THIS THREAD IS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE UNAFRAID OF NORMAL “SPOILERS”, LIKE “THIS HAPPENS IN SPACE” AND “DEAD THINGS ARE INVOLVED”. Also, if you are going to slip in a real spoiler, just describe up to what point you are talking about and then put in the SPOILER, and that should be good.
So I picked this up today, and it is exceeding expectations as of the intro and the first puzzle or so. The controls are spot on, a reminder of what a current gen RE4 would feel like…I don’t miss the wiimote one bit. The dismemberment is excellent in every way. I’ve only killed a few things, and they were spectacular.
The graphics are stunning. At first I was irritated with what the talking, lipsynch, and head movement on humans looked like, then I got into the environment and my 3rd person perspective and everything was great. I love the interface.
The first weapon is extremely viscerally satisfying. Little touches like being able to “turn” the beam, as well as the precise, surgical pace of the combat are intoxicating. Sure, I miss angry Spanish guys cursing at me, but I will gladly take exploding body parts of lingering corpses getting juiced when I stomp.
My wife is happy to have the first “spectator” game in a long time, since she loves horror games but not on her own. I’m hoping RE5 will be the perfect synergy of coop and horror to get us over that, but this will do fine in the interim.
Sadly, my wife is a big pansy when it comes to anything ‘horror’ related. So I will be playing all by myself late at night when she’s gone to bed. Can’t wait.
Stuff jumps out at you, but this isn’t (as of Act One) a soul destroying horror game like Silent Hill or Fatal Frame. Think of it as a SF action movie with bad lighting (it’s much more like The Suffering), and you’ll be good.
It is a beautiful game - the main character is well animated, and the controls are very fluid. I had no trouble picking up the basic combat moves, and the controls have faded into the background. There’s a very nice implementation of the “where do I go next?” arrow that is really quite elegant.
Yeah, I’m a big wimp when it comes to horror games but so far (a ways into Chapter 2), Dead Space isn’t bad at all. Mainly jump scares. It’s about as scary as Doom 3.
Only poking around in Chapter 2 so far, but this kind of feels like what Doom 3 could’ve been if it played to its strengths instead of tried to be Doom. I mean that as a compliment. Coincidentally, the menu displays remind me of Doom 3’s computer terminals.
I don’t know- I’m well into Chapter 3 now and it’s still all pretty much predictable boo scares (“gee, I wonder if anything will jump out at me once I go to the far end of that deserted corridor to get that audio log?”)
I’m also a big pansy when it comes to horror stuff. While I haven’t had any big scares, the atmosphere has felt pretty tense and the “whispers” Dead Space has going in the ambient noise creeped my right the heck out. Ahhh!
I quit Dead Space and logged a phew minutes of Age of Booty. Phew.
I quite like the feel of the engine. It feels more tangible and concrete than a lot of Unreal Engine games; I actually kind of wish Bioshock was built on this. It also reminds me a bit of Chronicles of Riddick in a good way, but a good way I can’t really articulate.
That’s where it feeling like a capable imitation of Resident Evil 4 really helped me out: the same “logic” that helped me on later playthroughs for that game is immediately apparent with this one.
Out of curiosity, have you upgraded the suit at all? I think the air upgrade is useless, since there are only two moments in 7 chapters so far where air has been an issue, and I either had an air can or a refill station to ameliorate the problem. I am curious if the 25 extra HP is worth the three nodes that it would take to get it and was looking for some opinions on that.
Well, I know up through the part I’ve played (ch3) I’ve been really grateful for the one air upgrade I put into it, and since those upgrades carry over with your suit, it seems like a very easy choice to make (that is, once I am done maxing out damage on the cutter).
In contrast, I have a tough time justifying upgrades to the slowdown and tk abilities. I never use them except in puzzles, they just don’t feel natural when I’m in the heat of combat (and the one time I tried using them, with those little bastards that jump all over you, it only hit half of them, who promptly jumped me as soon as the rest of them had mauled me).
Am I the only one that really likes the upgrade stuff? It’s simple, but they have arranged the nodes so that its almost impossible to overpower anything early on and you really do have to focus on 2 or at most 3 things to upgrade them effectively. That and the inventory management give me a nice, warm and fuzzy rpg feeling.
No, I like it as well. It seems a nice visual representation of staggering out a weapon’s upgrade, a refinement of RE4’s “you can only upgrade each aspect of each gun up to a point until you get to x level”. I’m not sure whether I love or hate the power spheres also opening certain doors. I realize it’s not a big deal, but I’m not sure I enjoy that.
The inventory management is very much in the spirit of the briefcase shenanigans in RE4 (that is, the scarcity of space seems well designed rather than cruel and unusual), with the bonus of adding in the old “magic trunk” system from old REs. That said, I upgraded to the bonus DLC armor (the free one) as soon as I figured out how to, because otherwise you would have seen me backtracking all over the place to sell/store every last leftover. Once again, having many playthroughs with RE4 left me with no doubts on what I can “cheat” on and still enjoy the game: whenever I did replays with the upgraded inventory it was a gameplay compromise I could stand.
Also, to build on what you said earlier: the posters are not my favorite (although many of the ads are fine if generic), and I’m not sure how I like the “scripted incidents behind glass” moments. Many of the monster ones I enjoy, but I would prefer they feel less triggered by invisible lines in the room. But the passenger on passenger ones I’ve seen so far have felt very forced in terms of the environment. Maybe I’ll get used to it, but I preferred the “no survivors” feel the game had until I realized those were becoming more common.
With regard to the upgrading, I started out upgrading the Line Cutter as it is an awesome and very powerful weapon. Ammo was plentiful for it as well. That started drying up and I was forced to re-examine the utility of the basic Plasma Cutter. I’ve gone through and fully upgraded damage on that and it’s been excellent. I now save the Line Cutter for big encounters with lots of enemies as it’s awesome for crowd control. I haven’t upgraded the saw at all, which has made it good only for wiping out the hoard of tiny enemies you’re intermittently attacked by. The utility of the non-upgraded saw on bigger enemies in the chapters (Ch. 7) I’m in is pretty much nil.
As for the Force Gun and Contact Beam, my first though was that the Contact Beam would be most useful. After carrying it through a few chapters it became clear to me that I was never going to find a good use for it. It takes too long to charge up to be of any use and the ammo is carried in such small stacks, that it eats up way too much inventory space as compare to its usefulness. The Force Gun, on the other hand, seemed like a waste to me initially. My thought was that because it doesn’t cut, it doesn’t help. After realizing that the Contact Beam was going to be no help, I picked up the Force Gun and have been fairly pleased with the results. I think the knockback is too weak, especially since that’s the entire purpose of the gun, but that might be because I haven’t upgraded it too much. I do like that the Force Gun softens enemies up, making it so you have to cut off few appendages to kill them.
Finally, regarding the Rig, I’ve been using the Scorpion Rig as I got it free for preordering. I’m sure that’s cheating to some degree as it’s a Level 5 rig from the get-go, which eases the problem of running out of inventory space. Still, I regard this as allaying something I’d find annoying, which increases my enjoyment of the game.
At first I thought upgrading the rig was pretty unnecessary, and focused on upgrading weapons instead. I think that’s a good move, but have since upgraded both my air and HP. While you don’t tend to need air many times, when you do, it’s nice to have a bigger cushion within which to work time wise. Dead Space’s controls break down a little bit when you’re forced to run and act quickly, so increasing the air supply time helps with that.
Finally, I have only just started upgrading my stasis ability. The default time duration is actually fine, but increasing the energy is a good move as you move on. When more and more enemies are flying at you, it’s nice to be able to slow them down, even if it’s just so you can run back and get some distance between you and them. I still haven’t upgraded the kinesis ability. I just can’t think of any situation where I’ve felt like I wanted more range. If it was able to upgrade the ability to allow me to pickup and throw the enemies themselves, I’d definitely do it, but being able to pickup stuff from farther away has never seemed necessary.
I found the Contact Beam frequently very useful since it’s often a one hit kill on the toughest enemies (just need to be back up to get some room), it’s excellent for boss encounters, and the alt fire is good for crowd control. Plus ammo drops are plentiful so I almost never ran out. Never got into the force gun much though- the knockback was great but even with the damage upgraded a few slots it just never packed the killing power that I wanted.
Finally, regarding the Rig, I’ve been using the Scorpion Rig as I got it free for preordering. I’m sure that’s cheating to some degree as it’s a Level 5 rig from the get-go, which eases the problem of running out of inventory space. Still, I regard this as allaying something I’d find annoying, which increases my enjoyment of the game.
Eh, don’t feel too bad about it- as a tradeoff you’re now permanently gimped since you can’t switch out of the Scorpion Rig back to the Normal suit and I believe the defense rating of the Scorpion rig is only half of the Level 5 suit. It’s far worse for those of us who used the console-specific special suits- their max defense is merely 1/5 of the Level 5 suit.
Frankly, if there is one place Dead Space is half assed, it’s the DLC. With no ability to ever change out of a suit it seems likely to me that the decision to make DLC suits available was done late in development and no one thought to implement a way to change your suits through the shop inventory. Maybe EA will patch it in later but I’ve already finished the game so oh well.
I finished this up yesterday afternoon, and I really enjoyed the whole thing. The story never really goes anywhere, and I was surprised to see it become a pseudo-commentary on Scientology 3/4 of the way in, but as I suggested in the other thread, that aspect didn’t dampen my experience too much. The gameplay and overall design are good enough to make up for the narrative weakness. It’s also true that the mission objectives never get too interesting, but I actually enjoyed the way they toured you around the ship. The locales felt real enough to me, even if the Ishimura would almost certainly fail an OSHA inspection.
But the real star of the game is the combat, which I think is exceptional. The three main weapons I used were the initial plasma cutter, the line gun, and the plasma rifle. Nearer the end of the game the contact beam saw quite a bit of use as well, after I finally figured out how and when to utilize it. I tend to play resource management games of this type very conservatively, and so for the first third or so I just hoarded nodes and cash, only putting one node into upgrading my plasma cutter (I also paid for one suit upgrade early on, but then switched to the DLC suit during my next play session.) Once I had 10-15 nodes I dumped a bunch into the line gun, and after that spread the wealth to the cutter and rifle. Up until the last level I didn’t upgrade my suit at all, but just before the final boss I gave myself several HP upgrades mostly using my extensive cash reserves (around 250k.) On reflection I should have put at least one node into upgrading my air supply early on, but at the same time, I never really had a problem with running out of air, and I always kept a medium air canister on me just in case (it only got used once.) I also never upgraded the stasis or kinesis modules, and in fact never really used stasis except on Brutes and puzzles. I used kinesis all the time, but never really felt the need to improve it.
If I have a complaint, it’s that I found the game too easy on medium. I ended the game with 150k+ credits, and that was after blowing a bunch on HP upgrades it turned out I didn’t really need. I also had something like 13 large health packs, 10 mediums, and around 30 stasis packs (almost every one I’d collected) sitting in the bank when I finished. I bought ammo from the store a couple times, but that was more so I could use a preferred weapon some more rather than being necessary. I intend to play through it on Fuck You! difficulty at some point.
Anyway, big, big thumbs up from me. Easily among my favorite games of the year so far.
Not that I know of Chris. The game is fantastic though. If you like third person action games and the setting sound interesting to you, I have no qualms in recommending it without any reservations.
