360 Backlog

STATUS: Finished
TIME TO BEAT: 13h40m

I discovered Dead Space in 2010, when I picked up DS:Extraction for Wii. After maybe 10 minutes playing that game I knew Dead Space was perfect for me- it's Resident Evil, Metroid, Tomb Raider, Metal Gear... every adventure, action and horror genre all blended into third person perfection. Amazing from the first scene until the last, the game starts a frantic pace and keeps it up for the whole ride.

Woah, is that an alien? Mutant monster? Or maybe... is that you, Dave? You've changed.

On a surface level Dead Space doesn't introduce anything new. There's:

your solo character vs. the world- Just call me "Samus"
zombies- scary, isn't it Ed Wood?
a spaceship- a brand new idea since 1954
unclear antagonists- M. Night Shyamalan has this patented

But in the same way Stephen King seems to be able to combine mundane things and yet somehow create nail-biting excitement, Dead Space blends old ideas into a completely refreshing game experience. After only 5 minutes you're alone on a zombie infested spaceship with only mining tools to protect yourself, and other than some skype'd input from your last 2 living team members every few stages, you have to defeat the unending hordes of undead mutants and save humanity.

And in the dark. Did I mention the spaceship has been sabotaged and is basically coming apart around you? Because it is. Now that I think about it, that's basically your TRUE enemy, the failing systems of the ship. You have to survive the bad guys, but the ship is the real problem here. You spend 90% of your time getting from point A to point B to repair something needed to get out alive, but throw in hordes of necromorphs and you have first class survival horror

There's not much to complain about in DS. The graphics are very good I realize the game is 5 years old now but they're quite sharp, the animations and textures are as slick as greased teflon. The 3rd person gameplay and camera work together perfectly to immerse you into the scary, uneasy feeling that the Ishimura provides. I had my gun up basically every second and inched around corners like a frightened schoolgirl (I basically was). And the audio, oh holy crap was the audio amazing. I'm always giddy when I hear things pop up and out naturally on good 5.1 Dolby surround sound -be it in movies or games- and DS delivered that experience on a Spielberg level. Every necromorph in every distant hallway sprang into my ears in true surround. DS:E on WIi is darned amazing as well, and perhaps it's the HDMI vs. Wii's audio output, but I think DS blew it away.

My sole complaint, and enough to dock it half a star here, is that the controls are cumbersome at best. I know it adds to the feeling of "being Issac", an engineer wearing a heavy suit and who was NEVER trained or ready for what he's gotten into, but c'mon... would a quick 180* button press have been so bad? Turning was a chore, and precision aiming required for strategic dismemberment (which the game basically introduced to the world) was often tough, especially given the narrow window of opportunity some faster enemies presented.

Man did I love Dead Space. Where else would a 3-armed, fire spewing toddler mutant be appropriate?

Since I played extraction on Wii before this game I was somewhat out of sequence... and most of the spoilers weren't a surprise to me, not to say the game didn't deliver on the scares and plot twists, but looking back I wish I had the opportunity to play DS1 first. Not to worry, I'll make up for knowing too much on DS2, I've been in media blackout since before that game launched, and it's been a difficult 2 years!

And by 3 hours into the game, because DS really is such a great experience on every level, I decided to replay DS:E as soon as the credits rolled on DS1- and that was absolutely worth my time. The developers used the same environments, weapons, undiscovered parts of the back story, even many of the same text and audio logs appear in both games. replaying DS:E really did feel like I was playing the prequel- including graphically.

My Opinion: Dead Space is going to be a money making franchise for a long, long time. The depth and extended universe are ripe for sequels. Long live the (new) king!

STATUS: Finished
TIME TO BEAT: 12h5m

Well, having played all the other versions of Dead Space back to back over the last 4 months (including a replay of the excellent DS:Extraction for Wii), I'm qualified to say:

Dead Space 2 is my favorite Dead Space.

All the things there is to love about the series are here; Issac is constantly traversing across tense, unnerving, scary environments, each mingled with the ever-looming threat of who-knows-what out there to get you. And there's plenty to get you this time around...

Early on you come across the residential area... and then an abandoned elementary school. Guess what happens next.

I appreciate the new weapons in Dead Space 2, maybe moreso because I played DS1 using only one gun (to get the accomplishment). There's just tons of great weapons, as always, but Visceral added some goodies this time- javelin electrocute and pins enemies, the the detonator is all kinds awesome (killed many a stalker that way!) and the seeker rifle is fantastic for finding enemies far away and taking off limbs.

Graphics are great, and the controls are acceptable (I might never like dual thumbsticks), but the best thing DS2 brings to the game is tension: There's almost never a quiet moment. Yeah, so it's as much action as it is scare, but it's really good action! The game opens with a terrifying scene that gets your pulse up FAST, then continues to push you through spooky corridors at a break neck speed with almost no time to react, then just as quickly you're moving at to a crawl as you inch around corners and through doors, heart still racing from the fear that something's about to get you. It's amazing.

Much like the raptors in Jurassic Park, the Stalkers are waiting behind corners, always in a pack. Detonator mines are really useful- let 'em blow themselves up!

Music and audio are, as in every DS to date, mind blowing. There's not much music, but when there is you know things are going down... and the Dolby is flawless, gives you a full immersion into the environment. Echoes and ambient sounds ring out from everywhere, very lifelike and detailed.

END OF GAME SPOILERS AHEAD!

One level near the end of the Gov't sector has multiple floors around an open atrium- the baddies were above, behind and below you at all times, pouring from the ventilation hatches, which made for a terrifying "Where is that sound coming from!?" vibe that kept me nervous and twitchy. By the time I had exterminated all the necros I was sweating. My palms were like wet bologna sandwiches, clutching the controller like MY life depended on it...

So when I opened the last door expecting a save point and a few rooms of calm, I discovered that Issac was about 50 yards away from 20,000 necromorphs, hallucinations of Nicole, and a Marker the size of the Sears Tower. As if that wasn't enough, the game immediately straps you in a tube, pokes your eye with a syringe and then throws a regenerating Übermorph™ at you while you try to open a locked door with only one eye... not enough? Good, start running because those 20,000 space zombies are now tricking 2-3 at a time into the sector you're locked in, the regenerator is constantly tailing you, and there's only one save station (protip: skip it and keep running).

That's 60 minutes of pure adrenaline-inducing survival horror action, right there. Stunning.

Dead Space 2 never lets go. It's a near perfect ride start to finish, on par with the amazing Super Metroid and Metroid:Fusion, which are the benchmarks of not just space action adventure, but gaming in general. Can't wait for part 3...

STATUS: Finished
TIME TO COMPLETE: 7h35m

Hey, RE5 isn't bad at all! Yeah, it reminds me a lot of RE4, except even more action-y and linear rather than tossing puzzles at you with constant backtracking. The BOWs are REALLY aggressive and have reasonable AI, which means there's little RE strategy of old here... forget waiting to let zombies wander in their circles just off screen so you can snipe 'em, sit very long and you're a target.

This is gonna hurt.

Because I wanted to get some backstory and round out my RE back catalog, I paused this for a weekend and fired up RE3 on PS1. Turns out RE3 is just OK, but it also reminded me just how much different the old series was than the new. Your best option used to be "run first, shoot once you're safe", but that's changed to a more COD approach; you need to run, duck, hide and pick your shots- mostly because of the sheer number of enemies and their use of weapons against you.

That works well here in RE5, but by playing that aspect up the game looses almost all of the scary and horror bits in favor of straight up run-n-gun. Overall I can't find anything to fault about the game; the audio was very good (although the voices in the FMVs were lower than in -game), the controls were reasonable (for a RE game), and the graphics were quite good... but it wasn't a traditional Resident Evil.

I'm OK with that. Not a RE:Make tier game, but definitely worth playing.