Someone explain to me how Dead Space is good

[Havok]

Ford, explain yourself. WHAT AM I MISSING?????? How far do I have to get before it 'gets good'????

I don't think I'm exacting enough or something.

Wha...?? All that pining for you Ford, and that is all you give Stark?! He is going to CRY!!

[Ford Prefect]

Shit, I don't know what to say. I mean, Stark actually reads something I say and then uses it as a recommendation for the first time, only to discover my recommendation was actually quite poor? It's like I've betrayed his trust or something.

[Ohma]

How could you Frod?

[Stark]

Guess what ohms? This game which is totally not system evil horizon has pretentious monologuing, recurring bosses that constantly heal this totally invalidating the premise of the game, and a laughable approach to biology and evolution.

No I know, it's uncomprehensibly original. Why haven't we seen mass-from-nowhere bio enemies before, particularly ones that exploit corpses and fill ships with gore???

[Phantasee]

No I know, it's uncomprehensibly original. Why haven't we seen mass-from-nowhere bio enemies before, particularly ones that exploit corpses and fill ships with gore???

when did we start talking about halo

oh, i see what you did there

[Ohma]

Guess what ohms? This game which is totally not system evil horizon has pretentious monologuing, recurring bosses that constantly heal this totally invalidating the premise of the game, and a laughable approach to biology and evolution.

No I know, it's uncomprehensibly original. Why haven't we seen mass-from-nowhere bio enemies before, particularly ones that exploit corpses and fill ships with gore???

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!

Damnit, all they really had to do to avoid most of the common bullshitty crap associated with game stories was *not* come out and say "it's a magical space hivemind/zombie/mutant/PORTENT OF DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM" and it'd just be a fairly fun and mostly atmospheric space shooter.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, they had to have FUCKING MONOLOGUES and explain shit . Why do game developers have no restraint?

Does it at least only have a few "omg you didn't jump back into the closet when you saw this weird scripted thing for the first time and are now dead" moments?

[Rye]

So is it like your average FPS with loads of ammo everywhere, or do you have to do it Condemned-style?

Because fuck, I love that game (even considered getting a 360 just for it till I found out it was like £5 on PC). If they ignored condemned in favour of "yeah, spaceships totally need a shitload of plasma rifles lol" that's pretty sad. WE MUST BARELY EVOLVE THE GENRE.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Does it at least only have a few "omg you didn't jump back into the closet when you saw this weird scripted thing for the first time and are now dead" moments?

It doesn't have any such sequences. Fuck you all, the game is outstanding. (Almost as good for an all night marathon as your mothers!)

[Zablorg]

Stark, you are a liar.

This game cannot feature nano-viruses that walk around

because then they would not be nano

no game would feature such a contradiction of terms

[Stark]

Condemned is WAY better than this. It also has 8bitbosses that are laughably easy and they keep saying 'hive mind'.

I continue to be amused by DEATHs inability to put forward an opinion or discuss anything. No, it's 'just good' based on. Othing and the detailed descriptions aren't worthwhile.


Phant, the basic enemy is from bioshock, the bloat guys are from halo, the many is from ss2, and unitogy is edgy. Nothing original here. The regen boss is resident evil 2 of course

[Ghost Rider]

Moving because this amused me too much to be simply destroyed.

[Shogoki]

Well, if you don't enjoy it with the lights turned off and playing alone, then truly your armour of cynicism is invulnerable, rendering you utterly immune to fun of any sort, let alone that in this game. Astounding. I'd mwntion how impressed I am more, but i'm too busy having fun.

I actually liked the game quite a lot, but it's not scary at all and I know why, at least in my case. It's just that it's 3rd person game. Neither Silent Hill nor Resident Evil nor any 3rd person game you can mention has ever done more than startle me a few times when a monster comes out of a window, lights off, surround on and all alone, nothing. And i actually found that quite disappointing in Dead Space because they went through all that trouble making the interface so sleek and seamless and created such a great atmosphere and then they tell you: so, here's your puppet, and that's what ruined the game for me, i enjoyed the first half a lot and then just progressively lost interest and stopped playing because the game play itself it's not all that. I haven't finished yet, it's just sitting there in my hard drive. Seriously, if you want your games to be scary you need a first person view.

[Ohma]

Neither Silent Hill nor Resident Evil nor any 3rd person game you can mention has ever done more than startle me a few times when a monster comes out of a window, lights off, surround on and all alone, nothing.

To be perfectly fair to Silent Hill, most of the stuff that's supposed to be scary or creepy isn't "omg a monster is after me D :" and more "why are there monsters poking their heads in and out of holes in the wall? waaaaait...eew...".

[Stark]

I generally like 'tight 3rd person' games like this, but you might be on to something. The games I'd think of when I think tone and mood are not third person, and no third-person game has done it right. I'm not sure this is a causal link however - 3rd person has beome more popular in the last decade, while design quality has declined. Silent Hill works best on psychological stuff anyway, which isn't detracted by third-person I feel. It's amusing that writing quality is the only difference between Silent Hill 1 having your daughter call you up just to fuck with you and unnerve you working, and some bitch drunk-dialling you all the time in Deadspace and having you just roll your eyes.

It shouldn't be taken that Deadspace ripping of EVERY SINGLE GAME ELEMENT from another game is why it sucks, either. Sure, it rips shit off, but heaps of games do that and in a modern context it's almost unavoidable. The problem is that it does them BADLY and adds NOTHING to the cliche; the 'marker' could be swapped for 'SHODAN's lifepod' and nothing, fuck NOTHING, would change. Every plot element is stolen; I'm just sad they didn't call the Valor the Rickenbacker. At least the Rickenbacker wouldn't have been wiped out by a single badguy when the crew has ARs and time powers.

SS2 also had better pacing, better mood and actual repairing; any review I would give for Deadspace has to emphasise that while they might CLAIM Isaac is an engineer he's nothing of the sort - he lifts things and he presses buttons. Occassionally he flails like a retard to smash a fuse. When Token says 're-route the junction boxes', the boxes have a nice big 're-route' button. The closest to actual repair is the trivial comms array.

It amuses me that even the 95% reviews mention the boring nature of the actual objectives; in some areas as you enter, Token will say 'okay turn on the thing, but the door's locked, so get the key from here'. No attempt is made to hide the Doom-level unsophisticated 'puzzles' which are so simple even I can solve them instantly. Oh, now we've magically unlocked a new door, and some badguys have magically spawned in an area you've cleared - but at least Deadspace didn't make laughable claims about 'ecology' like Bioshock did.

Losonti also made a good point; the best gun is the pistol. Buying other guns actually dilutes the drop pool so you don't get as much pistol ammo, making the game much, much harder. Buying the contact gun was the biggest mistake I ever made.

[Losonti Tokash]

Well, I never bought any of the weapons, just the suits and occasionally a health pack, but I still get ammo for guns I don't have. The contact gun ammo doesn't even sell for much though, it's always the first thing I drop if I run out of space.

[General Zod]

Losonti also made a good point; the best gun is the pistol. Buying other guns actually dilutes the drop pool so you don't get as much pistol ammo, making the game much, much harder. Buying the contact gun was the biggest mistake I ever made.

I thought the line gun was pretty powerful, simply because it let you dismember multiple limbs in one shot. But yeah, that plus the pistol were the best weapons in the game.

[Stark]

Well, I never bought any of the weapons, just the suits and occasionally a health pack, but I still get ammo for guns I don't have. The contact gun ammo doesn't even sell for much though, it's always the first thing I drop if I run out of space.

What I've noticed is around level 3 you start getting drops (linegun, then contact gun, then the force gun) for other stuff occasionally, but what you're carrying affects the 'random' drops from crates and bodies. When I was just using the pistol and AR (which is pretty rubbish but it's a real gun dammit, worthless secondary mode included) I always got enough pistol ammo back to replace the ammo I used - now I'm carrying 3 guns, I'm constantly running out because the contact gun is a) fucking useless and can't kill a slicer in one shot even if you aim for a limb and b) drops one shot at a time. A 6-pack of pistol ammo is enough to kill 2 guys if I use slowmo, but 1 contact shell won't kill ANYTHING. I tried the flamer too, it's worthless.

Zod, I stayed away from the linegun because it drops 2 shots and not 6... but I bought the contact gun by accident which is even WORSE.

[General Zod]

Zod, I stayed away from the linegun because it drops 2 shots and not 6... but I bought the contact gun by accident which is even WORSE.

I never really saw that as a problem. The linegun let you kill enemies faster by chopping off more limbs at once than the pistol, so it made up for the lack of ammo drops.

[Stark]

Oh yeah, but at the start when it's 6/25/2 in drops, the linegun seemed too risky when I'd rather buy a power core. Later on when there's infinite money, I couldn't be fucked buying other guns because my fully upgraded pistol makes minemeat out of everyone when combined with my 9-shot 16second slowmo powers.

I wanted to try the flamer against the little goobers (last seen in the Lost in Space remake), but it's rubbish, the AR is better in this role. The contact gun doesn't actually appear to explode; it's no good against the wall-tentacle guys or the little goobers and the disintegrating guys. Oh no, my super armour is vulnerable to HANDS ATTACKING ME lol.

[Shogoki]

It's not like I hate 3rd person shooters, i actually consider them just as good and sometimes better for cinematic action a la Max Payne, or GoW, and also stuff where you have to be very aware of your surroundings, like Hitman. But suspense and horror? You may as well build a Ferrari and then slap a Civic engine in it.

I guess what i mean is, at least for me, games that depend on explosions, action and dramatic scenery for immersion work better on 3rd person. Games that need you to worry about your personal safety require a first person view.

[Covenant]

I think 3rd person fixed camera games really give you a great feeling of the atmosphere because you spend so much time looking at it--they really make for good creepy environment games. Adventure games and stuff like that. You really get into the environment. You can also feel really, really helpless because your character feels detached from you ala a nightmare where you can't run. This is a lucky happenstance, because the real reason it feels that way is due to problematic controls.

3rd person shouldercam games are... I dunno, I think they do alright for cinematic stuff, yeah, where you actually glean a lost of the enjoyment of watching your character interact in the environment, rather than just the interaction itself. If your character is a really flavorful sort of magnificent bastard, or goddamn Laura Croft, then that's a main selling point. Otherwise it's not. Shouldercam games also make it easier to see exact things, like where cover is.

1st person games are the best for giving the player themselves a feeling of power or terror since you're working on them directly without the abstraction of their character. So games that are meant to be really scary work best first person, but you really, really risk ruining the simulation if the GUI is too visible or the power too pronounced. Fallout 3, for example, gives you a great feeling of atmosphere and immersion in first person... but it also lets you just massacre giant mutants with stupendous ease. Kinda takes the suspense away.

In any case, movies are the benchmark. Think about which movies are the most terrifying to you or whatever--and those are generally NOT first person or shouldercam movies. There are a few that have been first person attempts (Cloverfield?) but most are 3rd person movies, and they all seem to work alright.

[Neko_Oni]

I actually found selling contact ammo gave me quite a lot of money. I only used the contact gun on the tentacles (not the ones that grab you in the quicktime like "cutscenes") and brutes, so I had shitloads left over.

It's strange I enjoyed Deaspace even though the plot is rehashed, and the gameplay is not very deep. The only deadset positive things that can be said about it is that the UI is clever and works well, and the graphics are pretty good.

[Zixinus]

Stark, you're standards are just way too high for anything mainstream to be good. So, you're question is rather redundant.

That said, the game at least TRIES just doesn't really know what its doing or just can't walk away from industry standards (YOU MUST HAVE GUNS! ALLOT OF GUNS! AND ALLOT OF ENEMIES! AND A PHYSICS GUN! AND SLOW-MO!). There are flashes of good ideas but stupid implementation (or things that happened beforehand that made those ideas stupid).

Dismemberment for example, is there to make your aiming more frantic (well, it was for me). Shooting at wiggling, moving tentacle-like things is hard and you fear for your life (or at least, supposed to). Although it does raise the question of what sort of twisted biology makes monster unreliable on heads but they need an apparently overnight-grown appendage important.

The gameplay is rather solid though. It's a standard RE4 style shooter that tries to be scary but really is just a semi-fun RE4 stlye shooter.

Really, what you have here is corporate's view of scary. It's scary enough to scare a kiddies, in which marketeer's mind composes 90% of the gaming population, but its not scary enough to require actual work or "potentially alienate audience" (my words, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were said).

It's often claimed the game is scary, but I'm not sure how this is the case.

Neither do I.

It relies yet again on the "gore is scary!" severe misconception that allot of VGDs have. Gore, obviously, is not scary. It's just disgusting at worst and slightly disturbing at best.

Then there is the "FLASHING LIGHTS" shit. You have a flashlight. They're annoying.

Of course, there is also the mandatory invincible monster that's VERY annoying.

[Zac Naloen]

I got bored of this game in the first act.

It had nothing to grip me.

So I went back to playing Pro Evo.

(cue stark hating on my terrible game review)

[Stark]

I want to say the story is one of those 'did anyone think this through' ones, where after the big reveal pretty much nothing makes sense. Yay!