I tried playing this game a few years ago and put it down due to a mix of difficulty and stress. The exploration and level design were really quite great, and the atmosphere wasn't something I expected to be so modern for a game from 1999, very thrilling. I'm very happy to have played this game, it's another classic PC game that respect the players time and intelligence. Most of these are polish nitpicks, nothing substantial. More instances of animated characters who are alive would have been nice, otherwise it makes it feel as if the audio logs were a technical limitation, and while they were economical, I feel like there could have been more NPCs on the ship that you physically see. The power cell puzzles also didn't really happen more than twice and it feels weird that they were included at all. The ghosts were great atmosphere builders and I would have liked them to show up more. As for some other criticisms, I feel like there were some underutilized elements. And a similarly disappointing boss fight. The ending level gave me some Zen from Half-Life vibes. It's mostly just another way to hand you quests and get you moving to another objective. But the big twist didn't really lead to anything. The way you would often get details out of order was great. I loved some of the audio logs of the passengers of the ship dealing with the infestation of the "many". But it definitely adds to the balance issues. The weapon degradation system I'm of two minds about, most people don't like it but I'm not sure, I think it might have been a clever way to add more micromanagement tasks to keep the tension up while enemies stalk the hallways. Lot's of the early game is weird, but once you're a few hours into a playthrough everything settles in nicely. The RPG mechanics have issues, mostly with how you can mess up a character build early on. The inventory management is alright, lots of choices to make about what to carry. There's very little repeated ideas moment to moment and the game still ends up being quite large. The level design is tight while still allowing you to get lost, which is a hard balance to strike. The Van Braun is huge and you always feel like you can walk from one end of the ship to the other. Gameplay is still mostly in that "immersive sim" quality. The effects and polish is still impressive decades later, even if it probably isn't mixed as well as it could be today. Industrial fans and motor hums can be heard in the backgrounds of audio logs from people on the engineering level. Mutants cry out in garbled screams of their former selves saying "run away" as their bodies come running at you. The UI also looks great, with lots of function that doesn't get in the way of it's cool aesthetics. In other words, the graphics are better here. The Van Braun, in contrast, looks like a space station. Citadel station looked like a graphing calculator rendering of a wireframe hell. There's a focus on atmosphere through lighting and audio missing in it's predecessor. The shooting feels better, the audio logs are better acted, and the mission design is more streamlined. There *are* some issues with the RPG mechanics, but it's admirable the amount of systems they put into this game. And an overall more enjoyable experience, while still being challenging. System Shock 1 did this, but's it's more immersive here I think. Looking Glass Studios really didn't make any bad games huh? This one captures that immersive element of being stuck on a desolate space station while scavenging around for supplies and a path forward.
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