Funnier still: a simple change to the ini file disables it. Don't like it? Just turn it off.

Nope, people had hard time accepting they're not playing Doom in the original System Shock. System Shock was, on the other hand, competing with Half-Life clones (funny thing is that it did the thing that HL was so much praised for - organic storytelling - soo much better)

And that makes you a cheater, because the game was balanced around degrading weapons. That's why there are repair tools everywhere, and a repair skill, and a maintenance skill, and anti-entropy field, and spare weapons laying all over the place, and why you can carry multiples of the same weapon. In spite of all that, some people still go all Eric Cartman screeching tantrum mode over their weapons degrading.

You want a mindless FPS, go play one of those. There's lots to choose from.

I don't think anyone cares when it, you know, improves the singleplayer experience of a game they paid their money for. Just saying :-P

Instructions for user.cfg are in the file readme_patch.txt in the System Shock 2 directory.
Look under "Configuration Information."

What if they dislike it because of the unbalanced RPG mechanics or the level design or something else?

Or are we just assuming that anyone under the age of 18 is incapable of independent thought to inflate our own egos?

And I wouldn't call either of the SS games terribly hard. SS2, in particular, has the same issue as Half-Life did where a lot of the deaths are from stuff you didn't see coming, and it's just a matter of saving and reloading a lot to get through things. And the random nature of hacking kind of... further encourages that.

SS2's only /really/ hard if you put too many points into the useless skills and you'd probably have to do that intentionally.

Yes, I totally am.
I usually only play FPS games.

But, with the hype of this game, and it being the 'original/real/whatever' Bioshock, I couldnt NOT play it.
I almost didnt buy Bioshock, as I played the demo and wasnt very interested.
But, I saw a buddy playing the game with LOTS more stuff than the demo gave, and since everyone said it was a really good game (just like they say about SS2), I bought it and loved it.

So, now, I do go outside my genre, when a ton of people say a game is great, I give it a fair shake and try it out.

The Witcher was my very first rpg, and I really liked it (except inventory management, I really dislike I M). I havent liked a lot of other rpg's though.
:(

So, I gave SS2 a shot, and didnt like it (well, I liked some aspects, but not others, and its those others that really make me not want to play it anymore), and posted my thoughts on it.

I just dont like the game, thats all.
And, the thread is about why you didnt like the game.
There are plenty of threads about how great the game is.
Different strokes for different folks and all.

People who love the game act like people who dont like the game dug up their dead parents, had sex with them, performed midnight rituals with them, shit in their graves, and then re-buried them upside down and pissed in the graves before throwing dirt back on them.

THAT, my friends, is the utmost in fanboy-ism.
The inability to see that not one size fits all people.

I don't see a problem either. Some people like The Godfather, some people like The Money Pit.

I dislike the respawn system. I makes sense to respawn at a designated area at half health once you die, but there are several small sub-areas that don't have one, which forces you to reload a save if you die in that area due to the lack of a spawn point. I think respawning at the beginning of each area if it doesn't include a spawn point would be less frustrating because you wouldn't lose your progress when an enemy spawns in a corridor you had previously cleared and are now backtracking through in order to get back to an area with a spawn point.

Additionally, once you exhaust a certain kind of ammo, hitting R should reload another type of compatible ammo, so you don't have to open up the inventory and change ammo types in the middle of a fire fight. I can't count how many times I died because I ran out of armor-piercing bullets and couldn't reload, despite having like 30 standard bullets that could have finished off the enemy before he killed me.

There's a keyboard shortcut for switching ammo types. I usually map it to "F", and map "change weapon setting" to "V", so all my weapon control keys are in a row (or column, as the case may be).

Furthermore, automatically reloading from a different ammo type would be a terrible, horrible thing. The last thing I'd want is to be blasting away at a bunch of robots, then wondering why they're suddenly taking more shots to destroy, then motherf****** where did all my preciously hoarded anti-personnel ammo go?!?

Of course it would not be a horrible, terrible thing, all they'd need to do is to give standard ammo priority if you run out of alternative ammo type. Maybe give you a prompt saying that another ammo type was loaded.

I admit to being utterly baffled by people who don't like the respawning enemies. To me, they're half of what make the game.

Beware, the following text DOES contain SPOILERS as I am talking about the ending.

I can understand why they complained about the mandatory multiplayer eating resources. The game does feel rushed toward the end. Is it just me or do the most amazing games have the most anti climatic and boring boss fights, in general? I actually expected to fight SHODAN in her "human" form in the end. I so very much desire a third entry to this series. A remake for the first one would be great, too. I am not sure if I can get into THAT antiquated visuals for an FPS game. Maybe screenshots just don't do it justice. If GOG ever gets the first one I will probably play it either way.
It certainly has its flaws, there is no denying that. The experience was just, oh, so overwhelming. The respawning enemies kind of made the game for me too. It makes perfect sense that there were more than 50 people on those gigantic ships. The game got too easy and I was actually a little angry that it showered me with nanites later on. Should not have played on normal I suppose.

I remember playing this for the very first time about 5 years ago, and I claimed it to be my all-time favorite game. Few years without touching it went by, and I always wondered if I still felt the same way. The re-release gave me a chance to see if it was true. Upon replaying, I can definitely find some criticisms.

(For the record, I played the game "un-modded", as in, how GOG packaged it. No extra tweaks or enhancements were added, just whatever patches that made the game stable.)

The aged graphics didn't bother me, but it would bother others no doubt. I find myself easily immersed to not care about the weird animations and blocky models. The amazing sound design helps as well.

The only issue I have with the combat is the melee. Hit detection is kinda wonky, and trying to attack small enemies like the annelids can be pretty difficult, and can lead to unnecessary damage. Having a melee weapon is essential for most of the game, as it allows you to conserve ammo. So the issue will crop up for players.

Personally, I'm not a fan of maintaining and repairing being two different stats. I feel that they could have been one skill, and maybe stack the required modules to upgrade. It didn't hinder my enjoyment of the game, though. Avid explorers will find plenty of modules for both.

The game's structured gets tiresome, especially later on. Fetch quest is a dirty phrase these days, and it will annoy some gamers to know that almost the entire game is just a series of these. With that said, it's kind of the point that it is this way. You're supposed to be a tool. But at times, it does feel like straight-up padding.

The last hour of the game is like a Eiffel-Tower structured difficulty curve. One point of the game goes into literal CoD-mode, with a linear path of respawning enemies that can kill you easily, which would have me pulling my hair out if I had any. I was frustrated, and when you have a game that's this good, that just suddenly becomes this frustrating, it just makes you want to cry. But after breaking through that section, the game gets strangely easy up to the end. I was low on ammo due to the CoD level, so I could only really melee enemies, and I never died again. The final boss wasn't much of a challenge either. (I can't remember if this game has difficulty levels, but if there are, I was on normal.)

So do I still consider this my all-time favorite game, despite some wonky combat, tedious questing, and murderous difficulty curve at the end? DEFINITELY. The feelings that I get when I play this game is unlike anything else I've played. When this game works, it freakin' works. I get stressed out, but never frustrated (aside from the aforementioned section) because there's so much freedom to the game. I didn't use many Psi abilities during my playthrough, but I'm curious how a Psi-only session would go. That's the kinda of game this is. You can specialize, and it's a very good idea to do so. It challenges you in ways similar games don't. And while the story doesn't have any greater meaning like Deus Ex or Bioshock, it's one of a kind, and told in a way that uses the gaming medium extremely well.

Bottom line: This game is amazing.

So I just finished my first playthrough.

The first parts of the game are awesome. I really enjoyed exploring around, finding new stuff, and I really like how they use audio logs to tell portions of the story. The way the story is told is great, the gameplay is fun and progresses well, overall it is really engaging...

Until the last few chapters. Without going into too much detail, once you get to the point where you have to hunt down several eggs to destroy, it kindof goes downhill. It's not game breaking, overall the experience was worth it, but the last few hours of the game kindof left a sour taste in my mouth (although the last "chaper" was cool). They seemed unnecessarily long and tedious.

My biggest complaint with a lot of games is that they often make the games too long and too tedious, confusing length with content and tedious gameplay with difficulty. There were definitely parts towards the end that fell into that category, I'd rather have seen it made shorter and without some of the tedious components towards the end.

Overall, it was awesome, but not something I want to turn around and play again immediately (not many games fall into that category for me, though), but something I'll probably go through again in a few months with a different type of character. Definitely worth the hype, definitely awesome.

I kept this intentionally vague to prevent spoilers, by the way.