The Lamer Gamer

I’d already commented that it was unreal how I’d missed Dead Space when it was first released.  More unbelievable is that everyone I know managed to miss it too, one of them only picking it up right at the same time as myself.  Having mostly finished it now, it’s proven to be a breakout title for me, particularly in the horror genre.

Not only does the game look pretty, or at least pretty gruesome, but it plays real smooth.  I’ve gotten into the habit of installing all games to the HD, so the load times were quick for me.  Rarely, the Metroid-like doors don’t open until the room on the other side is ready, but that’s completely bearable.  The interface is very well thought out.  The communications, menuing, ammo, life and other displays are attached to your suit or float in the air via holographic projections, all in real time .  Most importantly, your interactions with the interface behave as if this were actually possible.  In that I mean it doesn’t pause the game, there are no separate menu screens, no reprieves, save for one oddity I noticed, when accessing the store you become invulnerable to the smaller enemies.  Helpful hint, don’t look at your map while being attacked.

Gameplay reminds me a lot of watching my little bro play Resident Evil back in the day.   Ammo is a lot less scarce (unless you’re me, and blow money on upgrades) and saves aren’t restricted, but a lot of that feel remains.  You can’t run that fast, and worse, if you do run away, they just follow you, quickly, sometimes popping through an airduct into you current location.   You’ve really got to make sure you go for the high damage limb severing shots and not just try pumping your target full of ammo.  Weapon diversity is good, but the best weapons is essentially the first one you pick up.  Occasionally one works better, but overall, go Plasma Cutter.  Upgrading the weapons is also a brief minigame (I’m being generous with that assessment, really it’s hardly more than figuring out an optimal path on the weapon upgrade grid).

I gravitate toward titles that spend a lot of time on backstory and the mythology of their own made up universe.  Dead Space is like a black hole in that way.  I love finding items, and Dead Space is chock full of collectibles (the logs) which fill in a ton of the story.  Beyond that there’s a ton of alien, (well it’s in English, but encoded) writing all over the walls that you could take the time to decipher if you wanted.  Really, there’s so much going on and in separate media too like the comics and anime that I’m sure I’ll never quite cover all of it.

Lots of comments I’ve read note that the game wasn’t scary, but I jumped, A LOT!  The environmentals are nerve-wracking, the sounds and score, the lights, the fact that some razor clawed monster just popped out of the wall behind me.  So you run, and everything calms down, then there’s some Lost type music which comes out of nowhere and suddenly a tentacle is dragging me down a hole.  I’m not typically a fan of the whole Survival-Horror thing, but Dead Space grabbed me.  Oh, and the ending, CREEPY!

One annoyance that I’m trying to get around is that this is yet another game which lets you unlock a higher difficulty, and worse has an achievement for it.  While it falls into my category of “Actual Achievement”, completing the game on “Impossible Mode” didn’t really appeal to me.   The storyline was compelling enough that I plowed through Dead Space in about 12 hours.  But on another playthrough, the story would be the same, and as far as I can tell there aren’t any other rewards for doing so.  I always went right to Legendary for the Halo games, it was challenging and provided some different (sometimes extra) cut scenes.  Maybe I’ll come back to this one later and go through Impossible, maybe not.  The only downside is the single player, single playthrough campaign.  Mass Effect handled that by having other classes, but that’s not a guarantee of replay value.  Anyway, that wouldn’t have worked with Dead Space given the plot, and I’m not faulting it really.

Bottom line, this game was SOLID.  4.5/5 easy. I loved playing it.  I’m sure there will be a number of sequels.  I can’t wait.

Because I managed to upgrade the drive on the 360, I’ve now got room for tons of demos and I’ve cued up pretty much every one I can find.  I’d heard about Dead Space from a number of people, and the most commonly used term between all of them was “overrated”.   So fine, it’s not all that it could have been or what it was hyped to be. I’d tried watching the Dead Space anime on Netflix, and I didn’t find it all that hot either, so I didn’t think much more of it.

But then I got the popup that Dead Space Dismemberment had been downloaded, and I thought, “why the hell not?” After I playing all of 10 minutes of the demo, all I want to do is find a copy of this game so freaking badly right now it’s insane.  I’m wondering why it was that these guys were dissapointed.  I mean, maybe the campaign is short or something, or it just gets tiresome after a while, but it looks and plays so freaking sweet I can’t help but be really excited to get my hands on the full game.  In a way, it feels a lot like BioShock, which I also rather enjoyed.   This is what I get for listening to other people.