System Shock 2: review

If System Shock was a handful of raw inedible peanuts, then System Shock 2 is a handful of delightful roasted peanuts. Which makes Deus Ex the transcendent peanut butter in this analogy.

I'm still stinging a bit from the ending, with its crass winks at the viewer, but it is fading quickly. It feels jarring because of the urgent and dire atmosphere, which is suddenly broken with silly Hollywood-style cliches. It's like being immersed in Lovecraft, and then suddenly Freddy and Jason stop by. And then you're back at the main menu, dumbfounded. For lack of anything better to do, I check the credits. An unexpected train wreck, which was fun for the crew, but its even more disturbing on another level. Curiously, the goofy ending and credits do little to distract from the majesty of the game.

I'm glad I don't have to just say this old classic was great for its time, as it is still a good game for today. While System Shock 2 doesn't look like it to belongs to the modern era, it actually marks the start of the modern era. Some day, some other game will start a new era of first-person role-playing games, but right now we're still living in System Shock's world.

I'm also very glad that I no longer have to avoid conversations and spoilers about System Shock. I should have played this years ago.

System Shock 2: in the swing

Another opportunity for an OS Upgrade... I chose Smasher - the ability to do overhand swings. I have no idea what that means, but since my primary weapon is a wrench, let's find out. OK, nothing different on my regular swing, but now when I prime a swing the wrench goes up in the air, and I can quickly smash down with it. Can't wait to try it out.

I'm still annoyed that after putting all these points into Strength, it still takes two swings to take out a shotgun zombie. I hope Smasher or another point in Strength fixes that.

I found another item to research, so I need to go back down to Medical for more chemicals, and to touch a healing table. On this level you can go way to the right for a table, or way to the left, towards Crew Quarters. The left way is better, because there's a whole bunch of upgrade machines there, and the vending machine with the maintenance kits.

Darn, I need just 3 more cyber modules to use this energy rapier. I might as well spend what I can so I can use this laser pistol. It looks like I can only repair items to level 5, but I know it goes higher than that because I've found items higher. My Maintenance level is only level 3, so we'll find out later. It was frustrating at first trying to figure out why there are separate Repair and Maintenance skills - repair is for unjamming, and maintenance is for upping the maintenance level. I have to keep an eye on the maintenance level so it doesn't jam, because I don't want to have to spend any skill points on repair.

Came back to elevator. I found a Psi upgrade module, which I'm dropping off in the elevator. I don't think I'll be using it, and I'll wait for a module more appropriate to this fighter build.

Oops, forgot to get the chemical for my research. Time to go back.

First, its time to dump saves again. I probably don't need anywhere near this many saves, but its early and I don't know what's unimportant yet.

Crap - there's no more Na on this level. I think I need to go back to the engineering area. That's a bit of a hike. The mapping system helps a lot, at least.

Double-crap - there's no Na down here either. Now what? I guess I wait until I find another chemical storeroom.

Moving, I acquire the plot token for this level, which also requires research. I purposefully head down to the far chemical store room - might as well exhaust the distant supplies first.

Now I can afford to raise my energy weapon skill to 4, and use that damn lightsaber. I hope its worth it.

I just repaired (maintained) my shotgun, and it went from 3 to 6, so maybe my current maintenance just does +3 per tool.

There's something that's been bothering me for a long time now: the vending machine says 'Thank you for using Value Rep', but it sounds like its saying 'Value Wrap'.

Time to go wack some things with my light sword. Its good, but its so damn noisy.

Found another chemical storeroom, but still no sodium. Why is this so rare? I should be able to just pick up a salt shaker in the commissary!

I've been carrying around two implants for a while now, for strength and agility. I haven't been sure which to implant. I guess I can get the OS Upgrade to allow two implants. Either way, it seems like they will deplete fairly quickly, and I'll have to visit a charging station. I don't want to use strength, because it might adversely affect my weapons and inventory if that keeps dissapearing. I guess I'll try agility, and leave the other implant in the elevator.

This is crazy but I think I still need two whacks of the lightsaber to kill shotgun zombies. That makes no fucking sense. I have high strength, agility, and energy weapon, and I'm using the lightsaber. No sense.

Inventory getting full, time to streamline. I insert the agility implant - unexpectedly, I can remove it! OK, that's handy.

I drop off the grenade launcher, as I'm not going for heavy weapons yet, if at all. And I guess I can lose the wrench now too.

Later...

I know when I'm in a game, because its all I can think of, even when I'm not playing. I'm slowly getting there with this game, but its not full on. There are too many UI impedances, and there's way too many game mechanics going on. It still comes off as someone trying way too hard to jam everything they could into one game. This was still somewhat evident in the next game, Deus Ex, but by then it was somewhat more reasonable. I think I'll like this game, maybe even a lot, but I don't think I'll love it.

Anyway, back to the game. I have a French-Epstein device, when I drop it on a weapon it says weapon mod 1. The in-game help is no help, let's dare a look online. Oh cool, there's an item recycler somewhere in the game, that turns items into money. I was just wishing I could sell some of the stuff I know I won't use.

Oops, read the list of weapons in the game. I mean, my character is in the military, he should already know all the common weapons inside and out. It was bit revealing in that the site tells you what weapons will be good, and its mostly dissapointing. There's not much in the way of good weapons coming down the pike, I already have most of them. Sad.

OK, I found a site with some really good weapons info [ http://www.gamebanshee.com/systemshock2/weapons.php ]. Its not too spoilery, and gives some good info on what weapon mods actually do for your weapons. Now I'm kind of regretting spending so much on energy weapons. There's no great energy weapon coming down the pike, the laser pistol and sword I am already using are about it. It looks like its worth spending for a point in heavy just to use the grenade launcher, and it looks like some weapons called the crystal shard will be an even better melee weapon than the laser rapier.

I could go back a few saves, but I just don't care to. I'll soldier on with what I've got.

Another neat thing: it looks like Hack skill could really upgrade some vending machines. Lot of good info on the aforemention site, at the cost of some minor spoilers.

Upgraded maintenance, now I can fix items by +4. Bought two levels in Hack, though there's nothing that needs hacking right now.

I'm kind of lost now, don't know where to go. Found another laser pistol, doubles my ammo. More wandering around, frustrated, tempted to look online for a hint. But I know if I keep wandering I will find something. I find a door to section A, and at some point I must have found a keycard to it. Broken vending machine; I think I'll wander back and upgrade Hack to 3. I can afford Hack 4, I'll take it.

Wow, I ran into two cyborg midwives at once, sliced 'em up with the lightsaber without taking any damage.

This is kinda neat - much like I can carry around two laser pistols, and have available the full charge of each, I can carry around several implants, use one up, swap in another. It makes sense, and I like it.

Just getting into Section A, seems like a good time to step off for the evening.

System Shock 2 : moving the ball forward

If you hit the Print Screen button in-game, you get a 1920x1200 (my native screen size) bmp. If you hit the Print Screen button while in the load menu, you get two 640x480 bmps.

Also in-game, if you use the in-game screen shot combo of Control+F9, you get a PCX file, but there's hardly any program now that can even view those. And it won't take a shot of the load screen at all, so its useless. So, Print Screen is what I'll use.

First, some out of game housekeeping:
make a RAR of save_0 through save_14,
delete save_0 through save_13,
rename save_14 to save_0,
start game.
My save game list is now empty except for my starter slot, which I can now load and immediately save over my old quicksave.

Hmm, my use key is messed up again; back to the mod manager.
C:\Sshock2\SS2MM\ss2mm.exe.
This keeps happening. I'm glad the mod manager is there to fix it.

OK, time to to get out of the Cargo Bay, and on to something more interesting sounding, like "Command Control". How quaint, fighting amongst explosive barrels; very turn of the century. Found some upgrade stations, made a small discovery. Because I can have so many menus open at once, I can upgrade my Maintenance skill, repair my weapons with great efficiency, then undo the skill upgrade and my weapons are still fixed. Is this a cheat? Of course it is, and I really don't need it. For now, I'll stay in character, and live with what I spent.

I'm at the Systems Monitoring Unit, and it wants me to Install Hardware Override. What? I know its just a stupid FedEx puzzle, but I don't remember it and its not even in my in-game to-do list. A quick look online (avoiding spoilers), and I'm not even supposed to be here yet. Back to Engineering.

Wow, you have to backtrack pretty far, to sections I had already forgotten, to get the next FedEx puzzle piece. I feel lazy for looking at online hints, but I don't think I would have thought to go this far back with out a lot of hair pulling. This much backtracking is just not done in most game, but I guess I'll have to be aware of it here.

Great, grabbed the thing, took it to the other end of the map, delivered the thing. Got more pats on the back from my handler, and some more upgrade tokens. Is my handler hoarding the tokens from me, when I could be using them right now to save humanity, or whatever it is we're doing? I don't like to be made to feel like I'm playing a game, instead of having an experience.

Not sure what upgrades to buy now, but this wrench thing has been working out for me, so how about more Strength and Endurance.

More backtracking, all the way to the beginning of this level, to a door I've long forgotten, that is now open. Flip some switches in there. Now where to go? Its so tempting to get some hints online, but then I might as well just watch a walkthrough to finish this game. That has some appeal, but I'll see if I can stand wandering around a bit.

Nice, studying the map payed off, I found where I needed to be, and its nearby. There are so many huge tacky signs every where, announcing where you are, but this really important room is behind a nondescript door in a shadowy corner.

I find more doors and keypads that are not being addressed - I can only assume I'll be backtracking to here somewhere down the line.

Oh, something I picked up from the hints was the look of really bright screenshots. I don't want to ruin the atmosphere by washing out the visuals, but I turn up my gamma a bit and everything gets clearer. I thought I had already turned it up, but I guess I didn't, or not enough.

So, now I can access decks 2 and 3. All this so far was one deck. Off to medical... oh yes, I remember this area now, this is where I started. Maybe I can find a healing machine here. Another thing I'd like to try is caching inventory in the elevator, since it seems to be the central link. I'll start my dropping my Psi Amp in there; I don't think I'll be using that in this playthrough. If it disappears, so be it.

I may as well wander around Deck 2 and reacquaint myself with it. Who knows where I'll have to backtrack, or what resources might come in handy later. At the least it might be useful to track where the nearest healing, recharge, and vending machines are.

Woah - I found a shotgun on a corpse at repair level 5 - how did I miss that!

Oh yeah, the healing table costs 5 nanites (the money in this game), but its still a bargain. A food item that costs 3 only heals you for one point, and the table goes all the way.

Crap! I just found a voice log on a cart - how did I miss this one.

I now find myself in a curious situation, which is kind of like cheating, but not really. As I wander around the medical level, zombies keep spawning around every corner. The shotgun zombies are annoying, occasionally taking off a few points of health, but the melee zombies are easy. I slowly accumulate nanites, healing hypos, and some shotgun shells. The nanites that I harvest more than pays for the occasional need for a trip to a healing table. Am I cheating? Or using the games stupid endless zombie spawning against itself? Its not so profitable a venture that I want to keep this up.

Just as I think I'm going to stop this foolishness, I wrench a shotgun zombie who's carrying 12 pistol rounds. Now that's a profit.

Darn, I found a lightsaber, but I still can't afford enough weapon upgrades to use it. It sure looks a lot like the Dragon's Tooth from Deus Ex.

More stuff I missed - a grenade launcher in crew quarters! I guess my eyes are getting used to these old blocky graphics.

Ah finally - I knew it was out there somewhere - a vending machine with repair devices (in crew quarters, near the cluster of upgrade machines). Now I can take advantage of all my spend on maintenance skill.

Back to elevator - psi amp still on ground, a good sign for caching.

System Shock 2: what am I supposed to be doing?

Came back after a short break - I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. My character's motivation is... amnesia? Finding out where the crew went? And where am I, in some lounge with character upgrade machines? I check my various info popups, look in the CD reader, find 'notes', and there's my task list. Oh yeah, I see, I'm fedexing. Go here, get this, take it there, so you can get to somewhere else, etc. I'm starving for scraps of story here.

OK, that's kind of cool - a recovered alien artifact that may have been part of an artificial intelligence, that has a fragment of voice message that sounds a lot like Shodan. Now we're getting somewhere.

I might as well take another point in Strength (from 2 to 3). I'm doing as much fighting as possible with the wrench, and strength also increases inventory (so I can grab everything not nailed down). I might as well take a point in Endurance (from 1 to 2) as well, since I'm going the fighting route. I still don't have a single point in Psi; going down that route would probably take a new playthrough. And I still don't have a single point in Hack, Repair, or Modify. I have no idea what and when to do with this Maintenance skill I chose in the initial setup.

Well, that's cool, now I can one-hit the zombie melee grunts.

Trying to throw grenades - can't - looks like I will need a grenade launcher.

I'm low on ammo, and my equipment is near broken. Should I spend all my current upgrade points on Repair skill? And then my last two maintenance tools on fixing my handgun? Even with double upgrade, it still only upgrades it 2 measly points. It would really suck to move on to the next level, and find a handgun that wasn't broken just lying on the floor. I'll hold the points for now.

I do this in every game I can - I hoard my resources until I'm sure I need them. Often times I wind up scraping past a problem, I could have easily spent the coin on. After the first playthrough or so, I'll know where I can let the resources go, but first time through I'm very stingy.

Wow, my magic voice handler - the one that sounds like Captain Janeway - is annoying. How can she even watch my every step if Xerxes has control of the security system? Later on down the line, Deus Ex gets this right with the infolink, meaningfully integrating it into the story and the gameplay.

Ran out of save slots. Can I use the old trick of moving my files away (using the operating system, not the game), and renaming the last save as the new first? Yes.

I forgot to mention another innovation: you can wind up a swing and hold it, basically performing half of a melee attack, so if you happen suddenly on an enemy you can quickly smack 'em. Its quite a brilliant little idea, and I've never seen it any other game.

I can't go any further - my guns are all broken or out of ammo. I need to rewind, and purchase another skill point so I can use the shotgun, which I have ammo for. I reload start of level, backtrack a little, purchase weapon Standard 2 -> 3. I still can't afford Repair, I'll have to move a little further into the next level, get some cyber modules, then come back again. This is the kind of crap you have to deal with on first playthrough.

Find more modules, come back and buy Repair 0 -> 1.

It's getting a bit strange to keep finding these voice message containers littering the place; a lot of times they're just lying around like they were discarded. At least the voicework is listenable, and so the story bucket fills, drop by drop.

System Shock 2: getting to know you

I'm getting into it, but the interface remains cumbersome.

Now its crashing on me every couple of minutes, something it didn't do at all until now. Research reveals this seems to be a common problem. I try setting CPU affinity from 0 to 1, seems to be working, for now. It seems like a big part of solving this game is resolving Windows difficulties.

You have to be careful where you drop stuff - some stuff can clip right through the walls. And it seems some of the stuff I drop just disappears forever when I come back that way. Speaking of coming back to disappointment - why are there new enemies in cleared areas? Resources are very limited, I would imagine on both sides. {Deus Ex spoiler ahead...} Also, it seems Xerxes and Shodan are not in league - perhaps they will join up, like the AIs in Deus Ex (will) do.

Anyway, for now I'll stick to the wrench as much as possible, conserve ammo. Melee combat is really awkward, but I'm getting the hang of taking them out with minimal damage.

The kitchen sink just keeps on growing. Its bad enough there is an upgrade kiosk, where I can upgrade my stats and skills, now there's another upgrade kiosk for "O/S Upgrades". Considering the importance and expense of this deep space mission, why isn't every crew member fully upgraded, or if its so expensive, at least reasonably upgraded in their specialties. I'm supposed to be a veteran soldier, and I can't even operate a can opener. I know the answer is its a game, and this is how we let you build up your character, but it throws dirt on the story, which is of course why we're here in the first place. In the year that follows, Deus Ex will integrate this much more smoothly in to the game (with magic nano canisters, no less).

Anyway, for my first upgrade I'll take pack rat. Since this is my first time through, and I don't know what to carry, I might as well grab more stuff until I can figure out what's important per my character build. I have 8 cyber modules, I could take another point in strength, or endurance. I'll hold on to it for now. I already upgraded strength so I could wear armor, no telling what I'll need next.

Important safety tip: don't walk near 'pile of disgusting worms', or it will cost you an anti-toxin hypo.

Finally found a working shotgun, but I need a Standard skill of 3, so I buy it. As an experiment, I try buying a maintenance tool, to see if I can upgrade the shotgun. I need a repair skill of 2.

System Shock 2: begin

Technical problems out of the way, now I can begin.

I'm describing it as I go, so of course its all spoilers.

New game, normal difficulty. I notice in the intro video Shodan's many little background voices - something that would be expanded upon in Portal. So there's the stepping off the subway part, I mentioned that, and the parallel (purposeful or not) to Half-Life. Up the grav shaft to street level I notice you can cancel out one voice message with another if you move ahead to quickly; they don't overlap, so I need to be careful not to walk out of range of one message before hitting another.

The street level first impression is cool - I'm in a real live world with streets and stores and advertisements. But it turns out to be simulated culture, like Disneyland. I'm sure it was more impressive 12 years ago. It makes me wonder who was first to transition game environments from the abstract halls of Doom, to something vaguely resembling actual human environments? I think maybe it was Duke Nukem, with fighting on city streets. I wonder if anyone wrote this history of gaming, I'd love to read it. On to the training section.

I actually really appreciate these introductory segments in a game. Its expository as heck, and causes much stilted and awkward dialogue ("move your mouse" - what's that supposed to mean in this supposed real world?). But at least you can hit the ground running when you start the game. You have some idea of what you can and can't do, and what world you are in. So far I know we have FTL travel, artificial gravity, cyberspace link. And I know that grabbable objects have four glowing brackets around them.

OK, that's odd - I can't left-click on items in my inventory, and I know I should be able to because the game explicitly says so. OK, that didn't take long, just had to edit a line in the user binds.

Back to establishing what kind of world this is. Nanotechnology exists, but I can pick up messages that that are held on some kind of shiny disc. I think this is where retro-futurism comes from, mixing present and speculative metaphors, and then outliving them to the point where they're not mistakes anymore, they are now nostalgia.

Oh crap - voice messages can overlap. I've got a PDA message playing and then I walked to the next training station - audio trainwreck. Is there a way to quickly shut this thing off? OK, it can be bound, and is currently bound to the delete key. Now I can't play the test message. I wonder if that's on purpose, or another bug. Next training station.

Holy cow. Mantling. This is like discovering a 747 in stone age strata. For a long time in First Person Shooters you couldn't jump at all, then you could only jump a stock distance, and later there were various conditions for variable jumping, but in all these years never mantling. Of course you can't jump your own hight from a standing start, but plenty of people could reach up to something and pull themselves up, kick a leg over, and get up on top of something. This feels really fresh (well, I think it was in the original System Shock, but still), and its in a long gone game. Wow. I can see why its not common today, though, because it makes good map design even more challenging.

OK, now I'm having trouble using items while in inventory mode - it keeps discharging my firearm. I think these keyboard binds are not yet fixed; I'll try the mod tool.

Poking around in mods on systemshock.org, I should try the updated texture mod, but I want to keep things original for my first playthrough. OK, installed Mod Manager, went to Tools -> Fix Use-Mode... let's see if it does. Yes, great. OK, off to Technical Training.

Nanites and cybermodules (as well as FTL and gravitics)... what year is this supposed to be? 2048? Nanites and cyberanything will the be food pills and atomics of the The World of Tomorrow.

Oh boy, now I have to choose a career, Psi, Navy, or Marine. Guess I'll start with the simplest, and go marine. Nice little cutscene. Now I have to choose a posting? Ah, a way to convey bonuses to your stats, with a little backstory built in (it reminds me of Traveler's character creation). Nice. I'll take +2 to Agility; that's usually best for fighting. This is a more elaborate and interesting way to develop your starting character, than just hitting + and - buttons on a list.

Oh, and its the early 2100s, not 2048. That's more like it. Year 2. Next up I'll take +1 energy weapons +1 cyber. Why is there so much military out in the solar system? Who are we fighting? More shuttle cut scenes. Oh nice, a robot walker right out of Deus Ex (yeah, I know this came first). And a dancing robot. I didn't need to see that. Next up, modify, maintenance, or repair. First time through a game you never know what's going to be important, where the designers give the greatest reward. I guess maintenance. And another shuttle movie.

OK, game starts and the first thing thats emphasized is the importance of psionics. Oh well, maybe on some other playthrough (assuming).

Here's another mixed metaphor: in the distant future, computers will go back to being the size of PDP washing machines.

I've been given a small upgrade, but I don't know what to buy yet. I'll hold it. Reading over the list of psionic powers, there's so many that they may as well have introduced magic. There's even a magic wand (a psi amp) for you to hold to help you do magic. Its kind of crazy that it appears to be so common in this world, and it should somewhat challenge why this world looks the way it does.

On a lift button is the name of the corporation that made it. I love that kind of attention to detail. I wonder if the lift can damage you if you stand under it. Yep, it can, a lot. What kind of brave new world doesn't install some safeties in its simple little lift system? I haven't saved recently, so I have to backtrack all the way from training. I guess auto-save hasn't been invented yet. I'll stick with the same career choices, though.

I thought the game had started, but I'm still getting these exposition consoles to read (What is psionics, how your map works, etc.). This really should have been covered in the front end training.

Whoah, was that a ghost or a hologram? Freaky. I need an access card, I backtrack. I keep missing important items, even if they're on the floor or on top of a crate. They just seem to blend into the background. Aw, my first combat. And there's music! I love the sound these guys make, talking to themselves in the background. I found a log to listen to, but this music is so loud I might not hear it. OK, I can turn the music down, good.

Another exposition ghost, this time informing me about the state of the vending machine! Are these supposed to be my memories, which I learned were compromised during the intro scene to this level, where my memory restoration was interrupted?

OK, quick save and quick load are coming in really handy.

Hanging corpse - creepier than anything I can remember from Doom days.

The quantum entanglement booth, i.e. the ressurection booth is the craziest tech in the story so far, far crazier than even psionics. I know, its just a way to keep the game moving, but still. Why can't I start putting dead crew in there, and build a team? And why would the booth need samples from me or anyone - wouldn't that be standard procedure, to have your sample on file?

There's so much in this game that feels like a rough draft for what would become Deus Ex.

Voicework is, like System Shock, good for this time period, but average for a great game (much like Deus Ex). The primary story teller sounds like she was directed to sound like Captain Janeway. Also the little picture avatars for the various messages look like they are wearing Starfleet uniforms.

I don't know which is creepier, the hanged man or this monkey.

I found some object that looks like a heart. I can supposedly research it, but I don't have a skill point in it yet, so I'll just hold on to it.

What the... I was standing near a locked door, listening to the zombies on the other side, and one blips through the door and clobbers me! Hopefully that was just some weird clipping bug. Forget about this resurrection booth nonsense, I'm just reloading.

My first encounter with a security turret. It takes all of my energy weapon ammo to knock it down; trying armor-piercing rounds with the pistol. Now that's more like it - just 3 rounds to knock it down. With some trial and error, I can just peek out from behind some crates so as to take no damage myself.

Got some more cyber modules. Time to backtrack to the upgrade station and learn at least research. OK, that's kind of a cool yet implausibe way to introduce more information into the game. I'll drop the rest of my upgrade points into standard weapon.

A surgical unit, handy. OK, at least now the ghosts have been explained - a side effect of psionic equipment.

Irradiated monkies that shoot psionic blasts at you. Yep, another thing ported forward to Deus Ex.

Wow, my standard weapons skill, 2, is so low I can't operate a shotgun, yet I can operate a handgun at skill 1. What?

There's something annoying here - I meet two zombie grunts with shotguns, I kill both, and they yield up jammed weapons with no ammo, even though they could shoot at me until I killed them. I ran through it a few times and it came up the same each way. Final insult is that the encounter costs me the rest of my ammo, but I get nothing for it.

check compass, update map

I recently went to a retro arcade (YesterCades) and it reminded me of a whole bunch of arcade titles to add to the Game List. I verify the dates on Wikipedia and MobyGames, and I can't help but load some up on YouTube, which only prompts the finding of even more games.

I found some recommendations for The Witcher, an RPG, I think, from 2007. I check Steam to see if its available - nice, not only is it available, but they fixed a silly censorship problem. It almost always pays to only play old games. Speaking of old games, Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics are available for six dollars, so I might as well have them in Steam. I was thinking about playing them once more but decided not to, because there's so much new stuff to cover.

Another sale item is the Jedi Knight Collection for $12. I don't think I've played any Star Wars game other than the arcade ones, mostly because movie tie-in games usually rely on their name instead of their quality for sales. I remember seeing the Dark Forces box when it came out and thinking that it was nothing more than a Star Wars mod for Doom. I ignored it, which is probably a shame, because I may have missed out on some interesting characters (Kyle Katarn, Mara Jade). I'll add the series to the game list, and maybe even read about them and watch playthroughs, but I don't think I'll be playing this series. I still plan on playing the Knights of the Old Republic series, though, because I've heard good things.

Deus Ex 1 and 2 are available for $5. I'll take them both even though Deus Ex 2 was an abomination. Then I see Thief 3: Deadly Shadows for $10; I don't even know if I have it already in the attic. I think I have at least one or two Thief titles, and I know I'm going to play them soon. Time to draw down the ladder...