Dead can dance
Workbenches and stores – which allow Clarke to upgrade equipment and purchase supplies respectively – are dotted throughout the Sprawl and are often situated nearby to the more difficult encounters. However, I did find myself on a couple of occasions besting these beasts by the merest of margins – my frustration at having to redo the fight numerous times tempered by the thrill of my eventual success (and this was on ‘Survivalist’ difficulty, the middle of five potential settings by the way).
Now if I just open my para.. ah shoot!
A brief mention should go out to the inclusion of a multiplayer mode too. While unlikely to revolutionise the on-line world, the team-based missions prove a worthy addition, rather than mere filler. Objectives for the human team include vying to destroy markers, power up escape pods and so on, while the necromorphs must, you guessed it, stop them. Clear objective marking means newbies will be immediately mission-ready, while success breeds experience, which serves to unlock additional weapons, power and the like.
Playing as the necromorphs draws immediate parallels to Left 4 Dead’s versus mode, with players able to pick from Pack, Lurker, Puker and Spitter types, according to taste. Spawning from various hatches and trap doors at the player’s discretion, the key is to ambush the human contingent en masse. A lack of objectives other than ‘kill the humans’ is limiting, but charging at your opponent, limbs frantically flailing, is certainly entertaining.
Looks like a warning.. on the back of a cigarette packet
Verdict
By introducing stellar set pieces and a more engaging main protagonist in the guise of a fully conversant Isaac Clarke, Visceral has succeeded in revamping an already great survival horror. Still to be mastered, however, is the subtle art of terror, as a surplus of stomach-churning gore and over-abundance of necromorphs serve to dilute an initially foreboding atmosphere. A great adventure game then, but not quite the fright-fest I'd hoped for. ®
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Dead Space 2
COMMENTS
Ditto
I was the same, unfortunately.
I picked up the first one for under a tenner, but I just couldn't get on with the third-person view.
Shame, as I did enjoy the atmosphere and tension building.
Yeah, I heard it the first time
The first game got good reviews. I bought it, and found it provided a very bad over the shoulder view of the gamespace. Worse, it had bad movement, akin to trying to see your player walk while an elephant was humping his leg.
Maybe just maybe later on in the game - some part of it saved it, but I never got that far. The game was antagonising and annoying, and clearly porting from console did bad things to it. And no, No ratings on version 2 will make me look at it.
jiggerwuts
Err what? ME2 was shit and you had no issues with Deadspace 1 on the PC?
sorry, my suspension of disbelief just crashed.
Not to mention
the inability to re-map keys on the 1st PC version..
Seriously? WTF?????
Dead Space 2
Yes the game looks good and runs well, one slight issue (reported by a lot of people) when running on Win 7 x64 you can't save game progress at the save stations. There seem to be two versions of this issue, one with a half arsed work around and the one I'm suffering from. In the first one save station open and close immediately, a work around is to alt - tab out of the game and go back in (that seems to work for some but not all), others have to load a game from an early save station and play large parts of the game over and over again. My issue is that save stations open fine but I can't save any progress, EA support have no fix for this yet and just gave me a load of things to try that I'd already tried and had found via Google prior to contacting them. So yes the game looks good but it's a bit like a scifi groundhog day right now.
Stear clear until a fix / patch is available .
