Today I went on a demo downloading spree because I figured that it would be time to actually play some new games and give you guys a review on what was going on. I downloaded a ton of them so be prepared to have a copious amount of reviews coming your way within the next week/week and a half.
We’re going to focus on Dead Space 2 for now though. I can honestly say that I haven’t played the first Dead Space because at the time that it was released, it didn’t interest me at all. Now that I’ve played the Dead Space 2 demo, I can definitely say that it is a game that I wouldn’t mind purchasing and playing for a significant amount of time.
From what I could pick up via the intro cutscene, the story picks up 3 years after the ending of the first Dead Space. The main character once again is Issac Clarke and he’ll be the character that you’ll be playing as for the entire game. I tried to follow the intro as much as possible but just like any other game, it’s extremely difficult to follow a plot if you don’t know how it starts. For example, when it started talking about ‘the marker’ I had NO idea as to what the game was talking about so it was off to Google for me.
One of the really unique things that I enjoyed about the game was the extensive work that was put into the camera motion. With most RPGs you have limited camera motion and if you do want to expand your sights, your character always has to move with you. In Dead Space 2, you can do a complete 360 around your character and you can look as far up and down the axis’ as you please. I was really impressed. Another unique feature is the ‘stomp’ motion. In order to obtain items from enemies that you destroy, you have to ‘stomp’ on them, which is literally you taking your boot and annihilating the crap out of the dead alien/monster at your feet. Plus, the developers added sound effects when you stomp, Issac Clarke actually exhales and shows exuberance when he performs the action.
As for the movement of the character, it’s pretty simplistic. It’s a mix between a sneak and a walk, I don’t believe that there is an option to run. The good thing about the pace of the walk is that it’s not so slow that you’re falling asleep with each footstep and it’s not too fast that you cannot pay attention to things creeping in the corners, so it works out either way. I’m personally not too excited about their choice of movement but it works in their favour.
Now, we all know that no game is perfect and so I do have a couple of complaints with the demo. The tutorial menu in the database has the smallest text that I have ever seen in my life. Though the problem is most likely the TV that I was playing on, it’s still something that should have been fixed because not everyone will be playing on a 65” LED TV. Also, since this game is a pretty free roaming RPG, there isn’t a map included with the inventory screen which makes it difficult to determine where you are supposed to go throughout the quests and there aren’t objective markers on a compass (like Fallout 3 or Oblivion).
I’ve heard about how scary the game is supposed to be and I can tell you that within the first 15 minutes of the demo, it definitely lived up to its expectations. You will be walking down a hallway and all of a sudden an alien will jump out from a glass case or they’ll pop out from the ceiling, etc. When I was playing it kind of reminded me of RLH (Run Like Hell). I’ll go out on a limb here and say that if you have any heart problems and/or medical conditions that may result in death I’d advise you to stay far far away from this game. Alongside the fear factor, the gore isn’t too overwhelming at all. We would expect that a game like this would have blood splashing on the camera and guts flying everywhere, but the gore was kept moderately modest.
As for fighting, you’re equipped with several guns and the aiming is quite simple. You can aim down your sights and be prepared for what’s coming when you open doors (which was pretty awesome). The y and x axis’ don’t go crazy when you panic, they’re at the perfect look sensitivity and that made me happy.
The graphics are decent, they aren’t anything that will win them awards at this years VGA’s, but they’re decent enough that you can tell that the game was developed in 2010/2011. I wish that I could elaborate more on the graphics but there isn’t really anything unique about them whatsoever. It’s your typical mid space blue hued and dark toned theme.
The final thing that I’m going to talk about is hacking. If you’ve played games like Fallout 3 and Oblivion, you’ll understand when I say that hacking is much like lock picking. In Fallout 3, you use a bobby pin and you rotate it while rotating a screwdriver at the same time, in Oblivion you’re using the lock pick to maintain the height of the prongs until all of them are up and voila. In Dead Space 2, you have a side screen that pops up and you have to rotate the toggle stick and click x when it glows blue, the same fundamentals as the other 2 games but a new way of ‘hacking’ in general.
Overall, I was impressed with what I saw and played. I wasn’t overwhelmed with the quest that I was given and I wasn’t petrified about what was going to jump out at me and when. The fighting was simple and easy to control, the character movement was moderately fascinating and everything else I would rate at a 7/10. It’s worth a try and I’m sure that I’d enjoy it but it’s not something that I’m nominated for Video Game of the Year.
Check out the trailer!
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