Friday 24 October 2008

Happy Dead Space Day!

What other innovations can one bring to the world of gaming?
An array of guns that most armies would be proud to have, precision and accuracy that make headshots spectacular and competitive, blood and gore to rival the most high-budget horror film, graphics to mess up your so-called top of the line computer. Quite an attractive package, isn't it?
What could one do to better it? I mean, there's only so many times you can shoot someone... or is there?
I can tell you now that Dead Space did bring quite a lot of innovations. Among them are some ingenoius yet inevitable progressions. Yes, the plotline is all too well-known: you go into outer space to help out some stranded people on a spaceship (planet cracker that's destroyed 34 planets... yay human technology!). You get there after a not-so-smooth landing, your engine is damaged, lost upon further inspection. You realize something "terribly wrong" happened there and that you don't know if you can help. The place is deserted, some of your mates die within the first 5 minutes... yadda yadda yadda.
Buut here's where some new additions make it more appealing: your healthbar is conveniently located on the spine of your armour, your player always stays on screen and you have a 360 degree range of revolving around your character. Messages, be them text/video/audio logs do not cut in the game, you're still playing while they are up on the screen. The controls do take a bit of getting used to and you do feel rather dumb healing every time you want to open a door... facepalm moments sprinkled here and there.
One of the newest most sadistic thing is how to kill your necromorph alien mutant enemies. Shoot them, you'd say twitching an index at me. Oh yes, you do that... and get stabbed in the spine when it respawns limbs!!! Ah yes, the way to kill the... dead people corrupted by an alien unitarian marker who turn into alien necromorphs... things is to shoot/stomp/cut off all their limbs. That will stop them.... and kill a bit more of your humanity.
The blood actually bubbles when the darling creatures get dismembered! Oh, detail, what would virtual reality (the bad world gone psychotic side of it at least) be without you! I mean we're all tired of killing badly pixellated characters, we want everything to be more realistic, to have a feel that someone suffers for our extinct social lives.
ARMY NOW RECRUITING NERDS FOR SNIPER CAREER (no dudes, neeeever gonna happen, put the controller down and go in a wide populated space that IS NOT (anywhere near) a convention!.... aaand your fly is open...)

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