Dead Space: Concluded

Dead Space had quite a hard time of it. A new IP released in the Christmas scrum of 2008, it lost out somewhat in the race for review column inches, along with Mirrors Edge.

EA Redwood/Visceral Games have done a fantastic job of picking and choosing which parts to replicate from their huge list of influences, and adding just enough to the mix to make Dead Space feel like a new adventure. There's a highly polished feel running through all areas from the excellent visuals and audio to the UI and front end ... however, there's a 'but' coming along ...

Below the high sheen lies a slightly rotten core. I encountered numerous bugs, from crashes to character and environment glitches, but nothing would prepare me for the bug that ended my participation in the Dead Space universe.

One chapter has Isaac Clarke collecting a number of navcards in order to access the shuttle to escape off the Ishimura. The total amount of cards was never documented (as far as I was aware), but no big deal right? It took around an hour to find the navcards, there was no fanfare or notification when each navcard was collected so I was never fully aware how many I had and how many I needed. The number of cards wasn't even listed on the inventory screen. 90 minutes in, I Clarke approached the shuttle, went to insert the navcards only to be blocke: NO ENTRY. Right, what? I tried backtracking, but was hampered by 1) the in-game naigation marker always taking me back to the shuttle, 2) save overwrites and 3) numerous blockers stopping me. I found only one mention of this on the internet here, so I guess I found a pretty rare bug. Great.

I sold the game at work the next day for £20, needless to say I never mentioned this glitch to the buyer!

Visually the game is stunning, if a little brown, but the enemies are a little disappointing. As so much work has clearly gone into the environments I found the characters a bit of a let-down, they appear to have come straight out of The Thing, 70's visuals and all.

The audio is particularly deserving of a mention, in fact I think Dead Space won numerous awards for it. On a Dolby Digital system I’ve never heard anything quite like it.

Overall, Dead Space is worth a play, but make sure you collect those damn navcards.

Inner Space

I'm the last person I know still playing Dead Space. Everyone else has fallen by the wayside.

"Too boring"

"Repetitive"

"All you do is retrace your own steps"

"It's buggy"

The last one's mine by the way, but I disagree with the other criticisms, so far at least. I've had a few arguments at work, defending EA's effort at survival horror against a barrage of criticisms ... my argument being that even though Dead Space is highly derivitive, it still includes enough new features that make it an excellent game. Will I feel different in a few days when I complete it? Who knows.

Blogs are old hat

Here's a link you may or may not be interested in - Is Twitter Replacing Blogging?

As you can gather from the title it's discussing the rise of Twitter and Facebook as a blogging tool. There are a lot of blogging tools available: Blogger (host of the fine blog you're reading now) and Wordpress, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter to name but a few. Twitter and Facebook both facilitate"micro-blogging" - limiting the user's text entry capacity (Twitter, for example, allows a maximum of140 characters) to a much smaller amount than previously possible. The current topic du jour is how these micro blogging sites render the other fully fledged tools redundant, cutting the bloat and fat of the wordy post down to it's component information.

As far as Game Concluded's opinion - I think there's room for both, however I'm a bit wary of limiting what people want to say. This already happens in the world of SMS, with many people carrying over their text-speak to real life - I've lost count of the amount of times I've received an email or IM in reduced text-speak and it's a real shame. We need less compression, more expansion. More eloquence, more story telling, more English.

Out of interest I ran Game Concluded through a blog post word count tool, and it averages 300 words per post which is below average. My aim for the blog is for it to be as succinct and to the point as possible without being too wordy. Hopefully I'm on track.

Anyway, I'm about to board a tram to the Engineering Deck of the USG Ishimura. C U L8TR.

Far Cry 2: Concluded

I have to admit defeat.

I can't continue.

It's too much for me, too repetitive.

All my previous concerns with Far Cry 2 were proved valid, and when I was told yesterday that after having played for 12 hours I was only 14% through, I cracked. I very rarely don't complete a game, even the worst of games must be completed in my eyes (this is partly a value for money thing, partly an OCD completeness thing) but I just could face slogging through another mission, another attack on the same old compound facing the same old enemies laid out in exactly the same way.

I must have played about 15 missions, each one followed the same path: go to this place to get briefed. During the 5-or-so minute drive encounter exactly the checkpoint populated by exactly the same enemy. Slaughter everyone, continue through another checkpoint. Meet contact. Repeat all previous encounters until the "base" or "depot" is reached, slaughter everyone and blow stuff up.

It really feels like no love has gone into the the game. I'll give you a little example: save points. There are save points all over the place, one would expect to be able to go over to one, press a button and call up auto-save. Not in Far Cry 2, expect at least four button presses to save your progress. In fact this spreads to the whole UI, it's clunky and very un-user friendly, continuing along the same path as the gameplay.

I'm reminded of my thoughts on GTA IV "The Lost and Damned" here, because Ubisoft Montreal have created a fantastic Africa (as I mentioned in my previous post), similar in quality to Liberty City. Why one works so well as a game world and the other doesn't, I don't know.

I may go back to Far Cry 2 but I doubt it. Dead Space is calling me from the deepest darkest reaches of space.

GTA IV: The Lost and Damned: Concluded

Well, that was a disappointment.

GTA IV was completed to 100% in the Thorne household. 43 hours. 50 stunt jumps. Every damn last pigeon. I enjoyed every minute of it, and couldn't wait to get stuck in to the downloadable content episode "The Lost and Damned". In hindsight maybe I was setting myself up for a fall. Hindsight's a wonderful thing.

Where do I begin with TLAD? The characters? All carbon copies of each other, none with the sublety previously seen in Niko, Roman et al. New mechanics? Most of the battles in TLAD are now squad based, and you're supposed to give a shit about protecting your comrades. On paper this is a good idea, but when one Lost member is replaced by faceless replica minus a bit of barely noticeable skill, it becomes difficult to care. Another new mechanic is another one that again on paper works, but doesn't in practise. When riding in formation a badge is displayed on the ground. The player is supposed ride on the badge and gain some kind of reward, but it's not obvious what the reward is, so here's another feature to ignore.

I suppose I should preface this next paragraph with a spoiler warning, although you'd have to be pretty slow to not see it coming. The main problem I found with TLAD, and I never thought I'd say this about a Rockstar game, is that it feels ever so slightly rushed. That's right, I said it. Rushed. A little example: along with the main story, as with GTA IV there are side missions - one of these is called Gang Warfare which is an excuse for The Lost have a running battle with a rival gang. Again, on paper, fine. However, as the Lost disband at the end of the game, you would have thought here would be no more gang warfare. Wrong. The Lost continue their gang warfare oblivious, even though they don't exist anymore.

Ultimately though, TLAD still works and here's why: Liberty City is the most realistic and believable game environment created ever, so you could throw any old hackneyed story, badly imagined characters or even shoddy design into it and it would still work.

Far Cry 2/The Lost and Damned

I'm about halfway through the GTA 4 DLC expansion "The Lost and Damned", and Far Cry 2.

I started Far Cry 2 two week before The Lost and Damned was released so I could complete and get it out of the way, but to be honest I've struggled a bit, hence why I'mplaying both at the same time. The problem I found with Far Cry 2 is that there's not much of game there.

Technically it's astonishing. It really looks and sounds like you're roaming across the plains of Africa, and the weather (although not real time) is marvellously well implemented. The fire effect, too, is unlike anything I've seen in a game before. The AI is a bit dumb and buggy and as a consequence ruins the illusion slightly, but the big problem I've found so far is the lack of game. It feels more like a tech demo than a game to me.

The small towns, settlements, guard posts and open plains are very realistic, but I wonder how much input the design team had in the environment. It feels like realism was favoured over fun, but I suppose videogames have been going that way for some time now.

That said, I am only hafway through so maybe I'll feel differently when (if) I manage to finish.

Braid: Concluded

Braid's beautiful, but too hard.

I never used to find 2d platformers hard. Flashback, Klonoa, any and all Marios (including spin-offs: Wario, Yoshi etc), Mega Man, Heart Of Darkness, Donkey Kong Country ... etc ... I could go on.

Granted, Braid has a unique mechanic: time control. As far as I'm aware, I don't recall having the ability to rewind time in a 2d platformer before and as such this contributes to making Braid an excellent game. All the legacy platformer features are there: pixel perfect jumps, gravity, keys & doors ... but Braid still manages to feel fresh. Maybe it's the superb art direction: Braid is a gorgeous, gorgeous game, dripping and oozing quality from every pore. Perhaps it's the level design: it feels like Jonathan Blow and co have spent decades planning and polishing each and every level. The sound design is excellent too, and the game as a package feels very polished.

Maybe I don't have the correct aptitude to be able to comprehend reversing time, maybe I've just become shit at platformers, who knows, too many sojourns into 3D territory. Unfortunately my inferior brain lead to me having to use gamefaqs toward the end, an admission which makes me feel ashamed.

Braid is too hard, but I enjoyed every frustrating, how-the-fuck-do-I-do-this teeth-grinding second of it.