Pix's Origin Adventures

I start exploring the fleshy corridors again and this time decide to ignore the radioactive water for now and head the other way. I wouldn’t say that the place is exactly crawling with annelids but there are a few of the tougher ones around. The biggest problem I have is finding my way around in what is essentially a 3d maze. I lost my automap the moment I left the Von Braun and I’m kind of missing it. There is no way the automap’s 2D overhead view would have worked in here though with corridors going off in all directions.

I must still be in the Rickenbacker as I come across bodies, logs and some rooms sticking out of the flesh. There is even another chemical room but I never find the chemicals I need to research the alien armour so it stays unused until the end of the game.

A log I find describes how nerve clusters can be used to control sphincters in here. This is a bit vague but it turns out the thing in the screenshot here is a nerve cluster. There are two of them I need to find and shoot. The sphincter itself stands out as its blue. As soon as I find out about these it goes without saying they will in the two most dangerous areas of the ship so I swim through all the radiation using anti-radiation hypos as needed and sure enough this one is right at the far end.

The second nerve cluster is in a room with a floating alien. It isn’t that obvious and I’d have missed it if I wasn’t expecting it to be in here after being attacked by the floating thing.

This opens up the sphincter and gets me to the next area.

This gets me to what can only be described as giant sliding teeth. It’s the old platform game moving column although this first one just has to be avoided.

I get to a second set of teeth which I have to jump on and ride to get to and shoot another nerve cluster. This isn’t too tricky once I get the idea and there even seems to sometimes be a safe spot in the middle of the tooth where I don’t get crushed.

I come to a room which I’m told is the womb for the annelids newest creation. I’m expecting it to have some significance as the orifices on the wall are highlightable in the UI. If there is anything I can do here I never find it though and indeed the whole room is optional.

A bit more exploring and I find myself with a big drop down into some water. No turning back now…

About this time I end up (and its becoming a habit with me) of saving my game just before I get killed by a floating annelid. These things seem to respawn in seconds which is why I wasn’t expecting it. It turns out my nearest savegame was hours back when I load it. To make things worse as soon as I do load it, it wipes out my autosave leaving me without even the option of turning on god mode or anything….. I’m glad to say Windows 7 has a new feature (maybe it was in Vista as well) similar to a network server where it backs up changed files once a day. I didn’t even know this was there but I use it to restore my whole save game folder. I have to start back at the beginning of today’s session but I can live with that and now I know where I’m going I play through to here again very quickly.

I pass through a corridor full of floating annelid and at the end there is what turns out to be a never ending stream of rumblers. I try taking them all out for a while but they just keep on coming. In the next room is the reason why. I’ve found the heart of the annelids.

There is always a trick to these final bosses. In this one I have to shoot these little aliens in wholes at the edges of the room. I then have to shoot the three stars floating around and finally take out the spherical thing in the middle of the room.

This isn’t all that easy with rumblers constantly chasing me. I can just keep ahead of them if I keep moving but can’t afford to stop for a second. Just changing weapons and ammo is tricky. Once the core is blown up, I can climb up into it and jump into the hole I just made.

I follow through a series of tunnels and find a strange semi-transparent log. It turns out that I’m not quite done yet. Shodan hasn’t destroyed the Von Braun after all and is using its faster than light drive to warp reality into her vision.

This means I get to explore a virtual reality area similar to that in the training simulators right back at the start of the game.

Shodan has created her own virtual versions of the annelids which seems a bit out of character for someone who wanted to destroy them all so badly. They aren’t any different to the originals except for being transparent.

I’m traversing Shodan’s memory in effect and I soon arrive at the start of SS1 from Citadel station. In fact the whole of the rest of the level is a warped version of citadel. It’s funny how the graphics don’t seem to have been enhanced much from the original yet don’t appear out of place at all. Revisiting here is a nice touch for the fans of SS1.

After I bit of exploring I jump down a load of blocks that were not in SS1 and end up falling into a long glowing tunnel toward what I’m assuming will be the final encounter.

Sure enough Shodan is down here but protected for now by a shield. I’m told in a log I find that I can hack the terminals to lower this shield.

There are two problems with hacking the terminals. The minor one is that the floor keeps getting electrified so it hurts if I stand too close. The bigger problem is these virtual Shodan’s that keep attacking me. I don’t know if its a PC speed issue but the respawn time on these seems far too quick to me. At first its got the ability to make you jump, when you are trying to hack the terminal and you suddenly hear one laughing in your ear but this gave way to irritation pretty quickly after I’ve tried 50 times to hack the same terminal. Most of the time I could just about select the terminal and click start before I was under attack. A higher hacking skill would have been really, really, useful here.

After many retries I get the shield down and the rest is easy.

Shodan takes a few shots but my energy gun brings her down quickly enough and I go into the final cutscene. Hypersnap failed me again in capturing screenshots from the movie. In brief Shodan attempts to coerce me into joining her, I refuse, blow her up and find myself back on the Rickenbacker. In the meanwhile, I get to see the two escapees from the Von Braun in their pod and the woman transforms into another Shodan. You could see this one coming a mile off – it was the only reason I could think why they were allowed to escape in the first place. I’m not sure it makes sense but it did leave the door open for the sequel we never got.

I’ve enjoyed SS2 a lot but I prefer SS1. This was a worthy sequel in every way and did build to a good climax whereas SS1 fell a bit flat right at the end. I don’t feel the story delivered quite as well, however, and SS2 was definitely less innovative. It’s a lot more accessible due to its improved interface but is a little too similar to some newer games and ends up suffering in comparison. There is no way I could rate this above BioShock in all honesty, but if I had played it years back and had the benefit of nostalgia I might have a different opinion.

The latest Wallace and Grommit game came out today. I’ll be playing that before I start another game here but it probably won’t take long. In the meanwhile, I get to play movie reviewer and have a look at the Wing Commander film.

I start out searching for artwork and the missing athletics keycard. I find the keycard on a body that I’d somehow managed to miss in the crew quarters first time around.

I head for the athletics area and see a huge fleshy creature in the middle of basketball court. For some reason it doesn’t move at all and I bludgeon it to death with impunity.

Through the next area is a swimming pool complete with a floating body.

In a small room off here is a spot for a power cell. As luck would have it I’m carrying one of these around so I use it here but I have no idea what this achieves.

I find the transmitter soon afterwards but I’ve not seen any more artwork yet. I must have missed some so this means trawling around the level again looking for pictures.

Much later I find this in the crew quarters – just one more to find.

The final one is in an art shop in the mall. It’s on the second level which is why I missed it first time around.

I head back for the transmitter. I’ve only got two possible orders to try the numbers in and the first one works out.

Shodan still can’t manage to wipe out the infestation and wants me to help her gain complete control over the ship. She activates the lift I saw earlier to the command deck and sends me up there.

The command deck has a simple tram system that carries me between 3 stops.

When I get to the end of the tram journey I see two survivors trying to get to the one remaining escape pod. They are chased away before I can get off the tram.

I follow after them and arrive just in time to see their pod escape. They have left behind a bridge access security card.

I use this card to access the bridge elevator where I’m greeted by another giant mech.

Once through the mech, its straight to the bridge. This place looks a lot more advanced than most of the rest of the ship.

I find the password breaking gadget I’m looking for behind some smashable glass.

I then trot off and use this in the right place to give Shodan complete control to the ship. She decides that she will be unable to wipe out her children as they have infested every corner of the ship. We are going to have to blow up the Von Braun then evacuate to its support ship the Rickenbacker.

This next stage of the game involves me being sent all over the ship to carry out tasks. First off, I have to go to the engine core to start the self destruct for the ship.

Shodan gives me the code to do this and thats stage 1 done.

This opens up a new area for shuttle access on the command deck so I head up there. I need to stop the infestation escaping from here by blowing up the shuttles. When I arrive a midwife is tampering with some sensitive equipment which doesn’t look good.

There are two shuttle bays here. The damaged equipment would have dropped the shield of one of them. I can still destroy the second shuttle at least and it only takes a few shots to blow it up.

I need to destroy the shield generator for the first shuttle. Shodan tells me to hack the nearest replicator to produce a gadget which will do the job.

I do this then run away as quickly as possible while it does its work.

A few seconds later and the second shuttle is destroyed.

I need to get to the umbilical leading to the Rickenbacker. I’m told to go to the middle tram stop but when I get there my passage is blocked and I get a message to go and meet up with one of the aliens on the bridge. This doesn’t sound like a trap at all……

When I arrive on the bridge, we don’t even go through the formalities of a chat before I’m attacked. I’m expecting something of a boss fight but it turns out to be really easy. I just hide behind a console and lob a few grenades out until its dead. This opens up my route to the Rickenbacker.

This route is well guarded and I have to carefully edge past a load of turrets.

My first task in the Rickenbacker is to destroy 15 eggs containing some new sort of super-mutant. These eggs are spread all over the base and will take a bit of finding.

I do a lot of searching around taking out any eggs I find. I also discover this gravity reversal switch. Throwing it seems like a good idea and nets me 20 modules but it doesn’t affect my immediate area.

I explore for a while taking out eggs. There are more defenses than ever but nothing much new. There is one area of the ship with a hull breach and I also have a puzzle involving raising and lowering missiles to create a path. The difficult bit here is jumping onto the first missile. There seems to be a problem in the engine at times with jumping and it takes a few attempts.

I find my final egg and head for the next part of the Rickenbacker.

This is where the gravity has been reversed. I walk into a church which now has an upside-down cross.

I find some potentially useful alien armour but I need to research it before I can use it. I’ve no idea if I’ll see any more chemical rooms or if I should go back but decide to press on.

When I get deep enough into the Rickenbacker, Shodan tells me that the infection has spread and now surrounds the ship. I have to head right into it for all that. She also seems to almost be getting fond of me and how I am becoming closer to her as I improve my cybernetics. I don’t entirely like where this is going – I was expecting her to turn on me before now and I’m not sure I expect a happy ending.

The infection is surrounding the windows here in a giant fleshy mass. I notice now in this screenshot that there was another permanent upgrade panel which I didn’t take advantage of.

This is due to being attacked on all sides.

In the end I take the easy option and run for the escape pod and launch myself into the fleshy mass.

I must be nearing the conclusion of the game now but I have to explore this place first and figure out how to destroy it.

Shodan can no longer maintain contact so I’m on my own. A lot of the tunnels are under water which is radioactive. My first first attempt at exploration leads to fatal poisoning. I was really tempted at this point to push on to finish the game but I decided to leave it for another night rather than rushing through.

When I’ve been playing this game, I’ve often thought how similar it was to Doom 3, with its email logs, sound design and the like. Now I even get a fleshy infestation taking over the station. I know Doom came first but it’s probably got less in common with its sequel than SS2 does – it’s similar enough that Doom 3 feels like a bit of a rip-off now. I’m actually quite a fan of Doom 3. While clearly being a technology showcase, it was still a game that generated a fantastically scary atmosphere. Years earlier SS2 has managed the same thing only with a far more interesting storyline and a load of RPG elements and gameplay options thrown into the mix.

SS2 is a game that would really justify another play through. The storyline isn’t always easy to follow as it comes at me in short emails in a somewhat random order. I do like this system for all that – the only snag is when one message gets cut off by another or if a monster attacks I tend to miss whats being said. It’s not always that quick or easy to find the email you missed so I do feel like I’ve missed elements of the story on the way through. Having the interface in a resolution it was never designed for probably doesn’t help matters here.

Aside from the story there are whole areas of abilities that I’ve ignored while playing this. I’ve not upgraded psi-powers at all instead concentrating on tech, weapons and combat skill. Even at this late stage in the game I’m a long way from maxing out most my stats even in these areas although I am clearly much more powerful than in the early game.

I’m curious to know where things are going at this stage, its still got me guessing. Clearly I’ll be attempting to destroy the infestation but Shodan will still be alive. I’m half expecting to end up being controlled by her due to my ever upgraded implants. An entirely happy and conclusive ending looks really unlikely.