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Dead Space [360] – First Impressions

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We had a little Dead Space party here at Casa Buttonmasher this weekend, celebrating the arrival of Dead Space on the Xbox 360.

In preparation for a full review, Ehergeiz is currently putting it through its paces. But since my 360 is kaput, he brought his machine over here and we put a couple hours in together.

So some initial impressions: In a generation of expensive development cycles and heavy focus testing, it’s clear that Dead Space is game of very high production value. Both the graphics and sound are superb. Not to be gushing, but these are Gears of War-level graphics, but in space. The environments are creepy and eerily quiet. Tension is real and when a baddie drops in behind you, it’ll make you jump. In the dead space of space, no one can hear you wet your pants.

Erhegeiz will have to go into specifics of actual gameplay, but from what I observed, control seemed pretty intuitive and responsive.

It’s hard to be innovative and appeal to the mainstream at the same time. There’s nothing new here, but that’s not a bad thing. There are lots of little tweaks and enhancements. It’s going to be compared to games like Gears of War and Resident Evil 4 for obvious reasons. But it takes its own approach. Marcus Phoenix’s curb stomp has nothing on you dropping the big boot.


Devastating.

RE4 had a great weapons upgrade system which Dead Space apes to a certain extent, but does it its own way, giving you upgrade paths with limited resources to max everything out.

The story has been enhanced by things like the No Known Survivors website, but is mostly standard sci-fi fare. You pick up snippets of what has happened (and clearly something has happened) as you begin exploring the space station. I love the details like writing on the walls (Portal), the audio and video files you find (Bioshock) and the monsters jumping out of ventilation ducts (Doom 3). Again, there’s nothing wrong with imitation. Dead Space does it with flair.

Now I can’t wait until Ehergeiz is done with it so I can get some time with it.

In my [Digital] hands

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Saga

Saga calls itself an MMORTS, which is a pretty good description, but it doesn’t describe it completely. It is an MMO, the majority of the gameplay is an RTS (real time strategy), but there are also city building elements above and beyond a regular RTS. And there are collectible card game aspects to it, as well. It’s free to play the basic game, with additional features available for a price. And booster packs can be purchased, too.

It’s all confusing, I’m sure. Check it out, see what you think and let me know. I was contacted a while ago by the people a Saga to play their game, but things like GTA IV got in the way, so I’m finally getting a chance to play Saga while I await the return of my 360. So far I’m liking it!

In Our Hands

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Thanks to EA for a copy of their Space Horror Survival Mining Simulator Dead Space. I say it’s in “our” hands, because while I am currently holding the phsyical box in my hand (that’s right, I’m typing this one-handed) Ehergeiz will be doing the actual playing and reviewing. My 360 is currently en-route to Mesquite, Texas, for some emergency surgery. I’ll hopefully have it back in house soon.

I’m planning on watching at least a bit of Ehergeiz’s initial play through and we should have some first impressions up shortly.

Tokyo Game Show Dead Rising Wii Impressions

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Luke Plunkett from Kotaku was able to sit down at TGS and give Dead Rising for the Wii a good, old-fashioned try. His comments scare me.

The whole point of the first Dead Rising was that there was hundreds of zombies. Because they were slow, and stupid, and slow, it was the sheer weight of numbers that provided not only the challenge, but the enjoyment. Zombie survival fantasies don’t involve evading/killing 2 zombies, they involve evading/killing thousands of them.

You know how many zombies I saw on-screen at one time? Six. Six zombies. And that’s not in a room, or a store, that’s across the massive concourse at the start of the game. Yet they still shamble. There’s no urgency, there’s no danger. There’s no fun. To compensate, Capcom have added a few new enemies: killer poodles and killer parrots. They’re vaguely ridiculous, and do very little to make up for the lack of more shambling corpses.

Some of us were excited about using the Wii-mote to play. Well, uh…

What’s worse, the controls are woeful. To pick up a dropped item, you don’t press a button. You press the Z button and the A button. They’re on opposite sides of opposite controllers. It’s stupid. The Wii Remote aiming controls are woefully twitchy. and to switch weapons you need to us the d-pad while aiming. Meaning you can’t use the Wii Remote at that time, requiring you to aim with the nunchuk while reaching with your other hand. It’s messy. It doesnt work.

I know the game has not been released yet. It’s even been pushed back to early 2009. So, there still may be time to address the issues. I guess the craptacularness of it will make it easy for me to stick with my no violence rule a little longer.

Halo 3 Recon

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Honestly, I thought I was done with Halo. I thoroughly enjoyed all three games and played the heck out of them. It’s no secret I have a special place in my heart for the trilogy. But I thought I had my fill of the Master Chief. Then I saw the trailer/teaser for Halo 3 Recon:

And they pulled me back in. I’m such a sucker for good marketing a good trailer.

I do, however, have a problem with the name. Why are they calling it Halo 3 Recon if this is supposed to be a prologue to the first Halo? Was Halo Zero not available? (I guess not)

Anyway, what do you guys think? Don Reisinger doesn’t think this is a good move for Microsoft. I’d have to agree. I think it’s time to let Halo (at least in its current FPS carnation) go. At least until the next Xbox is upon us. By then, we’ll be ready to take on the Flood once again.

But for now, let’s give it a rest.

Xbox LIVE Demo: Fracture

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As a word of warning: I only played around in the demo for a little so this won’t be a complete review of the demo.

I thought that the story didn’t seem very interesting from the beginning cinema. Nothing jumped out and grabbed me. They setup a good tutorial/newbie-type area that you could try out the basics of the different weapons and the control scheme. Now the meat and po-ta-toes, you have this pretty cool weapon that can either raise the ground up or down where you shoot it. The gun has the ability to re-charge (could have been a faster re-charge rate for my tastes, but alas) so you pretty much have unlimited ammo.

The game really didn’t stand out from any other 3rd-person shooter. The visuals are awesome of course, the Unreal Engine 3 is quite a piece of work. The only real difference in this game from the plethora of shooters that are out there is the terrain deformation. You have to think vertical more than just horizontal, you get shot from above and behind then you need figure out how to get up there and take care of business. Use your terrain altering gun and make a hill to get up to a broken stairway to get to the next level and take those punks out that shot you in the back.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: From what I’ve seen it’s mostly just another 3rd-person shooter, and the story hasn’t made me care for the world of Fracture at all. Now, if the multiplayer can utilize the terrain deformation aspect of the game in a fun and creative way, it might actually turn out to be something. But with all of the FPS/3rd-person shooter games that are coming out soon (Left 4 Dead, Gears of War 2, Call of Duty: World at War, etc.) I don’t see Fracture becoming a best seller this holiday season.

Games on my Radar

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Nintendo DS
Well, it looks like my 360 is on the way out, again. So for the foreseeable future, I’ll be seeing a lot more DS and PC action, with the occasional DS game as well. With that in mind, here are a few games that are showing up on my radar.

For the DS, three games that have piqued my interest:

Lock’s Quest
I have mentioned this game before, but it completely fell off my radar until recently and now I’m ready to give this a go. It’s quite simple: an RPG with Tower Defense. Need I say more?

Disgaea DS
Disgaea is one of those games I’ve always been intrigued by and always wanted to play, but never had chance due to its platform exclusivity. Now that it’s coming out on the DS, Disgaea is finally within my reach. Even though it’s a port of the PSP version (which is, itself, a port of the PS2 version), I want to play this game. I’ve heard of its depth and replayability and I want a piece of that action.

Chrono Trigger DS
Being a part of the Greatest Video Game Generation™ (The 16-bit generation), I played my share of Square titles on the Super Nintendo, but one that I only played briefly was Chrono Trigger. I played enough of it (before I had to return it) to know that it was awesome. Now I get a chance to relive those memories and actually finish the game. This is going to be a great game.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (link is in Japanese, sorry)
I love Fire Emblems on the GBA and started playing the Gamecube version before getting distracted by other games. This one isn’t due out until next year, but another one I’m anxiously awaiting. I’m starting to see a pattern here.

Is there anyway to disagree that the DS is not the best gaming console out there right now?

Dead Space
If you’ve been following the development of Dead Space at all, you already know EA is going all-out in developing the back story and setting the stage for the release of Dead Space next week. If you haven’t been following its development, definitely check out No Known Survivors. There’s lots of good stuff there. We should be getting copy here in-house and hope to have a review of it up as soon as we can. Even though my 360 is kaput, as soon as it’s back in commission, I’ll be firing this up. I am very much looking forward to this.

The Godfather II
Speaking of EA, I’ll admit interest in their upcoming open-world mobster game, The Godfather II. That’s not arriving for a while, though, so we’ll have to wait and see how it develops.

There are more games out there, especially some triple-A titles for the 360 coming out very soon. But until I get my box back in house, fully operational, it’s the DS for me.

(Updated: I knew I’d forget something. I meant to include Fire Emblem for the DS. That’s been corrected)

Nintendo Gets Closer to the iPod

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They announced the DSi earlier today at it’s Fall presentation.

From what I’ve been able to gather:

  • It’s 12% thinner
  • It’s $178 (Sorry, Japan only right now)
  • It has a camera
  • It’s not replacing the DS Lite
  • It has an SD slot, but no GBA slot
  • It has internal storage and plays music
  • It has bigger screens
  • It is awesome

My DS Lite is currently going on the fritz. However, it’s too bad this does not look to be released in the States until after Christmas. It would have been the toy of the season. While cool, I think Nintendo is shooting themselves by not releasing it here at the same time.

In My Hands v2.0

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I know these are usually just left as is, but getting my mitts on a copy of this game is one of those feats that just made my day. I’ve been wanting this game since waaaaay back in 2002 or so when it was originally released. I passed on it when it first came out and since then it has been impossible to find anywhere.

Fast forward to last year. I was in one of the two rinky-dink video stores in my town and I happened upon a copy of R.A.D. on the shelf. I tried to convince the clerk to let me buy it, but no dice. It drove me nuts as I knew nobody else in town was going to rent it. I’ve gone into the store since and checked to make sure it was still around and thankfully it was. I was heading home from work today and popped into the store to see if they had Iron Man on blu-ray (nope) and there was my lonely R.A.D. on the shelf. The owner was in the store today and I put on my best hang-dog expression and asked if he’d be willing to part with it.

$15 later, I was walking out of the store with the game! And from what little I’ve played, it is a blast.

This is one of those games that, by not buying it and never being able to find it, turned me into the kind of near obsessive collector over the past several years. If I ever see a game with an interesting concept, I am almost loathe to pass it by because I don’t want a repeat of what happened with this game to happen again. It doesn’t help that you’ve got a company like Atlus that preys upon people like me, what with their awesome concept games and incredibly tiny print runs!