System shock 1 had almost no gameplay and was very ugly compared to Doom. Systemshock 2 was pretty good for its day but mostly for its story and atmosphere. The gameplay was very bland FPS under par compared to other action FPS games of its generation.
Whoa there! What did you say?! Them's fighting words, buddy!
Granted, Dark Messiah has its moments, but after all's said and done, I found it to be repetetive and somewhat dull. Don't go mistaking eye candy for gameplay! IMHO, DM is nowhere near the greatness of SS1 and SS2 for sure. It's not even close to its "older brother" Arx Fatalis.
I mean, take for example, the spider temple in DM and the endless waves of zombies in it. After about 20-30 minutes, it started to get so repetetive that it was mind-numbingly boring and it just went on and on and on. Compare that spider temple level to Arx Fatalis' crypt level. Both have the same kind of premise, but the crypt is leaps and bounds better designed level. It achieves so much more in terms of mood and gameplay than DM (with "lesser" tech, no less). Not once during the crypt level did I feel like it was dragging on too long and that the level had been stretched to the max to "pad up" the game length or something. The spider temple sure made me feel that way many times over.
The Havoc tricks in DM are cool for the first couple of times, but they lose their coolness factor pretty fast after you kicked a few guards to those strangely everpresent spikes or off some ledges. HL2 had the right amount of gravity and environment tricks with Havoc, DM was really tring too hard with them and it resulted in totally unrealistic (yes, I know it's a
fantasy game) and just plain silly environments.
Even if the first person combat is pretty cool, there just is way too much of it, so much so that it starts to become boring ("oh look, yet another batch of zombies"). Even if there are the basics of an RPG character progression there, with such a limited range of weapons and small array of skills, it just doesn't seem to click. The exploration aspect is well done in a "find a hidden area" kind of way, but still the levels are quite linear and it shows the FPS side of the game strongly. DM does look great, even today, but still feels hollow. The main NPCs are extremely well made (NPC animation especially, one of the strengths of the Source engine), but everyone else is just an enemy with a very generic look. (Have to give a quick thumbs up for the orc models, though. They're superb!) The entire time I spent with DM, I felt something was amiss, like it was a movie that was just slightly out of focus. So close to being something really great, but never actually achieving it. Unlike SS1, SS2 and Arx Fatalis, which all achieved gaming greatness. So don't go badmouthing them, ya hear!