... Let's talk about System Shock 2; as gaming is on a rise, folks are either with less cash, bored and keep talking about how much some recent games suck, cursing as they loose a match in Fornite's Battle Royale and try to find other things to kill time during the corona virus during the Quratine.... Which reminds me, if and when this post is read from a point where this virus is a thing of the past; a moment of silence for those who have lost their lives to it and pat yourselves on the back for surviving.
System Shock 2, isn't that much of a game pushed outta the lime light, but it's a classic not much looked at or talked about and there's a FREAKING REMAKE IN THE CARDS BEING PRODUCED!!! So let's talk about it while we can before it get's it's spot back int he light once more.
System Shock 2 is an earlier version of Bioshock; but with a heavier and well made blend of RPG and FPS done right, done far better than Fallout 4. (THAT'S RIGHT!! A game developed back in 1999 DID IT BETTER THAN A GAME PUBLISHED IN 2015!!! I'M CALLING IT OUT!!!) Another element added aside from RPG is the horror element... Which ain't that scary in terms of horror, not traditionally anyway. When you start the game, you got 3 classes, Soldier, PSI, and Mechanic classes. What's the difference? It determines how you build your character and start out. Soldiers can use a large multiple number of weapons, RPG's, Machines guns, the works. The also have a slightly higher Health Count than the mechanic and PSI operator. Mechanics or I.T. Personnel don't have the HP, weapon training or the psychic abilities of their counter parts, but they make up for this with ingenuity. They can modify weapons such as adding a burst fire function to a pistol or armor to absorb radiation poisoning to survive in contaminated areas longer. They can also access chest's and they aren't completely useless in weapon usage, can hack their way past locked doors and disable security camera's. PSI operators are your basic mages; they can freeze stuff, levitate items to come to them from a distance and explode things with your mind.
It should be noted that all characters are basically the same, the only difference that happens is when you choose your starting stats via class; so a soldier can learn PSI or a Mechanic can tote weapons and increase their HP... But that's now how the game was built, which should also be noted, you can't really play this game as a 'Jack of all trades.' Whatever class you pick, you need to build your character for that game around it's strength's since upgrade skill points are INCREDIBLY scarce; you can get''em in spades by finishing missions or quests, but buying them and finding them is another story and can be very difficult... Which LEADS ME TO THE CO-OP FUNCTION!!! (DUN x 3)
There is a multiplayer function that is incredibly straight forward; someone hosts the game, your friends hop in and you play the main story together. Does the game adjust for this in terms of game design? We're the games maps designed for this type of play? World no!.. But it's still fun to actually play. It took me a while to find a friend who was into retro games like myself and a bit longer to convince him to try the multiplayer with me; I bought the game on Gog alone to pass off to him using their DRM free option since it was a free classic game for him and I got a partner to game with to try out the Co-Op in return. A few things we discovered, the host in responsible for the game's save file, meaning when you save the game, the game saves the file on whoever is hosting, meaning you can't work on your character or character's offline unless all players reconnect to the game to play again though the upside is noone can over-level or out level the other, the players are forced to try and level up and work together.
While I'm on the same note, since the Co-Op doesn't change the map or gameplay, not as much as I can tell though; Co-Op makes the game a lot harder, as this is somewhat a traditional old fashioned survival horror such as conserving ammo and what not. As we're stepping into this, the ammo drops and health pacts and what not are as scarce as characters will need to share resources and gear with one another as to keep each other from dying and hope one of the few zombies you kill drop candy bars for health or ammo for your shotgun/shotguns. Which leads me to another element we discovered, wandering science zombies spawn in the game, though at irregular moments and while they don't hunt you down outright at first, when they do spawn though, they walk around through the map/floor looking for you. So as long as a player can play skillfully, they can, fairly, get the ammo they need along with a few health items... But who has the time for that?!
So what's the game's story? Picking up from System Shock 1, an A.I. called Shodan (pronounced as Showdown, clever pun from the late 1990's) hi-jacks an international research space station, plays shenanigans with the scientists research in releasing psychic monkey's, dominating and controlling all military machine's and infecting the station with a bug to make them part machine or something along that line to create more believable human zombies instead of a T-virus... And then you come in; you are just arriving at the station during your tour of duty and put in cryo-sleep to help with space travel. a few humans still surviving the onslaught of Shodan hack your cryopod to wake you up and with their help, help you take on Shodan and defeat her/it/whatever it is again. The game does have horror elements and it will get a scare out of you, sometimes a jump scare, fear of being found by the creatures as your hunted or doing the hunting and Showdan herself during some scenes are just too dang creepy... I mean, you listen to her rant for about 2 minutes in any video and being alone in near darkness on a station devoid of communication or methods to call and receive help and you'll have every right to feel her and the fear she produces.
The game itself is a lot of fun and aside from having graphics more dated than Doom, it still has an atmosphere of tension and horror that can be felt from level to level... As for why it's not talked about, we got Bioshock, Doom 2016 and Eternal, we got Nintendo we got- Yeah, it's not a wonder; but as someone who stepped back onto that space station, it's worth a second look or if your feeling up for a retro title, give this game a whirl. Ya won't be disappointed, just try to bare with it as learning the controls from this generation of games can get tricky and a little experimentation.
This is a first for the list; I have a card game I've been designing since middle school, quite literally; this isn't even a review joke or item to add to this list. But when there is a game that comes along on another medium... And you see Marvel give a middle finger to the medium after relizing that Stan Lee is in the grave and thankful he isn't alive to see what's become of his world and company he built; then this is something you track down for kicks in hopes to see if someone will make joke cards for it.... Ontop of that; this is the first TABLETOP game I've added to the list... So I guess by default, everyone else can add their faves to this list too.
Tabletop games have no story, but I can talk about them, especially this in better detail.
So what is Wildstorms? It's a cardgame featuring something every gamer and nerd can relate too, Super Heroes, aka Comic Books.
What's my appeal t- Everything I don't really like that much about this generation of comics from Marvel and DC, this is kinda my remedy to them. The card game was developed and published around 1995 and kept going until 1996-ish? I can't really find a date when official support ended since they released expansions that included characters from Image Comics and adding different elements to keep the game going like Yu-Gi-Oh does today... So, what's the objective of the game? When the game was developed, there are 2 game mode's prebuilt, a standard battle where you fight to control a battlesite by earning points, via destroying each other's characters and claiming their point values, or playing the campaign mode, which is a longer game than the standard battle and uses the 'red colored text' listed in the cards.
The easier parts of the game are how combat is performed and scoring points. If ya noticed, the character cards I posted above have 3 Values at the top of their frames, C, R and D. C for Close Combat, R for Ranged Combat and D for Defense value. You can't use the R value unless the character get's an equipment card like a shotgun or sniper rifle.... Or has an ability built in to account for that like Hulks ability to 'Throw Objects' and it's value being that damage... You then compare the cards attack values against (D)efense values and add modifiers such as combat cards to shift things around and the final value will injure the losing side or 'stun' them. They lose again, you knock'em out, flip the losing card face down and the winning player scores the point value of that card. Attack a knocked out card, you kill the character and the opponent can't revive them using a healing item, ability or plot twist; and you, from what I can read so far, lose points that way once they're dead.
Then there's the deck building where things get more complicated than the written card effects.... Which has very, very specific rule's; the point values of your cards go into this as well, you need an accumulative of 30 points or more in characters and equipment, while keeping the total point value of the deck under 200 points... Why this however? Because you need to knock out characters to earn points to win a game or a round in campaign and equipment increases that point value of the character you K.O. What is the 200 point limit? A cards effectiveness is scaled using their point system. So you got Savage Hulk above, with abilities to make him stronger and heal, he's dangerous to keep on the board so he's ranked at 9 points while the Thing is basically a copy of Hulk except his starting C power is higher than Hulks and he can fly any plane or ship without any difficulty, so he's ranked at 10 points for kicks... It's kinda confusing at first glance, though once you try playing the game yourself, you'll kinda see how and why; as in, more powerful cards cost more, but if you fill a deck with them alone with equipment, your powerful heroes will be outnumbered by your opponent while having a weaker team against a stronger team won't ensure a total victory.... So some Mix and match might be needed.
As for playing cards; your given a 10-point allowance per turn to play whatever you want and they don't accumulate; that's more or less the basics in a nut shell...
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HOW DID THIS GAME FAIL!? You got comic book heroes, a balanced-ish deck and game system an- My main guess why it failed as hard as it did? I have a few theories. How the game was distributed for starters. A prime example is if you have Upper Deck as your printer and distriutor/publisher, then your game get's released to comic shops in THEIR network. Upper Deck deals with sport cards, baseball, football and so on, so developing a game for them to publish in shops that deal with baseball cards, your not really going to get your game to the market ya wanna target. This is well noted with the fall of Versus.
Second Theory? Wizards of the Coast and Magic the Gathering.... Enough said; just insert a reason here, they're like a mob for tabletop card games. They have patents and own the phase TCG, Trading Card Game... You even use TCG in your card game while not working for them, their lawyers will knock down your door and demand loyalties or a cease and desist of your work...
Third, the game wasn't as well known? I was a 90's kid and grew up in that era and the only thing I remember seeing in terms of card games we're pokemon, yu-gi-oh and Magic the Gathering.... in fact, I remember seeing Magic the Gathering played more often at summer camps and in toy stores than any other game.
Now for the infuriating part of this story... There is a die-hard set of fans who keep the Wildstorms website running and keep the game slightly up to date with fan-made cards of their own based on other comics being ripped and I.P.s for kicks... And the unofficial expansions they come up with this are good... Such as this spiffy Star Wars card of
Leia or
Logan from X-men.
It's apparent this game has a labor of love in it's creation and fanbase so much that the fans are trying to keep this game going. With digital media's to replay card games online such as Table Top Simulator and Untap, you should have the ability, but noone has taken notice to this relic or made the proper mod for it. It was shoved outta the lime-light by Wizards and plain bad luck... Which is why I'm doing something about it or at least something different. I'm working on a Tabletop Simulator Workshop mod to put Wildstorms on the table to be played for fun... My only major problem is keeping all the cards the same size since I'm importing the cards directly from their HTML addresses on the site though I may take an alternative route for this massive library.
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As for my comment on this generation of comics and my final note on this entry; I have nothing against this generation. I love IDW's approach to the Sonic comics, making thing more grim, dark and interesting during their Robotnik Machine Virus saga and Rick & Morty comics are always at the top of my list to read as well as Manga such as Dr. Stone. The comic, the I.P. that's driving me to talk about this card game is Marvel's new I.P. of 'The New Warriors' and how they try to touch on a culture I would rather avoid like a plague. I mean, they have character's named Safespace and Snowflake; which after watching the premiere video introducing them and the rest of their team- It's kinda unbearable for me to watch... When I googled super hero card games; I was hoping to see if I could make joke cards surrounding them like the cards from MTG's Unglued or unhinged; cards that can still be played with, but screw with the game mechanics and players.
