Dead Space 2 Is No Resident Evil 4

[Colton Burton]

Personally i like dead space. And i grew up on resident evil and silent hill and nothing will ever beat those in utter perfect horror-ness (and i'm really hoping the new silent hill game will return to the finer game mechanics of the earlier games.) My problem with dead space is solely that i think it's trying too damn hard to please everyone. Think about every complaint that people made towards dead space 1. now look at how many things changed in dead space 2 solely because of those complaints. Isaac now has a voice. there are now "action momments" to break up the horror. the list goes on.

they just need to do what they believe works for the series.

I do agree that it's a tad ridiculous the necromorphs transform instantly, but i also don't agree that there are too many of them in the game. The "outbreak" has occured on epic scales on a colony, a huge freight-class space ship, and an even bigger colony. it would be unrealistic if you only came across a few necromorphs from time to time. it worked for silent hill, but silent hill wasn't set in new york.

Although i do agree that monsters are far scarier than the fully lit creature, but sometimes shoving something that can only be described as fucked-up in your face works pretty damn well to get the adrenaline pumping.

Dead space isn't by any means perfect, but it could be a whole hell of a lot worse.

 

[Normandyfoxtrot]

Personally i like dead space. And i grew up on resident evil and silent hill and nothing will ever beat those in utter perfect horror-ness (and i'm really hoping the new silent hill game will return to the finer game mechanics of the earlier games.) My problem with dead space is solely that i think it's trying too damn hard to please everyone. Think about every complaint that people made towards dead space 1. now look at how many things changed in dead space 2 solely because of those complaints. Isaac now has a voice. there are now "action momments" to break up the horror. the list goes on.

they just need to do what they believe works for the series.

I do agree that it's a tad ridiculous the necromorphs transform instantly, but i also don't agree that there are too many of them in the game. The "outbreak" has occured on epic scales on a colony, a huge freight-class space ship, and an even bigger colony. it would be unrealistic if you only came across a few necromorphs from time to time. it worked for silent hill, but silent hill wasn't set in new york.

Although i do agree that monsters are far scarier than the fully lit creature, but sometimes shoving something that can only be described as fucked-up in your face works pretty damn well to get the adrenaline pumping.

Dead space isn't by any means perfect, but it could be a whole hell of a lot worse.

I would agree on that point DS is most certainly hampered by "committee design" you can diffidently tell there was a lot of compromise in the development of both of them between the survival horror and the action portions of the mechanics. Yawtzee's opinion is obviously influenced by his love a Silent hill and one can't blame him for it, but I do think he's over looking that like the newer resident evils DS is going to a Action-Survival horror rather than a survival horror-action game like SH.

 

[DeafMute]

Okay first off I was lazy and only read through the first page since they all seem to be focused on fold ups anyway.

Iron man's suit in the first movie actual made me smile when I fist say it. Anyone who has done a little research on the F-117 stealth fighter there are many such control surfaces because guess what to put something in the air that is not kept aloft by lift from traditional wings causes many small adjustments usually handled by computers. To me all these control surface type structures gave credibility to the suit actually being able to fly. It was a small gesture that showed some research. Then the suitcase monstrosity came which felt like a cop out.

As for Issac's helmet my biggest problem with it is it retracts ever time someone addresses Issac without a video conference. It would be far to easy for anyone to go "Yo Issac" and wait for the helmet to move out of the way before shooting him in the face or *spoiler* tries to assault him.

I like to go into games cold I like to give the game as much of a chance to surprise me. The Stalkers fail miserably, they announce their presences before they ever charge and they usually appear in very similar rooms that seem out of place with the rest of the closed in limited approach design of the game. I half expected a them to have be hooked claws on their feet and some sort of raptor name.

The biggest short coming is the loss of the subtly the first dead space had. This may have been repeated to death but in the first game you could be tricked into thinking your girlfriend was still alive, as unlike as it would be. It made the reveal a lot more effective in the end. Instead Issac becomes someone that is so obviously crazy he has to be sane. It was almost like a squeal of The Sixth Sense where Brucie Willis walks through walls.

The Cult is also a short coming. I want to feel like an ATF agent serving a warrant on a compound outside Waco Texas. I want the cult to seem reasonable until it is far to late. All of that is abandon since it seems like everyone joins just so they can become a necromorph and everyone knows what the marker looks like. Since the marker seems to be reproduced as the ascetic pillars in the church.

 

[Thedarkness77]

good episode as always.

 

[Biodeamon]

Ì survived the eyeball drill thing the first time and i thought it was no big deal. then i saw tobuscus`s playthrough of the eye drill thing and nearly fell off my chair...OH GOD THE BLOOD!
Deadspace can be shocking...just not scary. Real scary games are like Amnesia:the dark descent. Deadspace 2 shocks you out of your seat but doesn`t scare you.

 

[TheUnbeholden]

How do light sabers in STAR WARS work? HOW? a light saber is impossible!
Stop arguing about stupid things.If u think a game is ruined just because you can't bend your mind around how a piece of technology works then you have some serious issues.Sure the helmet is an important trademark of the product,but it's not a thing to worry about in this game,because it has alot of other great things to offer and to learn from, as a gaming experience and a as a story.

They use a crystal from a far away planet, and they is a sense of consistency because blasters use the same technology, just in one continuous beam rather than fired in intervals. But theres tons of advanced technology, like cyborg arms that are can put on humans... personal space crafts that can enter and escape atmosphere without needing to have a detachable rocket.

 

[Mindless1]

I haven't the time to read all these comment but a few things to note:
Dead Space is to Alien what Dead Space 2 is to Aliens.

First game you're on a smaller ship, tight corridors, no real means of defending yourself from the creature other than what's at hand. Need to find a way to escape.

Second Game, it's on a colony ship, Aliens was on a colony plant. Alot of the dezidents end up getting infected leaving more enemies, larger areas to explore, more weapons and gear to your disposale. Oh don't forget space marines. Ends with we don't need to just get out of here, we need to destroy here, with everything on it.

As for a survival horror aspect? IT IS A SURVIVAL HORROR, YOU'RE SURVING IN A HORRIFC SITUATION. Now people may say that there isn't much survival when enemies are just exploding with health, ammo, and credits. This easily fixable if you have gamer cahones. Play it on hardcore mode, enemies are beefed up to take extra damage, they won't drop items anymore, and items are scarrce. You only get three saves, and WHEN you die, it's not back to check point, you go back to your save. Not only was a fearful of not being able to take down a simple slasher, but I was also afraid I'd lose all my progress. I feared having to run through certain parts again wondering if I'll be as lucky this time when I'm trying to run past a colider, or I might miss that emergency blast door target when I blow something out into space.

If you're not scared while playing a game, don't be so quick to blame the devs. The problem most likely lies in your hands. Are you blasting through the game like you were master cheif with god mode on? Crank up the dificulty. You can't get immersed in the game? Turn of the dub step (Actually I find it synchs up with the game quite well, but i digress) crank up your surround sound, play at night with the lights on. I bet the next time your cat, dog, partner, parents walk by you might forcible evacuate your bowels. This is obviously coloring me fan boy so I'll leave you with that. The horror is in your hands.

 

[solidsamurai]

Double post. *burp*

 

[solidsamurai]

Well, as for the helmet, it comes out of the back of the armor - it doesn't nestle itself painfully at the back of the wearer's neck. The armor is probably powered armor, meaning there are powered artificial ligaments in the back help to lift the folded piece, when in storage (as well as the other heavy bits of the armor; which might incorporate knee ligaments for Isaac's otherwise human-powered legs). And then a robotic limb lifts the the helmet up (there's like one cut scene where I saw this; it's near the end of the game where Isaac is leaning against the wall, and then he stands up... rest is spoilers), so that it can fold over the wearer's head and face (and then provide a tight seal and oxygen, somehow - maybe there's many small carbon nano-tube melded tubes traveling up to the face, woven into the bottom layer (the head covering that Isaac wears underneath the helmet), or something).

The same hand-wave most likely applies to iron man 2. Despite this, it doesn't really explain why Isaac sounds like a deep sea diver whenever he speaks, but whatever.

The plates protect the head, kind of like banded mail or the roman legionaire's breast armor. Each plate folds over the other to provide greater integrity - rather than functioning as one piece, each plate defuses force to help to cushion impact. The plates are also hard, to protect against scratches and dents of slashing or stabbing weapons.

About jetpacks...

Isaac's rocket boots don't accelerate all that quickly. At most, it's maybe 30km/h (and if that's too much, then tone it down a bit more). Really, all he needs is enough to dodge giant hunks of space debris flying towards him. If it feels like he's free falling at the time, then that's obviously style over substance (although zero-g does offer the constant feeling of free fall), but I digress...

Basically, the same technology is used in NASA's astronaught suits, repair of the ISS. Just little puffs of low ejection mass. Enough to maneuver in zero-G.

Isaac also uses magnetic boots to adhere and walk on any surface in zero g. This probably requires a good deal of balance on the part of the user (lift your leg and a ligament in your suit's knee pulls a tiny lever to deactivate the magnetic field in that section of the boot). Whether or not the magnetic adhere-to-anything-not-just-ferrous-metal part is realistic, feel free to argue that, though.

We all know the main reason Isaac is a super hero space marine though is that powered armor is cool and still not nearly main stream enough. xD

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Most of Yatzhee's complaints seem like nitpicks in this one, dating back from his previous review of the game. I thought that despite Isaac's voice, he did seem to be somewhat of a unique character based on what he does in the situation at hand (he's not a wisecracker, but that technically would confine him to a wisecracker formula, ie. - instead, he seems to be just a normal tough guy with the simple title of 'engineer' for lack of a more futuristic job title, that tends to ask questions ("I don't even know what you want! What are you, even?!" was sort of his complaint, a similar thing that Yatzhee wonders for why the ghost girl is more important than everyone else that died on Ishimura in Dead Space 1; you can bet that Isaac would wonder the same thing, if the game wanted to give us extensive accounts of Isaac monologuing) and only proceeds for the sake of his own survival) - compared to most others in the genre.

Watching Toby do a lets play for about 50+ episodes of this game, I'd probably give it a 7.5/10 (.5 because I'm a pussy, screw you).
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What if Max Paine had ended with him shown in an asylum recovering from a Valkyr addiction, the doctors commenting on the fact that he can't tell the difference between his high induced hallucinations and the real murders he committed, maybe even implying that he may have been the one killing his own family. Wouldn't that have made a better game?

I would probably find that incredibly irritating and then blog (and/or spam the nearest chat channel of online game of your choice) about how the story writers were complete ruttin hacks.

IMO, uncertainty is a nice way to tell a story - so long as it doesn't piss readers off so that they can start calling things 'plot holes'. Then you're doing it wrong, no matter what your justification is ("I read a post online about uncertainty!").