Cynical

Cruelty Squad. Holy crap, this game rules, which I'd have never expected from a one-man indie thing praised by a lot of hipster sources!

Could well be; last time I played with Rebirth would have been over 15 years ago.

SS2 EE, from my understanding, is basically going to be SS2 + SHTUP + Rebirth without the topless Cyborg Midwives + improved multiplayer coop + VR support.

Going back to an older post here, but this bit from a 2018 Q&A is worth reading: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148660&p=2387992&viewfull=1#post2387992 "However, I approved the proposed changes in scope after receiving positive feedback and a verbal commitment from a publisher to fund the game and the new design we submitted. We promised a bigger, better game and we were told that the game was going to be funded beyond the amount we raised on Kickstarter. Unfortunately, that deal fell through 7 months later for reasons we are still not clear on. To put it bluntly, we were left high and dry after making crucial, consequential changes in staff and scope." In other words, we actually got confirmation from ND themselves that abandoning what was pitched in the KS to attract funding from a publisher was the goal. ND straight-up attempted a bait-and-switch on the backers, and we're *really* lucky that they didn't succeed (or that the project didn't die when they failed, which was the most likely outcome; the result we got might be the first evidence in recorded history to support the idea of a benevolent universe).

Prey (2017). An absolutely ridiculous masterpiece in the "Ultima Underworld/System Shock-like" genre, with far more player freedom and much better level design than any similar game.

System Shock 2 doesn't need a full remake the way SS1 did; its controls are perfectly modern. NewDark + SHTUP is all you need.

Check out Bloody Steel (especially map 02) and Monster Hunter Ltd. EDIT: Also Ultimate Torment and Torture.

The log that gives a lore explanation for the level design being "mazelike" is new in the remake (the original made no such attempts at explaining this), and is one of the few areas where I think the remake made a minor misstep. If you've ever been on a ship that's not specifically designed for tourists (like a cruise ship), you know the paths are cramped, convoluted, and mazelike; no explanation was necessary for this, it's just a completely needless bit of Fallout 2 in my System Shock lore. SS2's simplification goes beyond the level design itself, but also the mission flow through the levels. In SS1, there's nothing stopping you from going "off the rails"; get security low in Med, and then there's basically nothing stopping you from going wherever you want. You can find some fun tools early by searching lategame areas early (like exploring Maintenance ASAP for the laser rapier), you can choose what order to do most of the tasks in, you can choose whether to prioritize story objectives or exploration (should I head to Flight Deck ASAP or really explore Executive?), once you clear Flight Deck you can blaze your own path for pretty much the entire rest of the game... meanwhile SS2 makes you do the whole thing step-by-step just how SHODAN wants you to. "Turn on the power, go to engineering since it's literally the only place you can go, turn on the elevator, OOPS YOU GOT STUCK IN HYDRO LOL, do Hydro because you're literally forced to." Then you can do 4 and 5 in any order... and then it's back on the rails for the rest of the game. SS1's freedom is simply much more interesting. The only spots I can think of where you can get 4 or 5 enemies in one spot on a respawn are on Research, and that's actually a quest-driven event; complaining about those spawns would be like complaining about the spawn rate in SS2 if you get caught by a security camera. Read your logs more closely, one of them will tell you how to turn those spawns off. The character building mechanic both gives and takes, but ultimately it's a net detriment because it limits what they can do with the "Metroidvania"-ish aspects that SS1 had. SS1, by making character upgrades just things you find in the world, can put things behind the jump boot upgrades, it can create areas where the combat is insane if you don't have the enemy scanner, it can create areas where you need the environment protection upgrade to traverse safely, etc. SS2 doesn't have any assurances that you'll have a particular upgrade at a particular point in the game (or at all), and thus can't do any of this. It does add some juice to second and third playthroughs, but SS1's approach leads to a much richer first playthrough.

SS1 doesn't run out of different enemy types after the first couple of levels, though? I mean, you don't even see the first Cortex Reaver until halfway through the game, and you don't see most of the organic enemy types until the Groves. There's also enemy types that you see early but aren't supposed to actually fight until later, such as the invisible enemies on Maintenance, and enemies you've already seen start getting new weapons and behaviors later in the game. SS2 relies more on random spawns than SS1 does, actually! SS1 has a *lot* of hand-placed enemies and setpieces where Shodan taunts you and then triggers something, and will only start respawns once certain hand-placements have been killed. SS2 is mostly random spawns from the start, with very few hand-placed encounters. Also, in SS1, you can stop the random spawns on most floors if you explore adequately (Cyborg respawns can be stopped by dropping security on a floor to 0%, robot respawns can be stopped by turning off robot maintenance on Research), while in SS2, you can't. SS2's only real advantages over SS1, aside from interface/controls (which really *are* crap in SS1, and the remake fixes), are the excellent stealth mechanics it inherited from Thief (although you don't get as many chances to use them, since there's only a few rooms with deep shadows; the few areas where you do get to really use them are the highlights of SS2) and the lack of cyberspace (which some people would debate me on, but having a real-time risk-reward game that you can get attacked during is better than having to play a crappy version of Descent). Otherwise, SS1 is pretty much better in every way; less linear/handholdy, more interesting ways to play with and use the environment, better story/writing/lore, levels are larger and have fewer loading screens for a more "contiguous" experience, no endgame level-design quality collapse with the Rickenbacker/Body of the Many levels, etc.

https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=42010 The plan from the start was to use Kickstarter money to make something unrelated to pitch to AAA publishers. This plan failed, which is the only reason we got a faithful remake of the game in the first place.

Aside from the crap controls/interface, SS1 is a better game than SS2, though.

I've been playing this, and I have to say, I'm shocked it came out as well as it did. While I've got some minor quibbles (I hate how a couple of the new logs changed the lore), and it *still* is worse visually than the Kickstarter demo was (which is pretty amazing, given that the demo is almost 10 years old now!), it's pretty much what I'd have wanted out of the game -- a modernization of SS1's interface that preserves everything about it that was better than SS2. The early development was badly mismanaged, and it was *nearly* a fraudulent Kickstarter (except ND failed at committing the fraud they attempted, heh), but in the end, somehow the forces of good won out on this one and the System Shock license was treated well for the first time in almost 25 years!

Rhythm being natural for you was probably the difference; it took me months of practice before I got to the point where I could play riffs that weren't quarter notes in 4/4 time (or tremolo picked riffs where the note changes were on quarter notes) to a metronome. I've got very little rhythm naturally; as such, really studying rhythm was 100% required for me in ways that scales and chords weren't.

It's a glaring example of "fake depth". Because of the need to keep resources up, about 90% of the combat comes down to rotating cooldowns, as though it's a DOTA game instead of an action game. There's basically no actual decision making; "which special isn't on cooldown? Use that one." is basically the whole game. Vanquish (which Doom Eternal is not-at-all shy about ripping off) does the "shooter combined with character action" thing far better than Doom Eternal could ever dream of. What about games (such as the classic Doom games) where you don't have to kill every enemy to progress? Where resource management decisions actually exist because you can carry more than two seconds worth of resources? Where your choices on what ability to use are greater than "the one that isn't on cooldown?"

Learn how to hold the guitar and pick (and by that, I mean spend 30 seconds googling it), then learn some songs. You can (and should) learn some music theory later, but for now, just kindle the spark by learning some songs. Personally, I don't agree with this; understanding rhythm is far more crucial than knowing scales and chords. There's a lot of genres that only use power or barre chords and live in chromatic melodies, but you need to know rhythm for anything.

Border Down!!! <3 <3 <3

Kind of a niche map, but "Unreal Zero: Cats 2" for Unreal was basically a slaughtermap in Unreal.

If you're paying people for "years of experience", then Hellena Taylor shouldn't be making much -- her last role was in 2014, almost a decade ago. She hasn't worked since then. Bayonetta is literally the only high-profile role she's ever had. The "average" rate for a leading character VA is $200-$300 an hour, depending on how renown the VA is, and she's far on the low end of renown for a leading VA. She was given a reasonable offer, and is throwing a fit about it.

A "mere" $4000 dollars for 20 hours of work, lol. $200/hr is "abuse", lol. I guarantee you none of the people crying about how this is a starvation wage make anywhere near that much.

They refused to pay her a living wage? From the reports, she was going to do 5 sessions total (typical VA sessions are 4 hours, so that's 20 hours of work) to get paid $4,000. $4,000 for 20 hours of work is $200 an hour. Why the hell are we feeling sorry for someone who was offered "only" $200/hr?

Why would I boycott this? They wanted to pay a VA who hasn't done any work since Bayo 2 (which is almost a decade old now), who has very few VA credits to her name, a rate that's slightly on the low-ish side for leading VAs. She didn't accept; that's her prerogative, but she doesn't need to be a drama queen about it.

How do you make a Doom wad inspired by Battle Garegga? You can't add rank mechanics in any way I know of, unless you've got some really revolutionary voodoo doll trickery?

So, does that mean it'll have Pestov Platforms? :D

You obviously haven't played Vanquish. Doom Eternal is basically first-person Vanquish, but much worse.

Daikatana is a good game that got hated on for reasons entirely external to the game.