As many of us know as the Holiday season closes in, the more gaming titles get released. This year was no exception. After being burnt out on Team Fortress for the last month or so, I have been diving into many single player experiences. The list is pretty long so I’ll touch on the key points that made or fucked the game.
First off….
Dead Space (PC)
This game pretty much takes survival horror and re blends it. It feels like it takes pieces from Resident Evil 4 and Bioshock and mixes it with some RPG elements. This game uses the over the shoulder 3rd person view which seem to work better for immersion and the scary factor then the First person view. This game kinda reminded me of what Doom 3 would have been if it was more than a flashlight simulator game. Its dark in space but its overall dim lit and not completely black. Doom seemed to get this wrong. Immersion in a Horror game is all about the aura and the vibe that the maps give you. And when you just plain old can’t see the map it kind of kills it and turns it into, “I’m scared because there is just shit jumping on me and I can’t see” Don’t get me wrong Dead Space is full of cliche horror scenes like the typical monster comes out of the wall and attacks you.
The game rides on the pretty common theme of Alone in the Unknown. The story line is pretty lame though, I’m not going to spoil it but its a bit predicable. I did however like the weapons. When I play a game i like to see some originality with the weapons. Typically in many games there is the pistol, machine gun, and heavy weapon shtick. Though this is how the weapon cast system is in Dead Space they seem to change it up with the Power node upgrades. Its a system that allows you to modify and unlock attributes to your weapon with a series of branched out upgrades. Another thing about this game that I haven’t seen in any other game is that you DON’T want to head shot, you want to take out the limbs. This adds a fun element to the game. And craftily flows over to some of the weapons.
As you may have seen from screen shots or videos, some of the weapons shoot out ammo in a line. These are denoted by the 3 laser sights. The fun thing is, is that you can choose on the fly how your gun is positioned to shoot i.e. vertically or horizontally. So if you want to shoot off an arm the best position is to have your gun shooting top to bottom. And if you prefer to slow down the enemy you can adjust the weapon to shoot a line of ammo from left to right and take off a leg pretty easily.
The game had a good length to it as well. It was just long enough to keep you from getting bored of the scenarios that it could throw at you.
Moving on..
Farcry 2
At first I thought I really liked this game. I had the mind set that it would run just as shitty as Crysis which actually takes away from the overall game play experience. When I launched this puppy, I found a gorgeous world that actually ran like butter. Which was surprising, and a total bonus. A few hours in I was even content with the story. But after being let out on your own to do whatever (sandbox), it just got old. My train of thought was lets get some good weapons going immediately. Well to upgrade your weapons you have to talk to a dealer and he will give you a mission to unlock said cool weapons. The missions given to you by the dealer are fucking identical every time. Go to (X) on the map and take out convoy. The convoy consists of a Truck and 2 Turret mounted hummers. No difference, every single time. Which leads me to my next grievance. The roads are pretty repetitive too, it goes something like this. 1) take out map, 2) find location and drive, 3) drive past check point 4) get out and kill everyone, 5) continue till next check point and repeat. Its kinda like GTA but the roads have nothing cool on them, its not like your driving down a street and have someone to run over or something to look at.
So at this point I am bored and go to get back on the main story line, which turns out there really isn’t a main story line. Its pretty much run around and help out whatever faction or what ever friend you make. I was pretty disappointed. I tried to go back to the butcher to continue my quest but he wasn’t there. I walked in and was getting shot at from all around. And on my objectives all it said was get a mission from random person i.e. gun guy or faction, which I was bored out of my mind with. I need some drive to keep me from continuing. Some story line to keep me involved.
I’ve had some time on my hands as of late so I have played an beaten most of the game I play. I will have to talk about Fallout 3 and Call of Duty: WoW and even my aspect on Left 4 Dead.
The Good
Okay so last night at 10:00 MST Left 4 Dead hit the internet, which I eagerly launched and played my most anticipated feature of the full version: Versus Mode.
As I’m sure most classic NES nerds will admit, when we first heard of Mega Man 9 we had visions of a classic remake, somewhat faithful to the original but just not the same experience. Boy, did Capcom prove us wrong! I remember* playing Mega Man (specifically Mega Man 2) and just bieng in awe of its difficulty. Well Capcom has definetly kept the same theme in this new game. It looks EXACTLY like the classic games, right down to the graphical flickrs when there is too much motion in one spot.