Comic-Con day 4

Sadly, upon arriving at the convention center today, it appeared that both Little Big Planet and SOCOM were no longer being demoed. It may have been poor timing, but when I walked by, it was just the developers playing and talking to the onlookers. I had a nice long look at LBP, and let me tell you, for a simple side-scrolling game, it looks incredibly fun. The graphics are as clear and as crisp as you could have hoped, the animations run smoothly and the little characters are just adorable. Street Fighter was still as congested as ever. The short time that I have at the convention center tomorrow will be devoted to somehow playing that game. But let’s get to the one game that I did get to try today. A pleasant little surprise called…

•Dead Space

I remember seeing some early info on Dead Space, and I wasn’t impressed. The story line of a distress call from an abandoned spaceship, we’ve seen it a million times. But I had heard that the game was genuinely scary, so when word got around that the demo was playable at the con, I was sure to get in line.

The demo kiosk was in a small dark room with a netted ceiling that let only a little light in. The developer set up the controls so that the game would play like a typical shooter, a gametype to which I am well accustomed. I started out in some kind of green room. The computer display said that there was an anomaly detected, and I got to set to check it out. The weapons are controlled by the D-Pad, identical to the Gears of War system, although I couldn’t tell if there were any limits to which type of weapons you can carry (pistols, light, heavy). In any event, I had a small nail gun pistol, a larger nail gun rifle, some sort of electric gun, and of course, the trusty flamethrower.

I came down a lift and walked into another green room, where I saw this…this thing. This thing looked like a little baby, only the baby sprouted enormous tentacles that flailed wildly in the air. This thing was absolutely horrifying. This thing made the Flood from Halo look like a bunch of teletubbies.

The developer was very clear that when shooting at enemies in Dead Space, one should aim to dismember the enemy. Shoot at the arms, legs, tentacles, whatever is sticking out, not the torso. I did so, and seeing these creatures writhe on the ground, soaked in their own blood is both horrifying at gratifying at the same time.

When playing Dead Space, be sure not to get cornered by your enemy. They will come at you fast, and there will be more than one. It is imperative that you always give yourself room to back up, as I learned quickly. I got cornered once, but was lucky enough to fight my way out with a combination of my flamethrower and Stasis. Stasis is a limited power your character has, and it enables you to freeze the grotesque aliens in suspended animation for a short time. While they’re frozen, you can shoot them, burn them, stomp them, and enjoy the spectacle of seeing them dismember in slow motion.

A lot of the fear factor in the game comes from when your enemies get close and latch on to you. When this happens, you rapidly tap A to get them off a perform a finishing killing move. When a tentacle baby tried to bite my face off, I managed to remove and stomp him to death.

The trouble came for me when I went into the third of many zero oxygen chambers. When in these chambers, you only have about a minute to live, and you must find the alien that is poisoning the air and kill it in order to be able to breathe again. I managed to find the alien, but after I killed him, several alien corpses on the floor came to life and began to attack me. That’s when I realized that I was out of ammo. I frantically searched my weapons and got three of the four aliens with the few rounds I had left in my nail gun, but that still meant there was one more to go. I tried stomping it and beating the crap out of it with my empty nail gun, but it overcame me and put a tentacle through my chest. Demo over.

All in all, the demo was fantastic. The gameplay was fast-paced and genuinely frightening, and even though some of the monster design wasn’t completely original, it was more than effective. Dead Space has made my list. I almost got a Dead Space t-shirt, but they were all out. The developer I talked to said that they handed out 300 shirts in 3 minutes. Wow.

Maybe…maybe I’ll be able to get to Street Fighter tomorrow. Hopefully.

The Tank.

~ by fishtank5 on July 27, 2008.