Tag: Dead Space

  • Don’t Try To Dig What We All Say: Trey’s Games Of The Generation Pt. 1

    A little over a year ago, the powers-that-be in gaming decided that the time had come, and released the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One, bringing to a close the longest console “generation” in gaming history: Seven years for the PlayStation 3, eight for the Xbox 360. This nearly decade-long era saw major shifts in the video game industry and its consumer base: Microsoft rose to new heights thanks to great first-party titles and Xbox Live; Sony handily won the new optical media fight as Blu-ray rose to prominence over HD-DVD; and Nintendo opted to fight on their own terms by releasing the Wii on unsuspecting consumers worldwide.

    The “console wars” raged on… sort of. As people who grew up playing games got older, started families, and began earning “grown-up” amounts of money, it became commonplace to have more than just one console in the house. Hell, I can’t think of a single friend with even a passing interest in games who didn’t own at least two systems, and most households had all three present. Exclusives still exist, but the majority of titles (including many of those on this list) are now cross-platform at launch, or “timed exclusives” that eventually ended up on every platform.

    Thanks to that, this list is not limited to just one system from the past generation, though I did tend to play more things on the 360. This list is in no way meant to be “comprehensive;” there will be things missing that you might have included, or things I included that you might have hated. I’m not claiming these are the best games from the past generation, or even that these are my absolute favorites. When I think about the last eight years, though, these are the titles that stand out most sharply.

    Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360)

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    No, I don’t mean the entire franchise, though the Ezio trilogy is certainly one for the ages; I mean Assassin’s Creed, the much-maligned, admittedly imperfect first entry in the series. Many people may have forgotten that this blockbuster gaming giant started off as a PS3 exclusive, and after the reveal trailer, I was ready and willing to spend $500 at launch. The mission structure got a little repetitive, but watching Altair go from a real asshole to a real assassin was genuinely moving, and the open-ended free-running inspired greatness in later titles such as Infamous and Sleeping Dogs.

    Battlefield: Cad Company 2 (Xbox 360)

    February 2nd, 2010 @ 00:01:04

    Of all the games on that list, I don’t know that any approach the return-on-investment provided by “Bad Co 2.” We played the single-map beta for this game all night, every night while it was active; the full game consumed weeks’ worth of our lives over the next year; and the Vietnam expansion pulled us back in well after the fun should have run out. For me, this game is the standard by which all other multiplayer shooters are judged, and found wanting. Find me another game where “ram the objective building with a tank until it collapses” is a legitimate strategy, and then we’ll talk.

    BioShock Infinite (PC)

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    I struggled at every turn with which BioShock game to put on this list, and it wasn’t until I was writing these blurbs that Infinite cinched the win. I still think the original has better atmosphere, the supporting characters are stronger, and Rapture still kicks Columbia’s ass in terms of environment. As a representation of this past generation, though, I think Infinite stands above its predecessor, because when you get right down to it, it is a better game. The relationship between Booker and Elizabeth maintains perfection from start to finish, and in my opinion is far more worthy of accolades than the title’s admittedly muddled metaphysical elements.

    Borderlands (Xbox 360)

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    Erich literally had to trick me into playing this; after nearly a week of bugging me about it, he came over under some pretense, installed it on my 360, and shoved a controller in my hands. Six (maybe eight?) hours later, he finally managed to get the disc and leave for home, despite my protestations. For weeks after that, it was almost impossible to get a copy in Tuscaloosa, as anyone with a friend and a console snatched them up. I know the sequel is seen by many as some sort of co-op mecca, but for me Borderlands will always come back to fighting Nine Toes (he also has three balls) in split-screen at 4 am.

    Dead Space (Xbox 360)

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    I have one word: Fear. Few pieces of entertainment have ever instilled in me the fear that the first Dead Space managed. Playing it became a catch-22, trying to balance my desire to keep going with the almost physical dread that came with being in Isaac’s boots. The next two iterations were greeted with mixed feelings and open hostility, respectively, but I don’t think anyone would deny that the original helped break new ground in horror. On some level, games like Amnesia and Outlast owe their success to Dead Space, just as Dead Space built from the foundation established by Resident Evil 4.

    Fallout 3 (PC)

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    I own the collector’s edition of Fallout 3 on the 360, lunchbox, bobble head and all; I even used a friend’s GOTY edition disc to install all of the extra content. It wasn’t until I picked it up this past summer on a Steam sale, though, that I really took the time to appropriately explore the Capitol Wasteland. The game is still captivating: The landscape is simultaneously beautiful and desolate; the characters are appropriately realized; the sheer amount of content is staggering; and finally, the number of nods, homages, and references to all things sci-fi warmed my insides. The moment that still sticks with me the most is when I snuck up behind a feral ghoul sitting near a fire, took him out, and searched him to discover that his only possession was a teddy bear. It was heartbreaking.

    Far Cry 3 (Xbox 360)

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    Beth and I received Far Cry 3 as a very generous gift from her parents, but it came at a cost. After we each unwrapped ours on Christmas morning, her mom sat us down and pointed out that the cover prominently features a man holding a gun, a person buried in the sand, and dead bodies hanging in the trees; she then read the laundry-list of reasons the game is rated Mature by the ESRB. After acknowledging that we were adults, and could make our own choices about what to play, she politely wrapped up with, “I don’t know if there will ever be a ‘Far Cry 4,’ but I can guarantee you it won’t be under this tree.”

    Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)

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    I knew I would have to buy an Xbox 360 after playing the first Gears of War at a LAN / System Link party in my dorm; I had to be physically restrained from going to Wal-Mart that very instant after my first chainsaw kills. Gears of War 2 only improved upon that formula, with Horde mode being the best inclusion by far. Few cooperative experiences match the thrill getting everyone settled into the right location and rhythm during the early waves, only to have everything fall apart at the claws of a well-placed ticker. It only gets better when one person, alone and out of ammo, manages to finish the wave using nothing but the stock of their shotgun.

    Halo 3 (Xbox 360)

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    There is not a game on this list I am more ambivalent about at times, or one I have said more terrible things about in the heat of the moment. I picked Halo 3 up at midnight, played some multiplayer, and then finished the campaign in one sitting after everyone else had logged off and gone to bed. I hate the story, yet have played the campaign multiple times, and some of the set-pieces still get my heart pumping. The multiplayer options opened up by Forge are staggering, and we still played custom games (Said the Liar!) for hours at a time years after release.

    Mass Effect (Xbox 360)

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    I had no interest in Mass Effect when it came out. Our friend Oz got a copy the first day, then convinced Erich to play it, and several months after the fact I borrowed it and decided to give it a chance at their insistence. I play for six hours, and the next day was overjoyed to discover that a store nearby still had a collector’s edition in stock. To this day, I feel the Mass Effect series is the closest we’ve gotten to games that genuinely capture the spirit of something like Star Trek, and the vast galaxy exploration still impresses with its sheer size.

    Metal Gear Solid 4 (PlayStation 3)

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    I bought a PlayStation 3 to play this game; in fact, I bought the system bundle that included the game. I’ll admit that the cutscenes can get both tedious and extraordinarily silly, but the core gameplay and story remain true to the excellence that is Metal Gear Solid. I could write pages about this game, but all that needs to be said is that the opening moments of your return to Shadow Moses brought tears to my eyes. Those tears evaporated shortly thereafter, of course, when I found myself using *(@^ing Metal Gear Rex to fight Metal Gear Ray as building crumbled around us.

  • Surviving Horror

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    In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d take the opportunity to weigh in on the state of horror in the gaming industry.

    I’ll also take a second to weigh in on Halloween: It’s the best. Period. Do not, under any circumstances, try and overrun my day with your Christmas bullshit. I like Christmas, a lot, as a reason to give gifts, a wonderful time to be with loved ones, and a celebration of my personal belief system. All Hallow’s Eve kicks its ass, though, and don’t you forget it.

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    Last night, I was thrilled to open up Steam – like I do every night – and see that they are celebrating this best of times with a sale on “spooky” games, which is Valve-speak for “almost all of the games, really.” I perused the selection, and came out of the process with Outlast, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Condemned: Criminal Origins. The first two are relatively new, but have been highly praised, while Condemned is one of the few big horror titles I’ve ever missed out on.

    I’ve never been what most people would call a “scaredy-cat” when it comes to life… Unless there’s heights, deep water, or darkness involved. Or horses. So long as I’m not being dropped into a horse-filled lake at night, though, I can keep my shit together fairly well. My mom loves all things horror, so being a wuss about Nightmare on Elm Street wasn’t an option. I saw Aliens at a very young, very impressionable age, and repeated viewings of the chestburster scene taught me that fear can be controlled.

    I’m not talking about “controlled” in some grand sense, or even in a way that works in a situation that involves a genuine threat to my well-being; the Kwisatz Haderach I am most assuredly not. The Bene Gesserit mantra – “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.” – still rings in my mind at times, though. While I certainly lack the qualifications to discuss why people in general seek out thrills-and-chills, I know my own reasons: I like conquering those moments.

    I don’t play scary games or watch scary movies during the day; I’ve tried, and it just doesn’t work. The reason it doesn’t work is because fear generated by media is something disingenuous by nature, and is best when you provide it as much fuel as possible; it helps the process when you can open yourself to the possibility that you might be in danger, no matter how safe you actually are. I can’t tell you the number of times I have shifted plans toward enjoying something scary just because a storm has blown up outside. My copy of Alan Wake was purchased under precisely such conditions, and I literally raced home so I could play it as much as possible while the weather was bad.

    Horror movies are experiencing a spike in popularity that started with the first Scream, and has been fueled by franchises like Final Destination, Saw, and Paranormal Activity. I’m a bit pickier when it comes to crawling over the back of an auditorium seat; I love a good slasher flick, don’t mind some psychological horror, need to see everyone get theirs in the end, and rarely bother with anything PG-13. The Strangers, Funny Games, and Cabin in the Woods all fit the bill in recent years, and I’ll probably see Insidious at some point.

    Saw and Paranormal Activity took Hollywood by storm because the ratio of expenditures to profit was mind-boggling, and such was the case with a little game called Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Amnesia isn’t the prettiest game in the world, and the mechanics leave room for improvement, but the overall experience is perfectly targeted to one goal: Goddamn nightmares. I’ve tried to really dive into it, but I’m lucky to get through a half hour each time before going “Nope” and shutting it down.

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    The horror renaissance has come to gaming in this way, with the apparent death of the big publisher old-guard giving way to indie titles, some of which begin their development cycles as free browser games. While I certainly enjoyed Dead Space 3, and still find necromorphs terrifying, I would never go so far as to suggest that it’s anywhere near as scary as the original. While careful inventory management was essential in Dead Space, my careful hoarding in DS 3 was merely force of habit, resulting in literally hundreds of health packs and thousand of rounds of ammo.

    If we’re going to talk about massive failures of pedigreed horror franchises, the rotten core has to be Resident Evil 6. I’ve owned all five previous numbered entries; I loved RE 4, and felt that the new control scheme was less a “travesty” and more “not broken and terrible.” Resident Evil 5 got me in with co-op, but the core gameplay was starting to show signs of mutation. I’ve only played a few chapters of Resident Evil 6, but they might as well have come straight out of a Michael Bay film that happens to involve zombies.

    If I’m being honest, the most harrowing game I’ve played to completion so far this year is The Swapper. An indie puzzle / platformer set on an abandoned space station, it perfectly captures the feeling of being afraid precisely because you are completely alone. In space. On a facility that used to be filled with people. Each new piece of information you receive only makes the situation worse, and the end of the game is as chilling as anything I’ve ever experienced.

    The Swapper wasn’t a horror game at heart, though, at least not in the traditional sense of building tension and sending dangerous enemies to hound you. In games like Amnesia or Outlast, the entire design is geared toward getting you wound-up, and then sending you screaming for safety. They achieve maximum impact by stripping you of any means to defend yourself, turning them from standard “survival horror” to “hide under something and cry silently” horror. Even when Isaac Clarke was completely out of ammo, you could fall back on desperate melee attacks.

    Weapons aren’t the only things you’ll be without, though, as the days of never-ending light from ephemeral sources are no more. Outlast, for example, puts you in the shoes of a reporter investigating a metal asylum. Your only means of illumination is the night-vision mode on your handheld camcorder, and it eats batteries like a Sega Game Gear. Amnesia employs a similar mechanic via a lantern with limited oil and environmental lighting sources that must be ignited via tinderboxes. The Dark Descent took things one step further by employing an Eternal Darkness style sanity system; stay in the dark too long, and your perception of things warps, hindering your ability to move, interact, and escape.

    You’re probably asking yourself why I would pick up other games of this ilk if this one already stymies me so badly? The answer is simple: I like conquering those moments. I’ve mostly reached the point where I have to consciously allow myself to be scared by a film, but games can still take hold. The main difference I can come up with is interactivity; a game asks you to invest in the idea that the line between you and your character is blurred. If they’re in danger, you’re in danger, essentially. In order for that to work, a good horror game has to walk the line between fear and frustration; keeping the character / player in a constant state of danger and near-death, without actually killing them so many times that dying loses its bite.

    Using this formula, the titles mentioned above have raked in impressive numbers – impressive, that is, considering that they’re indie horror games. Even the big-name titles like the upcoming The Evil Within from Bethesda won’t have the numbers of something like Skyrim, Call of Duty, or Madden. Video games are already less accessible than going to see the movies, and while watching Amnesia reaction videos on YouTube is entertaining, it still doesn’t approach the social connection achieved by watching a scary flick in an auditorium full of other people.

    At their core, horror games have to succeed on the existence of a very specific group: Individuals with a semi-disposable income, the desire to play games by themselves, and the skill necessary for the generally steep difficulty involved. Even within my group of friends, there are only a handful of us that fit this criteria; even I haven’t ever purchased these kind of games at their standard $20 price point. When you consider what a horror game would have to offer to get me to shell out $60, I begin to have a little more sympathy for publishers and developers to be more cautious about investing in them.

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    Unfortunately, this can lead to wasted potential on certain titles, such as the recently announced Alien: Isolation. Sega has a lot riding on this title, as further mishandling of the franchise after Colonial Marines could destroy what profitability is left. The report is that you will be playing as Ellen Ripley’s daughter in an environment that contains a single xenomorph, in homage to the first film. Sounds fantastic, right? Except that the report also talks about “clone soldiers” and other nonsense that makes it clear the bulk of gameplay will probably consist of generic sci-fi shooting.

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    I feel this paradox – the seeming inability of games in traditional horror franchises to stay focused on horror – highlights the challenges facing the industry that have led to the current state of affairs. The more popular a franchise becomes, the more likely the call will be made to tweak it into something more marketable. I haven’t played A Machine for Pigs yet, but word on the web seems to be that it isn’t the terrifying tour-de-force delivered by its predecessor. Have we really reached the point were a new IP can’t even make it to the second entry without having to worry about “accessibility?”

    For the answer to that question, you only have to look as far as the second paragraph on this post: Whatever sells, wins. Halloween isn’t much more than cheap candy and Instagram pics of girls in costume as “slutty sluts.” Christmas gets people spending money, and so has been allowed outside the confines of December. Hell, there are department stores opening up at 8 PM on November 28th, right in the middle of what should be post-dinner Thanksgiving naps and football.

    In two months or so, there will be millions of people unwrapping copies of sports titles, action platformers and shooters, with some racing titles and JRPGs thrown in for good measure. These are the kind of games that show off new consoles with flash, or keep kids huddled around the TV, or let older gamers chat with friends while enjoying a round or two. You won’t find a whole of people whose first hope Christmas morning is “Oh man, I hope I get a hyper-terrifying game that will keep me alone in the dark of my room!”

    For this weekend, though, I’m going to allow myself to become absorbed in the darker side of things; let my imagination run rampant, to the point where I triple-check the locks and keep my flashlight under my pillow. Come Monday morning, I want to exult in the rising of the sun, clawing my way up from a place of fear. I want to conquer those moments. Plus, it looks like Dead Rising 3 will probably be my holiday launch title that gets played while we gather around the tree, and at least it has zombies. My mom loves zombies.

  • In Space, No One Can Hear You Get Cancelled. (UPDATED)

    Photo courtesy digitalspy.com
    Photo courtesy digitalspy.com

    Reports are swirling that EA has officially put the “dead” in Dead Space and effectively cancelled the franchise after sales for Dead Space 3 did not meet expectations. EA has been laying off employees in their Los Angeles and Montreal studios as part of the company’s restructuring plans, which now includes no more Dead Space.

    EA’s expectations for the game were too high and everyone knew it. Last year, CEO John Riccitiello said he thought that Dead Space 3 could sell 5 million copies. Remember when selling a million copies used to be considered  a hit and sequel worthy?

    Despite the sad news, Dead Space 3 received a glowing 9.5 review from us and should be experienced.

    UPDATE

    EA has responded to the story this morning saying that the Dead Space franchise is still alive and well at Visceral Montreal and remains one of their most important IP’s.

     

  • Make Us Whole: Dead Space 3 Review

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    “In Space…”

    I don’t get scared very easily. That’s not machismo talking, it’s just the truth; while I enjoy scary movies, survival horror games, and even ghost stories, but my enjoyment comes from allowing myself to be drawn in and spooked. I don’t experience nightmares or sit up listening to things go bump in the night afterwards. So I always consider it a testament to a title’s terror credibility when it gets under my skin: Dan Simmons’ historically engrossing novel Drood, John Carpenter’s hopeless tale of survival The Thing, and the genre re-defining Resident Evil 4 all have places on that list.

    I say all that to give you a foundation for the following statement: I could not play Dead Space 3 for more than a few hours at a time before my anxiety levels became unbearable. I’m going to talk a lot here about the series’ evolution into an action game, but I wanted to establish that no matter how much the balance of power might have shifted in Isaac Clarke’s favor, this game will still scare the Hell out of you if you let it. It accomplishes this task the same way the first two did:

    Necromorphs are $*^-ing terrifying.

    For me, at least, that has always been the core concept of Dead Space. These aren’t just zombies that a headshot will put down, or Flood that drop after a few shotgun blasts, or even the mutation-capable Plaga. We’re talking about civilians whose ribs are now talons used to crawl along the ground; workers whose legs rotted off and their spinal column is now a scorpion tail; toddlers on all fours with barbed tentacles growing from their backs; and finally, crab walking infants with their torsos swollen into exploding sacs of acid.

    As if those creature designs weren’t enough, the persistent gameplay mechanic is that shooting them is never enough. You have to dismember them, take them apart piece-by-piece, and even that just slows them down at first. The standard necro has four limbs and a head, and can lose two of those things and still survive; three if one piece is the head and it still has both arm appendages. Body shots might eventually cut them in two, but that doesn’t always stop the upper half from dragging itself after you.

    One of the new enemy types is mutated researchers in arctic gear dual-wielding climbing axes. Taking off their upper half results in their legs sprouting three tentacles and continuing to attack, and you have to take off two tentacles to finally drop them. Late in the game I missed the tentacles on one with a shotgun blast and got the legs instead; I mistakenly though it dead as the force knocked it away, only to be horrified as the intact tentacles began crawling after me, dragging the now-useless legs behind them.

    The Binding of Isaac

    With that image now firmly in your mind, we can continue on to a more extensive look at the game as a whole: Dead Space 3 continues the tale of Isaac Clarke and his seemingly inevitable fight against the alien artifacts known as Markers, the Necromorphs they create, and the Church of Unitology whose members seem to think that becoming an undead nightmare is some sort of transcendence. I’m not big one reviews that spend too much time on the past; if you want to know what happened before, there are two excellent games that can fill you in. The only really important bit is that Isaac was previously imprinted with the “gift” of being able to decode, create, and destroy Markers.

    After the events of DS and DS 2, Isaac understandably decided he was done getting involved in situations where he had to perform combat amputations on entire populations using jacked-up power tools. Unfortunately, both the forces of EarthGov and Unitology fell differently, and have small armies to back them up. A small squad of EG troops has located what they believe to be the Marker “homeworld” and they want Isaac’s help to possibly eradicate the necro threat for good. Just as they arrive on the lunar colony to enlist him, the Unitologist leader Dannick launches a massive coup that culminates in him activating Markers that had been secretly installed in an unknown number of locations.

    From there, things get all sci-fi horror as crap just starts falling to pieces around Isaac and the rest of the team. You eventually make it to the Marker homeworld, and once there you uncover evidence that “all of this has happened before,” etc. The planet itself, known as Tau Volantis, has been visited by more than one group of people (and more than one species) trying to understand, control, eliminate or activate the Markers over the millennia. Its frozen plains and canyons make for an interesting change from the usual deserted corridors Isaac finds himself in, and allows for new necros to do things like pop up out of the snow or blindside you in a white-out blizzard. A late game environment shift puts you back in corridors for good, but the change is part of a plot reveal that makes those sections more interesting than you’d think.

    A Fistful of Stasis

    Attractive environments aren’t your only reason to pay attention to your surrounds, as DS 3 ups the ante in terms of the series’ weapon crafting / upgrading system. For those unfamiliar with previous installments, each weapon came pre-built and used a unique type of ammo; upgrading was accomplished by using a universal resource to unlock new stats via a branching research tree specific to each gun. Most players eventually settled on two weapons that they just couldn’t live without for upgrading, and used the rest of them as circumstances dictated.

    The new system breaks each weapon down into core components: the basic frame, a top tool, a bottom tool, a tip for each tool, and two attachment slots. These parts can either be found in the world or constructed as you need them from scrap; there are also blueprints that can be constructed from scratch if you have enough resources. Ammo is also universal this time around, so you don’t have to micro-manage how much you have for each weapon or worry about equipping something and forgetting to change out your clips.

    The end result is combat that can be significantly more varied than previous outings, if you want to put in the effort. I won’t go into all the variations, or even a fraction of them, because even I only scratched the surface. Suffice to say that if you’ve ever wanted a high-tech beam rifle that fires acid-coated saw blades from its lower half, or a dual-stream flamethrower / cryo gun that also puts enemies in brief suspended animation, you’ll probably find the crafting system to your liking. Upgrading has also been streamlined into “circuits” that affect damage, reload speed, clip size, and fire rate; these can also be found / crafted and are freely interchangeable between weapons.

    I beat the first DS using only my plasma cutter, not because I wanted the “One Gun” achievement (though that was a nice bonus) but because none of the other weapons felt as solid to me. I quickly realized in DS 2 that such tactics were unadvisable, and DS 3 only builds on those changes. Crafting and equipping weapons suited to your play style is essential, because you’re going to be using those weapons at every turn. Make no mistake; this is an action game where the enemies just happen to be horrible monstrosities. You will have to fight off necros in most rooms, and as the game progresses they only become more frequent in both numbers and variety; it’s these large-scale, multi-wave fights that provide biggest test of your loadouts and resource management.

    This installment introduces human enemies for the first time in the form of Unitologist soldiers that attack in squads. I had heard these segments praised as a nice break from necro hordes, but to be honest they fell kind of flat for me for one reason: headshots. I’ve spent two full DS games learning to pick limbs off charging necros from twenty yards out; I’m Sheldon Pendergrass with a plasma cutter. So when you give me enemies that can be dropped with a single shot, and combine that with the ability to craft a weapon whose sole purpose is damage and accuracy, I’m left with a lot of corpses just waiting to be infected. Supposedly the soldier AI is capable of impressive tactical maneuvering, but again, I didn’t sit around waiting for them to start flanking me in two-man teams or whatever.

    The designers must have recognized this fact, because there is an enemy type that consists of a head that crawls around on tentacles and attaches itself only to enemies who already don’t have heads; said enemies then get back up and either fire wildly in your general direction or try to club you if you get too close. I haven’t decided if I’m impressed that they tried to make the soldiers a dual-threat or annoyed that they didn’t just have them immediately get ambushed and reanimated every time you encountered them. Hell, about half the time you encounter them toward the end of the game that is exactly what happens, and often on a large scale that makes you feel pretty awesome as you sprint through the chaos.

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    Now Entering Zero Gravity

    If I have one major complaint about the game, it would be that it contains several half-developed concepts such as this one. The zero-gravity sections have finally been perfected, but now there are bits where Isaac is rappelling up and down cliff faces while fighting enemies and dodging avalanches; the idea is solid, but the execution – especially when it comes to the collision detection for dodging chasms and debris – is so maddening I almost threw my controller on more than one occasion. There’s a new type of hacking mini-game that uses the analog sticks to control the interface, but very early on it introduces diagonal movement, which it can only accurately detect about half the time.

    The weapon crafting is great, as I said, but weapon parts, upgrades circuits, and spare part boxes all take up space in your inventory until you can get to a bench and store them. This wouldn’t be as aggravating if there weren’t a full nine slots for “key items” down in one corner, which I swear I never had more than three of in the entire campaign. Finally, several missions that do use those slots involve you running about and collecting parts that then need to be assembled at a bench to make some gizmo or another. As if fetch-quests weren’t bad enough, the benches are often in areas where enemies constantly spawn, meaning you have to clear the area and then hope the doo-dad assembles faster than they can respawn.

    The worst offender in terms of useless mechanics, bar-none, is the side quests that are scattered throughout the game. Not the co-op quests, mind you; those work well for reasons I’ll talk about later. The single-player side quests work this way: you’ll come across something, usually a key card or an audio log, which indicates there’s a place nearby that has a resource stash or information that could be useful to the mission. The catch is that most of these places are where things went to Hell the fastest and hardest at some point in the past. Admittedly some of them work really well, and can deepen your understanding of the Markers’ impact on history, introduce unique enemy types, and provide you with some truly phenomenal new equipment.

    The majority of them fall far short of this ideal, and serve to do little more than lengthen the game in infuriating ways. You’re led somewhere you believe will be important, yet there are no indications of this via audio logs, text logs, or the collectible artifacts scattered throughout the game. You wander through four generic rooms, go down an elevator, and come out on another level where the rooms are essentially the same. The only distinguishing feature of these rooms is that each one has at least four vent shafts, which means a constant stream of necros. This all culminates in a room where you press a button and then have to fight some insane number of foes, and then open a resource crate that contains little more than resentment.

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    Too Many Engineers in the Drive Room

    My final complaint with single-player is simply that I didn’t really care much about this story this time around. DS and DS 2 survived on the Alien / Aliens dynamic. The first game was driven largely by a mixture of Isaac’s survival against an unknown enemy, his reliance upon questionable allies, and his investigation of where it all went wrong for the Ishimura; the second one thrust us into a situation that was just starting to go wrong, as Isaac – the sole survivor of a previous outbreak – tried desperately to get someone to listen to him while everyone above him manipulated his experiences for their own purposes. There were some questions along the way: “What are Markers?”; “How are Markers and necros related?”; “Why would anyone ever want to be a Unitologist?”; etc. We got some answers, too, but the real focus was on Isaac (i.e. the player) and his personal journey through this madness.

    Dead Space 3, while certainly better than Alien3 in my book, suffers from some of the same missteps in terms of changing focus away from the main character in favor of the “bigger picture.” We’re suddenly expected to care about the balance of power between EarthGov and the Unitologists; questions about the why and where and how of Markers / necros are too central to the plot; enormous answers to those questions are overshadowed in favor of keeping the plot going; the plot see-saws between focal points to the point where nothing seems to have any substance. The low point for me was when the only emotional impact I had felt was overturned to give more heft to act three’s maguffin, of all things. I’ve got some more story elements to talk about, but they’ll make more sense after we talk about the cooperative play mode.

    Butch Clarke and the Teslacoil Kid

    Of all the things that I’ve ever seen gamers up-in-arms about, the inclusion of co-op in DS 3 has to be fairly close to the top of the list. Citing examples like Resident Evil 5 & 6, general consensus was that you can’t make a genuinely intense survival horror experience if there’s someone tagging along for the ride. I think RE 5 and DS 3 both have intense moments that go beyond the number of players, but I will admit that the former got one thing right: When you’re not in a co-op game, the second protagonist – John Carver – simply isn’t there. The game arranges for him and Isaac to have to “take separate paths,” and this works well for the most part. Carver will still communicate with you over the radio, and you can sometimes see him on cameras or off in the distance. In co-op play, the game actually features separate dialogue that takes Carver’s sudden proximity into account; the developers even went so far as to alter some of the scripted action sequences so that both characters have to participate.

    Yet in a few key cutscenes and scripted events spread throughout the game, it fails repeatedly and always in the same way: Carver simply appears somewhere near Isaac in a way that makes absolutely no sense. The worst co-op example of this I can find is a scripted event early on that has Isaac leaping onto a ship from a platform. In single-player, Carver was already on the ship, and the player just button-presses to help Isaac climb; but in co-op, regardless of where the Carver was when the event is triggered, he is suddenly on the ship already and both players have to button-mash. Single-player wise, there is a scene where Isaac has fallen behind the group and is ambushed as he tries to catch up with them; despite the fact that you are alone and having a conversation with Carver over the radio, when you get ambushed the camera pans around to show him coming out of the corridor behind you.

    The only substantial change to content between the two modes are side missions that can only be accessed through co-op; the reasons for Isaac not getting into these places alone is actually part of the story these missions tell. They follow the same formula as the other side-missions, but don’t fall as flat as often due to the aforementioned story significance. Without revealing too much, the driving force here is that Carver, unlike Isaac and others, has not yet become as… resistive to the Marker signal. Suffice to say that arguing with your co-op partner about things that may or may not be real and should or should not be killed right now or else you’re going to die adds something to the experience.

    As a gameplay experience, co-op is handled almost flawlessly: Areas where you have to do something like climb feature two grapple stations, and vehicles feature two seats; benches feature an activation panel at each end so neither of you has to wait, and previously hidden suit kiosks power up in some areas; each of you sees and can collect standard resources independently, and unique crafting items are automatically put in both inventories. You can also share blueprints and upgrade circuits at a bench, and either drop or directly give ammo and med kits to your partner.

    Unfortunately, I’m not going to pretend that these latter features don’t drastically reduce the difficulty, especially if you’re playing with someone who has significant playtime under their belt. I opted to play the game through solo at first, as did my brother, and we started a co-op venture after the fact. If you want a true Dead Space experience, I would suggest doing it that way, as well as playing the game on at least Hard. For the record, one of my friends cares more about experiencing the full story and all possible content, so it actually worked out for him to start in co-op. In that regard, the addition of this mode does become a boon to less hardcore players who prefer entertainment to having a re-animated mound of nightmare flesh rip their head off and spew acid bile down their throat on the first date.

    Convergence

    Dead Space 3 is not a perfect game. To be honest, in writing this review I have come across qualms I wasn’t even aware of while playing it; others were so obvious that they had me seeing red as I reloaded a checkpoint for the eighth time. The characters are mostly bland, except for Dannick, whose hipster glasses and tiny ponytail are grade-A tv villian reject material. The most interesting character in the bunch is a scientest who’s been dead for over 200 years and the rest of his doomed expedition, but audio logs are infrequent and have been replaced with text logs that you have to read on your tiny, holographic HUD. The gameplay whiplashes from survival horror to horror action to cover-based action to Uncharted-esq climbing and scripted events. It veers a little far from its roots, both in terms of gameplay and story, and the end result is a game that isn’t as memorable as either of its predecessors. Knowing that, keep an open mind going into my final score.

    Because my final score has almost nothing to do with those qualms, and everything to do with how I felt playing the game. The rush of adrenaline I felt at finally being able to mow through familiar necros only to have my bowels constrict at the sight of some new form; the elation at decimating Unitologist zealots replaced by the despairing thought that convergence might be Isaac’s ultimate fate; the confidence of having someone watching your back shattered by the realization that he might be your biggest threat. The final level design and setpiece are jaw-dropping, and the mechanic used to kill the final boss is a massively satisfactory middle finger to Markers and the hell-spawn they generate.

    Then, like you could in Dead Space, you can go online and look up the chapter titles and put the first letter of each one together into a sentence.

    And you will share my fear.

    Altman be praised.

    NERD RATING – 9.5/10

    Author’s Note:[amazon_link id=”B0050SWVIQ” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ] I reviewed the game on Xbox 360. It is also available on PS3 and PC.[/amazon_link]

  • Reserve A Game On The Microsoft Store And Get 1600 Points

    Dead-Space-3-Splash-Image1

    There are a lot of big name titles coming out in the first half of this year and Microsoft is giving you an incentive to reserve the ones you want on their store site. The The Microsoft Store is offering a free 1600 MS Point card ($20) when you reserve any of the games they have listed on their site from the promotion. Big games like [amazon_link id=”B0050SXKU4″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Grand Theft Auto 5[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”B0050SWVIQ” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Dead Space 3[/amazon_link] are on the list. All in all it’s not a bad deal when you are essentially paying $39.99 for a game when you get your card.

    Take a look at the list of game available for this offer.

    • Grand Theft Auto 5
    • Tomb Raider
    • Bioshock Infinite
    • Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance
    • Lost Planet 3
    • Tiger Woods PGA Tour ’14
    • Crysis 3
    • Dead Space 3
    • South Park: The Stick of Truth
    • Army of Two: The Devil’s Cartel