I just finished this game and rather enjoyed it. It was quite creepy and even scary at times, and the levels(at least on board the Von Braun) were HUGE. The plot was sufficently interesting, despite borrowing a lot from 2001 and ALIEN/ALIENS, as well as StarCraft(which itself borrowed a lot from ALIEN/ALIENS).
It did have some problems, namely, with the following aspects:
The weapons degrade far too quickly. I guess Gun makers in the 22nd century design and build really crappy guns that break after 100 rounds.
90% of the lights on the Von Braun don’t seem to work, there is nothing akin to a flashlight and while this is good for atmosphere, it’s pretty bad for navigating(I hated the cargo bays for this reason).
Shodan got on my nerves after a while. While I trust her/it as far as I can throw Tau Ceti(and thus know she’s only helping me as far as it furthers her purposes), it’s still rather annoying to have her/it saying “Why are you so slow?”. I’m slow because I’m trying to open all these damn locked doors and wade through these big, nasty monsters and military robots, as well as scavage for ammo and health supplies so I don’t die. Aside from the modules, I didn’t see SHODAN helping me by say…turning off any cameras or hijacking a military bot to help me out at all.
A lot of skills are useless or almost useless. Repair isn’t worth much at all. Modify is only worth the first level. Same with research(unless you want to play will all the alien gizmos). Maintence was artificially inflated.
This game was begging for a flamethrower of some kind.
Anyway, some comments and questions about the game.
Towards the end, you have to destory a couple shuttles because the aliens were loading them with eggs and preparing to launch them. Okay, and go where, exactly? Tau Ceti, if it’s still in range, is already infested, so that doesn’t make any sense. The only two ships around are pretty well infested as well. I guess it dosen’t matter, since I destroyed pretty much every egg on both ships, plus the shuttles.
Trioptium(I spelled that wrong) is a piece of work when I comes to ship design. They build a fairly comprehesive ship, with pretty much everything needed, plus a mall, a virtual brothal, a movie theater, a swimming pool(but no weight room), with advanced research and medical facilities. However, the engines and the coolent systems are messy and they only have enough escape pod cyro-tubes for 24 people to escape(6 per pod, 4 pods). I guess only officers and tri-op excutives would be saved.
With the above point, The officer quarters on the Command deck are rather…crappy and cramped(6-10 officers in a single room?), compared to the private apartments I saw elsewhere on the ship (Med-sci deck and Recreation Specifically).
4.The Navy seems to be even worse(or the programmers got lazy), considering I saw neither toliets or bunkrooms on the Rickenbacker(I guess Marines are expecting to piss out the airlock and sleep on cold, hard metal). And of course, an escape pod for only 6 people. Captain and Bridge officers, I guess.
Anyone want to comment on the ending? I thought I got rid of SHODAN…
I just remembered that Tau Ceti is still full of those creatures. Sounds like a setup for a sequel…that or the SHODAN/Rebecca thing.
Oh, the other thing that bugged me was, the game felt very linear at times.
Namely…“Okay, go here to find the keycard/code so you can get in here so you can get another keycard/code so you can open this door, etc, etc”. Decks 1-3 had this problem, while it seemed to open up a bit in Decks 4-6.
The degrading weapons was probably my single biggest complaint. A dumb and unnecessary attempt at “game balancing” that would have been better addressed by making ammo even rarer.
Well, the lights not working is obviously a side effect of the ship being wrecked. I thought there was some sort of light source you could carry with you, but maybe I’m thinking of the first one. Still, I didn’t really have too much of a problem with not being able to see stuff. You could always have cranked up the gamma setting, if it was that much of a problem.
Shodan is supposed to get on your nerves. She’s evil. But, she was also more fun in the first game.
I disagree about Research: it was one of the more useful skills in the game. Repair and maintenance were iffy, though. I also didn’t like the way they changed the way you rewired stuff: in the first game, rewiring locks and such were little logic puzzles. In the sequel, it was basically down to random chance based on how high your skills were.
Never though about it before, but you’re absolutely right.
Questions and comments:
Earth, I assume. The Von Braun was supposed to be the first FTL ship, right? If that’s the case, where else can they go? For that matter, where the hell do you go once you beat the game? A two or three century voyage home might be no problem for Space Alien Eggs, but I think it’d be a little hard on a human. For that matter, the first game took place onboard a spaceship orbiting Earth. How the hell did the bio-pod you jettisoned in the first game end up at Tau Ceti? Not only did it not have FTL engines, it didn’t have engines at all! Major plot hole in the game, unless I’ve missed something.
I guess if the ship is light years away from Earth and crippled to the point of being unsalvagable, it doesn’t really matter how many escape pods it had, does it?
Eh. Military ships are built with different purposes in mind than civilian ships. Nuclear subs have very little in common with luxury cruisers.
I noticed that too: the few levels after the Von Braun seemed very small and rushed, compared to the rest of the game.
Citadel was orbiting Saturn, I believe, but I didn’t have any engines. The grove was ejected at a decent velocity, but nowhere near the speed it would take to get to Tau Cet in 30 years(I’ve heard it qouted at 1/3 the speed of light). That is a bit of a plot hole.
The only half decent explanation I’ve heard that might explain it is that SHODAN may have used that “Reality Warping” power of the FTL drive to somehow create a wormhole that the grove would fall into 30 years ago and come out near tau ceti.
That has a lot of problems as well, but as I said, it explains how it could get there in time.
On the other hand, if the ship was cleansed at the end of SS2, all you’d need to do is figure out how to get the FTL drive working(actually, I think you already did that when you reset the narcelles and the core earlier), get the navigation system working, and set a course for earth. 6 months and then home. I’m sure there is enough food to keep you alive that long(or just get back in a cyro chamber). Even fixing XERXES would make it all pretty easy.
Well, if the pods on the Van Braun are anything like the one on the Rickenbacker, they would have cryo-sleep chambers, so they could remain frozen for the 30 or more years it would take(assuming the pod was headed the right direction…).
Yeah, but I’m talking about the officer quarters on the Von Braun(Command Deck). The Rickenbacker had no quarters that I could find at all(other then Diegos).
And Nuclear subs at least have bunks and toliets. The Rickenbacker appeared to have neither. Pretty bad considering there’s at least 120( I don’t know if that’s total crew or just marines) men on the Rickenbacker.
There was at least one crushed/blocked/mangled passageway on the first deck on the RB, as I recall. (guarded, ironically, by a pair of those ceiling mounted laser turrets) I’d presume a big chunk of the crew quarters were down thataway. Of course, it’s just a game, and all…
As for the skills in the game, I’ve found, the way I play the game anyway, that modify and maintenance were pretty useful. The fully modified assault rifle always becomes my weapon of choice as soon as I can lay my hands on it. Four Anti-Personnel rounds take down them big ole rumblers quick like, and two Armor Piercing rounds make short work of the… cyborg nannies, whatever they were called.
'Course, if you can find a pair of those Epstein devices, you don’t need the modify skill. But I hate lugging stuff around for 3/4 of the damn game.
Anyone ever make it successfully through the game relying (mostly, at least) on the Psi-Ops skills? I tried it once or twice, but it was just too alien to my style of game play.
The first time I beat it, I did with psi-ops. Some powerful abilities there. Particularly invisibility. And the higher level fire attacks were invaluable in the final level, when you’re fighting nothing but annelids. Having to equip the psi-magnifier to use my powers was lame, though. Would’ve been cooler if you could keep a gun drawn while using them.
That was pretty much my problem with it. If the power selection interface was a bit faster, say if you could set more than a couple of hotkeys for specific abilities, I’d have a better time with it.
With the assault rifle (or even the shotgun or pistol) it’s a one key press toggle, to switch between the three ammo types. If you run into, ferexample, a rumbler, a pair of cyborgs, and a heavy robot, it’s fairly simple to pepper the rumbler with “red” ammo, then switch to “green” and hose the rest down in rapid fire, dodging like a madman all the way.
But again, that’s me. I’m too twitchy, I guess, to accurately use that power meter for the psi abilities, in combat. I end up having to lob a dozen low powered shots, or burning myself out three or four times, trying to bag a badguy.
[sub]Or trying to telekinetically grab the badguy three times before I realize I missed cryokinesis on the power selection thingie.[/sub]
My approach to weapon modification is usually to take only a level or two in the skill. When I wanted to modify something, I’d put on the Expertech mod and then modify the weapon to level one. If I wasn’t skilled enough to mod it to level 2, it was time to break out the Epstein’s. The extra ammo capacity or damage most weapons give you is really useful. The shotgunmodifications, on the other hand…
So I don’t really think the skill’s useless, but I’d never put 6 points into it.
As for going through as a psionicist, I’ve done it; on the highest difficulty, of course. In fact, I’ve gone through the game without ever putting a skill point into a weapon. I’ve played the game far too much and am quite handy with the wrench. It’s really hard going early. The cargo bays are even more hellish than before because you’re so helpless against the robots and turrets, but I did manage to get in and out without equipping a gun. After that, you start picking up enough modules that you can get good abilities. Invisibility and localized pyro is cool. Actually, invisibility is just plain cool.
For bonus points, try doing psi without weapons and no psi hacking until Shodan. Now there’s a challenge.
Oh! The OP!
Comments:
I agree the weapons degrade too quickly. It was purely a game balance mechanism that was really annoying at times. If nothing else, it provides incentive to get some minor psi abilities in the form of anti entropic field.
I don’t have a problem with the lights being out so often. The ship was supposed to be falling apart.
Plus, you might not jump out of your seat as high if it were warm and well lit.
I wish they hadn’t given Shodan the ability to give you modules and just increased the number you could find. Considering you were her avatar (there’s a nice juxtaposition), shouldn’t she do her damndest to be sure you stop the Many. As it is, I keep thinking I should ask Shodan for a small loan of modules. “Y’know, Sho, this Rumbler is really tough. If I had just two more modules, I could pick up pyrokinesis and waste the fella. How about a small loan? I mean, you’re gonna reward me with something like 20 modules when I get by the fella, right?” Instead, she’s just stingy and complains way too much. I usually lose it somewhere around her line:
“You’re too slow. Do you think this is some sort of game?”
Answers:
The eggs could be going anywhere. It really doesn’t matter. One shuttle may be bound for Earth in an attempt to take it over. The other may be bound for some unknown planet as a backup plan and left to grow for a thousand years. The Many is patient and could wait for the shuttles to arrive at their destinations at sub-light speeds. The material from the grove survived a long space flight; I imagine the eggs could too.
2,3,4) The designers left out an easy out for complaints about the ship’s layout. By making a few of the dead end passages blocked by wreckage or adding a few bulkheads you couldn’t open due to decompression on the other side, the designers could have implied that anything left out of the design was on the other side. As it is, there aren’t enough unreachable sections. I suppose the blocked off section at command may account for some officer’s quarters, but not everything.
It’s a good thing I’m too busy clubbing zombies and running from protocol droids to notice most of the time.
The explanation I like the best (I think I heard it first on the Looking Glass boards) is that Shodan had worked herself into the cyberware Rebecca found. In one of her logs she makes note of some stuff she found and stashed in the storage facility where a red assassin hides and crates fall from above. It may also imply you are vulnerable, though I doubt you’re infected. It seems a little tacked on to me, but I think they were trying to set up the sequel.
Yes, the planet is still infected. I wish they had left off the “Shodan Lives!” aspect of Rebecca and used the fact that the AI fragment and the annelids are still on the planet as the basis for a sequel.
Ok, now you’ve got me. What was borrowed from Starcraft that wasn’t in Alien (or at least Warhammer 40K) first? It would be nice to find SOMETHING in Starcraft that wasn’t either blatantly stolen or a reference to something. (And no fair comparing Shodan to Kerrigan, as she has considerable seniority)
Yeah, pretty much no one liked this. A perfect example of a pretty good idea with awful implementation. Note that nothing else you can use degrades, especially armor . . .
With all the Thief-engine games, I had to turn the gamma WAY UP to see anything at all. I think it was a graphics-card issue, you might have gotten the same.
Actually, I loved her running comments, especially the insulting ones after you ‘find out’ who she is.
Yup. And the alien weapons, once you spent all those upgrades getting them, were awful, except the sword-thingy, and there was almost no ammo for them.
The late levels were pretty weak in general, I thought. Especially that horrible ‘jumping’ room with the ‘teeth.’ The reality/virtual mix part was done pretty well, though.
What surprised me most was how erratic the voice acting was. Most of it was pretty good, some (that commander guy, Shodan, a couple others) were exceptional, but some of it was utterly deadpan (the female half of the ‘romance’ couple)
No good enemy from a computer game EVER really dies. Actually, most of the bad ones come back for more, too. The Dr. Wily effect.
–
‘Bio-neural?! Those things have a dangerous self-preservation instinct! What if it was activated?’
Well, the life cycle of the Many seemed be more reminicent of Starcraft then Aliens. Particulary it was the whole feeding bodies into the bio-mass to produce eggs for different creatures.
That and the worm carpenting reminded me a bit of the “Creep”.
Tell me about it. I Spent part of the game carrying around an extra set of combat armor, ready to put it on when the first one wore out.
I finally did that on the Rickenbacker.
I wonder if they were added at the last minute. The Von Braun had great level design, and then it starts slowely going downhill when you get to the Rickenbacker.
I hated the teeth and the damn radioactive pools.
I know. It just seems kind of stupid considering there’s an entire planet full of those damn things and possibly another SHODAN incarnation as the Many (“Babies Need Sleep…”).
SHODAN had a lot more personality with then the Many or XERXES((Xerxes seemed to have been lobotomized).
They found a decent enough way of reiviving SHODAN here, but it works better when it’s a suprise and not a given. And it just gets comical after a while to have the same villian over and over again who won’t completely die.
