If you listen carefully to the "Why do you go so slowly...?" message "Polito" sends you on deck three (as heard at 6:49), you can hear just a little taste of the electronic distortion that SHODAN's later speech is swimming in. It's a nice touch that SHODAN is getting so impatient with you that the mask slips a little.
I remember getting to that part when I first played SS2 and thinking "hmm, that's weird". I had been assuming, up until that point, that Shodan was going to make a sudden surprise entrance into the plot by killing Janice Polito as she was talking to me over the comms, then taking her place. Which was almost correct, technically! But after that little mask-slip moment in Hydroponics I started to wonder why Polito was acting so impatient and callous while supposedly being the one to help me out of this mess. Then I think I asked myself "Wait, how does she even know how fast I'm going? Is she watching me all the time...even though I always disable the security system whenever I enter a new area?!" After that point I figured something crazy was gonna happen at any minute. I felt pressured to hurry up and only got more concerned when finally entering the hallway to Polito's office on Ops...when the normally omnipresent music suddenly vanished into dead silence. The perfect "uh-oh" moment that I love to experience in video games.
I'm certain someone has already mentioned this, but people have made their own master servers for dedicated Unreal Tournament servers even before the delisting, so that torch is still being kept alive, just, in a bit more of an unofficial capacity. Also I'm reminded of how there's probably a ton of people who think the Unreal Tournament callouts originated from Counter-Strike or even DOTA 2 of all games.
Y'know, mechanically BioShock Infinite IS kind of a Halo game. Though admittedly closer to Combat Evolved, since while you're stuck with the two-weapon limit, your health is regenerating shields and static health. As for the soldier just going "nah" in SS2, I thought it was hilarious. Admittedly it would've worked a little better if this was Space Quest, with the "nah" coming from the likes of Roger Wilco, but blowing off a would-be god with the same tone you'd use for turning down the offer of a cigarette? That's still pretty fun.
@@TheEvilCheesecake For all the talk of ”Halo clones” I've never seen a single game that actually works similarly to Halo mechanically in a meaningful level. Sure, they have the *surface* of Halo, like CoD copying the 2-weapon thing… but nothing have recreated that combat dance you got with the bungie Halo titles (or even some of 343 ones). I find it strange, we have boomer shooters that are inspired by Doom and other 90s fps, and we have the Half-Likes… we even recently had a F.E.A.R inspired one in Selaco. But Halo-inspired? Absolutely nothing. I find it kinda baffling, surely there's a market?
@@torb-noThere was Splitgate but that died when Halo Infinite released and it never quite nailed the feel of Halo. There’s not one thing that makes a Halo game feel like Halo. It’s many different things working in tandem.
@@sergioizzaqt7707 In the multiplayer realm I think Splitgate is very much what I’m taling about! I’m not looking for exact clones, just games that sort of truly are of the same FPS subgenre (Halo-likes if you will). What I’m missing though, is something truly like that in the single player campaign side of things. Hopefully we’ll see something in time.
@@wgerardiIndeed, I find this recurring criticism rather bemusing. It implies that black & white didactism is somehow more "mature" and desirable than attempts (however clumsy) at philosophical examination.
You guys are missing the point. It's not an issue of "clumsily" attempting philosophical examination, it's an issue of lazily GESTURING at the idea of philosophical examination without actually DOING that. It's a way of feeling smart and freethinking by giving you two cartoonish extremes that are obviously bad, all while contriving to show them as symmetrical no matter how asymmetric they are, by letting you reject black both black and white for a perfect medium grey. Which isn't philosophy, it's fingerpainting. It doesn't deserve points for trying to be philosophical, because it's not doing that. It's trying to look philosophical without actually saying anything, which is the opposite of philosophy. If you're gonna put two sides into a dialectic, you need to actually put on your grownup writer pants and make something of it, rather than going "This side bad... but - other side bad also? Both bad, extremes bad, not-extremes good".
@@jamesnomos8472 I think you are assuming Ken's goals are loftier than they actually were. Do you think he was trying to be deep and philosophically profound? Seems more like he was just trying to make a fun game with some interesting hypotheticals pushed to their extreme-- to me the story is meant to be cool sci-fi to provoke thought. If we were really supposed to take all of it seriously as some sincere philosophical juxtaposition would the hero's only line really be "nah" ? -- maybe you are asking for more, which is fine, but look at it for what it is also. In the 90's wasn't the idea of an AI overlord vs. singularity/combined-human-consciousness pretty original and smart on its own?? Correct me if I'm wrong. I didn't play this game until '09 and I thought it was a super interesting idea- I've spent many a night awake in bed thinking about it not necessarily in the context of the game.
My parents were huge wheel of time fans so I’ve read the first nine books and we owned the game. It was solid, all of the places, fluff, and mechanics pull straight from the source material. The game takes the setting and invents a plot and characters to create its own story in it so things like angreal, the ways, and the white tower all exist in the setting fairly close to how it’s represented, but almost all major characters and events only exist in the game to let it explore many of the most interesting locations.
Interesting that they chose a member of the Brown Ajah as the protagonist of a fps game. I get not a Green, since there was no way a game from that era would have handled Warder companions well (and a Green *should* have more than one Warder). But wouldn't a Blue make more sense?
@@orestes0883It’s actually a clever plot point to justify the ammo system. Instead of a mana system or letting her create weaves on demand they use specialized ter’angreal, allowing them to limit what actions the player has access to. Plot wise the main character can’t channel much, so instead became an expert in using various ter’angreal thus brown Ajah. It works much like Doom, with some levels resetting your “weapons” and providing specific options for certain puzzles and combat encounters.
@@karry299 its interesting that you say that, because while culturally women are dominent, it also portrays them as at fault for many of the mistakes and misunderstandings of the series.
Honestly: yeah, the ending of System Shock 2 is silly, but it's not *that* much of a letdown. The whole game is pretty silly, with it's telepathic monkeys, clunky robots that go clank and 3D printed ninjas. It's cyberpunk, but it's cyberpunk by way of 1950s pulp (the transatlantic english accent in the intro is a dead giveaway). It's kinda like how Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers goes from political manifesto to talking dogs and jetpacks.
Oh my god you're so right about that! You've put a feeling I've had about SS2 for years into plain English, thank you. I can't believe I never made the connection with Starship Troopers cheese, but it makes total sense. The corporate megalomania of the world in SS1 was the quintessential setting one would expect in a cyberpunk story. But of course the sequel takes place decades later when the balance of power has shifted. The world's nation states have confederated under the UNN and tightened control over private enterprise. It makes sense that the genre of SS2 would be less cyberpunk, and more military sci-fi futurism, akin to Starship Troopers, Aliens, or Wing Commander.
@@icarus313 It's so frustrating for me. SS2 is such a fun, vibrant action horror game and people talk about it like it was scifi ARMA, written by Cormac McCarthy.
Idk man I was absolutely friggin scared of the monkeys when I first played. They were so hard to spot so you relied on listening how their sound turned from cute to this unhinged anger, and I find this transition absolutely terrifying, as if your sweet cat that you love suddenly decided to murder you. Even recently I had a nightmare when my cat turned into a zombie, and killed everyone in the house who thought poor little guy was just sick and tried to help...
For me, what helps to mitigate the "both sides are bad" element is that Shodan (more or less) created the Many. I've always seen them as somewhat of a victim. Shodan created them and lost control, because she's a narcissist who thinks she can't fail, just like she created you the player and eventually loses control of you. Shodan's failing is that she underestimates other beings. When the Many aren't trying to kill or subdue you, I feel like they do see some kinship with our shared predicaments. Whereas Shodan is a liar, I think the Many were being honest. For that reason, I don't see the player as being the mediator at all. The Many were a tragic consequence of Shodan's hubris, and they're also really dangerous. Those aren't incompatible to me.
It's been a while but I always thought they found the many in space and it infested the ship. Didn't know that the machine mother created them. Well the name should have given it away lol. Well here I go play it again
Kind of like how everything Fontaine did in _BioShock_ was only possible thanks to Ryan creating the perfect environment in which his "business enterprise" could thrive.
The whole "enlightened centrism bad" rhetoric is just as cartoonish as the video says Ken Levines depictions of libertarianism vs authoritarianism/individualism vs collectivism are. The whole point is that any ideology can be taken to disastrous extremes.
@@eatersthemanfool centrists are just people with no morals or beliefs, you either think killing babies is wrong in every situation or you don't, you either support socialists like hitler and stalin and mao and their genocides or you don't.
I fell off the series about eight books in because the writer would introduce characters, forget about them for a few books, then bring them back in and I was just supposed to remember them after hearing nothing from them for literal years.
Wheel of Time was just... not good. You could tell they put a lot of work into it, but the actual FPS combat was laughably clunky and you ended up with WAY too many magic powers, most of which you might use once and then never again.
The "tower defence mode" in the Wheel of Time FPS does not feature much in the main campaign at all, but it's the main focus of the multiplayer game, where each side can place defences and guards in their fort, then try to defend their fort while infiltrating the enemy fort.
I had to take a double take on that ending cut scene for when you defeat SHODAN, cus I almost thought it was a gag about a meme made by someone in like the early 2000s as a shit post... and not the real cut scene cus oh boy that feels like a shit post animation
RE: Alien Versus Predator being a "labour of love" - if the fact that all the Marines are British didn't already give it away, they didn't have any actors... all those video calls are literally the game's developers having a root through the fancy-dress bin and playing soldiers themselves!
@@karry299 It's more that the lack of funds showcases the labour of love itself; because then you learn that the team couldn't afford to get anyone else on board for a given component...and decided that they cared enough to just do it themselves.
Presumably that's because the interactions would have to be entirely scripted so that the game's systems don't implode, which would go against the "systems driven" philosophy. The other (equally likely) explanation, is that having the factions dynamically fight each other would undermine the player's role as the "prime agent".
@@RunePonyRamblings Even if that *did* kinda go against the traditional im-sim design philosophy, a modern game focused on de-centering the player as the prime agent and throwing them into a dynamic, systems-driven war zone between multiple factions, where they're just a small part of the overall picture sounds like it would still be pretty cool to experience imo
It's good too see someone talking about System Shock 2 in a genuine way, no blind praise like it's an untouchable cult gem. It has plenty of flaws, and I'm looking forward to a truthful analysis of Bioshock later in the series too. As usual, excellent essay.
It’s fascinating how Ken Levine’s ideas from his earlier games are still popping up in his newer work - just depends on what he wants his team to spend time and resources expanding on. That bit early in this video about Shodan docking you cybermodules for disobeying her, and how Shodan and The Many are constantly on your ass throughout the game either giving you orders or trying to sway you to their side of their conflict seems like the dynamic that Ghost Story games is pushing now in Judas, or at least what they’re presenting to media in the initial gameplay previews. In Judas, you’ve got the three different AI leaders, each with their own agendas, and completing missions for one AI / going against certain members will result in rewards or punishment, though I wonder how dynamic or in-depth this system will be in the full release.
One of the reasons I didn't vibe much with system shock 2 but loved the first system shock is their different approaches to level design. In the first system shock citadel station's different floors had a wide variety of aesthetics to them. The executive floor looked like a gaudy luxurious 1970's NYC hotel, the maintenance areas looked industrial, the medical bay looked sterile and the garden's naturalism contrasted well with the otherwise artificial ship. Entering an elevator and going to a new floor felt exciting because you had no idea what it would look or feel like. It also did a lot of world building and thematic stuff. We know the people in charge of citadel station were self serving jerks who didn't really like working on a space station but used their power and influence to give themselves a sense of exclusivity and luxury because the executive level is a decadent well lit palace compared to the rest of the ship which was more gloomy and utilitarian. The medical bay looks competent but is cold and sterile suggesting a indifference to worker's well being and the investment in sophisticated medical facilities was solely a pragmatic decision to keep employees alive and working. The gardens look like they were well maintained and controlled but are now becoming more wild and abrasive due to Shodan's influence. With System Shock 2 everywhere on the Von Braun looks essentially the same. The spaces have the same sanitized generic sci fi space ship aesthetic to them. Occasionally a space will break from the aesthetic but even then nothing feels lived in the way the first game did.
The take on Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament misses for me a couple of key items. First is that this was the peak of the single-player bots brought about by Quake's modding scene. While Unreal Tournament would develop its bots further in future editions, they would fall out of fashion in FPSs as broadband became the norm. Second is that Unreal Tournament marks a key shift in the FPS market towards team games over deathmatch, also represented by the success Counterstrike was going to garner during its beta this year. Quake 3 would be seen as almost dated in its approach, responding with Quake 3 Team Arena (Q3TA) the following year. Unreal Tournament was also one of the first games to do what we'd now call "free DLC" with a sizeable release of new maps for all its mods, prior to the release of Q3TA. It's an early example, though not the first, with Total Annihilation's unit releases being the earliest one that I recall.
I agree with this. I also felt that he missed the point of things like the mishmash of weapons and levels. If I remember right, the in universe reason is that the Liandri megacorporation makes these crazy outlandish arenas for televised deathmatches. So that everything has a lot of flair to it makes sense to me. And it is a lot of fun too to see what the next crazy deathmatch arena is going to be like when playing for the first time. I mean why wouldn't an evil megacorporation with near infinte money make deathmatch arenas based on historical events and themes? I think it is awesome nonetheless and a very memorable game from my childhood that I still play from time to time.
A new Children of Doom is always to be celebrated, even if it directly contradicts the stated format. Fuck the rules! All is chaos! Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!
I think you’ll change your opinion on swat3’s legacy once you get to swat4 and all of its minor details. Enviromental storytelling, thick atmosphere, non-lethal instruments, score system that actually encourages you to do it in non-lethal way. Swat3 may be wish fulfillment for cops if you look at it at this angle, but 4 is a different beast with different focus despite mechanically being kinda the same. And later games like Ready or Not are more swat4 followers than 3
The way the events of RoN are framed feels particularly sober: Los Sueños is a barely pessimistic depiction of failing LA whose decay is caused by larger factors, and beyond the scope of what policing can address, there is no pretense of saving the world. The force you are a part of is depicted as under-funded and outpaced by rampant crime in a context of desperate economic upheaval, and you contend not just with your squad mortality but also other forms of trauma. One mission turns out to be a swatting incident, where nobody was at risk and it's actually our presence that may trigger a gunfight. Obviously a game where you play as police officers isn't going to scream ACAB and "defund police!" from the top of its lungs, it's by nature going to justify policing institutions existing to a degree, but it doesn't frame them as the fix to society's ills. True success in this game isn't to merely bring order to chaos, it is to get everyone out alive, so someone else, not cops, can sort it out.
@@kevinwillems8720 I mean the game fails you all the same for killing someone with less lethal force, and flavour text warns about this. Less lethal is not unrealistically reliable like it was in SWAT4. I think that makes it far less of a fantasy!
I feel the need to defend SWAT 3. I am as opposed to militarized police as the next guy, but it does seem weird to criticize a game where you play as a SWAT officer for starting from the premise that SWAT teams are sometimes needed. 1. None of the missions cited are part of the base game or the campaign. They were added with the Tactical Game of the Year edition and are noticeably lower quality than the main levels - as well as a lot more stupid. 2. True, the use of deadly force is not strictly discouraged, but limiting it is absolutely encouraged. The game gives you points and awards you Unit Commendation medals based on not killing people who don't pose a threat - it also won't award you other medals if you've killed folks you needn't have. 3. The game does a few very cool things with proper use of deadly force: A) You're supposed to yell at suspects to drop their weapon BEFOREHAND, otherwise it is typically not proper use of deadly force (unless they are shooting). A surprised or outnumbered suspect will often surrender. B) Even if the suspect is holding a weapon, it is only proper use of deadly force if they actually raise their weapon (very much not the case in the real world). C) The damage you deal seems to be randomized, so shooting someone in the leg will sometimes kill them. D) Civilians are sometimes armed and they need to be restrained. They sometimes refuse to give up their weapon or shoot at you - giving lie to the ridiculous "good guy with a gun" fantasies. 4. I really liked the fact that the mission briefings usually included pretty sketchy intel. No being sure what exactly to expect made it seem more realistic. "Bring order to chaos" is a real thing in mass shooting situations, that's literally what SWAT teams should do - not shoot dogs when responding to noise complaints. 5. SWAT 3 did an incredibly cool piece of storytelling - so cool that most of its players are unaware of it and it's not mentioned on it's wiki. Towards the end, suitcase nukes appear, but it's never made completely clear how the bad guys would would have gotten their hands on them. Then in the last mission, there is this civilian, the Secretary of Defense. He is sometimes already wounded, sometimes not, and when he isn't he's armed and might be hostile towards the player. There is a suitcase nuke in that mission, typically not far from where he is. It would seem like the Russian bad guy faction placed the nuke there. But if he's wounded and you listen to his moaning, he'll repeat the phrase "that treaty must be stopped" - suggesting HE was the one who'd gotten and planted the nuke there. The game does not acknowledge this in any way, it simply rewards you for paying attention with a hidden plot twist. I played SWAT 3 A LOT as a kid. It is better than SWAT 4 in almost every way, especially suspects' and your teammates' behavior. I never felt it was selling me on the necessity of using deadly force, quite the opposite. It encouraged not killing the suspects, especially compared to the Rainbow Six games where killing was your only option. The main issue with the game gameplay-wise was that the team AI worked well in short hallways and small rooms - so the game included lots of missions with very long hallways, open spaces and very large rooms. The AI didn't know how to handle it, so you basically had to go it alone, with your team as back up.
@@Nipah.Auauau I meant that "a good guy with a gun" is always considered a threat first. In a mass shooting situation, law enforcement cannot tell who the good guys and bad guys are. Sometimes, in the game, the "good guys" will shoot at you. Other times, hostages will die in the crossfire between the suspects and armed civilians, failing the mission. They are rarely a benefit, always a hazard.
I agree with you. I sort of grew up with SWAT 3 and thought it was great at the time. I love the little details like the section of the game where you have almost like an encyclopedia of detailed text about all your gear, tactics and other explanations of why SWAT teams do what they do. The AI was amazing in some ways even compared to some games today. And other times they were a bit more limited in some levels, which along with the brutal difficulty usually leads to a much larger killcount than you'd like. But I think that is just that late 90's experimental game design. To me I always try to save as many suspects as possible, and a mission turning into a bloodbath is usally the players fault for not using superior tactics. Which is what SWAT is all about in both the games and real life. And yeah, the added missions are really weird how much of a tone shift there is from the original campaign. Almost like they were made by modders or a very amateurish dev team.
@@Apolita1987 So a scenario where an armed civilian will intervene in a hostage situation after the police are already on the scene (or intervened earlier and failed to resolve the situation before the police arrived), will not cooperate or communicate with the police, and may shoot the police on sight? Does that kind of situation come up often?
@@Nipah.Auauau In real life or in the game? In the game it happens every few missions. Usually it's private security, but I think I remember instances of over-eager morons who will sometimes just pick up a gun off the floor and cause chaos.
I was such a huge fan of Wheel of Time back then. It impressed me in so many ways and made me read the books, but nobody I showed it to seemed to care.
It's an awesome, sprawling series. With some dips in quality in the middle part, sure.. and with a VERY unsatisfying ending.. (to me at least) but ultimately worth reading. Oh, and the game is cool too. I guess.
OK, technical gripes aside, my biggest takeaway from this was the offhanded comment you made about _System Shock_ reminding you of _Dark Souls._ It so happens I just recently watched Rojovision's LP of the game, and that was the same impression I got. In fact, it made me wonder what a game inspired by _System Shock_ that leans into the _Dark Souls_ similarity would be like. Not being able to savescum, always getting sent back to the last bed you interacted with instead of just getting a game-over if you die in a new level (that one might have already been fixed in the remake), enemies only respawning when you do, beds being your only source of health refills... there's some real potential there. Oh, and apparently EA did plan to make a third _System Shock_ game and actually did get a studio to start working on it. You might know it better under the name it actually eventually released under, _Dead Space._
Dark soul really is the Undertale of everyone’s first “gAmErZ” experience, in that everyone keeps claiming such and such mechanics come from or is popularized from there. Developer’s just copy and iterate what came before, all FromSoftware games and probably the entire industry can be traced back to Dungeons and Dragon’s. 😗
That's not the message of SS2. The status quo in the game are the UNN and Trioptimum, which are both portrayed generally negatively. The player is just defending humanity from two forces, the Many and Shodan, that want to exterminate it. This would be like claiming Fallout 1&2 are centrist because in those games you defend humanity from the Master and the Enclave.
@@xBINARYGODx yeah I was just agreeing with the video. in hindsight it seems pretty clear what the politics of these devs were over their entire careers. system shock 2 came out in 1999 and over a decade later its the same theme in bioshock infinite. its just what they do. people can like it! i love all these games, its just very interesting how gen x they are
@@xBINARYGODx I just have to disagree that the moral of them is "everything is fine" when the worlds of System Shock, Thief, and Deus Ex are all quite dystopian and actually paint a pretty cynical picture of the world.
The moral is actually closer to taoism. Chaos and order are neither good nor evil, and balance is found by walking the thin path between them. It's a way of thinking that has fallen out of fashion in recent years where everything has to be taken to the extremes (brought on by internet algorithms in order to maximize engagement). In other words, variety is the spice of life, and all things in moderation. It's not that "everything is fine" but rather that "nothing is fine". You should look into moral philosophy. You'll probably end up finding yourself agreeing with them (or at least some of their points).
Wheel of Time has an odd place in canon in that the game tries very hard to not contraddict the novels that were already out at the time but at the same time you can tell that some parts just can't take into account the books that came after it so they fill the gaps as best as they can. Some parts are also different due to gameplay limitations, for example Balefire in the novels is not a sort of railgun that passes through walls but something that delets things and people from reality that has to be calibrated by the caster to avoid overshooting the target or delete its existence hard enough to make it/them cease to exist too far into the past (and yes, it's a plot point in the books) but regardless of how powerful it is it kills on contact and casting strength only influences the distance, the area affected and how far in the past whatever hits it ceases to exist (it also deletes souls from the cosmic reality barring any reincarnation or resurrection, even the bad guys balk at its use). The game was my introduction to the saga (in Italy publication was spotty until Fanucci got the rights in the early 00s) and I enjoyed it so much I also bought the books when I spotted them in a bookstore some years later, I enjoyed it all the same without knowing the saga so I think it's accessible enough for those that don't know it.
I find it weird that, at the end of the SWAT 3 section, Ready or Not is brought up as some kind of spiritual continuation of SWAT 3's weird fetishization of the SWAT when SWAT 4 is the main inspiration for its gameplay and storytelling. The game never really props up the SWAT as "absolute saviors," especially when you're in missions where the game practically screams at you "the whole situation is fucked up." You're also heavily encouraged to _not_ use lethal force (which, gameplay-wise, makes a lot of the weapons worthless). I don't know, I just found its mentioning being a little "preachy" but ultimately insignificant since it's such a ᵗⁱⁿʸ part of an otherwise excellent video; I'm just nitpicking.
as someone who ran THROUGH a demo disc of redline as a kid, seeing you play it for five seconds and struggle to get past simple geometric objects was deeply relateable. redline is less a game and more a hitbox-navigation crash course
For a game as cynical and copaganda as SWAT 3 is, that whole "UN World Peace Forever and Nuclear Disarmament Day 2005" thing is one of the most hilariously, painfully naive things I've ever seen.
In fairness, the only countries at that point with significant nuclear stockpiles were America and Russia. Even Ukraine, which had inherited a large part of the Soviet nuclear stockpile, had been convinced to give it up. It didn't seem _totally_ impossible that other countries would follow suit and dismantle their nuclear weapons.
Really appreciate the wider cultural view of these games that you lay out. Its interesting that we hear concerns about violence being normalized by video games but rarely do we hear them about indoctrination into police state violence, or looking down on poor and vulnerable individuals as "thugs" "junkies" and other acceptable targets for FPS shooting sprees. Looking not too far forward from these games at COPS running on repeat on G4 and there's a really important conversation to be had about this for sure.
Thank you for this. Seriously, I'm utterly exhausted from busy days at work, needing a pick-me up and you drop this 80 minute feast and finish with a teaser for Deus-Ex of all things? Why ambassador, you are really spoiling us.
Man, I'm disappointed to hear the kind of slander you direct towards the S.W.A.T. games. I take your point about how focused S.W.A.T. 3 is on policing at the expense of other institutions and how tone deaf the presentation can be, but as Apolita1987 points out, the game still has proper respect for due process and giving suspects the option of surrender. In that way, sure, it single-focuses on the depth of policing tactics and equipment to the degree of a simulator and ends up less than well-rounded because of that. I'll accept that. But tarring S.W.A.T. 4 and Ready or Not with the same Copaganda brush? Really? The games that expect an unrealistic degree of both less--lethal force and concern for the suspects' well-being to the point of being arcadey? The games that mock Tom Clancy-esque villain plots in favour of down-to-earth scuffles and ripped-from-the-headlines situations? They're designed to be textbook depictions of reality and procedure, not manifestos for a New World Order. The accusation seems to be that having a game about policing be filled with situations primarily solved by policing will tell the player that policing is justified no matter the situation or conduct, and that the game is immoral for propagating such authoritarianism. This, to me, is like saying that a game about pacifism being filled with situations solved with pacifism will convince people to walk up to polar bears or knife-wielding substance abusers and assume the best, and that such a game is immoral for suggesting such idealism. Please, take a step back for a second and consider both the nature of the medium and the intelligence of the viewer. To critique Kingpin and Redneck Rampage as bigoted games made by middle-class trust-funders that slander the poor and oppressed as murderous bastards, then turn around and dismiss games that are precisely about sorting the poor and oppressed from the murderous bastards and dealing with them appropriately strikes as exactly the same sheltered, NIMBY sentiment you criticized ten minutes before. This round peg/square hole, political theory-infused perspective is not a 'new look at an established premise through an alternative lens', this is walking into a Thai restaurant and demanding that they serve you Philly cheese steak.
Tragic that you didn't mention Mortyr. It came out in America literally the last day of 1999. In Europe, it came out *before* Medal of Honor. I think it might be the ur polygonal WWII shooter
I played UT99 like crazy for years after it came out and still boot it up now and then to this day... and I just now learned you can use the impact hammer on the transporter
I'm going to defend System Shock 2's ending. You might say it's goofy, but what better way is there to cut through her interminable speeches than with a "your mom"? It's the pithy needle-point that pops the balloon of Shodan's swollen hauteur.
saying Shodan isn't much of a character in 1 compared to 2 is insane, Shodan is *all* of SS1, she's literally everywhere in that game. In 2 she has to share screentime with The Many and kind of just comes off as a weaker version of her 1-self.
I think he's more saying in SS2 Shodan has more of a relationship with the character? Like in the original she's trying to stomp out a bug running through its halls and in SS2 She's very much useing you as a pawn.
I thing so to, Shodan was entire ship, you were almost nothing in comparison to her. but in the sequel, you could almost completely wright her out, and just have the many as main big bad, almost nothing else changes.
It is 1999, i'am 14 years old. I got my first gaming pc with gpu (before i had 486dx PC that i played doom in software mode). Those several year 1999-2001 was like pure magic. Unreal Tournament, Quake 3, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Soldier of Fortune, Need for speed, dungeon keeper 2, half-life, max payne, undying, no one lives forever and many other. I never in life will feel the same as i felt those years back then.
an amazing game. the first time you play it you will run out of ammo, you will have guns jam in the middle of a fight, you will run for your life. you will shiver as the many hijacks your mind and quietly threatens you. but the second time you play it, you'll save your ammo, you'll lean around corners, you'll spend your modules more wisely. eventually you know where everything is, know how to take down enemies efficiently and won't get lost in the maze. then you'll go for every module and become a godly god. great design.
01:13:49 - The Wheel of Time is so underrated! Think Heretic / Hexen, only for Unreal fans; a competent shooter set in a dark fantasy world, with stunning visuals, unconventional mechanics here and there and gorgeous soundtrack. And it was among the first games (if not THE first game) with female protagonist who wasn't overtly sexualized. In 1999, before it was trendy!
It would be interesting to have a male protagonist in WoT game, with every woman constantly bitching at you and force you to do stuff because she's a woman. I wonder how that would be taken by gamers.
I'm honestly surprised considering how dominant war games became that you choose System Shock 2 over Medal of Honor, especially since you already covered SS1 in so much depth
It's so fascinating to hear your take on System Shock 2 thematic conflict between cartoonish individualism vs. cartoonish collectivism. I understand that, as an American, you have way worse experiences with greedy, unconstrained capitalism than with anything remotely similar to Soviet style communism. But I, humble Eastern European socialist, think there's some truth in looking critically at badly implemented attempts of collectivist societies and I see System Shock 2 less as Enlightened Centrist Stupidity and more as, frankly, quite clever form of dialectic with main character as a synthesis. Stellar video nevertheless. Have a good day, Mr. Signal.
While I understand that, the body of Ken Levine's work suggests that is not the goal of SS2. While it might be read that way, Levine certainly meant it as an argument for centrism and the status quo.
@orestes0883 I think we could differentiate early Ken Levine who's, albeit not perfect, was able to make some niuanced political statement mostly right and late Levine who's politics boils down to "racists and antiracists are equally wrong" which is... well, profoundly stupid statement. I have some problems with assumption that far left rhetoric and praxis can't be wrong in any case whatsoever, which is... well, ahistorical and I think it's a blind spot that many Western leftist share, sadly. Like, in this case Chris almost sounds like apologist of authoritarian state, which obviously isn't the case.
@@MistyPop I never found any nuance in Levine's writing, from any period in his career. I mean, unless you count him not staning Randian Objectivism despite being "on the right" as nuance.
17:40 captures the exact kind of arguments I watch for on your channel. Thank you for including your values in your work and making a case for what games could be.
It feels strange that I only know System Shock and Quake 3, out of this year's shooters! Previous years I always knew of several, as cool things I couldn't play lol. Huh! Glad to hear that you still have more thoughts on System Shock. That was one of the ones that dominated my imagination as a kid.
Bought SS2 on a whim back in 2000 at our local video game shop. Didn’t know what it was about, just thought the cover looked kinda cool. I was totally stumped by the gameplay at first but as I kept playing it, the game opened up for me. It’s a fascinating game that is radically different from everything else released at the time. Although it’s antiquated from a convenience perspective, I can highly recommend playing it. It’s a unique and fantastic experience.
I had gotten my PC just a couple years before '99 and when I finally got a 3D card played the hell out of most of these. Pirated because game imports were almost nonexistent and extremely expensive for a highschooler. The UT callouts dislodged some memories in my brain lol, funny how that works.
Despite its jank, I really loved Medal of Honor. The music was pretty great and it was generally fun. I even did a report in school on Werner Von Braun after hearing about him in the game. I guess Spielberg's plan worked!
1:09:05 To me, SWAT3 "legacy" argument is so odd. "SWAT3" and "Its legacy" are different. As you said, SWAT3 itself includes police-friendly gameplay, but other later games (SWAT4, Police Stories, Ready Or Not etc etc) usually punish players who kill civilians with ranking system or even mission failure. On the top of that, we can argue that this game brought the topic of shooting ethnic on the table, while other tactical shooters like Tom Clancy series doesn`t. R6 and GR have some rescue missions, but usually hostages do not pop out. You will just escort them. But SWAT 3 brought the possibility that you can kill innocent civilians because of your instinctive reaction. In SWAT3, it wasn`t executed well. But as "its legacy", This gameplay can be positive to this media, provoking thoughts about collateral damages.
Yeah, that whole bit was a bit odd. Like, Occam's razor, which is more reasonable: tactical shooters are big government police propaganda designed to brainwash the youth into thinking that authoritarianism is good, or just, you know, playing as le cool tactical guys is fun.
Its also odd. Swat 4 feels to me when I play it about convincing idiots not to get themselves killed. You are armored enough that you can take a few hits, so typically one mistake on a perp with a gun won't end your run, but it will make it harder. This is made more difficult by the fact that even innocent civilians won't always comply. It's properly the first time a game ever gave me empathy for law enforcement. Yes I feel bad about pepper spraying that guy or hitting them into complying being cuffed, but this entire office complex has multiple people with guns running around and I know for a fact in the next room over there is a guy with a sawed off shotgun who will not hesitate to kill me, or this innocent guy if he runs off in that direction. The more variables I can control, the higher of a chance all of us get to go home safely at the end of tonight. It made me understand (some) of those police shootings you would see where people would ask why the cop didn't just shoot someone in the leg. Since then, however as police have across the nation gotten away without punishment for even the most heinous of actions that empathy was heavily worn away. In SWAT 4 if I shot someone without yelling and seeing their reaction, I lose points and may not be able to keep doing my job. In real life... That's not always the case. It is kind of optimistic though that in a pre bodycam era, that each of these actions would be so heavily tracked and taken account of.
You're not wrong in the direct sense. Police thinking twice before pulling a trigger is always going to be a good thing, and there are plenty of games that try to demonstrate that, but the most negative aspect of their existence is still very present. The problem isn't in whether or not you gain or lose points for killing hostages, its in the FRAMING of the entire situation itself. It puts you in the shoes of police exclusively, and never questions whether or not you should be the one making the call about who to shoot and when. It is an expected and valorized task in these games, to go out and "neutralize" threats to the status quo. By even framing these games as shooters, they completely skew the very different reality of the situations we have in our society. And I'm not getting all "video games cause satan worship", I get that these are familiar aesthetics and familiar scenarios with compelling action and drama that can be attached to them. And I don't think that just because someone plays a police tactical shooter it's going to make them like...advocate for the death penalty for parking violations. But this media does influence how people address these issues, often not overtly, but implicitly. It doesn't shape how people ANSWER questions, it shapes WHAT questions they even ask.
I haven't played 3, but my experience of SWAT 4 is that it's very much an exercise in following procedure. You can't just twitch shoot in the fraction of a second after spotting an enemy, because you have to laboriously and meticulously order them to surrender, then respond to whether they chose to surrender or not, each with different requirements. It was a game where I found myself opting for the beanbag shotgun because lead bullets to centre mass didn't really give me any sort of flexibility in dealing with a wildly divergent threat picture. It's a game where you're not allowed to shoot someone pointing a gun at you because there a *rules* you have to follow, and I think that's what makes it a great and unique experience. Of course, that's not immune to accusations of buying into self-serving narratives of the police: there's an argument to be made that the professional, procedural SWAT officer who has to make all those right calls instead of just shooting first and saying they followed procedure afterwards is as much of a fantasy as the poor, heroic cops constantly under threat of being jumped from an alley that they have to be ready to end a life at a moment's notice... but it's at least a different fantasy that stresses that the rules are there for a reason and the ideal you should be striving for is the rigid, rules-following professional. Which makes me somewhat shocked when I see SWAT 4 fans complain that the game was too restrictive in its rules and should instead let them make their own calls on when it's OK to shoot, as if that wouldn't just turn it into another shooter where you deploy maximum force without hesitation against anyone who as much as looks as you wrong.
Swat 3 has a trust system that's supposed to make your subordinates less likely to follow your orders or back you up as you make periodically bad decisions, shoot suspects without sufficient threat, allow civilians to be harmed or even do something as innocuous as misreporting someone wounded as dead or vice versa. But... the system doesn't really work properly. As the player, you never feel a mechanical difference between high-trust officers and low-trust officers under your command. The game also allows you to outright fail objectives and still progress to the next mission in the campaign mode (unless the fail state involves a nuclear weapon going off lol), so being a bad cop deliberately or by accident is permitted up to a point. Still, it was a little awkward to see Campster roll into that attic and execute the guy while he was still stunned by the flashbang and not try to detain him alive. Like, part of his argument stems from his own poor behaviour. Granted, that's footage from the very first mission in the campaign, which is the simplest and least threatening - sometimes the RNG will have him unarmed and completely compliant and you can finish it without deployed any tools except the lockpick. In the later missions where you're fighting some kind of America First far-right militia hell-bent on killing the Russian ambassador, the only way to take any suspect alive is with copious amounts of CS gas and flashbangs and you'll never arrest all of them. Actually what I love most about SWAT3 as a tactical shooter is just its ballistic system. I don't think I've seen an FPS let you shoot through multiple layers of wood and drywall and put you in scenarios where collateral damage from over-penetration is realistic and a significant factor in fire fights.
1. The original Medal of Honor for the PSX was the very first FPS game I ever played, and even today it’s still one of my favorites…even if the “forward aiming” mechanic (as it was called in the manual, iirc) is pretty archaic by modern standards. ^^’ I’d love it if someone could give this game the remastered treatment; Better textures and lighting, tweak the aiming so it’s easier to do with a D-Pad (or at least let us manually map it to the right analog stick), and *maybe* throw in some bonus levels or a custom level creator so we can have some more fun post-campaign. 2. Kinda unrelated to the general topic, but the way the combat/magic system works in that Wheel of Time game looks exactly like how I’ve always wanted my dream Bionicle game to play (albeit with the inclusion of fantastical melee weapons and some futuristic-looking ranged weapons).
- I'm curious what build Chris plays SS2 with the most. - The idea that while working on this series, Chris somehow found a nemesis in the form of Xatrix Entertainment, that's just hilarious. Though that arc is probably over now since I can't see him disliking RTCW.
My go-to is a hacker who knows his way around pistols/shotguns and *maybe* by the end game has enough exotics weapons to wield the crystal or lightsaber. I actually very rarely play with psionics, but I made a point when playing the game for this video to try that path - and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit!
44:40 I basically grew with UT(only the solo campaign, amusingly enough), so I can't help but feel a bit of unfairness in its description. don't worry, I know not everyone has the same relationship with this thing as I do. I'm curious as to how the quake 3 solo campaign works, since UT is basically making you a contestant in a grand competition, and each adversary has a little bio of varrying interest.
1:00:15 Yeah that's pretty interesting how even back then the cross pollination of the industry led to an entire wave of WW2 shooters. I always thought it was cause of Wolfenstein but I suppose Wolfenstein never took the cinematic realism angle and it actually was Medal of Honor that kickstarted it. How attention from the mainstream leads to these giant ripples in gaming.
So it's a bit early in the timeline you're doing, but do non-fps games made with the Doom\Quake\etc engine still count as "children of Doom"? Specifically, I'm thinking of the RPG Anachronox (2001), which was made with the Quake 2 engine (heavily modified).
The single FPS I was allowed to play as a kid was Catechumen, a bizarre christian game (that I can't figure out how to play on modern hardware, alas) where you get different swords that let you shoot beams of virtue at demons and roman soldiers. Given my unfulfilled desire to pick it up again, I am looking forward to trying out Requiem lol
Eh, you've lost me in your critique of narrative themes. These games are not "a defense of centrism". They show the dangers of dogmatic applications of ideology in the service of cynical centralization of power, as a believable fuel for megalomania and narcissism. They don't present a moral equivalence. If anything, they issue a warning that being right and doing the right thing are not the same thing. Also System Shock 2 is one of my favorite games ever. :)
Oh I'm glad that Wheel of Time game included the weird infantalization of women that Jordan was so fond of, what with the talk of sending grown women to "the Mistress of Novices for a switch across the back."
I remember playing this co-op with my friend. Before we were even out of the first room, he said, "that lady that's talking to us is SHODAN, isn't she?" She's too famous for her own good.
Campster do you take requests for future installments? Because BREAKDOWN on the Original Xbox may not be a certified classic but it's so weird that it would fit CoDoom's format, and since it's backwards compatible on the Xbox One at least, it shouldn't be painful to get footage for, especially if you have a Series X controller. I won't spoil anything but you are in a very different place at the end.
Love the critique of the philosophy of SS2, I'd never thought of that, having played the game as a kid and that entire side of it going over my head. How did you put it? The player is in conflict with individualism and collectivism? Radical centrism indeed, and now that you mention the Thief and Bioshock franchises, it's tired and played out. A bit like South Park ;-)
Knowing that taoism is basically about the same thing and seeing how long that's been going on for... I don't think it'll ever have "played out" as you say. Moral philosophy truly is a complex thing that'll have you questioning everything. Even more so once you learn the valid arguments every school of thought has.
@@danvzare6201 At the same time, it's also perfectly valid to observe that one who stands for nothing will fall for just about anything - and the "compromise" between doing something bad and not doing that thing often winds up still being terrible. Questioning everything is great, but at some point you need to start finding some answers. For practicality's sake, if nothing else - because otherwise what's the point? An argument merely being _valid_ isn't enough.
It's nice to see someone to see who share the same point of view on Kingpin: Life of Crime as I do to be honest. I don't think the game's bad, it has a great atmosphere, it has a nice and grimy atmosphere and set pieces (from Viktor Antonov of Half-Life 2 and Dishonored fame no less), it has pretty advanced AI technology for your NPC buddies, the multiplayer (despite me having only played it with bots) was really entertaining and hey, say what you want to about the looping Cypress Hill tracks, it made want to listen to the whole Cypress Hill IV which was nice. But it all falls apart because of the janky combat mechanics, the conflicted level-design and objectives, which rely way too much on tedious backtracking early on, the barebone interactions with other characters and its views on gangsterism and life on the street feel way too nihilistic, ugly and trying way too hard to sell it as realistic and miserable, only to make it look deeply over-the-top and edgy for the sake of it in my opinion. Other than that, great video as always, seeing some all-time favorites of mine like System Shock 2, Quake 3 and Unreal getting the spotlight was a real treat (despite the lack of Descent 3, which I'm currently playing at the moment, or Opposing Force, but hey, the quality of video is more important than the quantity of games covered here) and I'm really excited for the episode focused on the year 2000.
You say Quake 3 engine finally caught up with Unreal by adding volumetric fog, but it should perhaps be noted that the fog in Unreal, including in the later Unreal Engine 2, can only be seen from inside the fog. It just colors everything with the set fog color with opacity based on distance. Quake 3 could have fog that's visible from outside of it. Which it uses, for example, for ground mist in some levels, which wouldn't have been possible in Unreal without particles or some other solution. I liked what you had to say about the extreme ideologies of the factions in Looking Glass games, but couldn't help but chuckle when right afterwards you said SS2 strikes a nice balance between the complicated SS1 and the simplified Bioshock Infinite. What are you, some kind of centrist? :P
Every time I see Campster give his (very reasonable) explanation about why he's covering an immersive sim when he initially said he wouldn't, I feel a little bit worse about being one of the first to ask that question.
Man the music to that outro rightfully gave me CHILLS! Can't believe that song still slaps so hard. Also thanks for reminding me tbst a game like Ready or Not isn't for me. #DefundthePolice
Ok, I have to stop you at 11:20. You are missing the point of the Many. Those Annelid hybrids you start off encountering are not fully converted yet, and were most likely the more strong-willed of the crew. The audio logs you hear of others are those who were more easily swayed and willingly embraced the hive mind. Hell, I got that message twenty years ago, it's not hard. You sound like you're trying too hard to be intellectually superior to the simplified allegories and morally superior to those who espouse a more balanced political worldview that rejects the extremism of American brand Socialism and Fascism. That out of the way, this is one of my favourite games. It's funny how I keep saying that about games that are over twenty years old, but very rarely about contemporary ones.
