Atheistforums.com

Arts and Entertainment => Film, Music, Sports, and more => Topic started by: the_antithesis on March 22, 2013, 01:29:06 PM

Title: Dead Space: first er, last impressions.
Post by: the_antithesis on March 22, 2013, 01:29:06 PM
So, in the vein of Conan O'Brien's Clueless Gamer series, I've picked up the first Dead Space game, which I've heard is the only good one in the series. origin recently had a sale and I picked it up for less than ten bucks. So I got a whole game by sacrificing a Happy Meal. I haven't played it very long, but what do I think?

I think EA is run by tards, first of all. This is the second purchase I've made with Origin, the first being Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The purchase went off smoothly enough but for both games I had to go into the options menu and fiddle with the settings. This seems stupid. You'd think the game install software would detect what resolution my computer's default is instead of starting up in 720 × 480. My laptop has a wide screen, game. Use it! Also the default mouse sensitivity in both cases was in the same neighborhood as a clitoris that achieves orgasm when light touches it. Christ, that sucks. It's nice that I can adjust these things to my tastes, but that I fucking have to kind of pisses me off. I also didn't fix the mouse sensitivity until after I stopped playing so the slippery controls colored my impression of gameplay.

As for the gameplay, I kind of hate it. I find it claustrophobic. This may be intentional since it was once supposed to be a horror game. But the tight, limited field of vision doesn't endear me. They also could have simply shown a blank screen to up the tension by reducing my vision. But that would have been stupid. So far, I've learned how to shoot things with some kind of space gun (it's called a plasma cutter and probably supposed to be a maintenance tool re-purposed as a weapon, but it's a fucking gun) and how to stamp on enemies and boxes.

Simply moving around is a chore, partially due to the bad controls and partially due to using the camera in the tight spaces. It's just not flowing very well. Also, having to hold SHIFT to run when using the WASD movement controls is giving me a fucking cramp. Maybe I should invest in a gamepad or something.

Plot-wise there is nothing to say. It has all the pacing of the aforementioned light-sensitive clitoris. Your character and his team of fresh meat go to some spaceship to fix something and while you're conveniently behind unbreakable glass, you see the others get attacked but a monster. The monster design is stupid, but the real sin here is it's fully illuminated so you can clearly see it. In a well done horror game, the monster would have been obscured by shadows or smoke or conveniently-placed cupcakes. But no. There it is. Right in front of you. That's what it looks like. Get fucking used to it.

A few seconds after that initial encounter when the thing or maybe it was another one chases me to an elevator-- where I learned the bad controls were going to make combat even more frustrating than usual, incidentally-- that I come upon of of these fuckers doing the old playing possum bullshit which I'd already heard that this game does in spades. that's actually pretty bad. They should have had the first dead monster I found actually be dead. Then it might be a surprise when the second one jumps up and goes "BOOGEY! BOOGEY! BOOGEY!" Having some of them being dead and some of them just playing possum could have made for tense moments as I may not know if the monster is actually dead already or not. Maybe I'm not being fair, though, as I didn't walk up to the thing but shot it assuming it was a shock scare waiting to spring and I'm likely to shoot every corpse a couple times just to keep them from jumping up yelling "Surprise buttsecks!" But the first dead monster I happened upon, when the game is still very scripted and tutorially, turned out to be alive. That shows the developer thought subtlety was a calorie-free alternative sweetener.

We'll have to see if the adjusted controls help at all, but what's really bothering me is the poor camera. It's hard for me to care that an enemy blindsides me when 95% of the environment feels like it's in my blind spot. That's not scary. That's not suspenseful. That's not exciting. That's not useful. That's aggravating.

I do hope the game grows on me a bit because, contrary to popular belief, I don't enjoy hating things. It's just because everything is shit that I hate it. I wish everything wasn't shit.
Title:
Post by: Poison Tree on March 22, 2013, 01:39:29 PM
I have never played the game--and honestly have no intention to, but I thoroughly enjoyed your review.
Title:
Post by: the_antithesis on March 22, 2013, 02:49:49 PM
So after a few more minutes of play where I do yet another fucking fetch quest, have I warmed to the game at all?

In a word: fuck, no.

The controls remain terrible and the environment, POV remains claustrophobic. In claustrophobic in a scary sense but in an annoying crowded subway car the guy next to me is breathing in my ear and if he doesn't stop I'm going to punch his dick off sense. It takes four bullets to take down the monsters. Two of them remove the limbs and the other two, at least, slam into the wall behind them because aiming in this game is like trying to piss in a toilet while standing up and drunk.

The monsters have the stupidest anatomy where you need to soot their limbs off to kill them. This is unintuitive since usually I prefer to aim for a vital area and, hopefully, take an enemy down with one shot. that doesn't work here. You're supposed to dismember the enemies and somehow loosing their arms and legs causes them to die. Actually, the head tends to fly off at some point, but not always. This is an completely unsatisfying combat method, even leaving aside the piss poor controls. I just don't feel like the things are dead when I kill them. There isn't that visceral "I got 'em" to this sawing off limbs. Also, melee is worthless. So you have to shoot these things even at close range to be effective. Although, saying I'm sawing off the limbs is not fair. Despite the spoken dialog that told me to not shoot their body but to aim for the limbs, I tend to eventually aim for the torso and their legs fall off. I don't really feel like I'm accomplishing anything. Each time these assholes pop up, it feels like a chore. A chore that has me thinking I should do my laundry instead.

The bullshit enemy placement just doesn't stop, either. I got to my fetch quest objective and then outside the door I got ambushed by two of the fucking things. Two of them, but at first I thought it was only one because of the shitty camera I couldn't see the second one just out of view. But then, just out of view isn't a bad name for this fucking game. Everything is out of view. I can't see anything. God. Fucking. Damn. It.

I'm just so frustrated with how this game handles in just looking around, moving around and trying to fight these fuckling things that all I'm left with is the lame story, which all reports indicate is no great shakes, and fetch fucking quests. At least in Kindoms of Amalur I got to hit a Gnome with a baseball bat through a stained glass window.

[youtube:2b5h9wwc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHMhThS0pGM[/youtube:2b5h9wwc]

So, yeah. I give up on this thing. It's a shame, because it could have been a decent game is it weren't for the bullshit enemy thing. If killing one felt good, I could have overlooked or worked through all of the other issues. But it doesn't feel good. It feels sloppy. Probably due to the developers wanting to leave a rag doll corpse lying around that you can stomp and get caught on your foot like a piece of toilet paper. The overall experience is just not good. If I could just zoom out from behind my character so I could take in the level design I might enjoy some of the set pieces (and figure out when the fuck I need to go because the map is borderline useless) and be ale to deal with the action a bit better because I'm not blindsides by some asshole who spawned miles away and casually sauntered up to be but I couldn't tell if that was a monster or I was making that squishy sound by stepping on all these dead bodies.

Fuck you, Dead Space. If this is the best in the series, then fuck this franchise.
Title:
Post by: Nonsensei on March 22, 2013, 03:22:27 PM
What a shame. I very much enjoyed the Dead Space games. I love sci-fi and it is a pretty rare thing to see genuine sci-fi AAA video games. Everything is either call of duty, world of warcraft, or indie puzzle platformers these days.
Title: Re:
Post by: Poison Tree on March 22, 2013, 06:00:28 PM
Quote from: "Nonsensei"What a shame. I very much enjoyed the Dead Space games. I love sci-fi and it is a pretty rare thing to see genuine sci-fi AAA video games. Everything is either call of duty, world of warcraft, or indie puzzle platformers these days.
Don't forget EA [s:2nnabbqw]Sports[/s:2nnabbqw] Sucks pumping out sport titles every year--with a new roster, better graphics and less features than last year! Don't worry, I'm sure they are hard at work on a DLC to give coke bottle glasses to the referees or some similarly critical issue.
Title: Re: Dead Space: first er, last impressions.
Post by: Jutter on March 22, 2013, 10:59:38 PM
Nerdmudgeon. It's part nerd, part carmudgeon. You're it.
The world needs more nerdmudgeons by the way.
Title: Re: Re:
Post by: Shiranu on March 23, 2013, 05:17:17 AM
Quote from: "Poison Tree"
Quote from: "Nonsensei"What a shame. I very much enjoyed the Dead Space games. I love sci-fi and it is a pretty rare thing to see genuine sci-fi AAA video games. Everything is either call of duty, world of warcraft, or indie puzzle platformers these days.
Don't forget EA [s:3dyao37k]Sports[/s:3dyao37k] Sucks pumping out sport titles every year--with a new roster, better graphics and less features than last year! Don't worry, I'm sure they are hard at work on a DLC to give coke bottle glasses to the referees or some similarly critical issue.

A. I agree with Nonsensei, I personally loved Dead Space 1-2 (haven't got 3 yet).

B. Sorry, but FIFA gets better year after year. As for Madden and their other branches, yeah sure... those games sucked to begin with and are based around a terrible sport, so of course they are terrible games.