Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Dead Space: Extraction

Who the hell is this? She has too much hair to be the main girl.
 

The game is actually a prequel centered around the events of the first marker extraction from the perspective of the civilians near the dig site. It ties in with Dead Space similarly to how Operation: Raccoon City ties in with Resident Evil 2. I knew this game was originally released on the Wii. Then It was released in a bundle with the Limited Edition Dead Space 2 on the PS3. On the cover it says "Includes Dead Space: Extraction." However on the covers of the non limited editions that they make now say "Includes the demo for Dead Space: Extraction." Who the hell cares? Maybe last generation it might matter but now you can just go on the Playstation Store and download whatever demo you want without buying anything. This is like saying the game comes with an instruction booklet. The only reason they have that on the cover is to confuse you.
 

I started the game expecting a third person shooter, the same as the other two games. However, it began in first person with no ability to control where I went. I thought it was a cut scene but it wasn't. This was the game. It's a horror rail shooter like House of the Dead or Carnevil. I've never been this confused/surprised about what I was getting before. I even researched this game and somehow never figured this out. This explains why it was released exclusively on the Wii first and why there was the Move disclaimer before the game loaded. It's made for motion controls which would closely simulate an arcade experience. I'm stuck with playing it on a regular controller but you know, what are you going to do? Buy a Playstation Move? PFFFFFF! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HAAAAAAAAAA!
 

You get your standard guns and abilities from Dead Space like stasis and kinesis which has a ridiculously long range on it and no recharge required. The stasis gives you three shots before it needs to recharge.
 

What is the deal with kinesis anyway? You can grab stuff that's far away so I guess that's useful but most of the time you're using it to plug in a battery or slide open a hatch. The seemingly simplest tasks are made to require this ability. In the future we've advanced beyond pushing buttons or using our arms and instead manually move every part of the machine with kinesis. THE FUTURE! You think that the cafeteria is full of people manipulating floating forks and drink glasses into their mouths? They probably put on their clothes with kinesis and walk by moving their legs with it too. Yeah I know, it's just an excuse to have some flashy ability and another game mechanic to include and I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool or useful to have but the way it's used is stupid. Going back to Red Faction: Armageddon, (two references in back to back reviews,) it's like in that game where you have nanobots. Which is basically having an instant 3D printer/replicator with you wherever you go. Just think about it. Who cares about ANYTHING? You can have whatever you want in two seconds. Want a shiny new car? Watch it materialize from air before your very eyes. Hungry? Have the bots make you a Happy Meal complete with toy. The terraformer that got destroyed in the begining and was going to kill everyone on the planet. Just fix it with nanobots. The applications are limitless. You have a magic genie with infinite wishes and you're using it to rebuild a rusty staircase or a cargo crate for cover in a gun fight.
 

The nature of the rail shooter usually requires you to just wildly shoot anything on screen that you want to interact with from flipping a switch to grabbing an item to making something dead. This game is different because in order to grab an object, you have to lasso it with kinesis which requires a little more accuracy because it's slow to fire. It also doesn't help that the camera view pans and boggles around like you're watching Cloverfield. You need to be constantly watching for stuff to pop up on screen because it's probably only there for a fraction of a second and then it's gone. And it's really frustrating if you fail to grab something important and then your character just turns their head and strolls on by. It's also strange when you see something for a moment and then have your character turn to talk to someone and during the entire conversation you're thinking about that weapon upgrade you just missed and waiting with bated breath, hoping the character will turn again for a second chance. Suddenly videogames feels less like videogames and more like Monday Night Football. Look over there. Over there! Come on. Yes! Get it! Get it! Get it! Get it! No! You idiot!
 

There are also parts where the game will stop and let you control the camera for no more than 5 seconds. And whenever that happens, you always wonder if you chose to look in the right area. What if something really awesome was just to your right but you decided to waste your time looking around on your left instead?
 

You've got a couple of new enemies like the severed head on the tentacle and the extremely bizarre flying delimbed body that appears to fly by flapping its pelvis... or was it the scapula? I can't remember. Those lumbering enemies carrying the tiny creepy crawlies within them are still there and I think the crawlies are more annoying than ever. If they get on you, you have to shake the controller until they're off. If you get a full batch of them at once, they don't just all jump on you at once like in the other games. One latches on and you spend a couple of seconds shaking it off. Then the next one gets on and so on until the one by one procession eventually ends. It takes forever. The only reason these enemies exist is to annoy you.
 

For bosses, you really need a fast firing precision weapon to hit the everpresent glowing targets on their bodies. Should you find yourself in a boss fight without one of these weapons then you're just up shit creek. When I got to the first boss I had no precision weapons at all. There are segments during the fight where you have to shoot the boss' tentacles to prevent them from bitch slapping you. I literally could do nothing but stand there and take it until it moved on to the next part. I eventually died because I can only go so many rounds like that and then had to start over. It starts you over at the begining of the fight with only half your vitality and the health packs in the battle don't respawn. Well thanks a lot, assholes. You just shot me in the other knee completely unnecessarily. How am I supposed to beat him now? It goes back to Fear Effect where you get weights strapped to you for failing to stay afloat.
 

Painting yourself into a corner aside, the game is still too easy, even on "impossible." There are four difficulty settings and ironically the easiest setting is actually labeled "normal." There's no "easy" mode even though they're all pretty easy.
 

You can only hold four weapons which is standard but what's not standard it having one slot taken up by the rivet gun. The rivet gun is locked on you at all times just so you can do parts where you rivet scrap together to block entrances. It has infinite ammo but is slow and shitty. It's a last resort which you never want to have to use.
 

You have to make do with the weapons that the game puts on the levels which can be as little as three. (It's even less than that if you fail to pick one up.) The other worthless weapon is the arc welder. It shoots a constant lightning bolt that is supposed to arc between enemies but typically doesn't. Even when they're standing right next to eachother. It does very little damage and you'll want to swap it out for ANYTHING else when you find it. The alternate fire lightning ball thing is okay though.
 

There's not much for new levels because guess what? You get on the Ishimura again, the derelict ship from the first game. About 60% of the levels are reused from the first game, most of them from the Ishimura. That's three separate games (every game in the franchise thusfar excluding Ignition... maybe,) where they use the fucking Ishimura. Dead Space 3 is coming out. Are they going to put it in there too?
 

The levels have frozen on me a couple of times which sucks because there are no autosaves so you have to quit and start all over again from the begining because you're just supposed to play through each level in one sitting.
 

There's no limit to the oxygen in your suit this time around. Oh and also the flamethrower works in the vacuum of space now. At least it does in the place where you first get it. What a fuckup.