chances of every playing it really... sadly.

[bergbros2]

As a postscript, I bought an Xtasy 128 MB ATI Radeon Graphics card and wouldn't you know the game crashed again with an error message stating that the game wasn't compatible with the 3d drivers. I had to again reseach the problem and found that if you open up the cam.cfg file with notepad and add the line safe_texture_manager, the problem goes away. So, in total, I had to install with the run command with a suffix called -Lgntforce, Downloaded the official patch, Downloaded an additional patch to make the game run in XP, Set the affinity in the executable to run on only one CPU because of the hyperthreading problem and THEN had to go into the file and add a line to make the game run with the new graphics card. All to play System Shock. And I'm not even a computer expert. Still, it was worth it.

 

BTW the game has mods to improve the graphics. The graphics are better than PSX and they are not bad considering that the game is now six years old (!!). It still creeps the crap out of you, especially if you play with headphones and the ghosts especially the one which tells the story on how the cyborg mothers were made are really haunting. It is an exceedingly hard game, even at normal level because ammo is scarce and you got to specialize correctly. I play as a navy guy right now and I don't even attempt to put points into the Psi Traits. Some traits are really essential like hacking while others like reseach are less so.

[Great Hierophant]

There are only three changes to make to the game balance. First, spawns have to be toned down a bit. It gets silly once you kill the twentieth grunt in the same place. Logically the material (i.e. human hosts/crewmembers) has to have a limit. Second, weapons deteriorate far too quickly. Weapon quality shouldn't go down two points every time I unload a clip. Third, I install background texture packs because some are just too low in resolution but I stay away from monster packs because that is deviating too much from the intended look of the enemies.