The problem with Dead Space

[BlackAura]

This was by far the scariest game series I've ever played, and that's all I need to know.

 

[Xpheyel]

Here's a thought. Issac Clark is an engineer, yes, but consider how most of the technology works in Dead Space. It almost always involves something the size of a dump truck moving at high speed while shooting lasers.

Great example? The gravity centrifuge. Before you plug it in. The plugs on the generator widget are spinning so fast that moving them in causes the unit, which is bigger than an industrial air conditioner, to shoot backwards at high velocity.

Any zero-gee area usually has some piece of detritus that could crush someone by sheer mass.

Apparently ordinary doors can malfunction so badly that they easily chop people in half.

Pressure doors on the sprawl have a button that has to be shot to close them?

I bet that when the CEC coffee maker malfunctions, it sprays 500 plasma that melts through bulkheads. Getting your finger caught in a 3 ring binder will probably take it right off.

Point being, you obviously need an iron nerve and cat like reflexes to work with industrial technology in the future. In fact, all their Marker experiments are probably just by product of the generally lackadaisical approach to workplace safety. So the egregious violations of common sense neatly excuse Issac's improbable survival skills.

 

[Blind Sight]

Wait, so what you're saying is that the game with alien reanimated corpses is unrealistic? I am shocked.

 

[ClassicJokester]

How can Mario beat Kingdoms upon Kingdoms of enemies and large dragon like turtles?

1. Mario can jump the shit outta baddies heads, no other character in mario can do that.

awww... look what you did. You apologize right now. :3

This was by far the scariest game series I've ever played, and that's all I need to know.

Let's change that [http://www.amnesiagame.com/#main]

 

[Plazmatic]

The problem with Dead Space is it's pretty much Doom 3.

bingo right on the money

 

[Jfswift]

His wife was on that ship. That gives him more motivation to survive. Besides he's an engineer, so he's supposed to be really smart.

 

[Nieroshai]

1. Everyone and their grandma was driven batshit insane BEFORE the necromorphs spawned, read the text logs. A lot of the Ishimura and Sprawl deaths were due to suicide and ritual killings by the Morm-I mean Sci-I mean Unitologists(BAD Niero!) and sabotage of the station. The crew (the sane ones at least) figured how to kill Necromorphs according to logs, but the Unitologists turned traitor.
2. There were survivors, and if you play Extraction, you can see how the cast of that game really made Isaac's job a lot easier than it should have been. One lost an arm and another, I doubt you care about spoilers, is hinted to maybe turn into a necromorph in the escape pod.
3. The whole POINT is isolation. The point from the beginning was to force the player to fight alone through the game using improvised futurey mining gear.

Honestly, what do you expect from a GAME? Do you WANT NPCs to do the fighting for you? Do you WANT every single monster to be nigh-impossible to defeat? Sure the game has balance issues ON NORMAL, but if the game's too easy, you have the option to try a higher difficulty. You really do. In fact if you like, DS2 has a mode where you only get 3 saves all game. The game being too easy is therefore your fault.

But you have the right to dislike the game. Nonetheless, you are wrong on your points.

 

[TerranReaper]

We call it suspension of disbelief, it wouldn't make for a fun game if the developers had to consider every plot hole or tried to make it as realistic as possible.

 

[Nieroshai]

I also have a better answer why Isaac survives, why did I forget about it? The Marker is helping you! The Marker has an effect on anything with a mind, making crew help it when the Hivemind isn't affecting them, and I think it's capable of controlling Necromorphs to a limited extent. Being an imperfect marker, it of course can't control a horde of necromorphs like Isaac's green Marker does. So how does this explain things? The Marker needs its pedestal to initiate Convergence, and it chooses Isaac to do it. So it does everything in its incomplete power to make it easier for Isaac.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Maybe the crew of the Ish were actually somewhat successful, when the Necromorphs attacked the ship they had a much clearer purpose, kill and infect everyone on board. When Isaac comes their job is done and they're more like mindlessly waiting for some direction.

Put it this way, if Isaac was actually there when the USG Ishimura was attacked he would have been shredded.
But in the aftermath he has more of a chance, the Necros don't really have a goal to roam around the ship and kill everything anymore.

Along with that a guy with an armoured suit and high tech mining tools atually has a much better chance against this particular kind of baddie compared to a trained soldier with standard issue weapons.

 

[inFAMOUSCowZ]

You know all those other great games

Half-Life really a scientist can kill hundreds of aliens and what not.

CoD- Your a one man army taking out another army

Uncharted- one man vs every minority in the world? Hows he supposed to win?

Its a game take it for what it is.

 

[AllLagNoFrag]

His wife was on that ship. That gives him more motivation to survive. Besides he's an engineer, so he's supposed to be really smart.

aaaaand... He's controlled by some otherworldy godlike force looking over his shoulder.

If you think about it Isaac would strike the lottery every single time because apparently people in the sprawl are extremely generous, leaving med kits, ammo and all kinds of supplies. Yes, looting is not allowed but, if your life depends on it, would you care?

Also, on topic, I think that it's alright that Isaac is pretty much the only person besides some other characters who can be counted by fingers. I find that alright since, the marker does drive people insane causing harm to themselves and others around them and the necromorphs LOVE dead bodies/recruits lying around. The people of the sprawl pretty much gave the nmorphs the ultimate breeding ground. Don't forget that unitologists are also big fans of the marker and cant wait for convergence

 

[northeast rower]

Here's a way to make the game better: make it realistic. That's the trend in video games these days, right? Maybe Isaac can be killed with one hit by a Necromorph, thereby forcing the player to start over. That's fun, right?

You think that the logic here is stupid? You, my good sir, are even dumber.

 

[Grampy_bone]

Issac survives because he is the main character. A story typically isn't very interesting if your protagonist dies in the first five minutes, no matter how "realistic" that may be. If your plot is about a horrible monster outbreak with one survivor, then the story must center on that survivor.

Furthermore I'd wager in the great majority of player's experiences Isaac dies on multiple occasions. So his real power is the ability to revert to previous alternate reality states where he didn't get eaten by the exploding monster babies or whatever.

For my personal opinion, Dead Space's monsters are suitably dangerous for the scenario to be believable. Maybe not entirely probable, but it's enough. They are certainly more threatening than the typical zombie hordes.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

What about Nicole, Kendra, Dr Kyne and Dr Mercer?

Nicole - like I said, radio logs don't count as interaction *
Kendra - isn't a survivor, she arrived with you. She also isn't that interesting.
Mercer - okay, I'll give you that one. But that's only one.
Kyne - ... honestly, I traded the game in by that point.

Compare that to Atlas, Andrew Ryan, Tenenbaum, Fontaine *, and Sander mother-f^*%ing Cohen...

All of these people talk to you - directly to you, not via recordings. Some want to help you, some want to kill you, and some want you to kill for them (and take dirty photos of their corpses, that sick bastard).

* Note - I specifically didn't finish a few thoughts above because I wanted to avoid spoilers.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

The main problem with the entire series is the lack of human contact. Sure, it's supposed to cast an air of dread, as if there is no escape off the completely alien filled catacombs of the Ishimura (And the Sprawl in DS 2). Alright, cool..

But if hundreds of people cannot defeat necromorphs in the beginning stages of the mass infection, suicides, and all out hell breaking loose, how can ONE MAN, let alone a man who has never been trained in any form of true marksmanship or weapons combat, defeat a legion of the re-animated undead by himself, even AFTER the fact that everyone is infected? People couldn't even survive when there wasn't even that many Necromorphs, and Isaac can single handedly take on the entire ship worth of the bastards? You'd think someone trained would've survived, at least a tight knit group..
But no, only Isaac, engineer with no background in monster killing, can waltz through the hordes without much fear of death. (It's not a hard game, either of the two in actuality.)

I call bullshit on the developers. It's just too unrealistic to have one man be able to handle something that HUNDREDS, (Supposedly thousands on the Sprawl) couldn't handle AT ALL, with trained personnel or not. The only true people we even see at the end of DS 2 are the soldiers aiming at Isaac, and even then they're easily wiped up by the necromorphs minutes later, that Isaac waltzes on through like buttering toast instead of fending for his life against otherworldly forces.

Stupid.

Dead Space is suffering from a severe case of after thought stupidity, and the developers should of thought a little bit harder on that fact, or at least made the game harder in EVERY way.

Spill your thoughts.

Er it comes in waves first wave is a psychogenic/psychogenic dementia from the marker(which is man made BTW), then insanity and mutations follow. DOOM 3 is simulair but I think DS dose it better.

Its still a cliched and stereotypical way of doing things but DS and System SHock 2 did it best.

 

[Agayek]

What's retarded is how they're supposed to be scary, when really they'd be almost nothing to a soldier. Most of the necromorphs are close ranged combatants, so all the soldiers have to do is set up a half-decent defense and they'd be fine.

And if you start to try to convince me that the soldiers are too terrified of the necromorphs to mount a decent defense, stop. It's ridiculous that some engineer could be able to control his terror, and yet a soldier who's trained to deal with life-or-death circumstances, can't.

Which works great, until one of the soldier's mind snaps and sprays the whole unit with a clip of hot lead.

I'm not saying they couldn't survive, just that it's unlikely due to the inherent mental instabilities and insanity generated by the marker. The only reason Isaac could deal with it was plot armor.

 

[Still Life]

This was by far the scariest game series I've ever played, and that's all I need to know.

You must scare quite easily.

I enjoyed DS for what it was, but it really failed in the scares department. After the first few encounters the creatures -- while totally fucked up -- failed to scare simply because they would slowly come at you from the other side of the room, with all the thunder and lightning associated with a wet willy. The devs just couldn't instill a sense of pure dread in me, and that was because they left very little to the imagination.

DS certainly startled me on many occasions, but that quickly turned into iron-determination to kill the aggressor with my box of tools.

 

[Noctis_XZ]

In my opinion Dead Space and Dead Space 2 aren't really Survival-Horror games. To me they fall more along the lines of Survival-Suspense.. you just know that something is going to jump out at you at any given moment but really there is nothing you can do about it..

Dead Space 2 needed more cutscenes in my opinion.. I don't know why more games pull away from them more and more as time goes by because really there is nothing wrong with them as long as they are a minute or two.. maybe even 4 given the type of game. The reason I say this is because anytime one those pseudo cutscenes takes place, such as with the tormentor, it was simply AMAZING.. such a rush. Am I the only love who absolutely loved that part of the game and think more of that could have only made the game better?

 

[emeraldrafael]

Cause he's the hero, and thats just what you do as the hero. Its convenient to the plot for him to be super bad ass.