Dead On
I?m still trying to rearrange my mouth after playing this, not necessarily because I thought it was so good, but because I can?t believe I thought it was so good. I had skipped over this gem in the blockbuster isle so many times for lack of appeal, and now I?m smacking myself in the face for it, this is the most fun I?ve had with a game since Fallout 3 of last November, initially thinking, ?surely some game about a rescue team investigating a distress signal cliché cliché ext ext? wouldn?t tickle my fancy, and I couldn?t have been any more wrong.
The game has you in control of one Isaac Clark (I?ll be the first reviewer to not make the stupid sci-fi novelist reference), a silent protagonist, acting as the games purported rescue crews engineer sent along in case repairs are needed. Apparently his wife or girlfriend or whatever was on board the ship that called for help, and his sole motivation for enduring seems to be the hope that he can find her alive amongst the mess that was once a mining vessel. Of course, when arriving, the ship is infested with aliens, and the list of sci-fi clichés just gets longer and longer until the very end of the game when it actually starts to get interesting. The story is good, even if a bit thin, and there are more bits of it told through well acted audio and video logs as well as shoved in your face by the game.
On the game play end of things the game works well, with a very apparent boost from the animation department. Isaac is animated beautifully, with very fluid and realistic motions which tie in perfectly with his movement. The camera has Isaac at the far left of the screen aiming in, which works well with the third person camera, the player moves at a lumbering pace which feels appropriate considering the space knight esque armor you?re clonking about in. The movement and actions, correspond well with the camera for once in a video game. The gunplay is solid, with the combat focused around blowing off limbs and individual body parts of the various alien tourists.
It controls well to, with a simple layout and controls that people will either be familiar with , or pick up quickly, there are some two button combos to be remembered, but once you get into it they feel natural. The health recovery works by a simple tap of the square button when your weapon isn?t readied, and the game will auto grab health packs from you inventory and heal you. These health packs, along with many other items in the game can either be bought, or found littered about the game or in the periodic stores found throughout the levels. Items can be bought and sold here, as well as schematics that you?ve found be downloaded, which unlocks new items to buy, excess items can be stored here as well.
Going back to the limb damage mechanic, it is, admittedly, essentially just moving the traditional headshot to different locations on the body, but what makes the limb mechanic unique is the fact that when you blow off a limb it actually affects how the creatures carry about afterwards. If you, let?s say, blow off a creatures leg, he is then forced to crawl at you, and while this might seem insignificant it adds a layer of depth to the established combat model. For instance, while being stuck in a room full of baddies, I shot off one of the faster ones legs, while using stasis (an ability that lets you slow down enemies and objects) to slow another, while I dealt with the tiny annoying ones that shoot at you from far away, and it all gets very engaging and complex from there. The weapons all handle adequately, ?feeling appropriate? for their size and weight and such, even if some of them wreak of ?more cool to use than actually useful syndrome?, a particular offender being the flamethrower. I don?t want to give away too much, but one of the cooler weapons is a gun that gravitates a table saw a few feet in front of you, allowing you to continuously saw through an enemy. Of not as well, is that all of the guns have a secondary fire mode, one that usually is more powerful than the primary, but consumes more ammo in the process. You can also throw a haymaker or drop a curb stomp as well, but these are mostly just to knock enemies back, or kill ones that are already severely wounded as they don?t do much damage.
The weapons can also be upgraded with power nodes that are either found or bought throughout the game, the upgrades for them are branching trees on a grid, and having to choose how many nodes to put into what adds another layer of strategy to the game, as well as a much warranted RPG element that works well, and carries over into subsequent playthroughs, just like money and weapons.
The enemies themselves are varied, with multiple types having their various annoyances. Some are small and fast, and can climb on walls and shoot at you, while others are latterly stuck to walls, and lob little pods at you that themselves shoot at you. The enemy types are nicely broken up, and they all generally have some kind of weakness that you can exploit to deal with them easier. Of particular interest is one that goes around the room reanimating dead bodies much to your annoyance, but its fun having to frantically de-leg the revived ones while simultaneously trying to deal with the one actually doing it, your guns will go ballistic when they enter the room. The enemies as well will sometimes grab you if they get close enough, in which case you have to mash the x-button to throw them off in some very satisfying animations, usually ending in there death.
But a game wouldn?t be a very good game if it was all combat however, and the level design is another area where Dead Space shines. Now, let?s get one thing out of the way, the levels are all linear, there?s a little bit of faffing about to find side rooms but there mostly only full of extra junk and ammo. The game also certainly doesn?t let you get lost either; you can simply hold own the R3 button and the game will literally light up a blue line on the floor showing you exactly where to go. But the actual levels themselves are broken up nicely, there?s plenty of backtracking, but they usually add some other element while doing it to keep it from being mundane (such as having to run back through an area from an alien that regenerates and is unkillable). The level design sticks to corridors, but is broken up every so often by segments IN outer space (oxy-moron ftw), and one particularly different environment that I won?t spoil towards the end.
And speaking of out in space, there are zero-G segments that work surprisingly well for a video game, it?s great fun leaping about in the vacuum of space, clamping from surface to surface in a soundless void. It also creates an element of creepiness, as there are still aliens out in the airlessness, and in space there is no sound. This also leads to some of the games more surreal moments, as you frantically try to get back to the airlock as your oxygen is dwindling, and you have several critters lunging at you in absolute silence trying to stop you.
There game as well is riddles with various set piece moments including shooting down meteors in a turret, and being dragged shooting and screaming down a hallway by a giant tentacle thing. It?s all good fun, and it?s all very pretty. I usually don?t make a thing about the graphics, but Dead Space not only does them well, but very effectively. I can?t decide if the main character Issac ?s armor is the armor that all football players will wear someday or, or some kind of robo-tank hybrid thing, either way his character model looks absolutely amazing, it?s been a while since I played a video game and said ?I want that armor and I want to sleep in it?. The rest of the game looks beautiful as well, as well as being very coherent, and giving to the games mood, the aliens look alieny, and the gore looks gory.
But the key point about the graphics, and the one place where all video games ever from this point forward should note, is where they aren?t. There is not interface superimposed on the screen, period, even your menu comes up in the game world as a holographic projection. You health is displayed as a gauge on Issac?s back, as well as you stasis meter, and your ammunition is displayed physically above the gun in a holographic display. At first I was skeptical, wondering how this would work and not get confusing but it does, and it works amazingly well. I would venture to say that this method of player interface was more useful then traditional methods of bars and meters pasted all over the place.
The game is not without its faults however. There are some sections where the game will task you with moving an object from point A to point B using your telekinesis (it?s an electromagnetic kind, not the magical) and the aliens will make the task grueling by throwing a block party around you. The games story is good, but doesn?t get actually interesting and show hints of uniqueness until the very end, almost leaving me completely disappointed instead of just a little. Some of the enemies have cheap moves, and some might say that Isaac was characterless, although I would disagree. I personally saw him as a knight, attached to his creed with one mission in mind, to save his women. I saw his character through his actions, and his willingness to be a subordinate to others for what he saw as a ?greater good? as his character, but can understand if others didn?t see it.
Almost seventeen hundred words in and I still feel I haven?t even scratched the surface, I haven?t had this much genuine pure fun with a game in a very long time, and I highly recommend it. The game is short, but the length felt rite, and to get all of the trophies you?ll need two playthroughs which should run about twenty hours. I was completely engrossed in the game the whole time, never wanting to put it down, only giving up to go eat and other pitiful human tasks as such. To put it in perspective, I rented this game Monday night at 9 P.M, and I finished this game Tuesday night at 9 P.M.
Final Verdict: Rent it, only because it?s so short
I?m still trying to rearrange my mouth after playing this, not necessarily because I thought it was so good, but because I can?t believe I thought it was so good. I had skipped over this gem in the blockbuster isle so many times for lack of appeal, and now I?m smacking myself in the face for it, this is the most fun I?ve had with a game since Fallout 3 of last November, initially thinking, ?surely some game about a rescue team investigating a distress signal cliché cliché ext ext? wouldn?t tickle my fancy, and I couldn?t have been any more wrong.
The game has you in control of one Isaac Clark (I?ll be the first reviewer to not make the stupid sci-fi novelist reference), a silent protagonist, acting as the games purported rescue crews engineer sent along in case repairs are needed. Apparently his wife or girlfriend or whatever was on board the ship that called for help, and his sole motivation for enduring seems to be the hope that he can find her alive amongst the mess that was once a mining vessel. Of course, when arriving, the ship is infested with aliens, and the list of sci-fi clichés just gets longer and longer until the very end of the game when it actually starts to get interesting. The story is good, even if a bit thin, and there are more bits of it told through well acted audio and video logs as well as shoved in your face by the game.
On the game play end of things the game works well, with a very apparent boost from the animation department. Isaac is animated beautifully, with very fluid and realistic motions which tie in perfectly with his movement. The camera has Isaac at the far left of the screen aiming in, which works well with the third person camera, the player moves at a lumbering pace which feels appropriate considering the space knight esque armor you?re clonking about in. The movement and actions, correspond well with the camera for once in a video game. The gunplay is solid, with the combat focused around blowing off limbs and individual body parts of the various alien tourists.
It controls well to, with a simple layout and controls that people will either be familiar with , or pick up quickly, there are some two button combos to be remembered, but once you get into it they feel natural. The health recovery works by a simple tap of the square button when your weapon isn?t readied, and the game will auto grab health packs from you inventory and heal you. These health packs, along with many other items in the game can either be bought, or found littered about the game or in the periodic stores found throughout the levels. Items can be bought and sold here, as well as schematics that you?ve found be downloaded, which unlocks new items to buy, excess items can be stored here as well.
Going back to the limb damage mechanic, it is, admittedly, essentially just moving the traditional headshot to different locations on the body, but what makes the limb mechanic unique is the fact that when you blow off a limb it actually affects how the creatures carry about afterwards. If you, let?s say, blow off a creatures leg, he is then forced to crawl at you, and while this might seem insignificant it adds a layer of depth to the established combat model. For instance, while being stuck in a room full of baddies, I shot off one of the faster ones legs, while using stasis (an ability that lets you slow down enemies and objects) to slow another, while I dealt with the tiny annoying ones that shoot at you from far away, and it all gets very engaging and complex from there. The weapons all handle adequately, ?feeling appropriate? for their size and weight and such, even if some of them wreak of ?more cool to use than actually useful syndrome?, a particular offender being the flamethrower. I don?t want to give away too much, but one of the cooler weapons is a gun that gravitates a table saw a few feet in front of you, allowing you to continuously saw through an enemy. Of not as well, is that all of the guns have a secondary fire mode, one that usually is more powerful than the primary, but consumes more ammo in the process. You can also throw a haymaker or drop a curb stomp as well, but these are mostly just to knock enemies back, or kill ones that are already severely wounded as they don?t do much damage.
The weapons can also be upgraded with power nodes that are either found or bought throughout the game, the upgrades for them are branching trees on a grid, and having to choose how many nodes to put into what adds another layer of strategy to the game, as well as a much warranted RPG element that works well, and carries over into subsequent playthroughs, just like money and weapons.
The enemies themselves are varied, with multiple types having their various annoyances. Some are small and fast, and can climb on walls and shoot at you, while others are latterly stuck to walls, and lob little pods at you that themselves shoot at you. The enemy types are nicely broken up, and they all generally have some kind of weakness that you can exploit to deal with them easier. Of particular interest is one that goes around the room reanimating dead bodies much to your annoyance, but its fun having to frantically de-leg the revived ones while simultaneously trying to deal with the one actually doing it, your guns will go ballistic when they enter the room. The enemies as well will sometimes grab you if they get close enough, in which case you have to mash the x-button to throw them off in some very satisfying animations, usually ending in there death.
But a game wouldn?t be a very good game if it was all combat however, and the level design is another area where Dead Space shines. Now, let?s get one thing out of the way, the levels are all linear, there?s a little bit of faffing about to find side rooms but there mostly only full of extra junk and ammo. The game also certainly doesn?t let you get lost either; you can simply hold own the R3 button and the game will literally light up a blue line on the floor showing you exactly where to go. But the actual levels themselves are broken up nicely, there?s plenty of backtracking, but they usually add some other element while doing it to keep it from being mundane (such as having to run back through an area from an alien that regenerates and is unkillable). The level design sticks to corridors, but is broken up every so often by segments IN outer space (oxy-moron ftw), and one particularly different environment that I won?t spoil towards the end.
And speaking of out in space, there are zero-G segments that work surprisingly well for a video game, it?s great fun leaping about in the vacuum of space, clamping from surface to surface in a soundless void. It also creates an element of creepiness, as there are still aliens out in the airlessness, and in space there is no sound. This also leads to some of the games more surreal moments, as you frantically try to get back to the airlock as your oxygen is dwindling, and you have several critters lunging at you in absolute silence trying to stop you.
There game as well is riddles with various set piece moments including shooting down meteors in a turret, and being dragged shooting and screaming down a hallway by a giant tentacle thing. It?s all good fun, and it?s all very pretty. I usually don?t make a thing about the graphics, but Dead Space not only does them well, but very effectively. I can?t decide if the main character Issac ?s armor is the armor that all football players will wear someday or, or some kind of robo-tank hybrid thing, either way his character model looks absolutely amazing, it?s been a while since I played a video game and said ?I want that armor and I want to sleep in it?. The rest of the game looks beautiful as well, as well as being very coherent, and giving to the games mood, the aliens look alieny, and the gore looks gory.
But the key point about the graphics, and the one place where all video games ever from this point forward should note, is where they aren?t. There is not interface superimposed on the screen, period, even your menu comes up in the game world as a holographic projection. You health is displayed as a gauge on Issac?s back, as well as you stasis meter, and your ammunition is displayed physically above the gun in a holographic display. At first I was skeptical, wondering how this would work and not get confusing but it does, and it works amazingly well. I would venture to say that this method of player interface was more useful then traditional methods of bars and meters pasted all over the place.
The game is not without its faults however. There are some sections where the game will task you with moving an object from point A to point B using your telekinesis (it?s an electromagnetic kind, not the magical) and the aliens will make the task grueling by throwing a block party around you. The games story is good, but doesn?t get actually interesting and show hints of uniqueness until the very end, almost leaving me completely disappointed instead of just a little. Some of the enemies have cheap moves, and some might say that Isaac was characterless, although I would disagree. I personally saw him as a knight, attached to his creed with one mission in mind, to save his women. I saw his character through his actions, and his willingness to be a subordinate to others for what he saw as a ?greater good? as his character, but can understand if others didn?t see it.
Almost seventeen hundred words in and I still feel I haven?t even scratched the surface, I haven?t had this much genuine pure fun with a game in a very long time, and I highly recommend it. The game is short, but the length felt rite, and to get all of the trophies you?ll need two playthroughs which should run about twenty hours. I was completely engrossed in the game the whole time, never wanting to put it down, only giving up to go eat and other pitiful human tasks as such. To put it in perspective, I rented this game Monday night at 9 P.M, and I finished this game Tuesday night at 9 P.M.
Final Verdict: Rent it, only because it?s so short