Someone explain to me how Dead Space is good

[salm]

Ok, so what kind of setting and plot would you guys have preferred. I guess the development went like this.

1. Someone comes up with idea of Tactical Dismemberment as central gameplay mechanic
2. A setting that is adequat to the gameplay mechanics is designed
3. A plot is intruoduced.

Ok, so we want to make a game with this Tactical Dismembermet (TD) thing. What kind of setting and plot are we going to choose?
TD screams for enemies with close combat weapons or slow projectile weapons that you can dodge because the player needs to be given time to aim.
The different enemies need to have a different amount of arms/legs in order to introduce more variance.
The arms/legs should be in different angles so that it makes sense for the player to rotate the gun.


So, what would you do?

[Stark]

First, it's not my job to make their game work.

Second, it's really easy. If they'd focused more their existing story soul have worked with some minor changes (like Isaac talking) but it's pretty easy to make the spooky planet + spooky spaceship + bizarre alien this be work. Like I already said, they both stunningly unoriginal and add nothing; just improving the quality would lift it.

Personally I'd both have more zombies (both type and number) and some actual aliens. I'd rearrange the logs to create mystery around the religion, why the ship is here (the rescue crew never even comment that it's illegal to mine there or that there's a colony) and what happened to the crew. As Hawks says, I'd add some actual jury-rigging and change how the drops work especially on hard. Changing weapon balance to make the pistol the 'easy', frequent drop option that is flexible but not good in any situation to encourage use of specialised guns would help too, particularly as a money/power node sink to stop the whole 'infinite money' happening. I'd personally like to see some hazards, but I don't think such complex forethought fits into the 'survival horror' genre (ps it's not a genre, it's a marketing term lol).

Frankly, it's not hard to make Dead Space work. People with no standards who think 'oh it's good enough' need to realise how tiny the changes would really be to make the game significantly better; in Dead Space's example, a PC mod that rearranges log locations, changes weapon balance and a few lighting situations would significantly improve both the logic of the game and the challenge. The devs just suck or don't care, or both.

Zod, while I think the controls are bad (ie, accidentlly press LB = omg flail like a retard and get eaten), I like that there's at least a HINT that Isaac is out of his depth. If he ever SAID jack shit it'd be better, but he's really rubbish at fighting. I wish the fucking foot-stomp had some contextual aiming though; missing all the limbs three times in a row and then getting grabbed is fucking stupid.

[General Zod]

Zod, while I think the controls are bad (ie, accidentlly press LB = omg flail like a retard and get eaten), I like that there's at least a HINT that Isaac is out of his depth. If he ever SAID jack shit it'd be better, but he's really rubbish at fighting. I wish the fucking foot-stomp had some contextual aiming though; missing all the limbs three times in a row and then getting grabbed is fucking stupid.

True, but the point of my gripe was that having shitty controls shouldn't be the only way to make it seem as though the character is out of their depth. And compared to 90% of all the other "survival" games out there Dead Space's control scheme was fairly tolerable.

[Stark]

LOL I don't think the controls were designed to create this meta-sensation in the player, they're just a bit rubbish. I don't mind them; I'd have preferred if they were closer to Gears (which is why I kept hitting fucking LB) but at least it isn't 'drive like a tank' and at least he can run.

Also, Isaac being a robot who isn't in love with this chick that doesn't exist and this explains why he can't talk, has a helmet where nobody else does, can resist being eaten more than trained soldiers and is clumbsy as fuck = better story than the one in the game.

Oh and holy shit. When I read about the Valor I thought 'wow I wonder how they're going to have those guys die, since one guy with tools can kill thousands and there's only one'. I figured MAYBE they'd say Isaac's slomo isn't common, or that the ship is small with a 6-10 man crew. Sadly no; they even EXPRESSLY STATE that they have slomo to create a new (nb not new) badguy type. So somehow a single badguy (not a regenerator or zombie-maker) was able to burst out of a recovered pod (which we never see aboard the Valor, terrible storytelling) and kill a room full of guys with slomo, make new zombies including a brute somehow, and then kill everyone else even though Isaac has no problems clearing the whole ship. Pffft.

They could have done a SS2-style 'we shotz him but now his alien nanovirus is messing up our ship oh no we crashed oh no the Captain's gone mad' thing, but that'd involve too much non-pretentious dialogue.

[Covenant]

Honestly, DS isn't the first game to have tactical aiming, it just makes limb removal a big selling point. Which isn't exactly genius or anything. I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 3 right now, because I like it, and it has tactical limb crippling. I shoot this soldier in his arm and it becomes a ragdoll arm and he runs away screaming, unable to fire. In Fallout 3, which I played recently, tactical shooting is a lot more tactical than in Deep Space. I can shoot guns away, cripple limbs, disable devices to cause enemies to panic or shoot their friends, I can shoot a grenade in someone's hand or in the air to make it go off, and so on. Sure, the limbs don't fly off but it is the same game mechanic overall, crippling a foe until they either die or are torn so badly up that they die. The idea of firing shapes of damage into an enemy is interesting, but it sounds more like a puzzle game gone wrong. Against a foe with big arms, why detach his limbs at the wrist if I can take off the whole shoulder at the arm? Can I simply slice off the head? Bisect the torso? Basically, it becomes an interesting and irrelevent idea since it's just the same thing a shooting an enemy who takes variable damage and damage states.

I suppose the real issue with DS was the first step. "Hey, let's make a gimmick game." Failure right there. Gimmick Shooters are pretty bland. Make tactical dismemberment an aspect of an otherwise good game, to give the zombies an extra level of horribleness. Making a game around a gameplay mechanism is bad design. Having a single gimmick gun is fine, even if it's stupid to leave it as a single gimmick gun when it could be a fully intergrated gameplay addition. But making a game around the gimmick is basically like making a game of Halflife 2 where every solution is solved by throwing toilets and boxes at people. It doesn't improve the game, and it doesn't take the gimmick and make it a puzzle or smart game (like Portal) it just restricts the player to standard conventions + a gimmicky extra layer of abstraction. Which, apparently, doesn't even work right... as everyone says they just use the pistol.

[Stark]

Yeah, they clearly put more thought into designing guys to encourage/counter dismemberment than the did into any other element like level design or plot. Sadly they never noticed all fights were the same 'lay down withering fire until all enemies are dead' stuff - I think simply nerfing the pistol from GOD PISTOL to something that is useful but less so than the specialised weapons would have really helped; smaller mags, smaller drops, stranger attack styles would have made combat more interesting than SLO MO BLAM BLAM I WIN ten thousand times.

Oh yeah, dismemberment + physics gun + slowmo? Could they fit more gimmicks in? There's even a vehicle segment!

[CaptHawkeye]

One of the things I'd do is just make the huge ship non-linear. Just have the entire game take place on a big ship (who's interior makes structural sense with the exterior) and simply let the player know that the deeper he heads into the ship, the worse things will get.

I also agree with Stark that they could make the game better with more enemy types. The bigger guns and tools can be stronger without compromising balance if you just take into account things like maintaining the weapons or tools rather than just stapling arbitrary damage values onto them like Quake did.......10 years ago. I'd even make the tools useful to the environment. (IE: When carrying a blowtorch you can cut through thin steel doors and walls.) The weapons are really powerful but need to be maintained with spare parts, etc. Ammo rarity would not be the only concern.

[Stark]

Oh c'mon Hawks, let's not be unfair. People have wanted a huge non-linear technical environment with actual location and system-based problemsolving ever since SS1. This was an EA game! It was never going to happen.

I found the door thing hilarious. 'Oh no he locked the door to the medical lab'. Um, hello? I'm an engineer loaded with lasercutterbombs. I think I can open a ... oh wait no I can't.

[CaptHawkeye]

You're right! This whole time I forgot we're dealing with an EA game here! Despite a shitty reputation amongst gamers, their games still sell like mad with the help of their immense but obvious hype storms! Could it be that gamers are full of shit again?

[Covenant]

You're right! This whole time I forgot we're dealing with an EA game here! Despite a shitty reputation amongst gamers, their games still sell like mad with the help of their immense but obvious hype storms! Could it be that gamers are full of shit again?

Could be!

People ask for these things, but they aren't dealbreakers. Look at some open-world environment games though, like Grand Theft Auto. Those sell on the open world aspect in a huge way--same with games like Fable. People really do want these features, but if they're lacking, they'll probably still buy the game because they still enjoy putting holes in things.

[salm]

Honestly, DS isn't the first game to have tactical aiming, it just makes limb removal a big selling point. Which isn't exactly genius or anything. I'm playing Metal Gear Solid 3 right now, because I like it, and it has tactical limb crippling. I shoot this soldier in his arm and it becomes a ragdoll arm and he runs away screaming, unable to fire. In Fallout 3, which I played recently, tactical shooting is a lot more tactical than in Deep Space. I can shoot guns away, cripple limbs, disable devices to cause enemies to panic or shoot their friends, I can shoot a grenade in someone's hand or in the air to make it go off, and so on. Sure, the limbs don't fly off but it is the same game mechanic overall, crippling a foe until they either die or are torn so badly up that they die. The idea of firing shapes of damage into an enemy is interesting, but it sounds more like a puzzle game gone wrong. Against a foe with big arms, why detach his limbs at the wrist if I can take off the whole shoulder at the arm? Can I simply slice off the head? Bisect the torso? Basically, it becomes an interesting and irrelevent idea since it's just the same thing a shooting an enemy who takes variable damage and damage states.

I suppose the real issue with DS was the first step. "Hey, let's make a gimmick game." Failure right there. Gimmick Shooters are pretty bland. Make tactical dismemberment an aspect of an otherwise good game, to give the zombies an extra level of horribleness. Making a game around a gameplay mechanism is bad design. Having a single gimmick gun is fine, even if it's stupid to leave it as a single gimmick gun when it could be a fully intergrated gameplay addition. But making a game around the gimmick is basically like making a game of Halflife 2 where every solution is solved by throwing toilets and boxes at people. It doesn't improve the game, and it doesn't take the gimmick and make it a puzzle or smart game (like Portal) it just restricts the player to standard conventions + a gimmicky extra layer of abstraction. Which, apparently, doesn't even work right... as everyone says they just use the pistol.

As opposed to other games DS focuses mainly on limb removement from what i gathered from the one hour i played it.
I also didn´t think that it was only a gimmick since it had to be used so frequently and intesive. Had they made it only an aspect of the game it would have been just another shooter with, well, a gimmick. The way they did it, the limb removement is actually a major gameplay mechanism.
I think it´s a good idea because it alters the root gameplay mechanism of First person Shooters.

Basic FPS mechnism is: move around -> point at enemy -> click button -> get reward (harm/kill enemy)

More modern FPS mechanism which is currently standard: move around -> point at right part of enemy -> click button -> get reward based on difficulty of enemy part (e.g. head is hardest to hit therefore insta gib)

Dead Space: move around -> point at right part of enemy with gun at right angle -> click mouse button -> get reward based on difficulty of enemy part and based on correct angle

Since the alteration of the current standard FPS is relatively simple - after all there are only two states in which the gun can be - it does make the root gameplay mechanics more complex but not extremely more complex. This means that while the mechanics are expanded the players can still easily adopt to the new, additional mechanics.


Also, are you saying that making a game around the gameplay is a bad idea or are you saying that making a game around a specific gameplay element is a bad idea?

[Stark]

You're lecturing us after an hour of play? Hint; it hasn't changed the FPS thing at all, just MOVED the critical point (to an absurd degree, since body/head shots do essentially zero damage - less than 10% - to force you to play along). You think it's about angles because you think all guns are the pistol (the most useful and all-around powerful gun in the game). Hint; they're not. The AR has no special features outside a TOTALLY USELESS helicopter attack, the contact gun is just a grenade launcher, the flamer is just a flamer. If you thought about it for a second you'd realise that the game doesn't even care what orientation the pistol is in (with it's absurd rotating section instead of just turning your hand) because it's all damage-based - you just have to hit a limb, not at a magical angle or whatever you're dreaming of. It's just a game where the badguys have four heads around their torsos and is otherwise just Bioshock's slicers over again.

This is why it's a gimmick - they didn't think it through and it becomes useless (something you'd know if you'd played more than an hour). Late in the game the pistol lets you kill literally dozens of slicers without any threat at all, because they all use the same animations and have the same hit locations AND YOU'VE GOT SLOMO LOL. The idea of 'tactical dismemberment' just means 'shoot their legs off' as removing their arms doesn't reduce their ability to attack you or the damage you take when they do. Slowmo, shoot their legs three times, rinse, repeat. REVOLUTIONARY.

It's just Nov, 2008's version of Blast Processing.

[Starglider]

It's just Nov, 2008's version of Blast Processing.

In case anyone is wondering what the hell Stark is talking about, he means one of Sega's shameless marketing efforts. Clearly Sega died because Sony hired away all their hype experts.

[Zixinus]

Ok, so we want to make a game with this Tactical Dismembermet (TD) thing. What kind of setting and plot are we going to choose?
TD screams for enemies with close combat weapons or slow projectile weapons that you can dodge because the player needs to be given time to aim.
The different enemies need to have a different amount of arms/legs in order to introduce more variance.
The arms/legs should be in different angles so that it makes sense for the player to rotate the gun.

I wouldn't have necessarily gone for the space-age route. It's unnecessary.

Why not go to, say, Depression era White Trash-land? Some miners find some foul, forgotten artefact is found by some miner, local preacher views it as an holy item destined to bring back the faithful to God and all hell brakes lose? You're a drunken guy who just wants to grab his family and scram?

Using melee weapons with the occasional firearm on the monstratoties that the anchient artifact has created and you learn, after you watch your family die one by one, that you can only stop everything from happening by trying to destroy this long-lost artifact?

Yes, I've been watching Carnival.

[Covenant]

Salm, I'm mostly saying that not only is their gimmick pretty unimpressive, but that making a gimmick shooter is generally a bad idea. This is really just an issue with shooters, since as you've said, the basic gameplay is fairly routine by now. I'm already aiming at certain parts though, why is aiming for a joint any different? I realize that it does alter the gameplay, but it ceases to be tactical when it's not tactical as much required. It's not like I shoot him in the knee because I need to escape, I shoot him in the knee because I need to shoot both knees before he does. Otherwise nearly every game is a tactical something, because I mash The Giant Robot in the gut until he Opens His Mouth and I hit the weak point for massive damage. Deadspace just adds the idea of, instead of hitting a head, or a mouth, or the eyes, or whatever, it's an elbow, and to top it off, that the limb then falls off. This is it? Hell, I've done tactical dismemberment of enemy Starships ever since they introduced system targetting in TIE Fighter, but it's not like the whole damn game was about blowing up turrets.

If your gimmick is, say... really good fluid dynamics or fire physics... then make the game about controlling fire and water to accomplish varied and interesting effects. If you did this in a shooter it would mean making enviroments specifically designed to handle it, enemies who are small micro-puzzles themselves, and for the game conventions to be built to support that ethos. Puzzles are a good example of this, like Portal, or Braid, or The Lost Vikings. Simple concept which would be a gimmick if the entire game hadn't been it. However, if your gimmick is shooting people in the arms, you have a problem. You begin to have a giant sucking chest wound of a problem when Elbow Blaster X-Treme's gamedev team decides to drop in a few normal guns that seemingly subvert the idea of planar damage entirely by making your velcro zombies shot apart just like any other creature from any other game. If I made Fire and Tide, that little fluid dynamic game I just thought up ten seconds ago, and included a fireball spell which did standard direct-damage to the enemies and basically ruined the entire puzzle aspect, I've just torpedoed my own game. What Dead Space did was make the pistol shitty but upgradeable. So at best it is a very slow-moving torpedo, but it is definately on course. You could deliberately play the game without the most obvious, game-breaking pieces of equipment, but that doesn't make the game awesome, it just makes your players smarter than the developers.

Yes, games that are really hard or really strange are hard to make. This I know. I don't fault Dead Space for being a commercial product. I applaud it for being an attempt to package something fun for people to play and just shoot shit, that's cool. I'd do that too if I was a game development agency, at least half of the time, because it's what pays the bills. But I don't give gold star ratings to something just because it didn't lose money. I have no responsibility to reward basic competance, or excuse bad decisions. That's what makes those few really awesome products really awesome, they manage to make money and do something clever and new and do it well. It's like the American educational system. A C grade is supposed to be average, but nobody wants their kid getting C's. Shouldn't a C be alright? We shouldn't give out high marks unless they're earned, and there is nothing MORE in the developer's control than basic high-concept topics like "Oh man, let's make a game about knocking parts off of zombies, just like all those Mechwarrior games, but with... um... zombies."