I’m not trying to say that those titles are totally without merit or that we’re only repeating others' opinions, just that maybe most echoes going around might be the result of a little Danger Mouse effect. You know about the Danger Mouse effect, surely? From your childhood it’s your most loved early Saturday morning cartoon, equally cherished and adored by others you mention it to (who remember those days). However, upon watching Danger Mouse again today you will no doubt quickly realise it’s the most nonsensical pile of piffle you’ve ever laid your eyes on. A secret agent mouse with an eye patch who lives in a post box? Come on, really. So I worry from time to time that my unchallenged devotion to System Shock 2 might also be on shaky foundations. I was, of course, much younger and much less wise to the intricacies that go into making a truly first class video game. More then this though, I’m sure the graphics would be laughable by today’s standards, the game play dynamics would have been studied thoroughly and improved upon since then and I’m sure I’ve heard more chilling moans from the dimly lit distance of abandoned space ships. I’d best take another look, just to be sure.
CRICKEY!!! This still scares 7 shades of top soil out of me. After about 10 minutes in I’d saved the game about 20 times and managed to walk about 4 meters through the ship. Progress was going to take some time unless I grew some stones fairly quickly. Aside from dimly lit corridors and the sense of isolation (occasionally interrupted by your back seat driver friend who drip feeds you cyber modules when you’ve been good), I believe it’s the level design that’s most responsible for the new colour scheme decorating your pants. It’s claustrophobic, features many corpses that have been discarded in the most uncomfortable of circumstances and some very disconcerting noises coming from almost every area of the ship. Also, a significant portion of the terror can be put down to your character being about as hard as a lattice of rice paper. He is, essentially, a copy of your average IT admin: great technical and hacking skills, likes hanging out in dark rooms with only the odd little flashing light for comfort and immediately pisses himself and dies at the slightest inkling of confrontation. Oh, he also likes to fiddle with himself due to a fetish for the latest upgrades. What was it Tyler Durden said about self-improvement? Anyway, the sense of feebleness is only further increased by your only reliable weapon being a wrench, the fact he manages to break every gun after a few shots and his main special ability is shooting snow flakes from his hands. Interesting how they swapped snow flakes for bees in Bio Shock.
To begin with this was all fine and marvellous, and I thought to myself: “Well done chaps, this environment has certainly given me the willies.” As time pressed on, though, other thoughts started to creep in, like “What the feck have they made this gun out of, potatoes?”, and, “How the hell did anyone actually live on this ship without some bread crumbs and a months supply freeze dried SAS rations”. By having a gun that jams while a bunch of hybrids (zombies to everyone else) chew on your arse, the game immediately dampens the fear factor a little (further reduced by you dying all the time), replacing it with a bit of pure rage. Even if this might seem to some to be excellent game dynamic, where’s the explanation? If I’d been told from the start that all the weapons you’ll find are going to be made from Styrofoam, then, at least the game world would have remained a little more intact for me. This is balanced out by letting you upgrade your repair skills which will allow you to fix various weapons. All perfectly reasonable, and I’m sure I’d need a few night classes before I could do the same but I fail to see why he needs an upgrade to actually use these guns. What’s he upgrading? The length of his index finger? This brings me onto the level design. The layout of most the decks are superbly considered from a gameplay perspective. You have to be as carefull when you tackle enemies as you do with the rest of the ship. Almost every room is a small puzzle that can be engaged in in many different ways depending on your skills at the time. In creating these labyrinths full of fear and puzzles, however, what seems to be lost is the sense that this is a layout of a real ship because it looks more like a mangled submarine. Other games have pulled this off by starting out with a convincing layout only to introduce an abundance of locked doors that not even a shotgun can get through (you know what game I’m talking about). At least here they could have just been welded up, perhaps as the crew tried the seal themselves off from the body snatching invasion. This would have fitted in nicely with all the other ripped off elements from Aliens – of which there are many.
At the end of the day it’s all too easy to grumble about inconsistencies between the realities video games create and their gameplay - not to mention futile. Very few games seem to care about this sort of thing and - if you believe in sales figures - very few players do either. I suppose as long as the game play is solid and the environment is engaging then it does not really matter. In System Shock 2’s case it certainly excels on both these counts and many more. So I guess it’s safe for me to continue holding up SS2 with such unwavering praise then? Well, if you consider that its failures continue to plague very many games today whereas its successes are only bettered by very few, then yes, I guess I still can. I’ll just have to keep in mind that it’s not perfect, to be wary of the Danger Mouse effect and to make sure I never sit down to watch Thunder Cats (ho).
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