PAX 2008: Dead Space - A Second Opinion
Although Fruit Brute had some serious hands on time with EA's upcoming Dead Space last month, at last weekend's PAX I got a chance to step into the game's booth and check out a couple levels of the quickly approaching survival horror title. The past few years have been pretty dire for your typical horror fan, as most spooky games have either performed below expectations or just been outright stinky. Dead Space has looked pretty impressive on paper and in motion, but how many times has a title looked good until the first reviews started hitting the web?
Expectations within EA are high, but realistic. The producer I spoke with, Chuck Beaver, said that making back the money they've spent would be considered a success, although this is no budget title. Chuck seemed to confirm that this is a bit of a sea change year for EA as far as offering original content for gamers, as was evident by the volume of new and different titles they had on the show floor. Obviously with the comic books and animated film, the company has big plans for the game. As far as franchising Dead Space into a series of sequels, he would only say that they had to wait to see the reaction to this one before plans could be made, but that the team would obviously be ready to make more games in this world.
That world is possibly the most impressive thing about the game. It feels complete and fully realized, which is surprising for a brand new title. The holographic HUD is a really impressive effect, but beyond the flash, it shows the game's dedication to not letting you escape the world they've created. Enemies are free to attack if you spend to much time playing with the menus in your HUD, and your various meters, such as heath and oxygen, are both visible on your character's suit, rather than some superimposed number in the corner of the screen. It blends nicely with the rest of the game's environments, which feel familiar without getting derivative. In science fiction, a creepy, desolate spaceship will never be the most original location, but the vessel in this game didn't feel like the Nostromo from Alien or the Von Braun from System Shock 2. If the level of detail I saw holds up for the rest of the game, the environments of Dead Space could rival this generation's most memorable locations.
More details after the break.
Both of the levels I played took place primarily in "zero gravity" locations, meant to ratchet up the feeling of disorientation as I leaped from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. In the first level I saw, I had to grab four stray boulders floating around the room and destroy them, so that gravity could be reestablished to the area. I could control the rocks using a multi-purpose weapon similar to Half Life 2's gravity gun, and then fire them into a stream of energy. The game didn't hold my hand: instead of walking into a reoom and having an obvious design element telegraph "THIS IS A PUZZLE NOW DO THIS," the few I saw felt natural and fit the situation. Add to that the fact that the game's creatures, necromorphs, can attack you the entire time, and these puzzles feel urgent, not artificial.
The necromorphs themselves are less like animated corpses than tinker toys of flesh and bone, put together like parodies of human bodies. They do lack a bit of the iconic nature of other classical horror enemies like Silent Hill's nurses or Resident Evil's zombies, but they make up for that with personality and panache. They react to your attacks in different and unique ways, and a number of times through the levels the producer walking me through the game and I would just crack up as a necromorph would ignore the loss of its limbs and continue toward me, barely phased. In the second level I played, I scorched one with a flamethrower, and it shook off a layer of charred skin, including its entire head, like a wet puppy after a bath.
The second level of the game had me turning off giant turbines, using stasis pods to slow down their movement so I could shoot rods on the inside that would otherwise be difficult to hit. Two were relatively easy to reach, but the last two were located outside the station. Launching myself onto an asteroid held into place just off the ship, I needed to navigate around the sphere, finding the last two turbines, fighting monsters, and monitoring my oxygen. It was the last one that finally got me, as I didn't make it back to the ship in time. It's worth saying that the camera takes some getting used to and it's easy to lose track of your place, especially in more open environments, but I attribute most of my confusion for jumping into a later level with less than 10 minutes of experience. Speaking of the controls, they've got a bit of a learning curve. You've got a lot more to do than run, shoot, and then run again, and you will probably press the wrong button or pull the wrong trigger more than once during the course of the game. It's not such a big deal most of the time, but I imagine if it happens at the wrong moment it could lead to more than a few frustrating deaths.
Dead Space is an ambitious title, and one that belies a lot of recent trends in the industry. This is not a casual game, and it isn't one for people who just want to blow stuff up. It's a game of careful resource management and one that requires you to pay close attention to get the most out of the experience. If the story and the other levels of the game have been shaped with the same care as what I've seen so far, expect great things from the game when it comes out on October 21 for PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.
Dawdle
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 4 September 2008
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: dead space, ea, pax 2008, pc, ps3, xbox 360
This is on my list of must plays, after the first couple of reviews then I'll decide on buying it. But right now it is high on my list.