Impressions from DJ:
DeusJester wrote:With this one and Mirror's Edge being the one-two punch EA is throwing around to try to convince people that they can make games besides Madden and the leavings from the brutal rape of an unfortunate third-party company who landed in their crosshairs, I figured I'd give it a go. Reviews are very positive, the buzz around the office was that it was good times, and I know people at EA which cuts my cost down to $20 instead of $60 for the PS3 version (I don't think my aging GeFore 7950GT would really deal with this game gracefully so the even-"cheaper" PC version was out).
So, I had a pretty low overhead and despite not exactly rolling in money this month, took a shot at it.
I also wound up home sick from work today thanks to about 8 hours of profuse vomiting due to what I'm gonna go ahead and say was a bad personal pizza I got from Trader Joe's. In between sprinting to the bathroom, though, I've basically just been playing Dead Space all night.
And, uh, yeah! It's pretty fun! I don't know that it's Half-Life 2/Portal levels of orgasmic glee or anything, but it's basically a solid Sci-Fi Survival Horror with production values roughly triple that of what you'd normally find in a game like that. Playing this and Siren at the same time is one of the most striking examples of budget difference I've come across yet (and makes me wish Siren had an EA-level chunk of money behind it -- oh, what could have been...)
It doesn't really feel like an EA game, though. Or rather, it feels like an EA game back before EA became EA. The production is jacked to the nines, but it doesn't have the usual extraneous bullshit stapled on, there's no EA Trax(tm) or 500 trailers for other games or any kind of overarching corporate branding going on.
I'm about halfway through chapter 6 (of 12), so I've cleared basically half the game in a single sitting, and while the scare factor wears off pretty fast, I find myself not minding much. It's similar to Resident Evil 4, which stops being scary once the adrenaline starts flowing, but you don't care because it's fun. Dead Space isn't a horror game on the level of Siren or Silent Hill. It's closer in atmosphere to Doom 3 (which is a good thing, as that works very well here).
Probably the weirdest thing, though, is just how close this game is to System Shock 2, of all things.
There's no Shodan, or really any kind of -Shock game arcvillian communicating with the player the entire time, but that's pretty much the only big deviation plot-wise. You're still looking at a female-voiced hive-mind that's taken over the crew of an extremely large ship and is working to actively occupy the entire thing. You're still sprinting around said ship trying to get it working while fighting off increasingly mutated/creepy biological terrors and growing in power and armament. You're finding video and audio logs left behind by the crew and slowly piecing together all the shit that went down before you made the scene, and there's a few remaining crew members on board who all have the number to your com link and will occasionally tell you to do different things.
Hell, you even have the same mission of taking a biological vaccine against the baddies to the ship's hydroponics section to stop them from polluting the air supply in the middle of the game (BioShock did this one, too).
It's sort of the same way that Escape from Butcher Bay is weirdly similar in tone and pacing to Bioforge.
Still, other stuff is done amazingly well.
Some of the set pieces are really nicely done. It neatly avoids the Doom 3 trap of making shit dark constantly while still coming across as extremely oppressive and hostile. At one point you walk onto the deck of the ship and see a meteor shower going on outside, with the sun in the background. It's all extremely pretty, and I actually just sat there for about a minute going "Wow..." Until a meteor slammed through the bulkhead of the deck and ripped a twenty foot hole across five floors.
There's no HUD in the game at all. Ammo counts are displayed holographically over your guns as you use them, and everything else is projected as a 2D hologram in front of your character, from the inventory screen on down. Swing the camera around so you're facing yourself and you can see your inventory screen from the back, mirrored. Neat!
It also means that time doesn't halt when bringing up your inventory or listening to a log file. I've actually had an enemy attack me through my inventory window, which made me jump like 3 feet from a sitting position.
There's a shop/bank system, similar to the chests from Resident Evil, though the shop system isn't as robust as the one from RE4. It gets the job done, though. You occasionally find little goodies to sell, which is a little strange given what's going on in the ship, but I guess you have to have a few videogame tropes here and there to keep the gears running smoothly.
The death animations are shockingly brutal at times, fitting considering the game is basically about dismemberment.
Going for headshots is actually detrimental. The preferred method for takedowns for me at this point is to crop one one or both of their legs, and while they're dragging themselves toward me on stumps, cut their arms off and then finish them off with a curb stomp.
I can only imagine how my neighbors are taking all the sounds this makes. Imagine putting three live cats in a blender set on "liquefy" and then shooting the blender with a shotgun. That's basically the noises that the monsters make. And I'm rocking this at 4AM. I think they're probably just too scared to find out what I'm actually doing to come tell me to turn it down.
But yeah! EA made a good game that doesn't revolve around sports, cars, or any combination thereof. Weird! I'm waiting until I finish it before I can rank it versus other games in the genre, but it's on track to slot probably just below RE4, which is quite good! It doesn't have the weird braveness of The Room or Siren going for it, and the plot lacks any of the depth of even stuff like Silent Hill 3, so depending on your tastes your mileage may vary. As a gamey-game, though, I'm having a lot of fun with it.
DeusJester wrote:Szcz wrote:How similar is it to System Shock 2? From what I've seen it seems dumbed down, more Bioshock than STALKER in terms of mechanics. I like my FPS games geeky and needlessly complicated.
It's a lot more similar in terms of plot rather than gameplay. Gameplay wise it's virtually identical to Resident Evil 4, except with an extra stick grafted on to the controls, an extra melee attack for downed enemies, and the ability to slow down time and use a gravity gun which you pretty much just use for puzzles and tossing random severed body parts around for fun. You can also move while firing. Enemies are much (much) faster and harder to kill but less numerous.
It feels like RE4, though, and not an FPS.
But yeah, it's nowhere near Stalker in terms of complexity. You have generic level-up items that can be applied to any of your weapons or your armor, and you can actually buy these, so they're not limited (though they are very expensive and you're going to need to buy other stuff unless you're very good at the game). There's no food to eat or anything like that, and your inventory is all very neatly managed for you. The game also has an objective tracker. You click down on the right thumbstick and your guy will emit a laser pointer thing from his hand that illuminates a blue line on the ground indicating the direction you need to go in (though you still have to be semi-careful as it will walk you through deathtraps and whatnot). There is a map in the game, but I've honestly never had to bring it up. If I'm not sure where to go, I can just call up the laser grind thingie.
A lot of things in the game are very streamlined, and virtually all of the busywork (inventory management, checking the map to see where you need to go, pausing the game to use healing items, etc.) has been eliminated. The emphasis is on atmosphere and pacing. They really seemed to try to de-emphasize as much of the "videogameyness" of it as they possibly could, and this extends to minimalizing the amount of interaction you have to do with your inventory or any kind of menu system.
Luckily, the game is paced in such a way where this actually helps, instead of feeling like the game is holding your hand. Sure, you can call up the guide laster, which is nice and easy, but there are also plenty of monsters who can (and will) take your head clean off from 20 feet away if you're not paying attention, and there's a good amount of death traps in the game. Dead Space is not afraid to instakill you for doing something retarded.
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