Now, what you have to understand about this game is that it takes a generally accepted gaming genre and scenario and flips it on its head in a way you dont expect. The early level layout is something that someone like Alucard would probably be able to moonwalk his way through in its entirety in around five minutes with his only concern is having to convince the maid to work late that evening to help clean the blood of his victims off of his fancy shirt. But instead of a glorious example of stunning manhood, you get to control Dave from the mailroom. You know, Dave, that guy who probably worked out a few times a week in his thirties but now is spending his days eating reheated KFC from yesterdays dinner, head down trying to keep out of the way of HR for the last few months before his retirement? Now imagine that guy, thrown into a strange dark labrynth (that doesnt have any filing cabinets), and then hand him a three foot long pointy metal bit, and see how long he goes before he ends up split in half by a flying axe. Or lit on fire by a fireball. Or impaled by a poleaxe. Or, well, you get the idea.


The entire idea behind this, I think, is the vast crushing weight of putting an average-ish man in a hopeless situation and see how long it takes before the crazy comes home to roost. I could talk about the philosophy and reference people and things, but thats not really what this review is about, so Ill skip the academics here, and instead focus on the gameplay. Now youll see a lot of reviews saying that the controls in this game are ♥♥♥♥. Well its not really that the controls are ♥♥♥♥, its more that these controls remind people playing that there is no possible way they could swing a heavy sword over and over and not get tired. What the controls are is predictable. Dave swings his sword slower than a diabetic puts down a candybar, but the timing is consistent. The game rewards patience and accuracy, with a particular emphasis on understanding how enemies move and timing your plodding strikes to just squeak inbetween their swings. Not something typical in a Metrodvania, but its an atypical piece I rather enjoy.


That doesn't mean its not infuriating, however. Even with unlimited respawning, dying over an over in the same hallways to the same axe swinging armored tosser will become almost painful, and the fact that just behind that particular tosser is likely another tosser with a slightly different attack patter that youll likely die to just makes the experience more hopeless. Add to that the fact that all the enemies respan when you do, and its a recipe for your own personal hell.


All in all, I highly recommend this game, but that being said I am a bit massochistic, so read into that what you will. I think this one will be a solid example of an interesting way to remake Nintendo Hard for the new Indie generation, and I congratulate Pathless Games for paving a new road to hopelessness for many many gamers.


Recommendation: Buy. Also perhaps buy some antidepressants.

Date: 2/18/16
Review Number: 20
Game: System Shock 2
From (Creator Publisher): Irrational Games/Looking Glass Studios
Played On: Steambox (w/ Controller)
Steam Price as of Review: $9.99
Total Time played: 35 minutes
Review:

Time to take another trip down gaming lane, picking out a random door to knock on and run away giggling while the owner comes to the door with a shotgun to chase me away. This time the random house happens to belong to System Shock 2, the critical darling of 1999 and FPS RPG of legend. This one had already seen a good number of hours of playtime both in and out of my Steam collection, however they had long since been removed, so I was working with a new install and a new game, which was just as good, because it appears that I have completely forgotten how to play.
Now, I will say that I do remember why I really enjoyed this game after playing for the thirty five minutes I moved through for this review. The gameplay is unique, implementing both standard first person shooter elements and RPG elements seamlessly, the storyline is fantastic and complements the story perfectly without becoming too intrusive, and the controls somehow manage to incorporate a lot of technical data in as direct a way as possible (though I will say a lot of button remapping needed to be done to the steam controller before all the possible combinations were covered. This one may be a mouse and keyboard only sort of game for any long term playing). The graphics, especially in the character models are significantly dated, but it doesnt vastly interfere with the game, and after some digging I believe improved models have been released, which should mitigate some of that. But really what makes this game so worth playing is that the whole thing is tied together in a cohesive way that is missed in a lot of games that have been released since. Many games focus on a single point or two and focus on them often to the exclusion of everything else (see most of the AAA titles that focus so much on graphics that they ignore everything else) but this game takes the entire experience of playing as a cohesive whole, and brings together all the pieces to make a story, writing, sound, graphics, gameplay, and everything else. In the end, any trip to nostalgia FPS lane would be incomplete if this game was missing. Definite buy!

Game’s Fate: Uninstalled, really just because I’ve played it enough times to not want to get into it again.
Buy/No Buy: Totally worth buying. A game that takes some of the best aspects of FPS games and RPGs and puts them together.