Thread title says it all. Post reviews about the games you are currently playing! Numbers? Letter grade? Nothing? I don't care, just review it! Let's hear what you think about what you are currently playing!
Dead Space
There are few games that come out that are really original, in fact I would dare to say the there AREN'T any 100% original games, they all take something from somebody else. Most games that steal stuff and try and add their own often end up far worse than the original (take Dark Sector or Conan, ugh).
Dead Space, though ripping off Resident Evil 4, Gears of War, and the Alien movies, is a shining contradiction to this assumption. Simply put, if you like any game that involves shooting, or any game that involves horror, you owe it to yourself to get this game.
The game itself is fantastic because it is so well polished in almost every way (I’ll talk about the exceptions later). The environments are vivid, thought out, and horrifyingly grotesque. You can tell the creators planned every room to scare or disturb you. The atmosphere in this game is fantastic, rivaling the best like Super Metroid and the Silent Hill games. It’s unnerving, tense, and very, very scary.
Still on details, it’s the small touches that make this game downright fantastic. First off, what everyone is talking about, is the fact there is no HUD at all. Your life is a bar on your back. Inventory, stores, everything is displayed as a hologram in front of you, and the game continues as you read it. There are only two or three cutscenes where you lose control, and those are legit (opening, ending, and a few where you get knocked over so you wouldn’t be able to move anyway). Ammo is displayed on a gun hologram, save points are holograms in the wall, etc. This may seem like a gimmick, but it is honestly a fantastic if subtle way to make the game even more intense. I once was sifting through my inventory trying to drop something when a monster leaped out and I didn’t see it until too late. Scared the piss out of me.
The attention to detail is throughout. When you go into a vacuum, there is no sound but your breathing and the vibrations of your suit when you shoot a weapon. I’ve always admired space game (or shows, like Firefly) where while you are in space there’s no sound. Realistic. Dead Space does a great job with this, giving the feeling of actually being in space. The zero G stuff is awesome too.
But a horror game wouldn’t be what it is without monsters, and Dead Space’s never fail to impress. They are horrible, awful mutations of people, babies (yes, babies), corpses, and more. They are very well rendered, fast, and scary as hell. Thank goodness they occasionally pause to find you, or they’d be near impossible to kill as they run faster than you and have one goal: to kill you gruesomely.
Oh yeah, this is an M rated game for a reason. It’s probably one of the goriest I’ve ever played, especially with the gameplay mechanic. You can’t kill these things by shooting off their heads (though you can try, it turns them into a furious monster of death). Instead, you have to blow them off limb by limb until they can’t get at you anymore. A simple mechanic, but it adds to the terror. Nothing scares the crap out of me like an enemy, after I blow it’s legs off, still crawling quickly to murder me. Not to mention if there’s groups they’ll “play dead” among the ones you killed, so when you run up to collect your loot they pop out and have their way with you. Very, very smart.
I can’t stress enough the immersion. It’s so well done…I can’t describe it. Very good.
There are a few things I didn’t like. First off, some of the puzzles/events are frustratingly hard or too subtle. If anyone’s played it they’ll remember that damn asteroid part, oh man. So bad. Actually there’s two of them, both suck. Second, the story is…kinda lame. I hate to say it, but even though it’s engrossing, it doesn’t culminate to anything amazing. It still works fine for a horror game, it’s just with such a high quality game around it, I expected more. Another thing is there is a pause button (At least in the PC version) which was downright stupid because you shouldn’t be able to pause, ever. Yeah, I know it sounds harsh, but it kinda ruins the experience.
The last thing that bothered me also was in Resident Evil 4, but it is a bit more in this game. As you near the end of the game, you are a complete badass, decked out with some serious mining equipment (or one of the…two actual guns), so most enemies are a cakewalk. The horror element is gone at this point, and it shows in the game. The environments become less scary, focusing more on how many enemies they can chuck at you. Resident Evil 4 did it too (in my opinion, the game went downhill ever since I went on the military base. Killing military men isn’t as scary as crazy normal people, I’m sorry), but it happens worse in this game. But it doesn’t fail to be fun, so I guess it still works.
Overall, if you have a next gen console or a good computer (or even a decent one, it has surprisingly low system requirements), you should get this game. It is seriously that fantastic, and I whole-heartedly support companies that will brave the waters with original titles (even retarded EA). This is seriously one of my favorite games ever, and probably the best Horror Title ever next to Resident Evil 4. It is a must buy, or at least rent the damn thing.
Dead Space
There are few games that come out that are really original, in fact I would dare to say the there AREN'T any 100% original games, they all take something from somebody else. Most games that steal stuff and try and add their own often end up far worse than the original (take Dark Sector or Conan, ugh).
Dead Space, though ripping off Resident Evil 4, Gears of War, and the Alien movies, is a shining contradiction to this assumption. Simply put, if you like any game that involves shooting, or any game that involves horror, you owe it to yourself to get this game.
The game itself is fantastic because it is so well polished in almost every way (I’ll talk about the exceptions later). The environments are vivid, thought out, and horrifyingly grotesque. You can tell the creators planned every room to scare or disturb you. The atmosphere in this game is fantastic, rivaling the best like Super Metroid and the Silent Hill games. It’s unnerving, tense, and very, very scary.
Still on details, it’s the small touches that make this game downright fantastic. First off, what everyone is talking about, is the fact there is no HUD at all. Your life is a bar on your back. Inventory, stores, everything is displayed as a hologram in front of you, and the game continues as you read it. There are only two or three cutscenes where you lose control, and those are legit (opening, ending, and a few where you get knocked over so you wouldn’t be able to move anyway). Ammo is displayed on a gun hologram, save points are holograms in the wall, etc. This may seem like a gimmick, but it is honestly a fantastic if subtle way to make the game even more intense. I once was sifting through my inventory trying to drop something when a monster leaped out and I didn’t see it until too late. Scared the piss out of me.
The attention to detail is throughout. When you go into a vacuum, there is no sound but your breathing and the vibrations of your suit when you shoot a weapon. I’ve always admired space game (or shows, like Firefly) where while you are in space there’s no sound. Realistic. Dead Space does a great job with this, giving the feeling of actually being in space. The zero G stuff is awesome too.
But a horror game wouldn’t be what it is without monsters, and Dead Space’s never fail to impress. They are horrible, awful mutations of people, babies (yes, babies), corpses, and more. They are very well rendered, fast, and scary as hell. Thank goodness they occasionally pause to find you, or they’d be near impossible to kill as they run faster than you and have one goal: to kill you gruesomely.
Oh yeah, this is an M rated game for a reason. It’s probably one of the goriest I’ve ever played, especially with the gameplay mechanic. You can’t kill these things by shooting off their heads (though you can try, it turns them into a furious monster of death). Instead, you have to blow them off limb by limb until they can’t get at you anymore. A simple mechanic, but it adds to the terror. Nothing scares the crap out of me like an enemy, after I blow it’s legs off, still crawling quickly to murder me. Not to mention if there’s groups they’ll “play dead” among the ones you killed, so when you run up to collect your loot they pop out and have their way with you. Very, very smart.
I can’t stress enough the immersion. It’s so well done…I can’t describe it. Very good.
There are a few things I didn’t like. First off, some of the puzzles/events are frustratingly hard or too subtle. If anyone’s played it they’ll remember that damn asteroid part, oh man. So bad. Actually there’s two of them, both suck. Second, the story is…kinda lame. I hate to say it, but even though it’s engrossing, it doesn’t culminate to anything amazing. It still works fine for a horror game, it’s just with such a high quality game around it, I expected more. Another thing is there is a pause button (At least in the PC version) which was downright stupid because you shouldn’t be able to pause, ever. Yeah, I know it sounds harsh, but it kinda ruins the experience.
The last thing that bothered me also was in Resident Evil 4, but it is a bit more in this game. As you near the end of the game, you are a complete badass, decked out with some serious mining equipment (or one of the…two actual guns), so most enemies are a cakewalk. The horror element is gone at this point, and it shows in the game. The environments become less scary, focusing more on how many enemies they can chuck at you. Resident Evil 4 did it too (in my opinion, the game went downhill ever since I went on the military base. Killing military men isn’t as scary as crazy normal people, I’m sorry), but it happens worse in this game. But it doesn’t fail to be fun, so I guess it still works.
Overall, if you have a next gen console or a good computer (or even a decent one, it has surprisingly low system requirements), you should get this game. It is seriously that fantastic, and I whole-heartedly support companies that will brave the waters with original titles (even retarded EA). This is seriously one of my favorite games ever, and probably the best Horror Title ever next to Resident Evil 4. It is a must buy, or at least rent the damn thing.
