xhonzi said:
I'd actually kind of like to see System Shock rebooted and tied into the Bioshock universe.
How do you see that happening? I, shamefully, haven't played all of System Shock 1 or 2, but I have put a couple hours into each. I plan on finishing 2, so perhaps I don't want you to go into details yet.
Sounds like you are more on top of it than me.
After playing Bioshock for the first time, I tried to get both games to work on modern technology with little success. I finally just read synopses and youtube videos of each and decided that is all I needed of System Shock, but still really wanted to play System Shock 2 for myself. Over the course of a few years I've tried time and again to play System Shock 2 with varying degrees of success on different hardware I've had access to. Once I got it running pretty well, but it would still crash pretty frequently. It'd crash and I'd load it back up and keep going. I made it a few hours in, then one time upon reloading after a crash it would give me an error every time I tried to load my saves.
I'm sure I've wasted enough hours on trying to get these to work that I could have beaten them both at least twice.
System Shock 2 is now on Steam for Windows and Mac, I plan on getting it and beating it sometime, but I haven't felt like spending the money lately. Maybe it will go cheap in the next big Steam sale (it's only $10 now, I think).
1. I said the reviewers were jedi mink* mind tricking, not jedi mind tricked. It's the herd mentality amongst gamers, established in part by the reviewers, about the which I am complaining. If a game gets good reviews, it is good- who needs to make one's own opinion on such things?!? However, your complaint seems to be that they are giving less deserving games 90+ scores... perhaps the reviewers are often tricked as well.
2. Have you been playing Assassin's Creed? That is one of my favourite series this generation. I have III on the shelf just waiting for its turn to get played.
Yeah, remember when I played Assassin's Creed II? We talked about it a lot in this thread. I've dinked around a bit in Brotherhood and in Assassin's Creed III. They're fun games, but they are basically the same thing over and over again. When compared side by side with the Bioshock games, I don't think it would be fair for games like Assassin's Creed of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Flag should be found to deserve a higher rating than Infinite just because the AC game meets expectations of its full potential, because it didn't have much to begin with (basically 'introduce a few new features the last game didn't have'), but an ambitious game like BS:I that falls a little short of its potential should be deemed undeserving of its high rating.
It's kind of like having two sons. One who aspires to be a brain surgeon, and one who says he'd be content flipping burgers his whole life. Let's say the first one goes on to become a physician's assistant, falling short of his aspirations, but still being quite successful; while the other ends up being a region manager at Wal-Mart. The first son fell short of his potential and what he set out to be, and the second son rose way above expectations, but still works a pretty lousy low hanging job.
Would we be more proud of the second son who far overshot his sub-mediocre dreams for himself, while feeling like the physician's assistant son failed to reach the true potential he was genuinely capable of?
To a good degree, it does typically work that way. We'd consider the story of a bum who got over his bumminess and became self sufficient working a respectable job with authority over many others to be success story. "Good for him!" If the son with the ambition and the grades to be a surgeon had become a regional manager for a retail chain, we'd consider it a sad story of great failure. Even if he is ten times the manager his brother is. "That is such a shame. I wonder what went wrong?"
I think when we compare one game rating to another, we kind of come into this realm of varying standards. Each game is judged on its own merit. I think it would be impossible for a gaming site to coordinate its rating system to objectively encompass what is the really the best game out there. A 3DS game that gets a 9.5 probably isn't really better value than a console game that scored a 9.0. Yet so many people spit venom at gaming sites for their numerical ratings systems.
*I was going to give you crap for 'sells figures'. Since you didn't give me crap for 'jedi mink trick', I guess it's good I didn't. :)
I thought Jedi mink trick may or may not have been intentional, and it gave me a good laugh. As far as I am concerned, on OT.com's off-topic meta culture, they are "Jedi mink tricks" from now on.
"Sells figures" on the other hand... That's an embarrassing groaner of a typo. I would have let me have it in true classic Xhonzi fashion.