Its kind of like Bioshock in that regard. It wasn’t getting the key from Dr. Steinman that was fun, it was the process of getting the key and learning more about Rapture. I had a blast in that game just slowly going along, absorbing the environment and piecing together what took place in the underwater city.
Yeah, and I was defending you!
Oh yeah, I know. Sorry if my post made it seem like I was defending myself from your mean spirited support of my points. :-p
Cool.
Just to weigh in on the tasks element, is the gameplay really good enough to support ‘red key hunts’? Even Bioshock could get a little tedious with the various collection missions and I vastly prefer to just be moving through a game without being made to do artificial tasks to just extend things.
I’m maybe not explaining this well, but sometimes ‘collect 10 bottles of water’ can feel like an overly transparent way to show you a world and I would be interested in knowing if Dead Space’s missions are more subtle than that.
So far, and again, I’m only a little way into Chapter 2, the tasks Isaac performs involve “go here, get/do that” sort of things. This has taken a few forms so far including getting a key or a circuit board and then coming back to open the door or repair the console. Essentially the player is just given reasons to traverse the environment and to be put into scary situations. Also, there are some “puzzly” type things to do, which have involved either using the time slowing tool or using the gravity gun ability. So there’s a little more than “get the key” type things to do.
With regard to “extending” things, it’s way too early for me to tell, but by all accounts Dead Space is around a 12 hour game. I agree that Bioshock did last a little bit too long, but I don’t foresee having the same feeling about Dead Space if it does clock in at 12 hours.
That’s basically my chief issue with Dead Space now. Bioshock really dragged for me in the final 1/3 where it devolved into a series of fetch quests that just seemed designed to artificially lengthen the game (get 10 widgets to build the bomb, etc). Instead of allowing the player to organically explore each environment, it was like Irrational was just making sure that you were forced to see every little corner of Rapture so that their artists’ efforts wouldn’t be wasted. Dead Space pretty much does that right from the start. When the primary interest at the outset is in discovering what actually happened onboard the ship and perhaps discovering what happened to your girlfriend, these fetch quests that the game sends you on don’t seem to important.
Minor spoilers for the first chapter or two:
Basically, it seems like your teammates that you are separated from are actually doing the interesting work trying to investigate what occurred while you get all of the grunt work of getting the tram system working or getting data access codes.
It’s not a huge issue and I’m every much enjoying the game but I do think it’s a legitimate criticism on OXM’s part.
I’m sure it’s a legitimate criticism, but the review seems preoccupied with that aspect without recognizing the more interesting elements of the game. Again, it’s almost like an attack of action games at a fundamental level, which isn’t inappropriate really, but it seems that what makes Dead Space Dead Space isn’t addressed in as significant a way.
Well I think that any action game that does have such boring objectives should be criticized for it.
Well, I’d contend that every action game has boring “objectives”. I mean, in Call of Duty 4 is holding X to plant the C4 on the artillery turret fun, or is fighting through the city, killing enemies to get there where the fun comes from? The act of holding X to place C4 or of pressing A to pickup a card key is fundamentally the same, but that’s just and end. The means are where one derives fun.
The fetch-quest argument is overblown. Either you lead the player from one dramatic encounter to the next major setpiece through artifical goals, or you might as well just revisit the design doc for Mad Dog Mcree.
The atmosphere, action, and pure visual overload is certainly accomplished enough to give the illusion of doing more than merely blasting your way to the next glorified key one zombie at a time.
Uh, what we define as objectives are clearly different things. Battling through enemy territory to destroy an artillery battery that has our forces suppressed is more interesting to me than battling through enemy territory to find a car battery so we can jumpstart the jeep.
I quit playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2 when I realized I was defending a mountain pass from monsters so that some old guy could heal his bunny rabbit. I realize for a lot of people gameplay is all that matters and setting and story are superfluous but that stuff is important for me.
The objectives are pretty uninteresting, but like MSUSteve I’m not really bothered by it so far, because the game has such strong fundamentals. The visual and sound design, controls, player feedback, and really pretty much every basic design element is very well constructed. After another 15 missions I may tire of running around doing fetch quests, but I got all the way through Bioshock, and at least Dead Space doesn’t bother with a bunch of illusory choice; it’s basically happy to be a cool third person shooter. Dead Space has precisely the opposite problem of Bioshock in a lot of ways. Where Bioshock had a creative narrative but suffered from stilted gameplay, DS plays extremely well but has a dumb story. Either way, I’m enjoying shooting the limbs off of shit too much to care. It doesn’t hurt that I’m a sucker for the alien infested derelict spacecraft setting.
I see what you’re saying Kevin. It matters to you that what you’re doing feels like it’s epic or important or at least has some interesting utility in the game world. I get that. My point was that essentially all of these objectives amount to the same thing gameplay-wise. But yeah, I see how battling through enemies to take out a big gun is more interesting that battling through enemies to heal a bunny, even if the two things are fundamentally the same as far as gameplay goes.
So far Dead Space’s objectives make sense story wise, which is enough for me. Hopefully at some point pushing that button results in some epic display of something, but so far what I’m doing in the game is enough to keep me going from A to B to C.
I hope this aspect improves as it goes along but, so far, the story content in the animated comics they released is far more compelling than the stuff in the game. I’m a little disappointed that they haven’t made more of an effort to craft a compelling roster of recurring characters like we had in Bioshock or System Shock 2. So far the audio and video logs in DS seem to share more in common with those of Doom 3.
I couldn’t agree more regarding the supporting cast in Dead Space. You have a whiny, shrill bitch and a standard, level-headed military guy. That’s it. One is extremely irritating right off the bat and the other is so vanilla and neutral that he may as well not be there. The audio logs still have yet to impress me in any way either.
None of that is a deal breaker for Dead Space in my opinion, simply because it’s supposed to be a solitary experience for the most part.
Yeah, no argument here. I expect it to improve at least somewhat as the central mystery is revealed, but I’m not holding out hope for great things. That’s fine with me overall, but there’s no doubt it would have been nice to see them put as much effort into that aspect as the gameplay.
This is close to what I mean. It also depends on the actual levels of the task. For example, fighting through to blow up a gun and then onto the next objective is punchy and fun. Compare that to fighting through to reach an office, finding the office is locked, trying to find the key, getting to the safe the key is in and then realising you need to get the code from an audiolog, finding the audiolog, but realising you need the magic earphones, getting to the fairy that makes the magic earphones and then…
Eventually it reaches the point where I can’t be fucked to open the door anymore.
I actually found Deus Ex was an offender here as well.
I gotcha John. That makes sense. I haven’t found Dead Space’s objectives to be that needlessly layered yet, but if that does happen, it will be annoying.
I just checked out the Crispy Gamer review and found this nugget to be absolutely hilarious:
Enh, Tom got in a snit over this game, it would seem. As far as I can tell, most of the monsters are actual corpses that got infected and mutated, so why the hell wouldn’t their pants still be on? They’re not smart enough to take them off.
After my first hour on the Ishimura last night I had to take a break – I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be there! Yep, pretty immersive, alright. But then I got back into it and got into the swing of things and now I’m a limb-chopping fool. Bring on those ugly dead fuckers! Horizontal plasma cutter FTW! I think I’m going to have a good time with this game – I smell completion on the horizon. (It helps that my disbelief is fairly lightweight, so suspending it is easy.)
I’m finding the wide breadth of reviews on this game quite interesting. Some find it scary, others find it mundane and predictable. Some love the setting, others find it stale. Personally, I think that how you play this game will have an effect on how you feel about it. I’ve been playing it in the dark, surrounded by a decent 5.1 sound system, and I’m finding the game wonderfully creepy and engaging. The environment looks great, and the combat is exciting and punchy.
I like the game as much as I’d hoped I would, which is more than I thought I would.
Additionally, the navigation beam you can shoot out of your hand is a godsend. I can see why some may criticize it as a crutch that can be too easily leaned on, but I love it. I can’t stand getting lost in these sorts of games, so anything that keeps me constantly pushing forward is great.
Overall, great game. It makes the wait for Farcry 2 and Little Big Planet (and Fallout 3, and Guitar Hero: World Tour, and Red Alert 3, and Gears 2, and WoW:WotLK) that much easier.