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This is a game that I played most of the way through and then gave up. It's a very fun game, but it suffers from a few glaring faults that keep me from maintaining the enthusiasm to play it. I think the biggest one is simply how badly it starts to drag on; you come to the point where Isaac and Carver can't complete a single task without having to backtrack twice or enter a previously never-before-seen area on the opposite side of the map because someone forgot to flip one switch before dying horribly long before you arrived. It starts to feel like the game is desperately trying to pad itself out to make up for not having enough substance on its own.
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Dec 8, 2014 04:49
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One other criticism the video inspired me to remember is that when this game actually gets to plot-relevant stuff, it seems to go too fast. Danik is their badass, well-dressed British villain with awesome dialogue, but he has no backing. He appears on a space blimp to just barely establish himself as a Unitologist leader, and then two minutes later the Unitologists are crazy paramilitary terrorists attacking the Moon and Danik is leading them with his fancy fur-lined jacket; he only appears for maybe two minutes before disappearing, and I think he barely even appears in person throughout the rest of the game. I'm not saying the game needed a 30 minute intro sequence showing a day in the life of Depression Isaac, but they just tried to zoom into the combat and advance the plot ASAP and you find yourself unsure of the importance of Danik when you end up mostly just shooting the same necromorphs as usual. The first two games, on the other hand, had multiple villains with relatively regular appearances (especially the first one) and enough time and dialogue to establish why they were there and why they were a threat. Combine that with the tendency to drag things out with backtracking and repeated "We need to fight another 10 minutes to go press a button" moments to pad the game out, and you end up with hella odd pacing.
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Dec 8, 2014 07:51
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Altman be praised.
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Dec 8, 2014 08:24
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KieranWalker posted:Oh my god. Yes. This is generally my opinion. I find Dead Space 3 fun in terms of just the gameplay and set pieces (the section later with the ship crashing and killing a good chunk of the cast is terrifying all on its own). It ends up being dragged down by a mediocre story, unusual pacing that alternates between blazing through the plot and forcing in padding segments, and the infamous microtransaction bullshit that we'll see come up shortly, probably the next video. It's not a bad game by any means, but its flaws make it unappealing to complete.
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Dec 10, 2014 15:35
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So, the question of the RIG's prevalence came up in the video. According to some wiki perusing, it's extremely common and appears to be mandated for certain jobs because of the handiness of its integrated communication modules and how it uses the spine to show a quick display of a person's overall health condition. It also provides a frame for adding things like armor, drug injectors, and stasis/kinesis modules.
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Dec 10, 2014 19:46
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Actual footage from the upcoming Dead Space film adaptation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpmshIjeSv8
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Dec 11, 2014 21:29
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Flawed though the games may be (especially the third), they never really failed when it came to acting. Gunner Wright is especially great.
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Dec 13, 2014 03:05
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Blind Sally posted:Space-crickets began to chirp in the background
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Dec 16, 2014 14:23
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The Wizard of Oz posted:What bugs me about backtracking in this series is that it usually takes a bit before I realise that I just went in a circle, which really pounds home how most of the games are generic corridors. All of the games in the series would be hugely improved by removing most backtracking and tightening up the spaces between set pieces, which would still leave you with meaty, memorable campaigns. I don't know why developers are so obsessed with hitting some fantasy benchmark for play time. This game only gets worse as it goes on. Like I said at the start of the thread, the constant backtracking to pad out the game is what made me give up on finishing it.
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Dec 20, 2014 05:52
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Rick_Hunter posted:If you think that's bad, just wait until you get to the optional missions. Not only are the missions uninspired, the 'dungeons' are copy/paste as well. That may have been one of the things to make it worse for me. I tried to complete every side mission before going on. Though this still isn't as bad as the marching through the snow looking for a suit station and you can't see well later on.
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Dec 20, 2014 17:29
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Sylphosaurus posted:The whole "Human civilization is doomed due to diminishing resources" alway felt so drat weird to me when you consider that Dead Space humanity is capable of FTL manned space flight and routinely turning entire planets into their base components, you'd think that they'd be pretty much set for a few centuries or so. Well, the question there ends up being "How many of those resources go toward planet cracking and FTL travel?"
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Dec 20, 2014 18:17
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Yeah, the exterior RIG readouts would be great for industrial or military work. At a glance you can tell who's injured (and roughly how badly), who needs their stasis recharged, and how much oxygen everyone has left if applicable. Oxygen and injuries are especially vital, as it's not uncommon for people suffering oxygen deprivation or injuries to not notice or under-report problems. Someone could keep insisting he was fine, only to drop dead of internal injuries at the wrong time.
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Dec 25, 2014 22:38
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Blind Sally posted:In the beginning of Dead Space 2, one of the more repentant crazies who worked for Tiedmann gives Isaac a med pack because his "rig is red." I think the spine is just meant to show a generic indicator of overall health. It probably interfaces directly with the body (as in actual stuff being shoved into you for measurements) to determine how it "looks" to its sensors at an average time and spots a variety of problems like heart rate, infections, blood loss, and separated or missing tissue (so it could also detect holes made in the body as well as dismemberment or chunks taken off) and generalizes it into a colored, depleting bar. I wouldn't be surprised if the in-universe explanation for the RIG spine design was that they were inspired by video game health bars due to their ease of reading and the popularity of video games galaxy-wide. It wouldn't be meant to replace proper diagnostics, of course. It just provides an easy-to-read (if not entirely accurate) depiction of how close to death an individual is, so you can look at a group at a glance and quickly determine who needs aid the most.
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Dec 26, 2014 02:50
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Glazius posted:I really love this setup, actually. Exploring the remnants of war-ravaged ships to piece together a lost secret of history, and scavenging for parts to build things to wreck space monsters. I just think it could have been done better. Each ship is basically "Fight another small army of necromorphs the same way you've been doing it, but you're looking for different audio logs this time."
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Dec 31, 2014 05:22
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CJacobs posted:Man I really should watch The Fifth Element! Thanks thread! If only for the Diva scene.
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Jan 9, 2015 21:41
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I think Dead Space works much better now as fiction fodder. Fanfics, roleplays, etc. that can build on the world it created and go in creative places that the developers weren't able to.
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Jan 11, 2015 03:17
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It's the kind of setting I'd probably run as a tabletop RPG. Only issue is actually making stats for literally the entirety of the canon stuff, which is maddening.
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Jan 11, 2015 04:40
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Night10194 posted:I did this once, between the Marker insanity and constant dismembering it worked out really well for a splatter-horror short RPG campaign. I think even something like what we're currently doing in 3 would fit, since every tabletop roleplayer loves the chance to explore new "dungeons" for loot. Then again, a good GM would do a way better job than this game did at not just vaguely reskinning the same ship over and over.
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Jan 11, 2015 20:13
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EponymousMrYar posted:It's the natural progression in a horror/thriller genre that 1 and 2 covered, with 3 is kinda tacked on at the end. Dead Space 3 is Jason X.
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Jan 17, 2015 03:15
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1stGear posted:Dead Space 3 had the excuse of being on the tail-end of a console generation and already straining the 360 and PS3. AC Unity was designed from the start to be playable on next-gen and thus had that much more space to play around with. The reason that Unity didn't have female characters was a combination of laziness/not giving a gently caress/pumping out AC games as quickly as possible. Also, I believe a dev from Assassin's Creed: Liberation commented on Ubisoft's claims about females being too difficult and noted that Aveline actually shared more of Connor Kenway's animations than Edward Kenway did. It's perfectly possible to make a female character without breaking the game or budget, but Dead Space 3 has to deal with dismembering skeletons and being quite stressful for the 360 and PS3 to run well. A lot of people don't realize how rapidly consoles become obsolete when it comes to power, and the last generation basically didn't want to end.
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Jan 25, 2015 03:37
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Naughty Dog are basically wizards. In a market where PS3 games suffered from mandatory installations to prevent endless loading times, they made a game with one relatively short loading screen at the start and followed up with continuously streamed content without a single loading screen afterward....and no installation. The train level from Uncharted 2 alone is a miracle of programming, let alone the rest of that game and its sequel.
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Jan 26, 2015 21:21
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This is the part I was waiting for! The game sorta picks up again around this point when you start dealing with the planet. I also actually liked the shuttle sequence and found it to be one of the extremely few portions of the game with legitimate tension.quote:If he's 49, he'd need more worry lines in his forehead and more grey hair before I could believe that. It's been suggested that Isaac spending time in the Dead Space version of hypersleep via stasis during long space flights has made him biologically younger than his chronological age.
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Jan 27, 2015 18:18
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WFGuy posted:The space travel is really pretty in DS3, it's a shame when it ends. Cool setpiece, but ohhhh boy, I'm looking forward to the CRITICAL DUMB of the next segment. It's going to be amazing. I think they shoved all the space segments in at the beginning because, if my understanding of the game is correct, it doesn't leave the planet for the rest of the game.
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Jan 27, 2015 22:05
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Glazius posted:So I guess in the space future, spaceships have so much user-assist that people don't even know how to pop a space-clutch or drive a space-stick anymore? Remember how Dead Guy #25 mouthed off to Isaac for telling him how to do his job when they got that new engine? And how the exact problem Isaac told him to prevent with the oxygen whatsits caused the fire he predicted? I think it's more that Isaac has been paired up with a lot of egotistical assholes who aren't as smart as they think they are and ignore advice or criticism as a slight against them. So....not much different from real life.
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Jan 29, 2015 03:49
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EponymousMrYar posted:The NPC's also tend to forget that before being one of/the only survivor of multiple Necromorph Outbreaks Isaac was a certified space engineer for the big space engineering firm. Isaac already manages to turn all his weapons into even more powerful forms given a few seconds at a bench. The dude's a genius with duct tape. chitoryu12 fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Jan 29, 2015 |
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Jan 29, 2015 05:09
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IronSaber posted:I had the same problem in DS1 and 2. Glad I could sell them for SpaceBuxx! Stasis modules and small health packs are the bane of your inventory. You never use them nearly enough to justify the amount you pick up.
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Jan 29, 2015 19:20
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WFGuy posted:Also, Dead Space 3 should have been 90% Isaac the Engineer fixing up ships and mech suits for Ellie the Pilot to pilot. There is very little in Ellie's representation this game that couldn't be fixed by an armoured battle-mech and some machine-sized mining tools. You really just can't speak enough on how badly Ellie got treated in this game. She achieved her popularity in DS2 by being a tough, non-sexualized woman with knowledge and skills who was literally a female Isaac Clark in terms of competence. Characters like that are disappointingly rare in video games. DS3 comes along and she's spilling out of her shirt and spends most/all of the game being just barely capable of surviving in the background.
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Jan 29, 2015 21:14
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CJacobs posted:dead space 3 ellie is a huge piece of poo poo #TeamIsaac The Crozier is a piece of poo poo, but actually pretty normal compared to everything else you find in Dead Space 3. Basically everything you find is half-operational at best and forces Isaac (and Carver) to run rings around the space graveyard or Tau Volantis to push buttons or find important parts or turn something with Kinesis.
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Jan 29, 2015 22:58
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Sandymane posted:It seems they really hosed up balance in DS3 compared to 1&2. I've heard that there are some weapon combinations that are just brokenly powerful. A part of it is that it's now possible to make weapons with enough raw damage to insta-kill regardless of where the round hits. As you saw with the "sniper rifle" CJacobs has, he can shoot center mass and all the limbs just fly off. I think some of the balance fuckup was from making plain firearms common weapons rather than one or two models among a whole collection of mining and engineering tools and they wanted to make bullet-firing weapons viable and competitive with cutting and explosive ones.
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Feb 5, 2015 22:55
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quote:Use of the catheter and colonic systems is mandatory. In the event you are caught outside for an extended period, bodily fluids can compromise the suit's insulation. Catheter and colonic systems are sterilized after each use and are perfectly safe. Keep your suit seals free of ice at all times. Do not stomp snow off your boots, as the reverberations will damage the catheter and colonic systems. Does that mean it's canon that Isaac has tubes shoved up his butt and down his penis every time he steps into the suit machine? That would explain why he looks like he's being twisted in agony right before the doors close. And why he sounds so angry when he stomps stuff.
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Feb 9, 2015 19:17
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Blind Sally posted:Isaac is stomping his boots constantly. I hope he doesn't damage the systems and gets peepee infections or butt injuries. He screams every time he stomps stuff because he's jerking the tubes around.
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Feb 9, 2015 19:49
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I decided to look up some info on surviving dropping of body temperature. If your core body temperature is at 82 degrees or lower (27.7 Celsius), you're suffering from severe hypothermia and about to die. Isaac would stop shivering because he'd be totally unconscious and all of his organs (including his brain) would be in the process of shutting down completely. Basically, Tau Volantis is so cold that Isaac (whose suit is mostly intact except for his helmet not closing) would last maybe a minute or two before his speech turned to random jibbering and he collapses. Ellie, lacking any form of clothing thicker than a pair of jeans and continuing to expose her cleavage to the harsh air, would be instantaneously killed by the harsh temperatures as soon as the shuttle broke apart. Isaac (if he managed to even survive long enough to get to her half of the Crozier) would have found her still strapped to her seat, tongue lolling out of her mouth and as solid as a hunk of meat in the freezer.
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Feb 9, 2015 21:11
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tlarn posted:The Thing videogame on the PS2 was a neat idea; it was a third-person shooter where you could had a squad of dudes and they had varying levels of fear which is affected by how dark the area they're in is, how much it's being lit, whether they have a weapon or not, and stuff like that. They're too scared, they'll either kill themselves, attack everyone around them, attack the environment around them, or just keel over from a heart attack. They also had a trust mechanic where they might not follow your orders if they think you're a Thing, or just straight up attack you if they're convinced you're a Thing. But if they trust you completely, they'll even help you kill fellow NPCs if you friendly-fire them too much. I think one of the problems with that game was that they didn't randomize who was actually a Thing. It was the same NPCs every time.
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Feb 9, 2015 21:33
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Blind Sally posted:When I have a little more time I will go on a The Thing: The Game tangent, because boooooy do I have a lot of words about what worked and what didn't. I tried to play it a few years ago and never got far. I kinda want to try again.
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Feb 9, 2015 22:27
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Discendo Vox posted:3) I'm guessing the 200 year difference in suit technology means Clarke doesn't have a bunch of tubes up in him, but our prologue redshirt probably did. I'm going to assume that Isaac has a bunch of tubes shoved in his sensitive spots just because that makes this so much funnier.
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Feb 10, 2015 03:59
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Neruz posted:Any suit that can function in space is going to be a sealed environment and so will almost certainly have at least a catheter for liquid waste disposal. Real life astronauts doing EVA use a diaper. Not kidding. It's called the Maximum Absorbency Garment because NASA understands humor. Apparently astronauts usually don't end up using it because they'd much rather wait until they get back to the ship or station to use a real toilet instead of wetting/making GBS threads themselves. The diaper is basically just there in case of a potty emergency.
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Feb 10, 2015 04:13
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Neruz posted:You know with the speed at which Isaac's core body temperature drops the outer centimeter or so of his body should have frozen solid in seconds; Isaac would have taken one step and instantly been encased in his own frozen skin. Think about how Ellie and the rest of the civilians would have been. They're pretty much totally exposed AND were in a part of the shuttle that broke off and exposed them to rushing wind. They would have been flash-frozen into their seats. Also, this came up earlier about how many other games use the hypothermia as a timer. Yes, but Dead Space made the crucial mistake of actually using a real unit decreasing in real time. Had they simply left a timer or even used visual and audio cues to indicate time to death, nobody would have noticed. But by choosing to try and apply a sense of realism, they inadvertently clashed with their gameplay intentions and created something that now catches the eye with how wrong it is.
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Feb 10, 2015 08:54
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quote:Also, for a movie where the terror was based mostly on tension, distrust, and suspicion, the game relies almost entirely on jump-scares. Also, it's basically an action movie and plays more like a Resident Evil game. Halloween Horror Nights (the annual Halloween event at Universal Studios Orlando) had a haunted house in 2007 that was basically their own sequel to The Thing: the monster's remains (and MacCready and Childs's cryogenically frozen bodies) are taken to a military research center in Orlando where it breaks free and begins infecting new people. Because it was set in a military outpost, they took massive thematic inspiration from Aliens. So there's a bunch of US Marines (decked out like Colonial Marines, but with M16s) and the gunfire sound effects were lifted from the pulse rifle. It was a really fun house, but had little in common with the movie. quote:Also, I quite liked the 2011 The Thing. It's nowhere near as iconic or terrifying as the John Carpenter remake, but it has heart. You can tell with all the effort and little nods that went into making it. However, I never went into it expecting it to be anywhere near JC's and I was pleasantly surprised. I think it's important to recognize that the 2011 movie is paying homage to all the source material, and isn't trying to be just a prequel to Carpenter's film. It pays homage to the novella, Who Goes There? and to the original film version, The Thing From Another World. In that sense, the 2011 film is a lot more akin to goofy-guy-in-a-costume monster movies, than the whole Lovecraftian nightmare that Carpenter's version channeled. I'd say, overall, it was well worth a watch. It's fun. Likewise. It seems kinda rare for people to like the 2011 prequel, I think because they're sore about the practical effects getting replaced with CGI at the last minute and because they were expecting something identical to the original. The prequel does rely too much on jump scares (like the vast majority of modern horror films, something I'm not a fan of), but it's not trite or unfaithful to the source material. They pull some clever things like having the survivors create an imperfect test that sows further discord, and showing many things found in the destroyed base in the original film and even creating the corpses in ways that directly tie it to the original. While I feel that it could have been better in terms of effects and toning down the jump scares, I found it a faithful and entertaining prequel that slots into the canon.
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Feb 10, 2015 21:45
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Dead Space 2 is gonna be an example of what the developers can do when not under a time crunch or being pushed to make the game more actiony and full of microtransactions.
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Feb 16, 2015 07:01
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Night10194 posted:Well, for one, the sales target they set was ridiculously high (like 5 million if I remember) which indicated they were going to kill the series unless 3 was an incredible CoD level hit. For two, a lot of DS3's problems come specifically from publisher mandate and it feels a bit like gutting the goose that laid the tentacle-strewn horror-eggs. I did some searching and VG Chartz estimates that the 360 version of Dead Space 3 alone sold about 940,000 units. The game was easily a good seller that likely made a profit, even if it wasn't a GTA V level where it made a billion dollars in sales literally three days after launch.
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Feb 16, 2015 08:58
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