Ouch, Official Xbox Magazine gave it a 6.5 Whats up with that?
Just one thing: I hope you enjoy medieval jousting!
One of the items in the LE is a crew patch for the Ishimura. It’s not really a spoiler anymore.
I can see where this is going. I’m just going to back out slowly and let you guys discuss your non-spoilers. Apologies for the disruption.
That’s a fine stance, and one I’ve taken on several occasions, most recently with MGS4. But if you really don’t want to know anything about the story or gameplay you probably want to avoid threads about the game entirely :)
I really hope you’re kidding Rock8. I think the basic premise of the game is well outside of spoiler territory. For anyone else, my impressions post contains no spoilers unless you’ve never heard of this game, in which case, I’m not sure why’d you’d be interested in impressions anyway. The entirety of my non-spoiler is simply saying that your see your approach to the setting where the rest of the game takes place.
In all fairness, ‘I don’t think it’s a spoiler’ should have given you the idea that there may be something sailing close to the spoiler wind coming!
Maybe. But saying that the very very first scene of the game looks beautiful hardly seems like a spoiler in any reasonable definition of the word. Regardless, this discussion of what is and is not a spoiler is pretty well played out, so let’s get back to the game itself.
Has anyone else played it yet? Oh, don’t forget to download the free platform exclusive suits (Elite on 360 and Obsidian on PS3). Apparently you can switch to using those suits at a store terminal, but I haven’t run across one yet. Also, if you preordered from EB/Gamestop you should get (or already have gotten via email if you ordered online) a code for a free download of the Scorpion Suit. All the suits are “Level 5” suits, which I presume means they’re good. I wonder if anyone will avoid using these suits as they’ll likely make the game easier quicker if they make upgrading the default suit unnecessary. I guess I’ll see when I get a chance to change.
Save anywhere or checkpoints? Can I downgrade to Easy in the middle of a game without replaying the whole thing?
So I took a look at the OXM review, mentioned previously in this thread. Forgetting the 6.5 that the reviewer, Meghan Watt, gave the game, I find the text of her review to be somewhat suspect. Now I admit that I have a little less than an hour in this game, but I don’t think my problems with her criticisms have much to do specifically with Dead Space. Instead it seems to me that her review reveals a disdain for the standard types of tasks one undertakes in an action game like Dead Space. Take this quote:
I think just about any action game of Dead Space’s type could be broken down into these simplistic terms. Does that mean that all action games are fundamentally broken or boring or whatever it is that Ms. Watt is stating? To me it just sounds like she doesn’t particularly like playing action games. Take another quote:
Maybe it’s me, but these sound like fundamental criticisms of almost any game of this sort from the last ten to fifteen years. I mean, really? This is what she spent her small word count on? Complaining that you have to pickup money and ammo? Did OXM get confused and answer Peter Molyneux’s plea to Variety to have a non-gamer review Fable 2 by having a non-gamer review Dead Space? Her criticisms sound like the sort of things my mom would say about a game. “I don’t get why you pickup money. I mean, why don’t you just break into the machines and steal the ammunition?”
It’s not that I’m defending tropes of modern video gaming, but these criticisms seem to have very little with Dead Space itself and more to do with video games as a whole.
Attention: ‘Dead Space’ takes place in…space!
correction: “Hard” is available right off the bat. I guess “fuck you mode” is what you unlock after a playthrough.
Just a FYI - yhe Xbox suit is apparently only available on the Live Gold service; if you have Silver, apparently you are out of luck.
I’m in the same boat - I love to be surprised by these sorts of games, so I’ve been in a self-imposed Dead Space blackout. I knew I was going to get it, so I just tuned it out. After finishing the game, I’ll go back and look at the comic books and whatnot.
As far as the game itself - not that creepy, IMHO. This is clearly a “game”, so that you’re never really that far from a bullet point/objective, and the plot such as it is, is spelled out in really obvious ways.
I’m only an hour or so in, and I’m enjoying it, but much more as an action game with a lot of “OMG SOMETHING JUMPED OUT OF THE DARK” moments. I’m not quite getting the slow creepy build up of tension that Steve’s getting. The soundtrack in particular is far too busy, with lots of seemingly random noise sprinkled in, and it isn’t building up the mood. I’m also playing through Fatal Frame 3, which is scaring the pants off of me, so perhaps this isn’t a fair comparison. I’m certainly playing with an open mind, and I’d love to be wrong with a few more hours of gameplay.
I played a little more last night and got into Chapter Two. The sense of tension and dread has lessened, though my enjoyment hasn’t. I still find myself proceeding cautiously, but there were a couple of big scare moments that didn’t shock me at all. In the interest of full disclosure I was playing with the lights on and my girlfriend in the next room running on the treadmill, so the environment wasn’t exactly conducive to building tension.
The Store terminals started appearing and I was able to download the Elite and Scorpion suits. The Elite suit looks great in my opinion. I’m still a little confused as to what the bonuses are on these suits. A quick check into the upgrade terminal showed that it came with no nodes in place, so any bonus must simply be inherent in the suit itself, which is bizarrely not communicated to the player in any way.
Is there any news of a PC demo coming any time soon? I’m trying to decide which platform I want this for.
As of Chapter 3, Whitt’s criticism on this point strikes me as very fair. Fundamentally, the objectives in the game just aren’t interesting at all. Get a circuit board, get the Captain’s keycard, bring the Centrifuge online, etc. I hope this aspect improves as the game goes on.
My perspective is that the typically it’s not the key grabbing or circuit board inserting that’s fun in these games. It’s the journey between tasks that’s the source of the fun. The missions are just a reason to roam the halls collecting various loot and killing monsters.
For me, context matters. It’s more exciting covering the exfiltration of a special ops team from the air in CoD4 when it’s the special ops team that you were just controlling one level earlier than if it had just been another random team.
Sure. In the case of Dead Space the context in which these rote tasks take place is where the fun comes in. You’re in a scary, gothic looking spaceship infested with hostile alien creatures. Collecting a key card in that environment is fun because you’re traveling through and dealing with that stuff. A game that takes place in an office building where all you do is collect key cards while weaving through a maze of cubicles would be essentially the same in that you would be pursuing some rote task, but it’s the context and the attendant circumstances of Dead Space that are important, not the tasks themselves. I think Ms. Watt’s review dwells too much on the tasks themselves without talking enough about what really makes the game interesting.