Every Dead Space Game Reviewed

well fancy meeting you guys out here in the endless vacuum of space yeah i kind of figured since our time in silent hill was a little stressful to say the least maybe it was time that i got about as far away from that town as possible so i boarded the usg ishimura looking to get a little r r out here among the stars to be honest though i'm starting to question that decision i don't know exactly what's going on here but ever since we entered aegis 7's orbit people have been acting a little crazy oh well i'm sure everything's going to be just fine so why don't you guys join me i hear the crew's about to initiate the planet cracking process sounds like it could be fun and certainly not a mistake whose repercussions will be felt by every human being in existence right what's up guys i'm jared from avalanche reviews welcome to the dead space retrospective [Music] is [Music] dead space rocked the industry in a few ways pretty damn hard and that's before it was even released for those of you with the ability to remember events a whole console generation ago things were actually kind of bleak for us most game releases that didn't belong to an established series were laughed out the door and we were all still balls deep in the cover-based shooting craze that infected its way into every game developers game design handbook and then here comes dead space an unknown in a notion of gaming dynasties a game that put horror damn near the top of the priorities list oh yeah and i guess the creepy ass trailer in advertising didn't hurt much either developed by what used to be visceral games dead space was a pretty big change in their long established demo see these guys have always been known for putting out games that people generally liked but nothing on their list of accomplishments is exactly what i would call required playing material with the exception of future cop lapd of course dead space was the first horror game these guys ever attempted and on top of that it's the first game that really gave the studio a chance to flex their creative muscles outside of a movie tie-in and holy hell talk about knocking it out of the park your first try and speaking of wild successes let's see what we have to deal with in the story department with very obvious influences from just about every horror and psychological thriller set in space ever this game already had a lot going for it in my mind i've always loved the cold dark isolating feeling that comes from media set outside of our orbit and dead space lives up to its pedigree right out of the gate upon pressing start on the title screen we take control of isaac clarke an engineer who's been assigned to what seems to be a quasi-military slash corporate rescue effort your small group has been sent in to check up on the usg ishimura a massive planet cracker which is essentially like an offshore drilling rig but in space and instead of drilling they're busting open planets for their resources so you know similar idea it seems like the ishimura the usg ishimura oh i'm sorry my mistake the usg ishimura sent a distress signal some time ago but no one's been able to get in touch since so our ragtag little team have been sent in and right from the start some typical gaming tropes are being challenged first off despite the fact that there are trained goons on the ship we take control of the deep space equivalent of a grease monkey a futuristic repairman if you will i've always enjoyed games that have you taking on the role of a kind of every man instead of a grizzled mercenary type but getting back to the intro a lot of vital information is given out in this short period we're taught almost everything we need to know about the ishimura but on top of that we find out that isaac has a personal stake in this mission yes you really miss her don't worry we're almost there you'll be able to look her up once we're on board sounds like you do have a lot of catching up to do once we arrive on site this intro really flexes its muscles with an awesome orchestral tune and some for the time jaw-dropping visuals but sadly this is also where things start to go wrong for our group upon trying to dock with the mammoth mining ship things go pretty far south and the rescue vessel has to crash inside the ishimura after that the team gets jumped by unknown assailants and isaac gets separated from the rest of the group from here it's a matter of both finding a new way to get off the ship and digging into what exactly happened here everywhere you look the environment makes it clear some dead serious stuff went down and discovering the events that led up to the current predicament is actually more satisfying than isaac's personal stake in all this which is good because we go long long periods of time where isaac's story gets put on hold in order to tell more of the issue morris history oh yeah and there are what seems to be reanimated corpses running around trying to kill everything with a pulse that's probably important to mention as you progress you learn about what seems to be a major religion in this world unitology apparently a belief system that's known for what we'll charitably call over-excited zealotry these unitologists believe an intelligent alien species created man and a big part of their belief system is the existence of what they call a marker an alien device of unknown origin that's supposed to prove the existence of these aliens and wouldn't you know it there's all kinds of rumors and top secret documents floating around that the ishimura has come across just such a marker the rest of the game is this amazingly well-paced trek through the process of piecing together all these really cool events and getting an idea of what's going on here we have these unitologists obviously being involved in some way then there's the fact that everyone's talking about some strange discovery down on the planet and then there's this mass outbreak of craziness going on people begin fighting with each other losing sleep murmuring gibberish to themselves and no one seems to be acting [Music] rationally then you have the appearance of the necromorphs which act like a thinking breathing disease that seeks out dead bodies to repurpose as mangled piles of jagged bone and skin now it's important to mention that there are two parallel plotlines running through this game first we have the story of isaac his fellow rescue crew and their plight to not only survive but escape the planet cracker this story is told through a very traditional sense with characters leading isaac around by the nose and we get to experience these events in real time now set that against the vastly more interesting tale of what happened to the ishimura this story is told using what i like to call the george romero school of tell don't show and any of the uogs familiar with his early work will know exactly what i mean in his movies romero worried that from a lack of budget or resources he wouldn't be able to show the viewers all of the details needed to build a believable and large world for his movies to take place in so instead he challenged the show don't tell mantra by flipping it on its head instead of actively showing the viewer the war zone that was carson city and night of the living dead he had ben describe it to barbara and by proxy us this way the audience gets to build the world of the media and their own heads where everything is custom tuned to their specific taste dead space pulls the same exact trick by having isaac find out about all of this stuff second hand which is mostly handled through text and audio logs sometimes the point of this log will be something mundane like someone having to do maintenance but we'll mention something offhand about a growing unease among the ishimura's crew or some security official will give a report regarding some riots or mass violence breaking out the pieces of the puzzle are there and if we're being honest they're kind of hard to miss so don't worry about this being a silent hill situation where only those willing to search every nook and cranny will know the full story this means you get the satisfaction putting the pieces together yourself but you don't have to worry about missing out on some giant plot thread because you rushed out of a room without searching it thoroughly and let me say this right off the bat as if i haven't made it obvious already but i absolutely love this approach gathering together all of these disparate little pieces of information and turning them into some kind of cohesive plot really hits me in all the right ways plus the beauty of having all of these events exist only as secondhand accounts means the story will always be perfect since it mostly exists in my head had they have visually shown everything that led up to this ship becoming a floating morgue it may have bungled the execution ruining what was an awesome idea instead i get to imagine all of these things going on using the environment as some kind of resource pool for my speculation in my opinion this will always be a better approach than just showing the player something because it custom tunes the story to each person kind of like how a book will always be just a little bit better and more personal than a movie and i'd love to get into the main story of the game instead of gushing about one that only exists in my head but before i do i have to give a slight spoiler warning from here on we'll be discussing some things that will rob you of your chance to experience a lot of these twists and turns yourself so if by some chance you haven't played this game before either click the time stamp in the description or skip to the time on screen trust me this story is worth experiencing for yourself make us whole again alright so now that the newbies are gone let's talk specifics isaac being a silent protagonist was a really awesome move but not for the usual reasons most of the time as you all probably know the silent protag thing is used as a kind of developer shorthand for we want you to insert yourself into this tale but in this scenario it takes on a very different meaning and that's mostly because despite being silent isaac is an actual character he has a goal for being here beyond just surviving and as the story continues he only gets stronger motivations don't get me wrong you'll definitely find yourself projecting on to him a lot but he's definitely what i would call a fully realized character despite that as the game enters its last act we get betrayed find out the unitologists were embedded far deeper than we first thought and watch other characters die but through it all he's more interested in finding nicole than anything else and he eventually does about 15 minutes before it's revealed that she's been dead the whole time a hunch i'm sure all of us had from day one but the way it's handled is masterfully done in my opinion and even though isaac doesn't speak in this scene his sagged shoulders and shaking head tells it all throughout the entire story he's had his face obscured by a suit and helmet and in a stroke of genius the devs give us one very satisfying face reveal at the very end of the game followed by a killer jump scare letting us know the marker had a relatively permanent effect on his mind without a doubt this is one of the most pleasing game endings i have ever experienced all of the dangling plot threads have been cut but leaving just enough ambiguity this left me with just the right amount of questions in the end and had me absolutely jonesing for more dead space media a desire that would likely be fulfilled by a plethora of comics and movies but we'll cover those another time but until then the takeaway should be these guys knew exactly how much of this story they needed to tell and how much they needed to leave up to the player you really don't get confidence like this in a lot of triple a games since the running mo for big developers is to over explain every plot element just in case a single microsecond goes by with the player thinking for themselves visceral told us what was needed to build a satisfying story but left a lot of it up to us to discover and that kind of approach will always be appreciated by me this way a person not so interested in all the background stuff can just kind of skip it while those of us who have sunk into the narrative can dig deeper and actually find something substantial well that's about all i want to gush about so what do you say we let the others back in alright so hopefully i've made it pretty clear that this is a story i very much enjoyed not only do i already have a soft spot for psychological tinged horror taking place out in the stars but on top of that dead space tells this stuff to you in a masterful way the main story is told straight to you through dialogue but the environment tells a very different story everywhere you look you're seeing what was likely someone's last move there's evidence of people making their last stand saying goodbye to loved ones and the mad scrolls of the insane this all but forced me to seek out more information and visceral were more than happy to provide that info if you ask me this is probably one of the most rich and complete horror stories ever told in a video game and i absolutely wouldn't have it any other way i don't do numerical scores here but the words 10 out of 10 do come to mind even if you think the gameplay might not be to your taste trust me this tale is one worth experiencing just make sure to keep an extra pair of pants handy you know just in case dead space's gameplay is often described as survival horror in the same way the core of the earth could be described as being cool to the touch that is to say [ __ ] inaccurately and look i get it you guys are probably tired of hearing me say that about games but can we all just agree that having an emphasis on horror is not all that it takes to make a survival horror title i mean all games have music but no one's about to call def jam fight for new york a music game i mean even if my definition of the genre is rather rigidly based on the game that coined the term i think we can all find some common ground if we agree that games who reward combat with resources just don't fit the bill if not well maybe you should start a relatively unsuccessful youtube channel and i can come to your comment section and yell at you tangent aside dead space is an action horror game only with the horror taking more of a front seat position which at the time was not the aaa gaming status quo the perspective is going to be familiar to anyone who's ever played re4 but instead of lazily copying capcom's homework visceral put their own unique spin on it which results in a really refreshing experience but before we talk about how much it deviates from the formula let's talk about how much it doesn't [Applause] much like the aforementioned re4 dead space features a large sprawling environment but locks you into smaller areas one at a time and the general flow goes a little something like this your compatriots on the ship will yell at you to accomplish some kind of task most the time things that they just flat out refuse to do themselves and then you'll be guided to a tram system and once you're inside the new area you'll have goals drip fed to you like coming across this barricade and then dropping the original objective for a new one like finding all the pieces need to make a homemade bomb a formula that does a great job of keeping you from thinking about the monotony that is actually putting you through on repeat playthroughs you may notice a pattern of your partners asking you to find some kind of part needed to fix something and then upon finding that mcguffin the thing you were trying to fix gets destroyed but it's the masterful use of tension and immediacy that kept me from really noticing this you're almost never timed in these little missions but even so i found myself keeping up a quick pace mostly because it does such a good job of conveying the sense of emergency that being said there are going to be plenty of moments where you come across an area packed with an eerie atmosphere and environmental storytelling which will have you slowing down and really taking everything in the design of the ishimura is not only a believable layout for such an old utilitarian ship filled with futuristic construction workers but this design also feeds into a really intuitive gameplay experience even when the environment was at its most complicated the right direction was always only a hallway and a door away i saw some people criticize the game at launch as a corridor shooter and while 75 percent of dead space is spent in long metallic hallways i think any gameplay style can be effective as long as the game's design is well tooled around that approach and the formula of zigzagging through creepy corridors getting jumped by lanky arm zombie aliens and then having that fight spill into a wide open section where the objective is located never got on my nerves and now that we're further in i have to bring this up again the real reason why it bothers me so much when people call this a survival horror title is how linear it is you're always locked into a very small single area of the ship and the path to your objective will always be a straight line sure there's going to be some locked doors you come across along the way but you'll learn early on that these doors are more often than not unlocked by one of your compatriots as your current objective gets completed hell sometimes there's no reason for a door to unlock at all it just will on its own after you've done what you've needed to in that area and hear me out i'm not using the word linear as a criticism not every game is going to have you backtracking across a big map and unlocking more traversal options as you go some games make linearity work and dead space is one of the best examples of that so i'm definitely a fan of what's being done here but you just can't call it survival horror and i know i'm harping on about this issue a lot but i think it's kind of important survival horror is a genre with very clear and delineated traits but it seems like in the last decade or so it's turned into vague lip service that's used as a kind of verbal shorthand for a horror game of some description and honestly it's not really the fans of these games that are to blame here yahtzee is a huge name in games media and an awesome content creator who genuinely seems to have a lot of technical knowledge regarding the medium but here he is making a verifiably false statement as if it were indisputable fact dead space is a sci-fi survival horror featuring an engineer named isaac clark hell even one of my favorite content creators grim beard is just as guilty condemned criminal origins is a first-person survival horror game listen the point of all this is to say survival horror is indeed a genre and that means there are requirements for calling a game survival [ __ ] and sadly not a lot of games fit that description but i've become more and more frustrated watching it lose its identity as it gets rolled under the general horror banner if you ask me the title of survival horror has just kind of come to be used as a qualifier for this is a really good high quality horror game i think the term horror sort of carries this cheap schlocky reputation with it and some people try to counter that with the addition of survival to kind of imply that the game is good or effective just not in so many words and yeah in the grand scheme of things this isn't exactly a huge issue it's just strange to see so many people misusing a label like this hopefully i've shed a little bit of light on the problem or at the very least given a little more of an explanation into why i feel this way but regardless i promise this will be the last time that gets brought up in this video probably so getting back to what we are discussing what seems like 12 or 13 paragraphs ago the game's story and characters do a great job of talking you into doing these things and the combat is so damn enjoyable that you really don't care where you're going or why you just hope you'll be able to kill a few hundred necromorphs on the way plus the design of the ishimura itself has this contradictory effect where everything is about as spooky and uninviting as you could possibly imagine and yet you can't help but want to progress through it so you can see more speaking of seeing more you'll be seeing a lot of items on your little trip almost everywhere you look in dead space there's something to pick up whether it's stuff hidden kind of out of the way chest filled with loot or items dropped from enemies you'll be picking up a lot of stuff in fact i've seen a lot of people use the limited resources argument in favor of classifying this as survival horror title but i don't know what game they were playing because i never at any point dead space ran out of ammo or healing items in fact more often than not it's the opposite i'll be so jam-packed with items that i have to drop a few just to make room for a little more and if you find yourself in that same position there are shops scattered everywhere where you can buy and sell items including fresh fits for your boy aside from the starting plasma cutter all other weapons in the game are going to be found here well kind of you'll find blueprints for other weapons in a few different spots and bringing these back to the shop means you can now purchase them but to be honest i never really needed any of them i always go for the line gun aka this game shotgun first and then maybe the pulse rifle next but i always just end up using the plasma cutter in the end having other weapons means more ammo competing for space in the inventory and on top of that every enemy in the game is easily killable with this starting pistol equivalent especially when you take into account your ability to use power nodes to improve your gear and buying more weapons means spreading your supply of these things even thinner and on that note i really love the fact that there are real noticeable changes in upgrading your equipment unlike most games where these kinds of changes come in these single-digit percentages each new upgrade here makes the game far more satisfying especially in the combat and well i guess it's about time we tackle that point huh combat in dead space is probably its largest claim to fame the idea is to do re4 style over-the-shoulder shooting but with a twist fighting against all of your inbuilt gaming urges dead space has you targeting the limbs of your enemies with the goal of cutting them off it sounds like such a small change but it really does spice things up in a very noticeable way the in-game explanation for this makes a lot of sense since these things are just reanimated corpses and the old reliable destroy the brain trope just kind of doesn't apply here on top of taking enemies out faster aiming for limbs can also give you a leg up in a fight pun intended going for an enemy's legs can put them on the ground somewhat limiting their ability to get to you and with some enemies going for their arms can really decrease the options they have to damage you since the game is asking for a little more accuracy from the player than your average shooter there's been some tweaks to ui elements like the on-screen aiming reticle using this straight line laser kind of look really lets dead space shine visually speaking but on top of that it makes aiming far easier at least it does for me and to be honest i'm not really sure why i think the common red dot in the middle of the screen always does its job but for some reason seeing my projectile's path before i fire it just helps me line up shots far better than i would have otherwise or at least it kind of feels that way if i did have one complaint about this system though it would be that i often found myself reverting to my old gaming habits in a tight situation and going for headshots but the game does a good job of punishing you for this so you're not likely to do it a lot a necromorph with a missing head can be really dangerous in a lot of ways not only does it attack wildly at anything anywhere near it but its attack patterns also become random and unpredictable and i think this is a really great way of both punishing bad play while also rewarding skill play a lot of these little systems are in effect during combat and they really do add up to a more satisfying and pardon the pun visceral feeling to the game's mechanics with necromorphs that don't have obvious limbs to shoot at you'll see these glowing yellow weak points show up a lot and while it does have a very video gamey kind of look to it it's a visual standard that gets repeated throughout the game the consistency of this little trick does kind of fall in line with the established look so far so it comes across as more natural feeling the more you see it honestly dead space is a sort of case study on totally nailing combat and horror game while the monsters you face do serve as lethal threats with the ability to do massive amounts of damage their effectiveness is directly controlled by how well you're able to shoot and how quick your reaction time is a single necromorph can really mess your [ __ ] up if you let it get too close but you're often given ample opportunities to stop this from happening as the game goes on and you get better and more acclimated to its combat you'll notice necromore showing up in higher numbers and closer distances at the start of the game you're often given these long straight arenas that have baddies funneling in from one direction but towards the halfway point the game starts having them circle around you and hit you where you're not looking and to be clear this isn't their ai getting more challenging but instead just smart use of the environment's design and enemy placement the game does keep you on your toes with enemies entering areas from several points and even retreating back to these vents and coming at you from a different one but once you've leveled up your weapon enough really nothing stands a chance i did find this to be less of an issue in the console ports of dead space as i've always been terrible at shooting accurately with analog sticks but even then i found things got far easier after about two hours of getting used to using a controller again normally i'd use a lack of difficulty as an example of how to ruin the horror elements in the game but dead space's level design and atmosphere make sure i stayed pretty creeped out the whole time and besides the necromorphs may get easier as you get better at the game but they're still very creepy looking visually plus their erratic movements scary-ass sound design and aggressive attack still puts you on edge when they're around this might honestly be the one game where giving you more options to effectively deal with enemies just does not negatively impact its horror and i think that's because dead space never stops scaring you in other ways even towards the end you'll still get caught jumping at shadows and the design of the environments combined with the game's absolutely phenomenal lighting and god-like sound design makes this one of the most effective horror games ever made outside of all the horror stuff though i really like this game's puzzles which all fit in the more environmental variety instead of reading logs to get clues to some kind of riddle or combination lock you'll be searching around your environment for objects to manipulate like batteries to put into machines and platforms to move around these may be far easier on the old noggin than your typical survival horror puzzles but they're also a lot more intuitive you can walk into a room and pretty much figure out exactly how to progress immediately mostly because these tasks draw on a lot more real world experience than the ability to figure out a sliding block puzzle or what item gets used where so if it weren't totally obvious i find dead space to be supremely enjoyable and nearly flawless as far as gameplay is concerned but you'll notice i said nearly flawless there are a few minor issues worth mentioning and number one on the list with a giant underline has to be this game's pc port during the xbox 360 era we had this really odd little portion of time where pc ports were more popular and common than ever but for some reason they always ended up having serious flaws compared to their console counterparts dead space in particular has an issue where the aiming speed is tied to the in-game frame rate making the game damn near unplayable for the longest time the only real fix was to just use a usb controller on pc but nowadays there's a pc mouse fix which is a required download if you're looking to play it on that platform and don't worry i will have it linked in the description after applying this mouse fix go ahead and disable the in-game vsync option and instead force v-syncing through an external program like amd or nvidia's control panel app i've heard horror stories about how higher frame rates tend to break the game's physics but to be honest i played through dead space at 100hz and never ran into any issues so maybe this has been patched out since the last time i played who knows on console the nasty little problem of an unreliable in-game framerate can be an issue in situations with a lot of smoke dust or fog on screen these console versions target 30fps which is already gonna be less than ideal for a game that's asking you to react to situations very quickly but when the framerate begins to chug aiming and shooting can be affected i didn't play more than a few hours into each console version and this did make combat a little more challenging but i wouldn't say it breaks the game or anything more like it's just i don't know a little annoying but had i have not gone from 100 fps on pc to 30 on console this may not have been so jarring of a change in a more general sense i really liked how the game had me changing my tactics by forcing me to target enemy limbs but the devs didn't have much confidence in me picking up on this little strategy in the very first area of the game there's a message in blood telling me to go for the limbs and two separate interactions with npcs repeating that listen forget about shooting them in the body you gotta cut off the limbs grab a cutter anything like that cut them apart honestly i feel like just the writing on the wall would suffice and maybe a refresher at the end of the first area for those who hadn't caught on yet but i have to assume your average person with a 360 or ps3 at the time would be skilled enough at video games to intuit this little strategy just from engaging in combat a few times i really like that these creepy ass stingray looking things could reanimate the corpses lying around the ishimura as it meant that these dead bodies served a purpose beyond mere set dressing but you can actually interrupt this process by stomping the arms and legs off of these corpses ahead of time now don't get me wrong i really like the added depth of springs but walking into a room and doing the ice at clark tango on everybody can be tedious and it sort of feels like you're cheating a bit after maybe an hour or two the game's mission structure of people yelling at you to complete tasks they could easily complete themselves will wear on you to a degree but like i said earlier the story and characters sort of give you a good incentive to want to do these things and well that's about it overall i found dead space to be wildly fun to play through again the horror atmosphere is so damn well done and the combat is about as close to perfect as you can get even as the long play time stretched out the devs did a great job of constantly drip feeding me more enemy types or unique gameplay scenarios like zero g the vacuum of space or the often hated turret section there's no doubt in my mind that dead space more than lives up to its own hype and that is a very rare thing in this industry it took a lot of chances by implementing gameplay that plays against your instincts and combines horror and action in such a way that neither side of the equation should be as strong as it is but it all just works somehow hell even things i normally don't like in other games just don't bother me that much here to be honest there's probably not much of a chance that you guys watching this haven't tried dead space out for yourselves yet but if by chance you happen to fall into that category please do yourself a favor and remedy that immediately no matter which platform you choose you're not likely to spend more than 20 bucks on a copy of dead space and i assure you it'll be the best 20 you've ever spent and this is where i really get to flex my creative muscles because dead space is probably just as famous for its presentation as it is for its innovative gameplay the overall look has this really unique style to it and there are several important factors that all add up to an insanely effective and aesthetically pleasing look and the first really big factor for me was the integrated nature of all of the ui elements in any other game it's more common than not that you'll see some kind of heads-up display layered over top of your gameplay something like a health readout or ammo counter maybe an exp bar or something of that nature but dead space integrates all of these elements into its own game world and really successfully remaining ammo is shown as an actual readout on your actual weapon your health is represented by a little meter on your back and even things like communications and the inventory have been worked into this laser projection kind of idea and at first this doesn't seem like too major of a step to take after all the same information is available in all the same ways but having ui elements worked into the game world like this just adds that one extra factor of immersion which is really important when you explain such a video gamey concept like a health bar or maybe an ammo counter as being a real and tangible part of your character's in-game world you remove a lot of the barriers between the player and that world in any other game pulling up the inventory screen transports you to this other place with graphical elements that aren't really consistent with the rest of the game world like let's say in a resident evil game the inventory could not be described as fitting in with the rest of the environment around it so pulling it up can be a reminder that oh yeah i'm playing a video game dead space manages to work these things into its world and if you ask me it's probably the most successful application of that idea in modern video games and since we're on the subject dead space may have one of the most artistically consistent looks i've ever seen i'm not quite sure how to describe the visual language of the game but from the characters to necromorphs to the environment around them everything feels like it's all part of the same world the angular lines and almost low-tech look of isaac's suit looks like it perfectly belongs in this rusted metal tomb around him i also really liked how they used these bright accent lights to differentiate isaac's suit weapons and other pieces of tech it creates this really pleasing contrast between the muted metallic backgrounds of the ishimura and everything else let's make sure these things stand out visually but it also helps tie everything together too the ishimura may seem a little more run down and in more disarray than what the necromorphs likely would have caused in such a short amount of time but that's actually explained from the start of the game when the info being given over the docking based speakers describes the ship as being the oldest planet cracker in service which goes back to how much effort was spent during development making sure all of dead space's gamey elements were explained as things that actually exist in the game's world on top of that dead space has this near maniacal obsession with graphical tricks that use the environment in its favor what i mean by this is post-processing effects like fog dust particles falling sparks insanely good looking lighting and even better looking shadows interestingly enough these small effects do a lot to mask the relatively simplistic and low res nature of its textures and 3d models for example when i get close enough to get a good look at nicole it's obvious that she's in a game that's more than a decade old you could see it written all over her face almost literally by just standing in this area here and you could be forgiven for thinking this was a game that was released this year something as trivial as walking through a hallway you've already been down can be creepy and tense just based on a change in the lighting like a fixture flickering or some fog rolling in from a cracked door as another example this necromorph looks relatively okay but it's clear he's not all that detailed or complex but put him at the other end of a hallway with really effective shadows and some strobing fluorescent lights and you've got yourself one amazingly scary enemy going back and getting more shots for this video i was genuinely blown away at how well these little lighting and post-processing tricks did to hide the relatively low spec nature of the visuals here if you ever needed proof that a good solid lighting system can do wonders for a video game well here's your entire argument colored lighting also plays a very big role in this killer atmosphere i noticed that the game would switch between warm and cool color palettes throughout the experience and each one does a lot to further enforce a room's unique feel in areas where there's a lot of rust or even dead bodies there's always a warm orange and yellow tint applied to the lighting but in areas with more of a sterile and metallic look you'll see a cooler palette of blues and grays this can really shift the mood of the area you're in and is another example of one of those small effects that add up to more than the sum of its parts oddly enough isaac's helmet also plays a pretty big role in the game's visual style or at the very least as a byproduct of it and what i mean by that is the suit you start out with sort of reflects isaac's involvement in the situation the rounded look of the facial area looks like a wide-eyed sort of innocence to me but from the first suit upgrade and on you start to see more aggressive straight lines and sharp angles which gives me the feeling of a sort of maturity kind of like he's now aware of what's going on and has become battle-hardened to a degree the look of the various necromorphs you come across manages to be really unique as well while still using very similar design language they have these erratic movements which can be really off-putting and each one is very visually distinct from far away so you always know which undead threat to prioritize in a fight just like i mentioned before getting up close reveals a relatively simple amount of detail and geometry but to be fair you will almost never be face to face with one of these things and if you are it's likely going to be in the heat of a fight so even this game's flaws can be almost impossible to see when everything is in motion and working as intended you might have noticed that i've been showing you mostly footage of the game's pc port so far but you guys know i love comparing ports so why don't we jump into the other ways you can play dead space starting out with the xbox 360 version i found the visuals to still be fairly impressive despite the obvious downsides of going from the infinitely scalable nature of a pc game to the limited nature of a 360 one the overall sharpness of the pitcher definitely suffers here but that is sort of to be expected most games on the 360 and ps3 actually display at 720p or under but are upscaled internally to match your console's video output settings so you'll get an image that may fit a 1080p screen but has all the visual fidelity of something far lower res and dead space ain't exactly bucking that trend so it doesn't look as good as it theoretically should on top of that i'm using a gen 1 360 which means i'm limited to component video output and i don't really trust the analog to digital conversion one of my capture cards would be doing so i ran it through the framemeister so i could get a digital image now i obviously lost a little bit of detail sharpness and maybe some color information when doing something like this but it's not the worst way in the world to get some 360 footage one thing that could definitely be called a universal downside with these versions of the game is the frame rate both console versions target 30 frames per second but each struggles to hit that threshold when the hardware starts getting taxed i noticed fog and smoke to be the main culprits in slow down but having more than a few necromorphs on screen didn't help either these moments of slowdown aren't what i would call game breaking or anything but you're definitely going to notice them especially when you move into a relatively simple scene and start seeing the game actually hitting its 30fps target as far as gameplay goes there's nearly no difference here at all picking up the game on a controller after using a keyboard mouse felt natural as hell which is probably a testament to how well tuned this game's controls are in general i will admit though i've never been very good at shooting accurately with analog sticks i'm not sure why but when it comes to shooters both first and third person i just can't use anything other than a mouse that being said as i spent more time with these console ports i found myself getting more and more acclimated but if you're already used to this style of input disregard this little nitpick the good thing about dead space's pc port having nearly no extra bells and whistles is that the 360 version will offer 99.9 percent of what you would have gotten on pc so you should be able to jump from one to the other with no issues whatsoever moving on to the ps3 version i noticed what seems like a much clearer and more defined picture but sadly i can't really know if that's only because i'm converting the 360s analog signal to digital after the fact honestly i'd love to come back to this point one day when i have a 360 with an hdmi port but for now it looks like the ps3 wins this little contest so there's definitely more clear and precise look to the visuals here when i compare them and it seems like the ps3 version also has a little more sharpness the difference may be slight but when you hold them up back to back it seems like the ps3 does have the edge and i think i might know why remember how i talked before about how these consoles often scaled their video output well it seems like this game doesn't at least not on the ps3 dead space actually outputs a native 720p when you start the game up on a ps3 while the 360 seems to scale the output to 1080p which might sound like a benefit but keep in mind scaling a picture won't produce any more detail or sharpness than was already there and any little imperfection might be made more noticeable when enlarged honestly i'm not really sure how far this whole thing goes and how many video games are affected by it but i did set both of my consoles to 1080p when i captured my footage but only one of them got scaled beforehand which is really really interesting for all the wrong reasons the 360 version also seems to have a different approach to some effects as evidenced by this little halo around isaac's helmet as you can see the effect is far more subtle and pardoned upon effective on the ps3 while on the 360 it seems overbearing and sort of botched as far as gameplay goes i didn't really notice any differences between the two other than what seemed like a slightly better frame rate but honestly that's kind of hard to tell i did find that i was shooting a little more accurately in this version of the game but i'd probably chalk that up to me being more familiar and comfortable with sony controllers if you're gonna play dead space and you absolutely cannot get your hands on a pc to play it on either console version will do just as well if you're used to playing games on console it's pretty likely you'll be used to 30fps and some slowdowns so any real downsides may totally go unnoticed however there is another port to talk about one that's a little outside of my typical expertise a little more than two years after dead space hit pcs and consoles ea decided android and iphone users needed to be able to delim necromorphs too sadly this game is no longer available on either the app store or google play but after going through something like five of the most popular android emulators i found one that would play it sort of for some reason or another i could only get one of these several dead space apks i downloaded to work but that one dumps me back to the home screen just when things start to heat up so this won't be what you might call a review but from what i can tell this was i don't know okay enough since i'm forced to control this thing with a mouse it's damn near unplayable since it needs multiple inputs at once but as you might imagine actual touchscreen controls would definitely make up for this sadly i'm in a position where the only way i can play this game is with the least efficient control scheme imaginable so i can't exactly pass judgment on it in that way and the emulator showed poor performance so i can't really critique how well the game ran either so let's just leave it at this dead space was at one point a mobile game and no longer is and that's about all i'm willing to say with any confidence on the matter heading back to a version of the game i can actually run i just couldn't finish this video off without touching on one of its most impressive features i think the guys at visceral really understood that visuals and tight design may be all well and good but above all else sound is the main thread that ties the experience together and holy hell did they prove it just standing still in a relatively safe area will have you being bombarded with atmospheric noises and tension building string ensembles there are more traditional music tracks that are used in moments of heavy action but mostly the soundtrack is made up of soft drawn out tones that are mixed very quietly into the background going back and taking a listen the real emphasis seems to be on sounds you would probably assume would be heard on an ancient space-faring vessel creaks cracks slams and of course the sounds of necromorphs doing whatever it is necromorphs do sound effects like shooting and melee attacks have a surprisingly crunchy sort of audio feedback and each of the game's enemies has a distinct noise that'll let you know what's in the room before actually seeing them but that brings me to my favorite aspect of this game's audio design it's incredible surround sound implementation honestly dead space may have some of the absolute best surround sound decoding i've ever heard in a video game before in some games surround sound elements might be limited to certain environments cut scenes or audio assets as to cut back on the overall size of the game but dead space has every single element perfectly represented in 5.1 making this one of the few games where you'll have an honest to goodness 360 degrees of spatial awareness in if something's going on over your left shoulder you're definitely gonna know about it which plays double duty when there's a loud background sound effect and you instinctively turn isaac around to see if there's a horde of necromorphs coming up behind you or something just fell off a shelf if you have a home theater setup or some 5.1 headphones i'd say there is absolutely no better benchmark for audio excellence than dead space and i think that might be all of the technical info i can give about this game if i haven't made it clear yet let me just state out loud for the record that dead space is incredible not only is it fun to play but the sheer amount of effort that went into its creation is honestly staggering from my perspective this is a case study and how well a small studio can do when given a budget and enough room to create something they truly love sadly as most of you probably know this would be a unique experience in the series as ea became more and more entangled in visceral's work as the series would go on but for now we can just sit back and marvel at such an incredible landmark in video games these guys may not have reinvented the wheel or used any mind-blowing new technologies to create dead space but they did put in an amount of effort very rarely seen in the aaa gaming space it's kind of one of those storybook scenarios where hard work diligence and dedication really did win the day the horror in the game was approached with real respect meaning it's not all about deferring to jump scares although there's definitely no shortage of those most of the memorable scares for me consisted of me exploring an area and hearing a rise in action in the music totally expecting to get sworn by enemies but then just continuing on with nothing really happening this kind of slow building miserable atmosphere is exactly what i loved about the resident evil and silent hill games so to say i was a little comfortable here would be one hell of an understatement the gameplay while technically just being another over-the-shoulder third-person shooter make sure you don't come into this one as an expert and really expects a lot out of you alright look i'm kind of rambling the point i'm trying to make is that dead space is a marvel of creative game design it uses a lot of tired tropes but somehow molds them into a truly unique gaming experience if by some act of god you haven't played dead space yet please please remedy that issue immediately it really is something special and having played through this first entry i am absolutely stoked to jump into more of the series but until i do i want to thank all of you for making it this far and here's hoping i see all of you again right here on the dead space retrospective okay so it's no secret that i really enjoyed our little stint on the ishimora but i'm ashamed to say i haven't really experienced much of isaac's story after that little affair i absolutely loved my time with him years ago but when it came time to jump back in the saddle i guess other games and maybe real life sort of got in the way so this is going to be a log of my first time figuring out just what the hell happened after all that marker business out in space so if you'll join me i think it's about time we checked up on our little engineer friend what's up guys i'm jared from avalanche reviews welcome to the dead space retrospective after the massive success of visceral's first dead space game the boys at ea got right to work on a follow-up one that would outdo their first attempt in every way and they did achieve that goal in at least one aspect dead space 2 had a much larger budget than the first game and nowhere is that more evident than in its advertising campaign i'm sure you guys all remember the your mom hates dead space ordeal a series of ads that took older women and sat them down in front of footage of the game and of course they used the more spicy takes to sell it this for some ridiculous reason became some kind of controversy leading legally designated landmass jim sterling to accuse ea of playing on stereotypes about women which correct me if i'm wrong i don't think counts because they sat them down and recorded their honest reactions so i guess if anything these women are to blame for the stereotypes about women being perpetuated i guess anyways this is an accusation that ranks relatively in the middle on the dumb [ __ ] jim sterling says scale because if he thinks an ad campaign trying to play the your lame parents would hate this therefore you should love it card as exploitative well let's hope he never finds out about a majority of the game ads from the genesis and snes era but manufactured and totally fictitious controversy aside the one thing to take away from all this is that dead space 2 had a real budget backing it and that won't exactly be relevant till we get a little further into this analysis although before we go there we should see if an ocean of cash is enough to write a story that achieves as much as the game that came before it the story of the original dead space was kind of a hard act to follow sure it left us with a bit of a cliffhanger but it's not the kind of cliffhanger you want a resolution for the story told a pretty complete tale with isaac essentially putting an end to all the insanity and getting off the ishimura and ideally that would be all she wrote you know sometimes it's okay to have a story that ends one that has a satisfying start and an even more satisfying finish but dead space's world was so big and so fleshed out that the writers made it possible to head back into that world without things feeling inorganic or manufactured the universe that isaac and the ishimor existed in had a real foundation with repeating design motifs and systems like governments and companies that could absolutely be expanded on and i'm happy to say dead space 2 does exactly that starting off with a little conversation between isaac and nicole where we find out that it was isaac who convinced her to board the doom dc more in the first place isaac thank you for what for just pushing me to do this which does retroactively give him even more of a motivation to find her in the first game but then we transition into some kind of interview process it seems like our guys escape pod was found and the guy doing the interview wants to know what happened aboard the planet cracker using this guy is a bit of a narrative device we get a really cool recap of the previous game's events in a very stylistic way which i'm really a fan of during the interview it looks like the last game's ending pointed us in the right direction with the marker having what might be a permanent effect on isaac's mind he's still seeing the apparition of nicole and it's hostile towards him this time and judging by his wearing a straight jacket we can assume that's not the only thing wrong with him mentally after this scene we're in isaac's shoes as he's rudely awoken by someone who says they're trying to help him before an infector jams his tentacle thing into the guy's head and we get to watch the transformation process happen in real time which is about as brutal as you would imagine and as a side note i was under the impression that this could only happen to corpses but i guess that was never really said out loud in the previous game so i'm willing to let it slide if it means we get an awesome close-up of what i'm calling the necromorphing process after this understandably isaac is on the run and it looks like wherever he is the necromorph infestation has followed him at this point i had about a million questions but those needed to be put on hold since i was essentially wrapped up in a perfect isaac sized burrito and surrounded on all sides by misshapen monsters with bone sauce for hands as we make our way out of the more immediate danger we start piecing together just what the hell is going on around here turns out it's been three years since the incident on the ishimora and isaac is on the sprawl nope not the philip k dick cyberpunk dystopia sprawl but a space station just off of titan which interestingly enough is revealed to be the site of the first ever planet crack i'm not sure why i find that so cool but it just seems like the perfect kind of world building anyways he's been here the entire time but can't remember much of it due to his own mental issues and heavy heavy amounts of sedation god knows what these people have been pumping him full of isaac we're all gonna burn for what we did to you [Music] at first we're led to believe that he's here because of his experience with the marker had driven a mad but then we find out there's actually some kind of umbrella-esque shenanigans at play here it seems like earth gov has been busy these last few years using the knowledge imprinted on the brains of people who've come into contact with a marker to build their own and i have a little bit of an issue with this idea for all we've learned about the markers so far it has no real positive benefits outside of the church altman be praised and i really don't understand why they would take such a risk knowing full well the side effects of making one towards the end of the game we get a single piece of dialogue explaining that they think it's some kind of infinite energy source but i really don't remember that being the case in the first game that being said there may have been something i missed so maybe we'll call this one even for now our boy is later contacted by a woman wanting to help him escape and even though isaac's not keen on trusting her he doesn't have much of a choice the giant space station is in the middle of a full-blown necromorph outbreak and i guess the hell you don't know can't be too much worse than the hell you do right he also finds a fellow lab rat by the name of strass who's well let's say a little worse off than isaac the rest of the story is spent going down several avenues with at the very least two backstabs incoming and a little bit of isaac working through his own problems too now i'll be the first person to say the first time i tried dead space 2 out i got the feeling that you would get when your favorite cult hit movie gets a big budget hollywood sequel and the very start of the game doesn't do much to challenge that idea it has this go big or go home sort of feeling and the pace is so rapid that it sort of spits in the face of the original's masterful pacing but i will say this you have to really stick with dead space 2's story it seems to be going in one very predictable direction at the start if i had to compare it to anything it would likely be resident evil 2 with its larger budget and more hollywood action appeal but truth be told three quarters of the way into dead space well it started heading in a more silent hill 2 direction which was a big surprise now that's not to say three quarters of the game has a bad story actually it's quite the opposite i really enjoyed the almost zombie outbreak feeling of walking through these living quarters and seeing signs of people committing suicide to avoid being torn apart while they're still alive and walking by doors with people in the process of turning or have already turned and i know that may sound like a gameplay thing and not a story thing but a lot of the story in these games are told through the environment and i think that's no different here now it certainly does have its fair share of cheapness like the obvious trope of having isaac dredged through a daycare center complete with child necromorphs but it also sends us through a church of unitology which gives us a better insight in how these people tick and what they're like when they're not sabotaging big rusty planet crackers if the environmental storytelling wowed you in the first game get ready for that exact same experience but more of it now i will admit this story's got a different feel from the first games but i think it still lives up to that dead space name the original had this slow building kind of creepy and dark thing going on and the second is a lot more in your face but it still retains a kind of authenticity and from a storytelling perspective this change makes a lot of sense we as players already know what's after us in the dark corners of this space station and we're already familiar with what's making them so it makes sense to start us in the heat of all the action i mean if it slowly revealed the necromorphs i would have likely gotten a little bored totally knowing what was coming next honestly though i think the best example of how things have changed would be the fact that isaac not only has a face now but a personality to go along with it they're swarming into a hole in the medical deck at least you won't have to go through there unexpected obstruction ahead shutting down welcome to the medical deck crap and i think i might be torn on this issue on one hand he had so much character when all we had to gauge his reactions by were his labored breaths screams of terror and body language and all that's gone now that he can properly express himself but i really do like his personality in this game you have him pretty evenly split between wisecracking action hero and deeply damaged nearly crazy person who just can't let go of the guilt that he feels for the role he played in nicole's fate he grows attached to the other characters in the game gets angry with them and even expresses frustration that mirrors my own when the old dead space trope of nothing working rears its ugly head it doesn't recognize a new junction i think i've got it from up here what i didn't hear you uh nothing nothing this new side of isaac is a contentious one and while i do really enjoy his personality i can't exactly argue that i wouldn't have loved for him to have remained a silent protagonist so this will be a subjective take but if you're worried about visceral ruining a unique character by having him speak you're not exactly in the wrong but i found this new personality to be really engaging anyways and yeah maybe there is a bit of the original allure loss now that he can actively comment on things but it is replaced with what i feel is pretty organic and believable writing so i guess take that for what it's worth and since we're talking about differences it's only fair we talk about how dead space 2 stays the same you'll still be following a voice on your radio and while you'll often come within mere inches from the people you're communicating with you aren't going to be fighting back to back with them or anything if this bothered you in the first game it'll likely have the same effect here but i really feel like this was done to make sure that there wasn't any kind of break and the isolating atmosphere the depths worked so hard to cultivate so i guess we'll call it a necessary evil and continuing on the subject of aspects of this game that stays the same if there were one thing this sequel totally gets right it's expanding on the world of dead space to a satisfying degree but making sure nothing gets over explained a trick the first game pulled perfectly the church the government and people of this world are all fleshed out just a little more than they were before but not so much that they stopped feeling interesting or mysterious just like before a lot of the background narrative is handled via text and audio logs and just like before these little pieces of self-contained world building are amazingly fun to get lost in i will say i was a little disappointed when i noticed that there were far few audio recordings than before with text logs being a majority of what you're gonna find but hey i'm not opposed to doing a bit of reading if it means getting to know a little bit more about this world and how it operates i do however wonder why this is the case you would figure that the increased budget would mean more voice actors being able to contribute for more lines but let's not get lost in minutia and speaking of minutia i'd love to start talking a little more specifically but before i do i have to throw up a little bit of a spoiler warning here so if you haven't played through dead space 2 yet skip to the time stamp on screen or click the link in the description to avoid having this awesome tale spoiled for you all right so now the first timers are gone we can talk [ __ ] about them and maybe this story in the first game we found out that nicole had been dead the entire time and this time around they still have isaac in absolute torment because he essentially pushed her to join the crew of the planet cracker in a sense dooming her to her own death and as you near the end of part 2 you start to see isaac come to grips with this fact and as he does nicole stopped showing up as some kind of evil specter and more like a helping hand i felt like this plot thread was handled really well isaac struggles because he doesn't want to let her go despite the fact that she's tricked him into almost killing himself several times by this point even though he thinks it'll eventually kill him he just can't let go of her memory and this was a really cool metaphor for him holding onto his baggage and it making his life worse when you hear that a game will be covering sensitive subjects like loss depression and suicidal thoughts you always hope for the best but often we're left with shallow or exploitative writing that just sort of cheapens these concepts and for a while i was really impressed that visual pulled off such a touchy subject with such class that is until it was all taken apart a few minutes after the big reveal right at the end in confrontation we figure out that it was all a trick to get isaac closer to the marker so he can be absorbed now don't get me wrong this last backstab i thought was really effective but honestly i would have been more satisfied if this turned out to be a little more like silent hill 2 where the main character struggles with an issue and the end of the game coincides with him or her making peace with their inner demons and letting them go maybe it's just me but i was all on board the isaac using the part of his brain that the marker affected to destroy it but at the cost of not seeing the apparition of his dead love anymore if you ask me this would have been the better way to go but that being said i'm not exactly complaining i just would have liked to have seen the other option explored as well maybe as an alternate ending or something like that and real quick before we let everyone else back in i just wanted to say that i absolutely loved this game's ending no analysis or critique here i was just really blown away at how for lack of a better word epic it was by the time the ending credits started rolling i genuinely found myself laying out a sigh of relief like i had been tightening myself up the entire ending sequence really grade a stuff and i wouldn't have it any other way alright so i think that's enough gushing let's let the rest of the crew back in what okay so time to put the cards on the table i was completely blown away by dead space 2's story at first i lamented having isaac shed his silent protag nature and dawned an honest to goodness personality but i genuinely grew to love it in that same sense i really didn't like the stereotypical two-dimensional character ellie at first the game introduces you to her as your average take no [ __ ] hard-ass female character that in any other game you just know would have been a sniper but as the two interact more and more she becomes this really endearing personality and that made the whole badass thing even more emotionally attractive typically i would use this spot in the script for critiques or issues but i genuinely had none the story was amazingly satisfying it had all the explosions and melodrama that a typical action flick would but also included the emotion and conflict that i would expect from a story driven affair for every single step it took towards that cheap and schlocky popcorn fuel feel it took another in the direction of a serious dark and brooding game with massive amounts of world building and an in-game universe that feels equal parts science fiction and damn near realism the pace of the story's events make sure you don't go too long a stretch without it stepping in and reminding you this is a story driven experience but also won't have you sitting through 40 minute cut scenes before you get a chance to start disemboweling necromorphs again so an even section of both sides of the spectrum is represented here and right about now i'm gonna say something that is likely to not be very popular okay here it goes i enjoyed the tale this game told orders of magnitude more than the original now wait a second before you authorize a drone strike on my house the first game was amazing and its story was no different it was earnest honest and not anything like what you would expect from a game that released in its console generation but dead space 2 pulled off the nearly impossible trick of receiving a massive budgetary boost while keeping the spirit of the original intact you cut off power to life support there may be other survivors over here public sector is already beyond acceptable recovery conditions i can't allow goodbye clark sure we've lost the small endearing almost self-contained nature of the first game story but what we got in the sequel was the developers pouring just as much heart and soul into it with the added bonus of expanding on all the concepts introduced before if dead space 1 is an underdog coming into the playoffs and nearly beating a season team all on his own then part 2 is that same guy coming back after spending years of training and actually accomplishing that goal maybe it's not as much of an upset as some young upstart coming into the veteran aaa gaming space and wrecking everyone's [ __ ] with a quarter of the budget but the quality and effort knobs have been cranked to 11 here i mean honestly it's damn near perfect in my opinion and i know you guys might not have been expecting that out of me i do spend a majority of my time playing 100 hour rpgs with rich and immersive worlds but this big budget third person shooter has me gushing for some reason and well don't worry it surprised me too maybe i'm just a sucker for dark and realistic science fiction stories with a twist of psychological horror thrown in after all one of my favorite movies is event horizon but for whatever reason i absolutely cannot recommend this story enough even if you're worried about your gaming skills not being up to snuff i'd say an easy run is more than worth it to experience this tale for yourself this might be one of the biggest blind sides i've had in a while and maybe it'll have a similar effect on you or maybe it's the only game i've ever played that let me actively take part in shoving a needle into a person's eye and that's something i can i can really get behind okay so we all hopefully know what dead space is all about by now long corridors leading to open areas where piles of twisted bones and corrupted flesh jump you in a fight requiring some limb from torso separation with light physics puzzles on top for good measure and in that sense dead space 2 is certainly not reinventing the wheel here but what they have done is what any developer should do for a good sequel they brought nearly the same exact formula to the table but with small additions and even smaller alterations that have what was old feeling new again aka [ __ ] that the gaming industry never does anymore the main alteration that immediately comes to mind is a much larger focus on using the game's telekinesis mechanic to better use your environment as a weapon now don't get me wrong blowing off a leg and then two arms is still the go-to move but literally nothing is more satisfying than picking up a long sharp implement and firing it into these guys with such force that it literally pins their lifeless carcass to a wall no joke this is a kind of therapy for me and you know what i'm not ashamed to say that of course this was something that was possible to some degree in the original game with stuff like buzzsaws but here you'll notice these environmental elements are present nearly every fight you're going to have and now even the necromorphs own limbs can be used as a weapon against them really changing things up after taking out one of these things sharp and bone spikes you can pick it up and skewer them with it and now that i'm thinking about it i'm not too sure if this is a returning mechanic from the first game that i just never used well regardless it is fun as hell and even helped me conserve ammo in more than a few situations this mechanic really plays into your target choices in a fight a higher priority target might be launching projectiles at you from afar and he might be the obvious choice when there's just low-level melee baddies simultaneously rushing you but taking these guys out first means filling the environment with potentially deadly weapons to use against the stronger ones at first i had issues instinctively opting for this tactic but it wasn't more than a few hours till i really grasped the concept and was making use of every available option in combat sticking with the game's combat i did something a little differently compared to my playthrough of the first game if you'll remember i was a little let down at how relatively easy dead space 1 was i mean i did die a few times but for 99 of the game i was steamrolling enemies with a starting weapon and even ended up selling my other weapons because i was never really in a position where i needed anything else so when it came time to start dead space 2 i opted for the next step up in difficulty and i will say right now with no doubt in my mind that this is the true way to experience this game and no i'm not one of those [ __ ] that thinks difficulty necessarily translates into good gameplay and anyone who stuck around for one of my streams knows i'm not mlg material by any stretch of the imagination are you guys serious how about now follow me just come out just you joined me already you're willing to come out come on come on all right i need you to run through the store now i'm a little upset i'm a little upset with you guys right now i'm gonna be honest i'm more disappointed than anything if we're being totally honest but despite this choice sending me to the game over screen 100 times more than the first game the increased number of enemies and absolute brutality of even the smaller skirmishes made for so much more of a satisfying experience i would come to a wide open combat scenario and die over and over again and instead of blaming rng or hoping i do better next time i was changing up my tactics and trying to better utilize the environment in my favor did i miss a few explosive canisters scattered around or was it just me forgetting to use my stasis ability again after getting absolutely demolished in an area i loaded up my saved game and strapped in with the intention of changing up my strategy and trying to shoot more accurately while fighting off an absolute onslaught of bad guys at the end of one of these more punishing fights i always felt like i survived just by the skin of my teeth which was incredibly satisfying and looking back i bet this would have made the first game so much more enjoyable by comparison if i had to guess i would wager this was the intended experience the developers were going for as dead space 2 went on the difficulty curve angled more and more towards a 90 degree drop and i was just excited as hell to see what nearly impossible situation they put me in next instead of shooting gallery level enemies rushing me from far away while i picked them off with these like in the first game i was being swarmed from all sides and while it was teeth-grindingly difficult it also felt incredibly fair for example i might get hit by a necromorph from behind that i just didn't even know was there but then in fighting him i'd notice where he came from and then i would start noticing all the entries into the room counting windows and air vents then i would just demolish the entire fight it felt like it asked for the perfect amount of effort out of me i never restarted a fight saying oh how the hell was i supposed to avoid that i was honestly inaud how much fun i was having this time around and just to reiterate i really really enjoyed the first game but to further drive that point home here's a nearly end game fight from dead space 1. i'm taking a lot of damage here but as you can see that's mostly due to me not needing to worry about avoiding attacks and there's no real strategy being deployed necromorphs are showing up from nearly all sides but at such a long distance that i can just pop them with stasis blow off a couple limbs and eat any damage from enemies i neglected while slowly picking my shots honestly looking at it now it seems like a big downgrade given the context now taking a look at an endgame fight in dead space 2 and it is a night and day comparison necromorphs are getting right in my face and i'm having to pick targets on the fly at an insane pace i'm needing to use crowd control by using pain states to pop multiple enemies with non-lethal shots just to get a micro second breathing room so i can line up the more damaging stuff i'm also needing to react way faster to threats here as you can see i'm moving my mouse a mile a minute trying to keep up with these fools and instead of reloading i was having to switch to another weapon just to make sure i wasn't left open for a few cheap hits which by the way is all it takes for these guys to take me down despite me having a fully upgraded suit despite the fact that i make a living trying to describe my experience with a video game it's just really hard to put words together that will tell you how satisfying this is but the chaos and pace at which most fights took place forced me to play better and by the end i just felt like an absolute badass which is what i expect from most action games listen i know this sounds like me bragging at how great i am at this game but believe me i died easily a hundred times or more in this playthrough but each time i was completely stoked to jump back in and see how i could better approach the skirmish that got the best of me if you take any advice from me in this video give dead space 2 a try on survivalist it felt to me like the perfect combination of difficulty and satisfaction trust me you will not regret it and if you've been paying attention to the footage up to this point you might have noticed a small difference between the first and second games one that's tiny but adds a very dynamic feeling to each fight instead of enemies just spitting out items on death you need to do extra damage once you've down them to collect any kind of reward this really switched up my approach to fights and even though it's this small little alteration it felt like a perfect direction to take the game's combat in now it really doesn't matter how much damage it is as long as the enemy is down which does help it not feel cheap but once you realize even throwing a bloody hand at them counts it sort of cheapens the effect to a degree on top of that i really liked having to use secondary weapons this time around like i said in my last video i really never felt the need to use something other than the starting plasma cutter since it was easily the most efficient weapon in the game but i routinely needed to switch weapons to better deal with groups or certain enemy types this time around it felt really good to be in a bad situation until i pulled out the pulse rifle to get a little room or using the javelin to not only crucify necromorph but its secondary fire to electrocute the others around him unlike the first game i often found myself nearly out of ammo although i only ever truly ran out once still though the stress of running low had me using my other weapons which is good and all around i guess the takeaway is i just absolutely loved the combat here the additions and alterations all combined together to make a much more satisfying experience than the first and again i loved the first game's combat so that really threw me for a loop as the game went on i kept meeting bigger and bigger challenges and this led to a real feeling of accomplishment when i got to the end as isaac took off his helmet and breathed the sigh of relief i was right there with him of course you guys know dead space ain't all action and on that note i'm happy to say the slow building dread of exploring a place recently invaded by an alien corpse virus is still 100 present and what i mean by that is there's still a lot of quiet time for you to really soak in your surroundings the in your face way the game starts might have you believing otherwise but even a few minutes into that very sequence you'll see enough slow building atmosphere to disprove that little worry this time around the place you're exploring has been more recently overrun so you get this closer connection between the environment and the events that happened here to make the environment look like it does at first i was worried the team would add more action to the game throwing off the carefully balanced ratio achieved in the first but instead the guys at visceral just expanded the size of everything so an increase on one side meant an even increase on the other so if my little tirade on the combat got you worried trust me you don't have to be you're still gonna spend plenty of time slowly skulking through dark hallways with blood-smeared walls while a single light fixture flickers off in the distance and do keep in mind i come into horror games wanting to spend more time in the dark feeling around for a light switch and less time partaking in pulse pounding action so this game getting such high marks from me despite having so much action really says something about how effective that horror is continuing with the theme of additions the zero gravity portions have made a return but this time with the added bonus of full 360 degree movement which is exactly what this mechanic needed it feels like the next obvious upgrade to make for a sequel and it works perfectly here you're not going to see it very often but when you do it's almost always a fun time plus it helps break up the gameplay once you've spent a long portion of the game either blasting eldritch [ __ ] or walking through their aftermath the work benches make their obvious return and the upgrade system works just as well as it did before only this time i felt like i was less flushed with power nodes at the end the physics-based puzzles seem to be slightly more complicated than they were in the first game forcing me to align mirrors and move stuff around in the environment more with kinesis of course they still aren't going to hit silent hill levels of challenging but then again they help break up the general gameplay loop and walk that thin line between being complicated enough that it doesn't become a bore but also simple enough that i can typically figure them out just by looking them over a few seconds so they're not going to give your brain a workout but they still serve their purpose very well obviously the pride and joy of the series is still alive and kicking that being the limb dismemberment system and very true to form they give you about five bajillion hints as to how that works including in-game audio logs actual graffiti in the environment and obtrusive tutorial messages and while we're on the subject man these messages stick around way too damn long continuing with these sort of downsides the new enemies are all really interesting and bring their own strategies to the combat but two of them really pissed me off in very specific situations this acid spitting [ __ ] is fine enough on his own but later on in the game as the difficulty is ramping up and the swarms of necromorphs seem to number in the hundreds these guys will show up and spit their sludge at you from across the room and with the chaos of fighting off nearly infinite amounts of other bad guys you'll often not hear his call out so you'll have no idea he's even in the area until you get hit by him and to be fair this wouldn't be such an issue if his long distance shoots stomach acid at you from beyond the visible playfield attack just damaged you honestly i was pretty flush with healing items nearly this entire playthrough but on top of the damage it also prevents you from running while slowing down your walk speed to an absolute crawl once this jerk gets a hit in on you you're almost guaranteed to subsequent death if there's any other enemy still in play so i learned to keep my head on a swivel and look out for his half-melted form but i'd still get the odd cheap hit from him and rounding off the list is this bigger sort of mid-boss type of melee based guy with long arms dealing with him isn't much of an issue most of the time just a quick stasis shot and unload on all of his weak points but he has a lunging jump attack that once activated the game just gives you zero tools to deal with i mean isaac's run speed is relatively slow and instead of focusing on mobility the game pushes fast thinking and even faster target finding but i couldn't find any way to knock him out of this attack and a slow run speed matched with the absence of any kind of dodge mechanic well your only hope once he initiates this move is to pray that you were already out of range when he started it because if you weren't it doesn't matter how far you run in which direction you are getting hit maybe getting this move a butt load of wind up or some kind of obvious startup frames would have helped but as it is if he's already in the air it's out of your hands and in a game so perfectly balanced for satisfying combat this one enemy feels really out of place and kind of lazily implemented if you ask me on the plus side though you no longer need an external mouse fix patch to get the pc part working well and that's really cool that being said i had some real issues lining up my mouse's sensitivity with the in-game sensitivity slider it took me a real long time to get the perfect equilibrium between the two but i am willing to admit this might just be an issue with me and how i like to play by now you guys may have noticed that i didn't really give an overview of how this game plays and instead skips straight to specific examples of what has changed and well that's because a majority of dead space 2 is just dead space 1 and that is a compliment too often in the aaa gaming space developers throw the baby out with the bathwater when a sequel comes around and while it may be an awesome game it's just not what we wanted from a follow-up re4 sorry i must add something to my throat anyways it's nice to see that these guys were competent enough in their original formula that they only saw to add to it instead of taking away so if you did like dead space 1 i just cannot foresee a reason why you wouldn't like part 2 but that does set us down a very interesting path no matter how much i absolutely loved this gameplay experience the public at large seems to not be in agreement with me sales for part two were abysmal if the scant amount of info on wikipedia is to be believed i've seen a lot of varied numbers but it looks like the game made back maybe a third of its original investment and to be honest going in i expected the game to bear that fact in its gameplay i expected some cheap ramped up sequel that dropped everything the original was about and i know i've made this comparison already but once again it is the most apt analogy i can think of dead space 1 was the first resident evil game in the series in a lot of ways sure it's more of an action game but both utilized in isolating settings slow building tension and a lot of quiet time to not only engage the player but cover up for what was a meager budget despite what makes them similar in a video game sense though they both just kind of hold their own place in their own respective series and if that's true i think you guys know what dead space 2 is yeah exactly it's basically the re2 of the series with a massive following from the first game and a larger pool of resources to pull from dead space 2 showed us all the things the first game could only hint at with audio logs and journal entries they finally had the money to show us a full-scale necromorph invasion much like our second trip to raccoon city showing us what a city-wide zombie outbreak would really look like through the first hours of the game i just kept getting images of the second resident evil in my head and yeah maybe that's because i'm obsessed with the series but maybe it's also because they seem so spiritually connected both titles completely replicated the last game's full experience but used their new resources to add to that base formula instead of forming a totally new one and yeah there's certainly an argument for stagnation when this trick gets repeated too often but generally it's what i look for in my sequels sure dead space 2 dials the action knob far past 11 but it also gives me those quiet tracks through a ruined environment with light fixtures swinging overhead and bloody handprints covering the wall so i guess you might be wondering what i'm getting at here well i'll just come right out and say it dead space 2 was the most fun experience i've had with a video game in several years i was absolutely glued to my screen the entire time and with the addition of the challenge from survival mode i just couldn't put this one down it was this awesome and satisfying ramping up of stakes and i swear to god the last four hours felt like a rollercoaster ride that i just can't get out of my head i know it's common to use this as an example of ea meddling and turning a niche horror title into this shallow action blockbuster and maybe maybe there are elements of that present here but honestly i didn't feel any part of this game either the action or the horror that wasn't also represented in the original to me this just felt like the perfect follow-up to visceral's original creative vision and i know that is not a very popular take now i'm always willing to admit when it might just be my subjective opinion here on this channel but this time i genuinely think some of you guys might have misjudged this one and honestly it's understandable the general opinion seems to be that this was an example of corporate oversight but i'm just not seeing it maybe even the touch of ea is enough to poison a game in our minds but this was some of the most fun i can remember having with the game and the only thing i ask is that if you already own it maybe pull it off the shelf or reinstall it and give it another go sure there's always a chance that i'm wrong here and if so maybe you just wasted a few scant hours of your life but if i'm right maybe you just got yourself a memorable experience that'll stay with you for a long time and if you ask me well that's a gamble worth taking okay so i'm not going to string you guys along for some kind of big dramatic reveal the fact of the matter is dead space 2 is an absolute graphical marvel every little corner of every screen seemed to be absolutely popping with detail and i just could not stop being impressed by it during my playthrough there were times where i would just sit there and stare slack-jawed at an absolute masterpiece of lighting texture work and design that should have rightly won awards it really seems like every square inch of the game is jam-packed with hundreds of these little microscopic details and despite this being the most i've been impressed with the game's presentation since the remakes of re2 and 3 i'm just kind of struggling on where to start with it all and with that in mind it wouldn't be fair to get into the subject without mentioning the giant necromorph elephant in the room so yes this game has a very very different look than what you're used to in dead space 1. in my first video on the series i gave the original dead space very high marks for completely nailing this old rusted metal and utilitarian slash industrial look but immediately upon starting part two it became very clear that they were going for a much different approach this time around one of the first things that jumped out to me when first taking control of isaac was that the starting area might have more color in it than 99 of the last game put together in the original a very warm color palette was used most of the time and this factory inspired sheet metal design could be seen in almost every part of the game but this time around you're going to be seeing all kinds of blues yellows and greens which can be kind of jarring at first now don't get me wrong colors like that were seen in the last game but mostly in the form of accent lighting sort of like visual indicators of gameplay devices like doors or entryways and that is still the case here to a degree but these lights share the stage with environments that look like people could actually live inside of them without taking part in some kind of 1960s russian art house propaganda piece about the dangers of capitalism or something and as a horror title or at least a game that aims to horrify its player you'd figure bright visuals would sort of play against that idea but i think the in-universe explanation sort of takes care of that dead space 1 took place on a decrepit nearly decommissioned planet cracker and this time around we're on an honest-to-goodness space station people live work and spend their leisure time here the change from drab and brown to colorful and pretty sort of makes sense in this context i guess the best analogy i can think of it's like going from a 70s era nuclear sub to a modern cruise ship on the plus side though the new more pleasing look to everything helps aid in driving home just how much desolation has taken place here on the ishimora i kind of had a hard time telling the difference between parts of the ship that were ransacked by the living dead and parts of it that were just run down and barely functional this time around you really get to feel like this was a horrible event and what seemed like a pretty awesome place to live so while it may not keep the same design language as the first game i think it works to create a similar feel it just takes a different path to get to that goal and for you purists there are still areas that'll give you flashbacks to the original old rusted environments left in disarray that if anything is the dev showing you that yeah we decided to do something else but we still got that old dead space talent in us and as a really cool little nod you actually get to hop aboard the ishimura one last time in this game and i think this section of the game serves as a tiny microcosm of the effort these guys were looking to put in they could have easily gotten away with just recycling the original environments from part one and i would have still been psyched to jump back aboard the aging planet cracker but instead they seem to have remodeled whole areas or at least added so much to the original assets that it's easy to think they did since earthgov got a hold of this thing and tried to scrub it for every piece of info about the marker they could you'll see work lights portions of the ship that have been disassembled and a kind of white tarp over some areas like they were dealing with an infectious disease as for the actual game we came here to talk about just expect all the small post-processing effects that made the original look so damn sharp and impressive despite not looking that great underneath it all but this time layered over a game that looks like it came from the ps4 or xbox one generation the small details like absolutely gorgeous lighting dust particles and debris floating in the air have all made a return and seem to be rendered at a much higher resolution this time around the jaw dropping perspective correct shadow casting is back and even though it's only reserved for certain dynamic light sources it still looks better than a majority of games being released today on top of all the original little touches of detail that made it easy not to notice a relatively low res approach to texture work and 3d model geometry we've got even more enhancements but if you ask me there's only one really worth talking about one little effect that's so damn impressive i honestly struggle to find the words to describe it and i know this is gonna sound so dumb after that build up but i was walking along one of the earlier areas and managed to come across a spot where the lights started going out leaving me in total darkness and while moving the camera around i noticed something the green glow from isaac's helmet was actually casting an amber shaded light onto the environment guys honestly when this happened i just stopped for a split second and said out loud you absolute madmen i mean really they had no reason to do this the effect of the green glow that was coming from his visor already looked great but they put in the extra bit of effort to make it a dynamic light source and if one day someone who worked on this game gets to see this video let me just say i cannot tell you how much i appreciate this kind of effort and sheer will to make a convincing look that you guys put into this game cheers guys there's not enough people like you in the industry and that is a goddamn shame and since we're talking about lighting i noticed the hard lines that delineated light combs in the first game have been softened this time around creating a more natural and realistic look to light sources that are shining into really dark areas and while i do admit that this is the more authentic way to go as far as replicating the behavior of real light in the real world i kind of prefer the previous look i feel like the reason i like the more stylized look of the lighting in dead space 1 was because it reminds me of playing old pc games and seeing all the cool stuff devs were doing to replicate real-time lighting that being said the lighting in this game still blows me away it's just not as stylistically pleasing in my opinion one thing that setting this game on a massive space station afforded the dev team was being able to really change up the look of different areas without stretching my suspension of disbelief if i would walk out of one area an issue more and into one with completely different approach to color design and decoration it would be a little jarring but here going from a bright colorful daycare section to the dark and brooding architecture of the unitologist church just feels like a natural progression honestly sometimes i would come across a window looking out at the rest of the space station and i know they're just sky boxes with low res 2d textures but the look of this place just had this perfect sense of scale to it kind of like i'd spent too much time in a dark and claustrophobic hallway and the devs wanted to make sure to give me a look at what i was really inside of so i kept that perspective of being this tiny little part of this giant game world and i didn't notice this little tidbit while i was actually playing but going through my captured footage it seems like there's a progression from day to night from the start of the game to a few hours in once again a little detail that just makes me appreciate a team that goes that extra mile i did have one tiny issue though one that i think most people probably don't care about in the first game the communications you had with the rest of your team looked to be pre-rendered had motion cap work and an absolute ton of detail where it seems like this time around video comms are actual in-game graphics and they don't have the same flair as they used to continuing on that note faces in part 2 are much more animated with way more points of articulation than before but they also include a more stylized look to them now i'm not exactly sure why but the style they went with here sort of reminds me of the very recognizable looking faces in the time splitter series and that one stealth game i reviewed back before i knew what i was doing second sight just like before this game was an absolute breeze to get running at a locked 100 frames per second with not even a hint of stutter or bad frame pacing which for a game that looks this good is still very impressive back when i first tried dead space 2 out i was running it on an old gtx 770 and an even older phenom x4 so great optimization is the name of the game here i imagine those of you looking to run the pc version on anything made in the last decade should have no issues nailing a solid frame rate and speaking of versions why don't we check out the other ways you can play dead space 2. if you'll remember last time we looked at both the 360 and ps3 versions of the game and the ps3 port won by a pretty narrow margin so let's start this little comparison with the reigning champ right off the bat i was absolutely floored with how sharp and clear the pitcher was in dead space 2's ps3 port with the first games console release i noticed the expected jump down in quality with things like sharpness and if i had to assume i'd say this is due to some type of bilinear filter or some other type of adjustment that was meant to de-emphasize jackie's on hardware that didn't do so well with anti-aliasing but this time around i felt like i was playing the pc version just with aa turned off it was really really impressive especially when you put the last game's port and this one side by side the difference in sharpness and clarity is just night and day keeping in mind both of these captures were obtained from the same ps3 with the same video output settings so as far as visuals go we are batting a thousand for sure but sadly the frame rate is a very very different story i'm not gonna lie it's rough getting used to a hard cap of 30 fps but that's not exactly outside of your typical experience with hardware from the previous generation the slowdown from 30fps however was a much bigger thorn in my side scenes with a lot of fog or smoke on screen seemed to drop frames like crazy and even opening the store in the ps3 version showed some serious slowdown now say what you want about dead space 1's ports and their very clear visual downgrade at least they played well the constant dips in frame rate here made combat very very very hard for me now i'm sure people who are used to playing on console will probably not consider this much of an issue but for me it was something i just couldn't stop noticing so i guess take that for what it is other than the frame rate though i couldn't find any missing graphical or lighting tricks so that's good i did however find that both console versions implemented this weird looking background motion blur during cut scenes i assume to make up for the lower frame rate maybe and it is a little distracting but not so bad that you won't get used to it eventually so i do have to say i'm a little disappointed with the champ's performance this time around so let's see if things fare a little differently on the 360. and if you'll remember last time i had to convert the analog component video output of my launch era 360 using my framemeister and some of you guys that were familiar with the 360 version of dead space rightly complained that a lot of detail was lost in this process so i asked my little brother if i could borrow his elite model 360 for this video and he was nice enough to say yes which means we're looking at a direct digital to digital capture this time around and maybe it's just me but it seems like the 360 version wins in the sharpness department the ps3 footage that i captured does have a bit of a darker look to it and i can't tell if that's affecting my decision but the good news is no matter which console port you go with you're gonna get some seriously impressive video on the frame rate side of things the same target of 30 fps is present in this version only showing much less slowdown in my opinion in the 360 port you can see we've totally lost the slowdown that took place in the ps3's item store and overall i just found this sport to be a much more smooth experience that being said i've never really done well with the 360s controller so i was aiming better on the ps3 but i think the 360 still takes the lead regardless i can get used to an oddly laid out controller but slow down is a different beast altogether so in an odd turn of events i have to recommend people stay away from my beloved ps3 this time around although i'm more than willing to admit that i may be a little more sensitive to these issues than most so i guess just go with whatever version you can get a hold of but just to help the decision making process along here's each version of the game side by side like i said before the visual downgrade is far less noticeable than you would expect going from 1440p to an internally upscaled 720p with the only obvious signs being a much more aliased picture on console as far as i'm concerned jaggies aren't the worst thing in the world and even sometimes gives the illusion of added sharpness so if you can't or don't want to play this on pc these home console versions are more than a great solution visually speaking but since i don't play shooters well with controllers i can't really tell you i'd choose them for myself okay so i guess it turns out having to sum up my feelings on dead space 2's presentation is actually really easy this is one of the most impressive showings i've seen in years now it obviously doesn't come close to the newer games in terms of raw power but instead beats them in artistic merit these guys really did try to include every possible little effect in addition the hardware would support things like environment design and interactivity don't always get lumped in with the game's look but if you ask me dead space 2 makes a solid case for that being a little short-sighted the more stylized and less realistic looking faces than the first game look better in motion than your typical photo realistic approach because when something already looks a little cartoony well you're not as likely to care when animations don't exactly line up with real life on the flip side the lighting is probably some of the most technically impressive and best all-around looking implementations i've seen in recent games so specifics aside dead space 2's visual presentation gets a gigantic thumbs up from me that style and feel of the original shows through perfectly in this sequel but with about a million editions that might have you believing it's a recent release i know most people don't play games specifically for their graphical look but maybe give dead space 2 a spin for that exact reason hey if you end up not liking the way the game looks on the plus side you have an incredibly fun gameplay experience to fall back on so it's a win-win situation when dead space first released i remember being blown away at such a unique and innovative title having graced the same exact console generation that had been doing nothing but cloning gears of war and call of duty for the last few years and with dead space 2 getting such a big increase in budget and more attention from its ea overlords i just kind of assumed it would be another series that had all of its edges rounded down so it could fit in a more traditional box and i think most people felt the same because of the massive 40 to 60 million dollar budget given to visceral only a very small portion of that was made back in sales and if you ask me that is an honest-to-goodness crime this game is everything the original was in my opinion but with a few additions and when you're making a follow-up to a popular game i know it should be common knowledge to only add to the proven formula instead of taking away but i think if anything shinji mikami has taught us that this is not always the mindset developers go into these things with so if you've never played dead space 2 because you thought it was a big budget cash grab that took away all the personality that the original had well i'm here to let you know it is absolutely not the case this is a real marvel in an industry where sequels are very rarely handled this well so i guess i'll put it as simply as i can did you really enjoy dead space do you want more of it but in a prettier package well i've got some good news for you oh and before i go i just want to thank all of you for showing this little project such massive amounts of support you guys are absolute sweethearts and here's hoping i see each and every one of you next time right here on the dead space retrospective after an absolute blast with part one and the non-stop thrill ride of satisfaction that was part two well i'd say dead space has certainly lived up to its pedigree now you guys know i've always been a man of culture and refinement being a silent hill and resident evil fan but dead space has quickly worked its way into my dark atmosphere loving heart that being said i do bring up these two series for a very specific reason even though there's more differences than similarities between sh re and ds my experience with the former taught me spin-off material that goes in a different direction than the main series can be really great but and this is a giant room sized butt they can also be terrible waste of resources and effort when hearing i would have to cover another rail shooter on the wii only this time with the words dead space on the box i prepared for well let's just say disappointment was my original expectation correct can this live up to my high mark for the genre aka re darkside chronicles well what's up guys i'm jared from avalanche reviews welcome to the dead space retrospective the development of extraction is about as easy to sum up as you could expect visceral wanted to make sure dead space hit every media market humanly imaginable and at the time much to my chagrin the wii was a real competitor in the games industry despite being and this is true an absolute piece of [ __ ] the goal with visceral seemed to always be this shotgun kind of approach where no matter where you were and what media you like to consume you could count on getting some kind of dead space experience and these guys really went all out with this approach we got books movies comics and games of course although i am a little sad we never got that dead space branded mission to mars so while it looks like a cash grab from certain angles i like to live in a more optimistic world where the devs behind dead space really had an awesome story to tell and just wanted people to be able to consume that story in any form they wanted well my guess regardless of intent the result is undeniable if you played the first dead space game you could skip right over to the second or you could just play or read the media in between and have yourself a much more fleshed out game world seriously most of the dead space media i've consumed have been pretty good all things considered and at worst still tied into the game's universe in interesting and novel ways but to talk about exactly how that is we need to cover a story that is much better than it has any right being honestly good idea lexing and i will stay here too what extraction starts off down in the trenches with you witnessing the event that started the chaos that isaac clark would eventually have to deal with in the first game that means you're filling the shoes of an engineer down on the surface of aegis 7 one who's working with a team that's supposed to secure and transport the marker up to the ship during this process the marker activates i guess if that's what you could call it some kind of energy shoots out of it and all of the collective psychosis and all around shenanigans start popping up immediately first things first we need to repair some damage this energy event caused the equipment near the planet cracking site but as we do we get to witness some of the events hinted at in the first game and described in the comics seems like the miners and workers down here on the surface have all gone insane and start attacking each other this beginning sequence is actually really cool not only do we get to finally see what happened down here but we get this firsthand account of how people act when they're under the effect of the marker and before they're a necromorph actually speaking of which for this entire first mission we don't even fight any necromorphs just deranged people trying to kill us with pickaxes and repair equipment i couldn't really tell you why but there's just something about finally experiencing first-hand events you've only heard about in the games movies or comics i don't know it's just sort of cathartic i guess kind of feels like you're getting this more complete picture of things and to be honest i love that visceral went in this direction they could have easily just told the story of dead space 1 and moved on to the second game expanding on it but instead they gave us verbal and written accounts of events that we would eventually see resolved on the pages of a comic book or during one of the movies and now on the wii and the beauty of it all is that none of it feels artificially stretched out or contrived on the spot the first game gave us a very low resolution image of the overall story that led up to isaac's little brush with the marker and each piece of media since has been slowly but surely further resolving that image and now it's kind of satisfying finally putting the last pieces of this puzzle together anyways getting back to the actual story at hand for reasons i really don't want to spoil we end up seeing the rest of the game's events from a few different perspectives but the main set of eyes we'll be peering through is nathan mcneal a psec officer who's trying to keep the peace throughout all this insanity not too long after we jump into nathan's shoes he's approached by a guy named weller an old military buddy who's now serving on the ishimura after a little catching up weller asks mcneal to help him and his unit get some corpses from the morgue however once they actually enter the place the team finds it completely empty foreshadowing later events and this is when all hell breaks loose [Music] people all over the colony begin losing their minds and start attacking anyone in their way after fighting their way back to psec headquarters they find lexine the girlfriend of the engineer refers to control of the group decides getting off the colony and into the ishimura as their best bet and holy hell talk about going from the frying pan and into the fire on their way they come across eckert an executive type who's clearly up to some [ __ ] the group makes their way through a full-blown necromorph outbreak and eventually find their way onto the dune planet cracker only to find that things are just as bad up here so after a little bit of revising the new plan is to get off the ishimura and onto some kind of escape ship of course along the way they come across a few survivors one of which being nicole isaac's girlfriend from the first game she doesn't exactly play a huge role in this one but we do get this killer scene near the end that shows us a little more of what led up to her eventual fate during the mad dash to escape the group ends up getting whittled down just a bit thanks to the more obvious threats on board but on top of that there's a turn code to worry about and i don't want to give too much more away but rest assured this is a story that almost seems a little too big for your typical on-rail shooter it may not exactly hit all the dark and meaningful notes that the main series nails so well but for a spin-off i was massively impressed i feel like it's relatively common for a spin-off to be a less important side story that doesn't encroach too much on the territory of the mainline entries but extraction takes a different route by filling in a lot of the blanks left by the games and other media that makes up this whole dead space universe if it isn't obvious i really like this approach because with a lot of spin-offs you sort of go in knowing nothing substantial is really going to happen now don't get me wrong i loved ari revelations but i think we all knew that this wouldn't be the game where the mighty jill valentine would meet her end come to think of it the way the story plays out is a cool little topic of conversation in itself there are no pre-rendered cut scenes in extraction all of the story is given to you through the gameplay and since this is a wii shooter it never breaks that first person perspective for it so you actually feel like you're taking part in these conversations and events instead of feeling like you're watching your character experience them of course this being an on-rails shooter you're not going to be controlling your character or anything but this unbroken perspective just sort of adds a tiny layer of believability to things as far as voice acting goes these guys are far from the worst i've ever heard but they're not the most convincing either something's not right weller should have contacted watch out all of the people you end up meeting have accents from around the world which really pushes this idea that the entire earth has sort of united around the idea of planet cracking and i think this game does the best job of bringing that idea across so far i mean i didn't exactly get attached to any of these guys but the story has this fast and frantic pace where every second not spent figuring out how to escape this madness is spent shooting the arms off of necromorphs so i didn't really need to relate to their characters because i was more relating to their situation all of them are on the ishimura after all and we all know how that story ends so i'm on board with the whole we gotta escape but we gotta do it now direction the story goes in there is a small amount of world building throughout the affair but definitely not the huge amount you're used to in a dead space game and i think that's perfectly acceptable for a spin-off and since it's a shorter experience i won't go much further than this but i will say i was really surprised by extraction it didn't do a lot to break the feeling that this is a side story but within the confines of a story that already exists in the main series they were able to do a surprising amount pure and simple if you love dead space's world and specifically the events that led up to part one you should absolutely dig into extraction it's not going to add much of anything to the story at large but instead fills in a lot of gaps that'll have you saying hey i remember that or damn that's how that happened it really does this amazing job at completing the tale that we already heard and there's something really cool about finally seeing the things that you up to this point had only heard in audio logs and conversations with survivors if you find yourself overly interested in the world of dead space this will be a great little snack to tie you over until you play the next entry and it just kind of hit me that using a term like snack might not be appropriate in the context of a virus that uses dead bodies to morph into killing machines oh well [ __ ] it gameplay and extraction is a pretty standard affair if you've ever played an unreal shooter before essentially the game plays out as one long cutscene with spots peppered throughout where you will be allowed to sit in one place and shoot enemies now that's definitely a simplistic view of what's going on here but you guys get the idea sadly i'm not much of an on-rail shooter type of guy so the only thing i can really compare it to would be the last game of the genre i can remember playing resident evil dark side chronicles and from the start i can go ahead and give extraction to win in one very important metric if you guys watched my review of darkseid chronicles you might remember one of my main issues with it was this hyper exaggerated amount of camera bob the game used throughout the whole experience even when the camera would transition out of a cutscene and into a spot where accurate shooting needed to be done it would still bob and sway at a nausea inducing rate not only did this make it damn near impossible to shoot well but also made the game a pain to look at well extraction gives you an option for decreasing the amount of camera shake and i immediately set this to its lowest setting just to make sure we didn't have any repeats of my time with darkseid another thing extraction does better than its re counterpart is immersion now you might say it's a little hard to get immersed in a wii like gun shooter and i guess you have a point but i would argue immersion is even possible in an 8-bit game if it's done properly in extraction there are no cutscenes that show anything other than your character's perspective that means there's no dissonance caused by seeing your character in the third person and then switching to the first person for gameplay while this is relatively normal in video games i think it adds to the delineation between the interactive bits and the cutscenes making a game like this lets us know that we have two distinct modes of being in the game one where we watch the actions that we have no control over and one where we perform actions that we do now it is worth mentioning you can't actually control the actions on screen when extraction is having your character move from one area to another but the effect it has on your mind isn't diminished at all or at least it wasn't for me and as a cool little bonus in order to keep this unbroken immersion you'll notice when switching between characters instead of text informing you of who you are or a scene where the camera might zoom into the back of your character's head there will be a little scene at the start of the stage that will have your avatar looking into a reflective surface i don't know why but this really impressed me i mean they could have easily handled this in a less creative manner and i totally wouldn't have noticed but it seems like the attention to detail seen in the mainline series has found its way into this little spin-off which is really awesome but all of this relative minutiae aside extraction is pretty damn enjoyable as far as like gun shooters go the general formula is you'll pick a stage from the main menu and then take control of a character there'll be some expository dialogue or action at the start and as the camera follows its pre-ordained track it'll take a break and sit still for you to shoot at necromorphs at first this wasn't the most engaging approach for me since i was keeping my wiimote's cursor off the screen so i could get some nice captures of the story scenes without this little floaty thing obscuring them but then i started to notice that there's a slight amount of interactivity during these scenes in the form of collectible audio logs ammo weapons and most importantly upgrades sticking to the dead space canon you use a kinesis module to grab items out of the background and while this does work pretty well most of the time you'll notice that passing characters or an awkward angle we'll trick this thing up pretty often the hell is that normal not really no there was a sort of downside to this because during cut scenes i was trying to pay attention to what my characters were doing and saying but i was also trying to look at every little pixel in the background to make sure i didn't miss any of those precious upgrades but i guess i should talk about how these upgrades and collectible items actually work in the game before its mission starts you can set up your loadout kind of certain missions only lets you take one extra weapon into it probably for balance's sake and the bottom slot is always filled with your rivet gun but under the weapons you'll notice these little blue squares which show what level the weapon is at throughout each level you'll find these upgrades and with each one gained that specific weapon gains bonuses and attack power and capacity sadly these upgrades don't apply to the specific weapon you're holding when you get it so you might excitedly start a mission over again to grab a missed upgrade but then find out it's for the flamethrower or something else equally useless now i will say that these are hidden relatively well in the game sometimes not so much by obscuring them with the background but moreover having them out in plain view but while your character is moving frantically from one spot to another so you might only get a second or two to pick one up i wouldn't worry too much about missing out on these though even though i feel like they are necessary for really enjoying the game i only ever restarted a mission to get one of these missed upgrades once other than that i had nearly every weapon upgraded by the last stage despite not exactly going out of my way to get them and this method for grabbing upgrades counts for weapons too you start each level with the measly psx sidearm and a rivet gun with infinite ammo in case you run out of every single damage dealing implement you come across something that actually did happen to me on the second to last level as you progress through a level you come across weapon pickups and once you've obtained that weapon you can select it from the loadout menu and start any mission with it and just like the first ds game i spent most of my time with extraction using the plasma cutter it has the best spread mixed with the fastest reload and damage output and you know what we haven't even really covered the reload mechanic have we so this game takes a very interesting route with such a common act you can just press the l trigger to perform a reload but these are slow as all hell and in the beginning of the game before i knew about this mechanic i was getting my ass handed to me enemies would mob up on me and while shooting their limbs off they would always get several hits in while i was waiting for a reload to finish then i found out each weapon has a faster reload if you can hit the button again when the meter on the cursor gets to the highlighted area and at first i'll be honest i thought i would hate this i mean reloading is an incredibly necessary game function in modern shooters and i thought complicating it would make it harder to perform in the heat of a fight but i ended up actually really enjoying it instead of mindlessly performing a common action in the game i sort of had to keep my mind focused on several different areas at once i had to be spatially aware of which threat was closest i had to pick my shots and aim accurately and finally i had to make sure i was activating these reloads perfectly and the best part is you never really get used to this since each weapon has a different reload speed and highlighted area on the meter so using my plasma cutter exclusively actually played against me since i would switch to something else for a better effect but then i'd have to get used to the rhythm of reloading it overall i really liked what this added to the gameplay and luckily the shooting is fun enough that this little trick isn't wasted on a mediocre gameplay experience but there is an asterisk that needs to be thrown in there this all heavily depends on when you get the plasma cutter when i first started the game i was actually not enjoying myself much mostly because mcneil starts rocking only the psec pistol and this thing is terrible before you upgrade it it can take anywhere from two to three or even four hits to delim some of the enemies you'll come across which isn't too big of a deal on its own you do get a pretty big capacity on this thing so the extra shots you'll need to take doesn't mean constantly reloading but this thing has a crazy small cursor and if you're aiming at something that isn't point blank the shaky nature of the wii's motion tracking turns this into a dice roll i even took to resting my wrist on the arm of my chair to steady my aim but even then the cursor was moving all over the place now it's worth mentioning that a plasma cutter is available from the very start of mission 1 right above these lockers here but i missed this my first time around and had to get through some seriously tough encounters without it and while difficulty can make a game more satisfying sometimes i typically don't feel good about a game's combat if i'm taking a lot of damage for reasons i don't feel like are 100 my fault but like i said once you do get a hold of a weapon you enjoy the game becomes really really fun while you're playing you'll come across these little puzzles that are supposed to act as a hacking interface and while they give me heavy bioshock vibes they're pretty fun overall sometimes they show up while you're being swarmed by enemies so you'll need to switch between solving them and shooting necromorphs which is actually pretty tense interestingly every single weapon has some kind of alt-fire so no matter your loadout you should be able to deal with almost any situation the only problem there being how alt-fire is activated with the wii version you have to turn your wiimote on its side and i know that doesn't seem like much but turning your wrist to the side while also keeping this thin piece of plastic centered on your screen can be really uncomfortable or at least it was for me but in all fairness i've had a few wrist injuries that might make this a little harder on me than it would be for anyone else after sitting here and really thinking about it i don't have many downsides to talk about sure the kinesis can get blocked by a character rapidly moving into frame and holding a wiimote sideways can be uncomfortable but it's not like you're gonna need to do this a whole lot the game just sort of does what it needs to and it does it really well in my opinion there is one complaint though one that's truly worth mentioning but it's kind of inherent to the nature of the game and the platform i'm playing it on this may sound really stupid for someone who on purpose played a wii game but the biggest thing that i have to complain about is the absolute terrible nature of accurate aiming with the wii's very ineffective motion controls now i know i'm setting myself up for a huge influx of comments about how effortless and effective we motion controls are to the commenter personally but nearly the entire industry agrees that nintendo's low resolution ir motion tracking was incredibly flawed and hard to use and if that's not enough nintendo seemed to agree so in this one instance i'm confident in saying it's not just me i had my sensor bar on top of my monitor and calibrated to make sure i wasn't going to have too rough of a time lining up shots but as you can see from the footage my aiming was incredibly shaky and while i would love to blame years of coffee and energy drinks for this i had my hand resting on the arm of a chair for most of the experience even after i turned sensitivity down in the wii settings i still had this jittery and shaky reticle on screen now for most games this isn't much of an issue with re light gun games i just aimed for center of mass and had no problems hitting most targets but in extraction you're gonna need to hit some seriously tricky shots given the circumstances at mid-screen distance a necromorph's arm might be one or maybe two pixels tall and with anything other than the plasma cutter that's a shot you'll make more on accident than on purpose now you might argue i should let mid and far screen enemies just come closer but a lot of times that is not an option you might have noticed this already from watching the footage but in this game necromorphs can hit you with melee attacks even when they're far outside of the expected range so mid-screen is about when these guys start to become dangerous so if i waited for necromorphs to get close enough that aiming was easier i'd end up taking a butt load of damage from them being so close those of you that follow me on twitter have probably seen me criticize nintendo for opting into gameplay gimmicks over console and hardware design past the game kubera so maybe i am the odd one out here but i would wager most of you are willing to admit that the wii's motion controls specifically the ir tracking was a flawed implementation at best and even if it wasn't which it is this game does one thing that really took me a long time to get used to usually with rail shooters like this on the wii the developers will map shooting to the a button and this is not a random move hitting a button on top of the controller requires you to move your thumb a very small amount and uses gravity to press it which is far less likely to throw your cursor off target then pulling a trigger with your index finger with less than a half pound piece of plastic in your hands that needs to constantly be pointing at a specific part of the screen there were more times than i could count where i would have a great shot lined up but the tiny twitch of contracting my finger all the way to activate the b trigger caused me to pull up just enough to miss now it's not the worst thing in the world but something that will bother you and sadly these guys didn't see fit to allow players to rebind these buttons so you're kind of stuck fighting against the natural process of relaxing and contracting the muscles in your hand over and over again which as you might imagine can be a real pain to get used to so i guess take this criticism for what it's worth if you've never had any issues with how a wii game controlled and maybe your imaginary mythological self would have no problems here but for those of us that exist outside of legends maybe expect some difficulties that incredibly specific rant aside i really did enjoy this game it's short sweet and does exactly what it aims to tells another bit of the super interesting dead space lore while offering players a chance to experience this world from a different perspective and like i've said a million times on here i love spin-offs like this games that take an established series and play with core elements like genre design or style these can be an awesome way to play a competently made game that might rest a little bit outside of your comfort zone for me personally we rail shooters are quite literally the furthest thing from my mind at all times but the re and ds retrospectives made me go outside my wheelhouse a bit and honestly i had a great time doing it so maybe don't expect an offer on the same level as the main line entries but instead a cool little experiment one that's fun as hell and has the added bonus of bringing you a little further into the universe you love so much in the series at large a universe that's made up mostly of empty space and dead bodies so that's why they call it that you guys know i'm a big fan of the ps2 xbox and wii's approach to 480i and 40p video output so maybe i'm a little biased here but i love the way extraction looks this game is able to do some pretty amazing stuff when you consider the fact that it's running on hardware not much more powerful than the gamecube back in my review of darkside chronicles i was incredibly impressed by the sections with dynamic real-time lighting and sadly this game falls far behind that but it's not exactly an insult just kind of a surprise since the main entries in the series are sort of known for their atmospheric creepy and impressive lighting engines instead most of the shadows and lighting effects and extraction seem to be pre-baked but since the devs had full control over what you were seeing at all times thanks to the on-rails nature of the camera this was used to a masterful degree to emulate a lot of effects seen running in real time in other dead space games i typically prefer to see the raw video output for lower res games like this as opposed to masking aliasing with post-processing effects meant to obscure jaggies but since most people at the time were used to seeing a very soft 720p being internally upscaled to 1080p on their ps3s and 360s the devs decided to include this halo kind of effect to high contrast areas that light is touching and like i said i'm typically all about seeing those aliased edges in my 40p content but this isn't a bad look at all shouldn't you take his firearm if he cracks i'll deal with it the day i can't put down a rookie is the day i hang up that upscaled sharpness still shines through a majority of the time and the softening effect this trick has on the image is admittedly pretty pleasing the 3d models of the human characters you end up meeting along the way all look pretty damn good for the time and oddly enough their faces seem more true to life or at least less stylized than dead space 2 which i thought was pretty cool the necromorphs look exactly like you're used to and the blood in gore was actually surprising for the platform i know nintendo was trying to court an older audience during this time but i don't think i'll ever not be surprised by seeing a lot of blood on a nintendo console as far as design is concerned it seems clear that these guys wanted to bring across the exact same look and feel we're all used to and for a game running on far less resources than the numbered titles it does an amazing job there are scenes in this game that just flat out blow me away not just for how great they look but for how familiar they felt after playing the other two games back to back say what you want about visceral but they created a real living breathing world here everything from architecture to fashion has been thoroughly established in the previous games so when i see this area that i've never seen in a dead space game before i can still recognize exactly what series it comes from that kind of visual identity is rare in games and even more so nowadays with everything taking a hyper realistic approach to design honestly it sort of reminds me of star wars a series that i really don't enjoy but respect the hell out of lucas didn't just create a cool story he designed that world's fashion government industry and politics in video games all of these elements are often passed up through superfluous things like clothes that look realistically wet or hair that has a physics engine accurately moving each strand the point is dead space already has a recognizable style and it's a testament to how deeply integrated that style was that it's still perfectly recognizable not only on a different platform but one that has far less processing power aside from the stuff that ties into the series though this game just flat out looks great like i said the lighting is pre-baked and clearly artificial in design but still can look amazing in some areas and while the darker parts of the game get heavily washed out you won't see this happen too often i really only have three issues with extraction's presentation and one of them sort of doesn't count the main problem is those darker areas i was talking about at the start of the game you get this glowworm that gets used instead of a flashlight for some reason despite the fact that flashlights do exist in this world anyways this thing only comes into play maybe once per level but it over saturates the screen in this neon green light which can be a pain to look at especially since the light source is placed so close to the camera you end up being blinded anytime someone in your party gets near your face next up is slow down luckily it seems to almost never come into play when you're actually pointing and shooting but panning shots over a complicated backdrop will show a pretty noticeable dip in frame rate and while it doesn't affect gameplay or at least rarely does it's still not very nice to see in motion let's face it 30 frames per second is already an unoptimal way to play a game that requires fast reactions and speedy aiming slowing down past that point is just rubbing salt in the wound and last is my most petty complaint by far extraction uses a faux crt scanline overlay to both mimic that established dead space look and probably mask some of those jaggies now if i'm being honest it actually looks kind of good it serves both of its purposes well and it's transparent enough that it won't distract you why i take issue with it will be obvious to anyone who's ever tried uploading upscaled retro video to youtube there's just something about artificial scan lines that does not translate well to youtube's compression and scaling i'm sure a lot of you guys will be watching this not full screen or maybe even on your phone and i kind of worry that this will look bad because of that so it's not anything wrong with the game per se but it's just kind of a thing only a content creator would ever care about but that's not all there is to talk about here while writing up this review i was surprised to find out there was actually a ps3 port for extraction and you know i'm a man who respects a good port so let's jump in and see what we're dealing with no get out of my head now there's two ways to look at this ps3 version of the game first up it's nice seeing extraction operating at a higher resolution at first it may look like more detail has been added here but a careful eye will notice the same details present in the original it's all there if you're looking it's just harder to resolve such small pixels at a mere 480 vertical lines as i was playing it i got the feeling that this is the lazy kind of port the kind that just plops everything over to a new console without any kind of improvements or adjustments not only has the base game been transferred over with no bump in visual fidelity but it's a warts and all sort of deal so it still runs at 30fps and surprisingly the slowdown has been perfectly ported as well in both versions you'll see slowdown by 10 or more frames per second and in the exact same parts so this is clearly emulation and i guess there's an argument for accuracy with these things but if you aren't going to bump up things to a totally doable 60fps on ps3 maybe fix some of the slowdown at the very least i mean it's not like they were above making changes as you might have noticed the scanline effect didn't make it into this version and in its place is a static filter one that's not necessary at all as the game already has a very smooth look to it on the plus side hdmi output lets us get a pure digital capture of this game without having the console converting the internal digital video to analog and my framemeister taking that analog picture and reconverting it back to digital again so that's nice i don't have the ps move accessory so i can't say if it controls any better than a wiimote but i'd say it's a good bet that it does with a controller the game is definitely playable in my opinion and even easier in a lot of ways moving your wrist just a small amount to get from one side of the screen to the other is nice and holding your thumb in a direction for a few seconds is not the best replacement but at least i don't have to worry about my button presses moving my cursor off target so we'll call this one a tie if you enjoy playing these kinds of shooters with a controller you'll probably like this part of the game but if you're looking for a more one-to-one type of deal this version does so little to the look and feel of the game that playing the original isn't exactly a downgrade so maybe the ps3 port was a little lackluster but on the plus side this is an amazing looking game for the platform i did have a few small gripes but was pretty impressed overall with what they pulled off and yeah maybe your average person doesn't care quite so much about the context of what other wii games look like and yeah maybe i obsess over tiny graphical effects and processes but i can't do much about that listen all right i'm an addict okay i recognize that and i'm working on it just very slowly so if you enjoy 480p video as much as i do then this game will probably look great to you if not try the ps3 version they're so damn similar you really can't lose with either of them you just watched us kill them all well another day another dead space game in the books i genuinely enjoyed this one and to be honest i couldn't tell you if that's because it's a great game that exists on its own or because it's an okay game that exists in a world i'm very interested in either way i feel like this is a perfect entry into visceral's multimedia approach to the series the idea was to give a bunch of people a lot of different ways to experience this story and i think extraction is an amazing example of this at play so if you love the world set up in the main numbered entries and you're looking for a little more well there's no reason you shouldn't try this out admittedly i'm not a rail shooter type of guy so i couldn't tell you how it ranks against other games in the genre but it was fun as hell for me so maybe it'll have a similar effect on you and i think that's about all i can say on the matter but stick around next time we'll be diving into dead space's cinematic offerings which should be pretty damn cool but until then as always i hope to see all of you again right here on the dead space retrospective all right so i'm going to go ahead and level with you guys when i started this retrospective i was under the impression that there were only five games in this series dead space one through three extraction and the mobile entry on ios and android i genuinely had no idea something like ignition even existed and to further compound that situation it feels an oddly specific niche so i guess if you're one of those few people that love puzzle games but you can't seem to find a way to marry that hobby with your love for motion comics well i've got some good news for you what's up guys i'm jared from avalanche reviews welcome to the dead space retrospective you know i really struggled with the idea of where to start here because this is such an odd situation but i guess let's put our first foot forward with the basics dead space ignition is a puzzle game released on xbox live and psn saying it's a puzzle game though sort of narrows what we're actually dealing with here like all other dead space side media this game's point well besides making money was to tell a story that would better flesh out the events in between the main entries this time that story being the nonsense that preceded isaac clark's rude awakening on the sprawl in the second game so it's got way too much story for me to call it just a puzzle game but if i called it a motion comic some of you might be a little confused when you had to solve puzzles in between story sequences so if we can't really classify this one thanks to its reliance on storytelling i guess we should probably talk about that story huh you don't want to put your family in harm's way do you think that themselves one thing that i really like about the dead space extended universe is the fact that each piece of media tells its own story but more often than not that story directly leads into the events of one of the games this fill in the blanks approach is an awesome idea in my mind since it gives a chance for other artists to put their hands on the general ds timeline and if lore fanatics have issues with any of the events and say one of the movies or spin-off games well they can just stick to the original trilogy and go on living their lives without ever having to acknowledge their existence personally i love this concept the original dead space had such a fleshed out and fully realized world that i couldn't help but wonder what happened before and after my playthrough and these side stories have all told really awesome tales covering just that so i'll go ahead and save you guys some time by saying this is indeed another entry in that category what we're dealing with here is the story of franco a combination maintenance guy and cyberpunk hacker the game takes place just before and during the necromorph outbreak on the sprawl and connects those events to the very starting point of dead space 2. it starts out as a routine call to fix an elevator but a mystery soon develops when franco mentions that he suspects some kind of foul play kind of like the elevator was purposefully sabotaged from here we don't get too much time to ponder those implications because the boss calls our team over to a computer mainframe that's gonna need some puzzles solved before it's gonna work after yet another call from the boss franco and alex get the news about some kind of outbreak and there are a lot more gadgets that need fixing all over the sprawl because of it on the way to the next support ticket the two run face first into the business end of a full-scale necromorph infestation his partner alex being a cop takes charge and figures out the whole dismemberment thing only this time without the use of any kind of graffiti on the wall and the two make their way to a tram station until they get further orders and along the way they find people needing franco's help in about every room they come across throughout this process our guy has been getting secretive text messages with cryptic commands like ready to rise when alex finally asked about these weird messages franco laughs them off as wrong numbers or appointment reminders but in a way that shows he's definitely got something to hide what was that wrong number uh weaver said we're having calm trouble must have got lines crossed somewhere oh and i probably should have mentioned that it's implied these two are bumping uglies a key fact that makes one of the game's endings pretty damn heart-wrenching but to be totally honest i would really like not to spoil any of them this is a really short affair with my first playthrough lasting something like an hour and 40 minutes so it's not like you guys are going to need to invest a lot of time into seeing each of these alternate events and honestly i would recommend it this whole seeing things before and after they get wrecked as [ __ ] is a cool concept and the back and forth between franco and alex is fairly well done christ look at this now we know why they didn't get many outbreak reports down here there's nobody left to call them in overall like i said it's a pretty short story and i wouldn't say it holds a candle to the official dead space motion comic but i don't think it's trying to it seems to me these guys had a story to tell and some ideas for a few puzzles and well that's exactly what we got so i guess go into this thing understanding that it won't be some kind of 10 hour epic but instead a short but interesting story connecting the events just after ds1 and just before ds2 i don't know maybe i'm being soft on this thing but at this point i would jump at any chance just to get immersed into that oh so recognizable dead space world again so if you're in the same boat and you're just looking for another quick ds fix i think i found the perfect game for you oh also if you're wanting to check this motion comic out but you hate puzzle games there's actually an option to unlock all the story scenes without ever playing past the title screen so i guess that's kind of cool but imagine being a puzzle designer on this game and watching them institute an option that allows people never to see her work even for dead space that's pretty brutal i have no idea but i do know this i'm hanging onto this plasma cutter gameplay and ignition is pretty damn easy to summarize you spend a few minutes watching the motion comic unfold and the story will eventually contrive a reason for franco to hack something that hacking process typically plays itself out as one of three different puzzles first off there's traceroute which i guess plays like a version of tron's light cycle but without any of the turning this little mini game is probably the most mechanically challenging that you'll find in ignition but to be honest i think it might be rigged in my favor no matter how poorly i was doing i always seemed to win just by the skin of my teeth now i would absolutely love to tell you guys that this is because my finely tuned gaming skills but those of you have spent more than a few seconds in one of my streams knows that is definitely not the case [Music] so what do we say in here like at what point do we finish the fight oh you [ __ ] either way i had fun with this one as you continue playing the game you unlock cool new features like droppable traps for your opponents or counter hacking measures i guess the only complaint i had was that my ps3's analog stick felt a little loose kind of like there was a big dead zone so i had to move the stick a little more than i expected and for some reason this mini game doesn't let you use the d-pad even though it seems perfectly suited for this kind of gameplay while you're heading towards the finish the course will twist and turn and this can be super disorienting but in a really cool way when it would alter my perspective i felt like some kind of a super genius every time i was able to pull ahead while accounting for totally new directions with new controls not too bad a way to spend a minute or two in my opinion the next puzzle system override is kind of like an attempt at a tower defense game you can choose to disperse your little hacking tools in one of two directions and you have a lot of different tools at your disposal like ones that can stealth by certain nodes but get caught by the searchlight looking ones or my favorites the little guys that corrupt nodes and cause them to attack each other the game does try to emphasize some kind of strategy by having you alternate how many of these things you send out based on what nodes are present but i found the brute force method of a few dozen of the typical attack programs followed by the ones that take over nodes solved literally every problem i ran into as you progress through ignition you level up how many of these things you have access to and by the time you start your third playthrough you'll be able to unleash a near infinite amount of these things taking away all of the challenge but i'll be damned if it's not satisfying as hell finishing one of these boards regardless there might be no real strategy and they might be easy as hell but these puzzles ended up being my second favorite which leads us into my number one hardware crack now there's a little bit of context needed here around about four years ago i covered the top down action rpg cross code and during my time with that game i sort of found something out about myself as it turns out i really like puzzles that have me lining up reflecting streams of light don't ask me why but something about these kind of puzzles just speak to me and ignition has got me covered on that front to further compound just how hard it can be to line up two different color light beams you can combine the two for a third color and take certain obstacles off the board in a limited number of course all of these elements combine to make some really awesome puzzles but i did have one issue here sometimes you could spend a few minutes lining up a solution for it to turn out bunk and now you're in a situation where you don't have enough time to start a new plan of attack but you can't just restart the puzzle so you have to sit there like an idiot until the timer runs out i guess technically you could just quit the game and reload your save but that usually takes just as long as it would to wait so that is kind of annoying but other than that this was a pretty fun time so at this point you've basically seen everything dead space ignition has to offer gameplay-wise and while it's not a whole lot you gotta keep in mind what this game is trying to accomplish feeding you a cool animated comic story line while making you solve puzzles was the intended goal and in that sense i feel like ignition delivered a respectable package okay so i'm gonna level with you guys if it weren't for this retrospective i would definitely not have gone anywhere near a title like this but i'm glad i paid the 4.99 on psn for it as a 5 investment i think ignition does pretty well i came into this expecting to hate it but instead found a surprisingly enjoyable time that being said i don't get the feeling that a lot of you are the type that would drop a fiver on a puzzle game but if it turns out you enjoy this kind of stuff or if you want to jump into another really well done dead space side story i'd recommend giving ignition a shot i may not have wanted to play this at first but now that i have well i'm kind of glad i did oh you have got to be [ __ ] me now typically this is where i would talk to you about a game's presentation but i don't think i'll be able to tell you much more than what you can glean just by looking at the footage on screen the puzzle areas look appropriate for the series i guess and the motion comic while not having what i would call top tier comic art is still pretty okay looking some of the animation can be a bit too over the top sometimes which causes the original art assets to warp in odd ways but most of the time it looks perfectly fine and on top of that i did notice what looks like block boundary compression artifacts and scenes of the motion comic with a lot of movement in them but it wasn't all the time so i'm kind of left with the hard job of describing something that definitely doesn't look amazing but also doesn't look too bad either like imagine if someone forced you to write a four-page paper on your commute to work today that's how i feel right now what i mean by that is this game is about the minimum required amount of effort for something not to look terrible but they never strive for anything beyond that which i guess isn't the worst thing in the world sorry handsome private party so dead space ignition talk about a surprising outcome like i said before i did not expect to enjoy this game i mean what would you think if i told you there was an re game that consisted of just cut scenes and block pushing puzzles you you know what come to think of it i play the hell out of that well whatever you guys know what i mean if you have a five dollar bill burning a hole in your pocket i'd say this game is a pretty solid bet it'll only eat up over an hour of your time and if you don't like puzzles you can just watch the whole motion comic from the options menu so there's not a whole lot to lose here and on that note i need to get to work on the next entry in the series and the last video for this little project of mine so stay tuned for that and until then here's hoping i see each and every one of you again right here on the dead space retrospective the day has finally come i guess there's no sense in continuing to put it off i finally have to look at the black sheep of the dead space franchise a game that i'm sure most of you are aware carries just a little bit of infamy along with it but infamy aside i do plan on approaching this like i have with my previous retrospectives which means giving it an honest and fair look despite what everyone else thinks about it which actually should be pretty easy as not only have i never played the game before today but i really haven't watched a lot of reviews covering it so for the very last time it is my extreme pleasure to say ladies gentlemen welcome to the dead space wretch come join me make us whole again after dead space 2's lackluster sales numbers a third game in the series wasn't exactly a sure thing but after about a year of speculation and leaks we finally got confirmation that a new ds game was indeed being worked on now it's no secret that ea took a much stronger position in some of the decision making this time around and i don't think i'll be ruffling any feathers when i say that presence can be felt all over the game and sadly most the time it's in the worst ways imaginable and that really is a tragedy one that i will talk about at great length throughout this video trust me but i do think it's important to er on the side of objectivity here by making sure none of those negatives taint any of dead space 3's accomplishments don't get me wrong i am no fan of ea and more to the point i cannot stand their practices regarding dlc and altering a game's core gameplay style just to turn a better profit but honestly i feel like that's all i ever hear about dead space 3 so from here on out just keep in mind i'm going into this relatively blind and hoping for a good time for all i know that may be something i don't end up finding and if that is the case you guys will definitely hear all about it but i'm not interested in [ __ ] on a game just because it's popular to do so and with that in mind let's see if this game's story is worthy of bookending such a well-loved franchise and i'm coming out of the gate swinging here dead space 3 in my opinion does a pretty good job at capping the franchise off at least as far as the story goes with the books movies comics and spin-off games we got a whole lot of dslr and after playing and watching all these pieces of media for months on end what i really wanted was a satisfying conclusion to the series and this is definitely not coming from uh god i hope this series ends soon sort of place i really did love these experiences i had but a part of me also wanted to see the kind of climactic ending i knew these guys were totally capable of so maybe we should jump right in because there's a lot to talk about here hey what is it what's going on nothing nothing everything's fine dead space 3 starts off with a really good recap of the previous games and even the events taking place long before the first game like the formation of the unitologist church although if you haven't played those previous games the sequence is going to spoil a lot of really cool revelations that you might have otherwise discovered on your own although i guess if you're the type of person who would go into the third game of a franchise without playing the titles that came before you aren't likely to care about that the game proper starts with a sequence showing events that happened hundreds of years ago on a strange icy planet called tal volantis now these events will be further expanded on later in the game but as far as an nmedius rez introduction goes it sets up a pretty awesome mystery who are these guys why are they looking for this codex why are their necromorphs all over and why is our character being rewarded for his hard work with a good sized hole to the head glad to hear that all that will be further contextualized later but after the pre-intro we're taken to a dingy apartment where isaac clark lives alone according to the game himanelli from the last game had a nice little happy life together but as the necromorph scourge spread and threatened all life in the galaxy a little bit of a wedge was formed it seems like ellie is looking for a way to keep what she experienced on the sprawl from happening everywhere else but after what isaac has been through being used by the marker earthgov and the unitologist our guy understandably just wants to live out the rest of his life avoiding ever coming into contact with any of those things again he seems to have taken a very defeatist kind of oh well what are you gonna do type of attitude and this is what drove ellie away now i've seen a lot of people criticize this move but i don't know it sort of makes sense to me from a narrative standpoint here's a guy who's seen terrible things been experimented on has come close to death a countless amount of times and held many full conversations with his ex-girlfriend who just so happens to be long dead honestly i might develop a little distaste for humanity myself in that situation but ellie is really gung-ho on finding a way to save the human race and since that would include the people who repeatedly stuck a fuck-off needle into his eye on multiple occasions well isaac's not so into that idea so since then isaac has been living the bachelor life until earthgov bust in and not so subtly insinuates he might want to take part in a rescue mission you know the kind of subtlety that comes at the end of a gun so it turns out ellie joined some kind of military civilian task force charged with finding the origin of the markers with the hopes that this will end the apocalypse that humanity is facing however she went missing and before that according to her isaac's the only guy who can finish the fight surprise surprise on top of that it seems like the unitologist church has reached its final form as some kind of religious insurgency type of thing looking to speed up the whole end of all human life and bet your sweet ass they are very much aware of the guy who's been thwarting them this entire time aka isaac clark i actually really like this setup it feels very cinematic the way that the writers have set up a situation where most human beings in the galaxy are in a panic which allows a small contingency of religious zealots to form an armed force that's big enough the government who's mostly worrying about killing these walking corpses with ships for arms can't exactly do much about them this is a genuinely tense situation and it feels appropriately bleak given the context of the full dead space series on the way to getting off the planet isaac runs into this absolute gem of a guy who's running the aforementioned unitologist uprising they know clark is the one who stopped them in the past and they are fully aware that he can destroy markers thanks to his special position as one of the only people alive to have come in close proximity to one without completely losing it or turning into a mess of bones and flesh speaking of which these guys have been going around to major human colonies and destroying the structures that house these newly manufactured man-made markers so they're the ones who've been spreading these necromorph outbreaks which would explain why the problem still persists after clark destroyed the marker in part two which gives us this really nice start there's the government initiative that is about as effective and well put together as any bureaucratic product and then there's the unis who are looking to cap not only isaac but the rest of the world as well so they can bring about their idea of a utopia one where every living being is well dead isaac can't stand earthgov because of what they did to him and he's not exactly fond of the unitologist either so he's really only here to save ellie and i sort of like that while throughout the series he's sort of been the chosen one type of character he's always seemed to resist that idea seems to me like the guy just wants to be left alone to draw scribbles of markers on his wall and not get needles shoved into his eye i feel like that's an understandable position to take but instead he's heading to an ice ball of a planet with the intention of saving yet another ex-girlfriend and after a little bit of regrouping our team makes their way to ellie's last known position where they fall prey to the same exact thing that took ellie's ship down this leads the rescue team to finally catching up with her and her crew but more important than that it looks like our girl has moved on and is slapping skins with this dork now so with the initial goal completed now they shift gears into figuring out why the ship graveyard's out here why there's active mines all over and why every single detail seems to be pushing them in the direction of tau volantis once on the actual planet a process that goes just about as smoothly as anything else that involves isaac clark the group find out that this planet is believed to be the marker homeworld the origin point that connects all the markers that have been found throughout the galaxy and the sovereign colonies armed forces which i think is a separate entity to earthgov we're here to figure out exactly how this could be used to help mankind if all the corpses weren't a dead giveaway though they didn't exactly find what they were looking for in fact all of the info we found shows that some kind of order was given that all people taking part in this expedition were to kill themselves to keep something a secret and again this was an amazing story point for me the side documents and audio logs scattered all over the colony paint this familiar picture of people starting to lose their [ __ ] but this time around the government seems to be trying to nip it in the bud by having everyone who even knows about the expedition eat a bullet come on valerie just put that down i'm sorry they don't have to know i'm so sorry not as sorry as i am commander so i obviously started wondering what the hell could have been so important that everyone here had to die it wasn't that the marker caused necromorphs i mean we knew that already so what the hell was going on down here well that's a question that i sadly won't be able to answer without some massive spoilers for both the base game and the dlc that essentially acts as its true ending so if you haven't played dead space 3 yet either click on the link in the description or skip to the time stamp on screen because we will be going in deep here and i'd rather you guys piece this story together yourselves sound like a plan all right let's do it you've got me let the others go so through a combination of written files audio logs and story interactions we find out that this was never the marker home world but on the plus side we weren't the only ones who were confused about this instead of an origin point this place seems to be where an alien race tried to accomplish the same exact goal that we came here to do and when i say we i mean humankind these aliens found the markers too and were looking to use them for their own ends but just like us met an awful end thanks to the marker's true purpose which seems to be to assimilate all life into these huge moons made out of flesh so we essentially came here assuming these aliens created the marker and thought that we could learn how to harness it for ourselves but instead found out these guys knew just about as much as we did and similarly when they found out exactly what would happen when the marker was activated made some kind of fail-safe that completely iced the planet over killing off their entire race with the hopes of saving all life in the galaxy and as a little side note here i absolutely loved this because it was such a great misdirection i went through the entire game just assuming i would finally see who was behind these markers but they pulled the rug out from under me in the most satisfying way after finding out about this alien race we figure out these guys built a fail safe into their machine which would destroy the planet's moon which was in the process of becoming one of these balls of living flesh so our group gets a hold of the means to do this but danic you know the guy who looks like elton john he's also on the planet and the codex that would let us destroy the moon can also set it free to devour whatever it comes across during our scuffle with the unis we see ellie die which was actually very emotional but i know i wasn't the only one who could tell they were gonna reveal this to not be true in the future and we end up with this sophie's choice where we have to decide between letting the only person isaac loves die or doom all of existence to a fate worse than death and for some reason the emotionally cold person on the team is the one who makes the decision for us the ending of dead space 3 was this really great self-sacrificing moment that really struck a chord with me someone has to be present to activate this machine and crash the moon into the planet and isaac knows it's gotta be him don't get me wrong it's not like i want the guy to die but it's an understandable mindset he's doing this to save everyone but especially ellie and the scene where she realizes this is a real gut punch it was this great little moment of someone sacrificing themselves to save everyone else and i thought it was very fitting so i'm disappointed to say that this is all undone after the credits with clark trying to contact ellie i don't know it just kind of felt cheap to me they did the same thing at the end of dead space 2 but we knew another sequel was coming i think these guys were trying to book in the series and it just seems really odd to end it that way but you absolutely can't sell dlc for a game if you kill off the main character in the last entry so we're left with this which brings us to the dlc campaign awakened a series of events that take place just after the end of the game and serves as what you might call the real ending to the series awakens starts off confirming that both clark and carver made it out of their ordeal alive even if they don't really get how so the rest of the story is spent with them just trying to get off the planet for a while clark assumes that them getting off the planet is exactly what the marker wants so they can lead the moon straight to earth but after a little digging it turns out that's old news as far as the markers are concerned they already know exactly where earth is so the two jump in a ship to warn everyone and when they finally get home the happy ending turns into a nightmare when they see several of these brethren moons already there seemed like while they were out the world sort of ended a conclusion that i guess really fits the series if you ask me i mean dead space was always very very bleak and i think this is probably the only route they could have taken while staying true to the general feel of the franchise the only thing i would have changed would be well for clark to stay dead i know this would have killed any sequel potential but come on it was the perfect book and all the [ __ ] the guy's been through the thought of him finally bowing out of the series was sad as hell and it hit like a freight train and undoing all that after the credits sort of made it feel cheap but i can't admit there is also a part of me that was happy to see him make it out okay in fact as i'm writing this i'm realizing that him dying outright would have been a mercy compared to him living through all this only to show up and be devoured by a moon-sized collection of dead bodies so maybe we'll call this one even and with that in mind let's get the newcomers back in here i still don't understand how we survived maybe we didn't so to summarize things i feel like dead space 3's ending was pretty damn satisfying and the devs at least had the foresight not to include too many sequel hooks that would have made the game's conclusion feel more like a to be continued than the end which goes for the game's vanilla ending and not the one included in the awakening dlc a piece of story that actually finishes the game's events with a price tag of 9.99 now i have some well-established feelings on dlc and well i kind of hate it in fact ever since it's advent i may have purchased maybe two or three pieces of dlc max but first and foremost while the events at the end of awakening are really cool in a fan fiction sort of way they are in no way required at least in my opinion don't get me wrong it's a cool ending but it's the kind of ending you probably already theorized in your head by the time you finish the credits in the base game plus this dlc still costing 9.99 when i got the entirety of dead space 3 for half of that does scream [ __ ] money making scam to me so i guess play it if you got it in some kind of bundle but don't go out of your way thinking it'll provide a more satisfying ending than the actual game because if anything it's just the same scenario but stretched out over an hour so if you're planning on playing dead space 3 specifically for the story just know there's some cool stuff going on inside this dlc but none of it is a must play type of deal and on that note i honestly do recommend you guys play this game for its story it definitely does feel like a departure from the other two main titles but in my opinion this is about the only way they could have ended the series as most of you may know by now the dead space mo has always been having isaac play a small role in the events of the overarching plot using the guise of him escaping some gruesome situation as a way of keeping the general events of the larger story relatively small compared to the mariana trench of things going on outside that escape plan well in three all of those chickens come home to roost and we finally get a few answers to some of the questions that i don't know about you but we're burning a hole in the back of my mind for a while on top of this we get what i would call a very movie feeling plot with isaac and crew exploring a pool of environments that were really interesting in this indiana jones globetrotting sort of way don't you worry the good stuff is still relegated to discoverable text and audio logs a move that as a fan of resident evil like 100 back and we're also dealing with a much larger cast than in previous entries which i know does pull away from the generally isolating feel of the other games in the series but don't you worry the game still spends most of its ladder runtime contriving reasons for the team to split up so all's not lost in that sense however there are some issues i had with this dead space swan song first up i really didn't like how hard they were trying to get me to hate ellie's new boyfriend good to see you made it isaac you know maybe we should give you two some time alone huh a i'm already on team isaac that's just not necessary b it felt like cheap writing in order to force an emotional response from the player which i don't appreciate a feeling that comes back as members of the team keep individually getting picked off as the story progresses instead of getting to know these people and being sad when they eventually die i was racking my brain trying to predict which teammate would bite it after what cutscene now i'm fully aware that a good writer will try to induce these kinds of emotions in the player but good writing makes that process nearly invisible to the untrained eye my point is go ahead and kill off major characters all you want just don't make it so obvious that you're trying to manipulate me when you do it and as far as complaints go i did have one final issue throughout the game because re5 happened and the entire game industry is committed to not letting any of us forget that dead space 3 was made with co-op multiplayer in mind which means making room for another main character in the co-op mode you get a lot of interaction between these two which builds the new guy's character up a bit and makes it feel like he's went through some kind of arc but if like me you'd rather play these games solo you get to a point where carter starts acting like he's been through some kind of development and formed a bond with isaac despite the fact that for a majority of the game i might have said a total of six words to the guy so when he ends up asking isaac about redemption and being a bad person it comes out of left field and gives the impression that he's been going through a lot of personal growth just off screen where you can't see is that what a good man does good men mean well you just don't always end up doing well definitely not the worst issue with the story i've ever seen but it is a damning look into what took precedence in d3's design process functionality innovation and on-brand storytelling took a dead serious back seat to placating common gaming trends for the time a trend that you will see repeating itself a lot during this video but don't let that get you down dead space 3 for all intents and purposes had a really cool story i enjoyed seeing isaac clark finally turn into the hero he's been avoiding like the plague this entire series and even though i complained about it just a second ago carver definitely grew on me a surprising amount for the little i actually interacted with him in the single player mode i'm sorry yeah don't be we're not friends seeing ellie return but having her just out of reach both realistically and relationship wise was a pretty smart way of giving the players what they want but still using her as a motivating goal without ruining the will they won't day vibe we got from part two the set piece driven more action movie bend a lot of the elements take in this last entry can feel a little more like uncharted than dead space but i think it still fits in some weird way plus the soundtrack did an amazing job of amplifying the emotional scenes and the overall mystery would i have loved to return to the more atmospheric droning noises like we saw in the first two games sure but the more cinematic orchestral approach does a great job of building and releasing tension so color me on board with it look like i've said a million times already it is a bit of a departure and i could totally understand die hard fans being upset at that change but coming from a guy who newly became a fan of the series it seems to still have that dead space heart beating underneath the more flashy elements added here there may be a lot of reasons to stay away from what was essentially ea the video game but i'd say the story is not one of them even if you've heard all the complaints and have sworn this title off for what i would call very valid reasons at least watch a playthrough of the game on youtube trust me the story is one area that i can say confidently survived ea's mishandling something i definitely can't say about the gameplay alright let's crack this egg on paper it would seem like visceral's got a pretty simple job here you just take the winning formula of isaac clark needing to escape some form of necromorph outbreak and then apply it to a new game with some minute additions or changes it seems like an easy home run but we're dealing with some odd circumstances for this release like i mentioned in my other videos dead space 1 really took off in the sales charts maybe surprisingly so but dead space 2 made back only a small portion of the money ea invested in the project so when it came time to release a new entry in the series you best believe ea was breathing over visceral shoulder the entire time influencing them to incorporate mechanics seen in other popular games at the time and pushing a bigger emphasis on multiplayer and in-game microtransactions a scenario that should surprise no one as it's the ea hustle we've been used to for what seems like two decades now so when i go through the results of all this with a fine-tooth comb just keep in mind these guys were literally listening to their bosses and since their bosses were the ones footing the bill i don't think you can blame them for a whole lot or at least that seems to be the case to me to be totally honest i haven't seen a lot of direct information that points at ea as being the ones who made these changes and not visceral themselves but we do have a historically recognizable pattern here and if precedence is good enough to work in the us court system i feel like it's good enough for my terrible youtube videos and with that damning lead in why don't we go over the scant amount that has stayed the same and the ocean of changes to be found here in dead space 3. first of all a lot of the more surface level elements that don't require a lot of deep analysis to understand are all here to varying degrees for example you're still playing a third person over the shoulder shooter with an emphasis on limb dismemberment progression is still handled in a very straight line sort of manner only this time having a few portions of the game that allow for backtracking and exploration only it's in such small amounts that it feels like an idea no one really wanted to commit to your inventory shooting item gathering interactions and weapon upgrades all pretty much work exactly like you're used to but there's a little more going on under the surface like i alluded to before this game was a clear case of too many cooks in the kitchen or possibly too many recipes in the single dish might be a better descriptor the amount of elements added in the game that weren't present in the last two could fill a damn book first off we have a change in the fundamental way the game is played in the last games taking a limb off an enemy was the best way to take them down and technically that's still the case here but there's a few additions that led to this being shoved out as an optimal strategy and to talk about that further we're going to need to go over a few more changes that made it possible so not only is there now a cover mechanic but to make that worth putting in we also have enemies with guns and i think we can all agree that's exactly what an atmospheric horror game needs is more shootouts between space marines and with the addition of these new enemies some changes needed to be made to the existing cast of baddies to sort of balance the mixture so what we're left with is a roster of necromorphs that must be at least twice as fast as even the most nimble bad guys in ds1 or two and at first you would think this move would be more in my specific corner as ds2's rock solid in your face action-packed gameplay was one of my biggest compliments but well the word poor balancing comes to mind a lot here since each enemy in the game moves much faster than your average necromorph they can get to you much faster make sense right well if these guys are closing the gap and the limb dismemberment is supposed to be a relatively slow process with enemies still able to damage you with just a single arm on their lonely torso while your strategy is going to have to change up a bit on the hard difficulty was taking me around three or four direct hits to cut off a leg or an arm but an automatic weapon like a rifle or uzi basically served the same purpose but had a rate of fire that actually made it a viable option and trust me it took me a very long time to figure this little tidbit out in the previous games automatic weapons were very much situational so when i started this game up i was trying to play it like an actual dead space title and it just was not working for me which led to the first two or three hours of the game being incredibly frustrating i kept playing it like other ds games and trying to make use of the plasma cutter but as soon as i figured out a faster firing weapon that caused a bit of hit stun does the same job but much more efficiently well the plasma cutter quickly rotated out of my lineup now i know what some of you might be thinking if the difficulty was a big draw for me in part two why the hell am i complaining about it in part three well that's the issue it's actually a really easy game sure i was getting hit like it was going out of style but look at my inventory in the first 20 or 30 minutes of starting it up what we're looking at right now is more healing items than i could conceivably need for the next hour or two of gameplay in fact it wasn't till the last 30 minutes of the game that i ever had to craft a healing item myself before that point i was regularly just throwing away healing items because they were clogging up space in my inventory for ammo so what's the issue then well the game isn't very satisfying for more than half of its run time or at least it wasn't for me i found that i kept taking these [ __ ] hits during combat now like i said i could heal these injuries no problem and even if i did die more often than not i would just respawn inside the very same room i just wasn't enjoying myself the enemies i was facing were given a huge boost in speed and in return all i got was this terrible dive roll that just looks dumb as hell in a dead space game and on top of that it was kind of hard to do on the fly in the pc version for some reason or maybe my head just wasn't translating very well into a dead space game where i had to do a lot of evasive maneuvers so to sum things up i just really wasn't satisfied with the combat thanks to a few tweaks made in the necromorphs.ini but i'm not exactly [ __ ] on the game and there's a reason for that it becomes incredibly fun when a few milestones get met and it's then that i finally saw the appeal here now to tell you this story i do have to start from the beginning at first i figured out the plasma cutter just wasn't cutting it pun intended so i went against my dead space instincts and used an automatic firearm for my main weapon but i was still lacking a lot of stopping power so i made myself a shotgun and you would assume well there you have it problem solved right well once again we're gonna have to go over another edition dead space among their nearly infinite list of changes implemented a universal ammunition system this means all ammo you find can be used in all the weapons you have so if you have several hundred rounds of ammo the developers are going to have to nerf the more powerful weapons and they did that so that this game's version of the bfg or whatever its most powerful variant of a weapon is doesn't make up your main arsenal all the time and in that spirit the shotgun is nearly unusable for a majority of the game the reason being it takes roughly two and a half weeks for isaac to recover from a single shot and you'll remember one of my complaints was that enemies are now much faster and more aggressive so if i do take a shot with the shotgun and it doesn't happen to knock the enemy back well that's a guaranteed hit period now this game does allow you to essentially combine weapons making two guns out of one physical body but you can't fire one weapon while the other one is still in its post-fire state so throughout the entire time there was some invisible countdown that was keeping me from firing the more reasonable weapon for seconds after firing the shotgun and this also applies to changing weapons which means firing the damn shotgun is a commitment the game really expects you to buckle down and deal with so for a good long period i was stuck in this limbo where yeah technically i could kill enemies but it just wasn't fun like it was in dead space too i was just kind of going through the motions to beat the game and get the footage and getting more and more frustrated along the way that is until i discovered the resources needed to build an explosive option at first i had a grenade launcher at my disposal but with some modification it turned into a rocket launcher now i was a serious threat to these necromorphs but to balance my newly acquired godlike power i had to make sure i didn't use this thing in close quarters because the splash damage would take me out even faster than the necromorphs i was shooting at and on a completely unrelated side note including the stasis effect of my shots made these mortal mistakes turn into some kind of slow motion hilarious reminder of just how dumb i was being [Music] but it wasn't long after this that i found an upgrade that makes my rocket splash damage do absolutely nothing to me and from here on out calling it a cake walk would be an insult to the hard work that goes into walking on a cake i was steamrolling everything i came across and the stasis coating meant even hits that weren't kills slowed down enemies long enough that i was able to get off another shot with no issue and oddly enough this is when the game became actually fun when i finally found the right combination of guns and buffs i could actually enjoy encounters but sadly every upgrade that came after that just made the game easier and easier till i started using the plasma cutter again just to insert some kind of difficulty back into the experience so i think it's safe to say that either ea or visceral had issues seeing that making tiny changes at the foundation level might affect nearly every single aspect of the game that made it recognizably dead space a sentiment that carries over into the other popular gaming mechanics shoved into this title with little to no care building off the limited amount of weapon customization that could be found in the other games ds3 has you collecting resources meant to craft your weapons every little aspect of your guns can be customized and to be totally honest i really enjoyed this aspect of the game i spent a very very long time in front of these benches just trying to tweak every little aspect of my weapons to make them perfect and to be totally honest with you i kind of got flashbacks of parasite e1 which is a really good thing these collectible resources made exploration way more fun and gave me an actual tangible reason to go off the beaten path every time i came across one of these workbenches i would be drawn back into making tiny micro adjustments to certain parts of my lineup with the intention of finally making a weapon that felt really good to use which led me to the insane realization that i was having way more fun customizing these weapons than i was having actually using them on necromorse on top of crafting and tweaking guns it's also possible to find or craft upgrades that affect their stats so you might figure this would be the solution to my shotgun complaints but at the point in the game where the shotgun was actually viable giving it my best rate of fire upgrades didn't even move the needle leading me to feel like they might have hard-coded some attributes into certain weapons as some kind of twisted misunderstanding of what balance is that being said as i entered the late game i was absolutely dripping with huge stat increasing upgrades but by this point the old rocket launcher mounted to a machine gun approach was the absolute best answer to anything the game could possibly throw at me meaning we're left with a little detective work to do here either we assume that a game studio that has shown twice already that they really understand the intricacies of making a mechanically satisfying game totally [ __ ] the bed on one of the most important factors that goes into a third person shooter which i guess is technically possible but not very plausible given this situation or by their hand or eas the game was purposely altered incentivizing spending real-life money on resources weapons and upgrades that bring the game to a playable state of course i can't really say for certain which one of these scenarios led to this idiocy but i think we all know what option is the most likely it seems very clear to me that the early game was purposely made frustrating or at least less mechanically solid with the direct intention of leading players straight into the pretty substantial list of pay to win extras that are still available today and i doubt very much there's a lot of you that are looking to disagree because well you know ea [Music] so on the plus side i did finally get to a point where the game satisfied me in the same way part 2 did but on the negative side by that point the game was nearly over and it wasn't too long after that that i was able to essentially break the game over my knee and keep in mind i didn't go into this with that intention i mean we're talking about a guy who never uses code veronica's knife or final fantasy tactics item duplication trick specifically because i like a good fair challenge i guess i just have no intention of making games less fun for me and speaking of which the next stupid mid-2000s gaming trend to be forced on a dead space players was the old reliable re5 inspired partner mechanic a system so poorly implemented into the main game that it seems the developers or ea just never expected anyone to play this game single player all over the place you'll find consoles with two terminals clearly meant to be used in tandem with a friend and rooms only people playing in multiplayer can even enter now you'd figure the game trying to copy ri5's partner system would at the very least copy the part of it where your partner is always there either being driven by another person or the ai but instead dead space keeps the second player's avatar the hell away from you in the single player so when you think about it there are two separate experiences to be had with dead space 3 and one of them got the lion's share of the attention and it feels a little dirty taking an amazingly fun single-player story-driven atmospheric horror game and shoehorning in a type of gameplay that would see your core audience that is to say people looking for a fun single-player story driven atmospheric horror game sucking hind teeth listen i'm not saying no games should be cooperative multiplayer but come on you could have at least shown the restraint it took capcom to wait till the fifth entry before you started pulling [ __ ] like this so after all this complaining what's the conclusion here well it looks like an absolute [ __ ] ton of features were baked into this game and if you ask me a majority of it was to the game's detriment now don't get me wrong sequels are supposed to add to their predecessors but these are supposed to be baby steps meaning you probably shouldn't add seven separate new game mechanics to an established series and expect it to retain some kind of an identity afterwards honestly if you ask me this could have been called 2013 the video game and it would have made a lot more sense but i am gonna level with you guys even though i just spent a dead serious four pages in the script complaining about the game i did have a lot of fun here all of my pissing and moaning wasn't because this is a bad game it's more frustration that this game is nowhere near as good as it could have been and as the others used to be the combat when i actually had the tools for it was really fun and even though you could argue they went overboard with the massive amount of action set pieces i gotta say they're pretty damn exciting and they're spread out enough that it doesn't feel like a call of duty title or anything after leaving his apartment isaac and the crew get stranded out in the space around towe volantis and while i wouldn't call it open world it certainly gives you more options than the typical dead space game even if those options do add up to a single non-essential destination honestly at first i thought this was going to turn into something more akin to stalker or metro exodus where we would have smaller more open areas to explore with side objectives scattered all around a style i would love to see walking around in a dead space suit one of these days the puzzles may not be silent hill tear mind exercises but there are a [ __ ] ton of them and they straddle that fine line between easy enough to figure out that the solution is clear after a few seconds of looking at them and challenging enough that you aren't just going through the paces each time you come across one if you'll remember one of my issues with part two is that there weren't a lot of these puzzles and this game may have more than the first and second game combined so that's good i also really like sending these little bots out to scavenge for crafting supplies you can sit them down anywhere and they'll look for resources while you go about your business but there are spots where they'll find the optimal amount of junk so i ended up spending a lot of time backtracking the previous locations to find one of these hot spots and putting one of these adorable little guys to work this was a surprisingly cool little mechanic and it fit in well with the crafting and sort of serves as a very tiny almost microscopic band-aid to put over the wound that is this game's obviously shady practices with dlc another feather in its cap would be its length typically story driven single player games like this have a pretty short run time but i spent nearly 30 hours on this one and while that does include side content the awakened dlc and me going back in to get specific footage i'd say at least a good 20 hours of that was me just playing the game as usual the best part about that being that it was fun enough that the entire game didn't seem like a slog so i can appreciate when a developer makes doing the same thing for 20ish hours stay fun and interesting the whole time and i guess that means we should probably take all this disparate information and condense it down into something you guys can actually absorb dead space 3 is about as far from the other dead space titles as it possibly could be it seems clear the money-making trends of the early 2010s were all squeezed into this one package and i don't exactly need powers of clairvoyance to see that this was all clearly ea stepping in and trying to ensure they actually made a return on investment this time and to be totally honest this happens to varying degrees with nearly every aaa release in the industry the only difference being most companies have the wherewithal to not make their meddling so damn painfully obvious whereas ea might as well have printed their intentions on the box i will say that it is a relief to see practices like this becoming more and more rare in modern games but going back to this dark age of game development does make me worry for the future a little bit all in all i wouldn't call dead space 3 a terrible mess or an unplayable game and truth be told a majority of my complaints come from me expecting something that lives up to the established high mark of quality seen in the other games of course there are very real issues that exist outside of my own biases or expectations but i would wager a lot of these have to do with visceral cramming several diametrically opposed game mechanics into one package dead space as a series had an identity before this you knew what to expect when you picked one of these games up but if we use three as a barometer the next ds game if we ever see one could be a first person open world base builder with dark souls combat and it genuinely wouldn't surprise me listen the point is the worst defense you're gonna find in this game is the disrespect it pays to all the effort that it took to get the series where it was up to this point for a short time we had this slow building dark brutal mix between alien and the thing and it was truly amazing then we got to see the big hollywood version of such an approach and while it did lose a little of that hungry independent feel it still felt undeniably like a dead space game and now well we have nearly any game that released during the xbox 360 era just pick one and it probably plays exactly like that the bright and unique colors of the rainbow may look beautiful and vibrant on their own but what happens when we combine them all together each one loses its appeal and we're left with this gray unrecognizable mass and i think that's what we have here a game trying so hard to be like the other titles that surrounded it on launch that it somehow forgot to be dead space in the end again i want to reiterate i'm not saying this is a bad game in the general context of video games it plays really well and it can be really fun sometimes what this is though is a slap in the face to people who are expecting something that would even remotely look like dead space and now that i think about it seems to be a damn near universal opinion in fact for the last few months my twitter and youtube comment section has been two-thirds full of people expressing their condolences for me having to play a game that went so far out of its way to [ __ ] on everything that made it popular in the first place and yet it seems like when that same argument gets used against the ff7 remake a lot of you seem to change your tune interesting that well i've gone off on a rant here but the main point is i actually do recommend dead space 3. i found the location set pieces and subject matter kept me interested the entire time the combat and dead space 3 was hot garbage for a while but when i figured out i couldn't approach it like other ds titles i started actually having fun was it as fun as part two's visceral and amazingly energetic combat well no way in hell but it's still pretty okay with moments of actual greatness hidden in there so if you're like me and all the negative reviews have kept you away up till now maybe think about grabbing a cheap used copy off of ebay for next to nothing or a digital version in some kind of sale and you might find more entertainment than you bargained for one thing i can guarantee you won't find though is something that plays like a dead space title and without hyperbole that is a god damn shame as the first game in the dead space line to try out co-op multiplayer as its main focus i'd be remiss if i didn't take advantage of it so i put out the word on my patreon and one of my supporters was nice enough to jump in a game with me and i have to say i was really surprised at how it changed the overall feel of the game speaking of which i want to give a giant thanks to jazzo mcspazzo for hopping in a multiplayer session with me and being cool is all hell if you guys want to show her some love i'll link her twitch channel in the description before we get into any of that stuff though there is one giant negative to cover here playing this game with a friend can suck any emotion or impact from the story scenes and i think that's something that probably doesn't need to be said but honestly those story cut scenes were most of what i enjoyed about three so if you're like me and really enjoy turning your brain off and falling into a game's world maybe give the single player campaign a try first and when you do finish the game and decide to start it up with a buddy i think you'll find the true form it was meant to take from the very beginning remember my video covering dead space 2 where i said it was some of the most fun i've had in years and remember a few minutes ago when i mentioned how frustrated i was with part 3 for feeling nothing like that well ladies gentlemen i give you the solution to that issue having two guns aimed at the same necromorph really improves the experience here and it seems clear that this was how the game was balanced for difficulty in the main game i had issues with enemies getting right in my face and i just didn't have the firepower to deal with them in a satisfying way and like you would imagine another player perfectly accounts for this and on a quick note the pure chaos of bullets flying from every direction and explosions going off all around while me and my partner had to keep our heads on swivels thanks to the increased enemy numbers and damage output made for such a hectic and frankly awesome time it is genuinely an experience i'd recommend all of you jumping into if you can like i said before during my time in multiplayer i kept getting these brief flashes of the frantic and action-packed fun that came from mowing down necromorphs in part two the speed and intensity of fights were hitting peak levels of fun and on top of that the difficulty felt so much more i guess appropriate in this multiplayer session i died quite a few times but it never felt like a cheap death to me even on the hard difficulty it always felt like it was my fault when i ended up getting taken out and that's exactly what i was looking for in the single player after experiencing what feels like the intended gameplay method here i can very much see why people were so upset at ds3 when it launched this multiplayer approach while fun is all hell clearly deviates a great deal from the isolating feel of past entries from what i can see this multiplayer mode is exactly what people wanted for their single player experience the whole time and it would have honestly been very easy to deliver on but it seems to me that no one at visceral or ea even considered the possibility that someone would want to play this game without a partner it took me a very long time to figure this out because i was having so much fun with the multiplayer and a moderate amount of fun with single player but all the hate that i was picking up on towards this game wasn't because it failed at what it was trying to do but more because it succeeded at not doing anything the fans of the series wanted which and i know i need to stop making this point but it seems odd to me how much overlap there is between people who are upset that ea made such sweeping and uncharacteristic changes to dead space's established gameplay and people who feel that resident evil 4 is almost mirror approach was the best thing that ever happened to video games hypocrisy thy name is reforestan's now don't get me wrong a games developer has every right to change what they see fit in their own creation but the underlying reasons for that change should always be in service of providing a better and more well-rounded experience to the players and it seems clear that this specific change was made more to capitalize on the pretty staggering success of resident evil 5 and its well-received multiplayer gameplay as opposed to something they thought would actually work in a dead space title as someone who has only recently dived down into the dead space rabbit hole i feel a little sad at what could have been had ea left visceral to their devices but i can imagine a long time fan of the series might have felt at least the slightest bit of betrayal at this move and i guess what i'm trying to say is i can most definitely sympathize so if you're looking for an amazingly fun gameplay experience i'd say multiplayer is very much the way to go here but if you can't bring yourself to play what feels like the soulless cash grabby mountain dew and doritos sponsored portion of the game well i think i can see where you're coming from okay so i know i use this term maybe a little more than i should but dead space 3's presentation is very much a one step forward two-step back type of situation which is very strange since each dead space game has wowed me in one way or another but part 3 is the first game in the series that i noticed little details that made it look much worse than the titles that came before it thankfully once again we have a big emphasis on moody lighting and dynamic shadow casting which in my opinion still looks great but there's some other things going on here that well don't for example in my last numbered video on the series i complained about the switch from the more realistic facial designs and animations of part one to the more cartoony and stylized faces in two but three continues that regression to a near comical degree genuinely i'm asking you guys because i don't know what in the hell am i looking at here on one hand isaac seems to be slowly transforming into some kind of struck match insect hybrid in front of our very eyes and that's not even mentioning the humanoid ape standing next to him i honestly don't understand what made them think putting less artistry and effort into the faces of a story based video game was a good idea i mean look at ellie over here remember her looking fairly good in part two well toss that right out of your head because she seems to have far less points of articulation in her face this time around and for those of you that don't understand the lingo just watch her while she talks you can see her lips wrap around a center point while she moves them now luckily this doesn't happen to isaac but i mean come on ellie is a main character who shares a not insubstantial amount of screen time with the clark these kind of rookie mistakes should not be happening in the production of a triple a title with this much funding let alone one handled by a developer who not only has proven to have an eye for artistry but already has high quality assets to work from how did they undo all the good work they did making ellie's animations emotionally convincing before i honestly don't get what happened here across the board i found cut scenes to be incredibly hard to watch because everyone's face seems to be partially paralyzed and keep in mind this is the base they were building from look at all the detail on the eyebrows and lips like i said before these faces may look a little more cartoony compared to what i enjoyed about the first game but i don't think you could argue that they were poorly made they genuinely look great but comparatively speaking at least when 3 is concerned these are works of art and believe me i know i can be very hard on elements like this in fact obsessing over small details is sort of my modus operandi but honestly let me know in the comments am i insane or is there a giant discrepancy between the faces in part 2 and 3. i'm honestly interested to hear what you guys think now i can't spend this entire video talking about facial modeling and animations even though you know damn well i want to so let's move on to something else i think visceral may have mishandled throughout dead space 3 i kept seeing these amazing looking room layouts and great sky boxes but something was just off for a while i really couldn't put my finger on what was wrong but there seemed to have been something keeping me from admiring these awesome looking vistas and interesting interior areas well after going back and looking at my footage of dead space 1 and 2 i think i may have figured it out dead space 3 leans heavily on a very high contrast look no matter what part of the game you're at you'll notice an unnatural difference between the brightest brights and the darkest darks kind of like they threw some kind of cheap hdr filter over the game and i have to admit there are plenty of games who use this kind of a look and make it work for them but for some reason it just isn't doing anything for me here and in my opinion was done kind of cheaply and possibly by someone who doesn't understand what they were doing there also seems to be this emphasis on wrapping more complicated textures around the geometry of the environments but these textures with all of their very small details look more low-res than those found in dead space 1 or 2. this makes dead space 3 seem so much more busy looking and less visually appealing than similar scenes in previous games and to prove that i tried to find shots from 2 that sort of mirror ones in three as far as color brightness and composition goes and i think you guys will agree that three over here on the right may look very good but it seems to be much more muddy and dirty looking than two the more simplistic approach to the design in part two leads to this extreme level of clarity while playing 3 for long periods of time i actually got visually fatigued something i can admit might just be an issue with my eyes but i think this also led me into way more cheap hits as far as gameplay is concerned and what i mean by that is i was way less able to track moving targets efficiently over some of the more busy looking backgrounds and floor textures it was like the mess of pixels darting around on screen were being camouflaged against the mess of pixels that made up the environment these missteps could be very easy to forgive in most scenarios because truth be told they're not flaws in and of themselves every game is going to have a different approach to how it models and displays its assets but if you play these games one after the other like i have you'd expect to see things improve as time goes on but that is not the case in a lot of ways here but that being said i don't want you to take this as me saying this game looks bad because in 99.9 of scenarios i think it looks really really good it just doesn't look as good as the game that came before it and for a development house who knows what they're doing in the realm of making video games look really great you'd figure there would be a huge improvement here and that's just not the case now since i started this section off talking a whole lot of [ __ ] about dead space 3 it's only fair that i talk about the ways that it impressed me and to be sure there's a lot of that to talk about the starting area reminded me of certain parts of the sprawl in part 2 but looked even more convincing i've always enjoyed more urban settings for video games because not only is that the environment i'm most familiar with but it can also be a pretty complicated look to pull off convincingly and thankfully ds3 does just that sadly this does only make up a very small portion of the game but there's other good news too the more open snow-covered environments are really great to look at not just in the exterior areas but the frozen interiors look great too after running around in knee-high snow while taking hits from frozen necromorphs literally rising up from the ground beneath me ducking into a frozen over little bunker or barracks gave me very hard the thing vibes and i have no problem admitting that's one property i'd be okay with more people ripping off on top of that the wide open seemingly endless space area in the very beginning looks absolutely stunning there's debris and refuge floating all around and even though i know a majority of it is 2d assets put across the background it does have this very very pleasing look the high expectations i have with dead space titles and really attractive real-time lighting are no secret and i'm happy to say ds3 gives me no complaints in that category in my last video you guys might remember i complained that while still looking great the lighting of part 2 ditched the hard edges of light sources in favor of a more realistic diffused but less appealing approach and three seems to have married these two ideas which is really awesome light rays still have very hard well-defined boundaries i guess for lack of a better word which helps them really stand out from the environment but in between those boundaries there's still a very soft nearly volumetric quality to the lighting plus it seems like there are way more dynamic light sources this time around and that's something that'll get no complaints from me i will say that particles getting caught in the light no longer look as sharp and defined as they used to but they still look great so i can't really get up in arms about that the menus and ui all follow the same design trends from the previous games and to be honest i can't really tell if they aren't just the same exact assets something i'm not too worried about at all because honestly they perfectly nailed these aspects in the first game so seeing this level of consistency and design is very refreshing as an odd little side note it seems like the main menu was made to run at 30 frames per second so when you push it past that on a platform like say the pc the animations all speed up as well which is kind of funny to watch now i know people have had issues with the suits and three losing a lot of the visual identity they had in the original games and there's no denying that but they still look pretty cool to me that being said i would have preferred more of the first games look when it came to the helmets which looks a lot more like a welding mask than something that would be used in combat but since we can't rely on the justification of isaac being an engineer showing up for a day's work i think we can all let that one slide i will say the more military look in some of these helmets and the separate eye holes that give off light definitely reminded me of final fantasy the spirits within but i can't really say if that's a positive or negative i guess you make the call there the necromorphs have had a pretty massive shift in their design and to be honest i sort of like it nearly every enemy you will come across in this game are going to look much more recognizably human or at least more human shaped compared to previous games and while you could certainly argue this goes against the philosophy behind their existence i don't know i sort of dig it i don't exactly know why in a lore sense freshly turned corpses on the ishimura turn into formless bundles of flesh but corpses left on tao volantis for hundreds of years retained their more human proportions and features but they sort of remind me of zombies and hey what do you want i'm a simple man with simple taste but on top of that these things now have easily recognizable eyes and mouths which make it a little easier to remember that they used to be a human for me at least that increased this feeling of dread that dead space is so fond of permeating throughout its titles the last area of the game has this alien architecture and technology look to it which was really effective and the tiny flourishes that show humans were here at one point studying it just drives home a lot of the story elements really well just like in previous dead space titles performance was rock solid for me on the pc with zero dips below the 100 frames per second limit i set it to an achievement that might not mean much for a title nearly pushing 10 years old but at the time these titles were incredibly well optimized and i can personally attest to that i ran both the first and second dead space games when they launched on a gtx 1070 and amd phenom x4 and from what i hear i would have been able to do the same thing with three that's very impressive look i think with all the controversy tied to the recent release of cyberpunk 2077 we can all appreciate a well-optimized pc gaming experience but we can't base everything off the game's pc performance so let's jump into my favorite part of making these videos and compare the ports starting off with the 360 version i was actually very impressed in the last two dead space 360 ports performance could dip pretty substantially without notice but with part 3 it wasn't anywhere near as bad of course there were some moments where the frame rate would take a noticeable dive but these didn't come during fire fights or at times when i needed to react to things quickly actually it seemed like having some of the calm overlays on screen was a big contender in frame rate loss which is really odd but overall i'd say this was a big step up from what i'm used to in the series graphically i have no complaints at all in fact there are some areas that look a little smoother than what i saw on pc now this is thanks to a lower operating resolution which for those of you that don't know 360 and ps3 games render their pictures at 720p internally and allocate resources to upscaling that picture to 1080p instead of using way more resources to render it out at more than double the pixels this little trick solved a lot of visual issues i had with the pc port like the messy look of it and the high contrast effect looking bad with the lower res textures and this same thing helped out with these lower resolution pre-rendered scenes that play to give the illusion of traveling from one location to the next here in the skip on the pc release these pre-renders playing in front of the windshield stand out like a sore thumb but here on console i doubt very much anyone even noticed they weren't rendered in real time i know i already talked about the relatively solid frame rate but i should probably also mention this game targets 30 frames per second and while i can really appreciate them nailing that target most of the time it is really hard playing an action game at that speed but i think that might be the textbook definition of a first world problem as far as gameplay is concerned i once again have to mention that i just flat out suck at using controllers for any kind of high accuracy shooting in games so i was getting my ass kicked throughout this whole run even with the difficulty dialed down to normal luckily this game seems to know about this issue and i was flush with healing items the entire time despite not once crafting them so i guess if you're like me and can't play shooting games without a mouse and keyboard you won't have to worry about this game beating your ass the whole time and since i can't find anything particularly off or noteworthy with this port why not move on to the ps3 release [Music] and right from the start i noticed the picture on ps3 is considerably softer than on 360. i mean it doesn't ruin the way the game looks or anything but i imagine there were at least a few people who had to turn up the sharpness on their tv while playing this as far as performance goes i didn't notice any frame rate dips that weren't present in the 360 version which is actually really nice to see this port of the game does seem to have a slight difference in brightness even with both releases set to default values in the options this slightly darker picture did make the game look a little better to my eye but that same thing can be done in any release through the options menu so we're not going to count this one as a win for the ps3 specifically what i will count as a win though is the fact that the ps3 controls were just so much more natural feeling to me my fingers for some reason seemed to instinctively move across a ps3 controller with no real delay or micro second of second guessing whereas my experience on 360 had me constantly forgetting which trigger was primary and which one was secondary fire now to be fair this might be because i had already played the game on console and i was just getting used to the key bindings but the ps3 would definitely be the way i'd prefer to play this game if i had to play it on console and before we close this little section out let's check out each competitor side by side as you can see the 360 wins in terms of sharpness by a considerable degree but to be totally honest i still might recommend the ps3 version just for its better controls but again that is just a personal thing ok i know i already said this but i do think it bears repeating if you just got to the end of this section you might think all the negative comments means that this game looks bad in my opinion but it really doesn't there were a lot of parts in this game where i had to stop in my tracks and just admire the scenery the lighting was also to die for for most of the time and i really enjoyed how visually chaotic the action set pieces were that being said in pursuit of those great looking scenes we're left with graphical assets that don't even hold up to a game that launched two years ago on the same engine and using roughly the same exact team what went wrong with the game's faces i don't think i'll ever know but i can tell you one thing for sure if this was done in service of making the faces look more realistic well i think we can confidently assign a loss there that is of course unless i'm missing some very deep lore that states everyone in the future suffers from severe fetal alcohol syndrome so in closing dead space 3 a great looking game that somehow and this is incredibly weird looks better and worse than its predecessor at the same time honestly i think i could have shortened this section to just that sentence and saved you all a lot of time i'm the marker killer remember well guys i have a bit of a hard job here on one end a lot of you were right this game was a goddamn disappointment but that being said i don't think i would call it a bad game despite how hard ea fought to make this not the case ds3 does feel like a dead space game most of the time sure it feels awkward and uncomfortable to be ducking in and out of cover when i'm used to dismembering necromorphs instead but the core of a dead space experience is still in there if i had to take a guess i would say the claims that this game is so terrible probably come from two different places first off we have people who are mad as hell that clear attempts were made to push players into buying crafting materials or weapons to help with how weak early game offensive options are compared to how fast and hard enemies can hit and to be totally honest i see exactly where these guys are coming from it's a scummy practice and while we can't exactly confirm that ea was behind that push there's a giant mountain of evidence pointing in that direction and most of it is ea's logo on the box in this sense i can 100 understand people's frustration here but i don't necessarily think it ruins the game it certainly takes away from what fun could be had otherwise but by the middle of the game i was kicking ass and enjoying the hell out of it so it's definitely possible to have a satisfying experience here but i will warn you you'll have to make it a few hours into the game to get there and yes that is nowhere near ideal but i play rpgs all the time that don't hit their stride till hour 12 so i very well may be a bad judge on this specific problem the next issue i think people likely wrestled with was the betrayal of seeing a series they grew to love being homogenized and turned into this formless mass that somehow resembled every popular game that existed in its time and again i cannot fault anyone for feeling this way especially after being the guy who still complains about re games no longer having tank controls obviously my ability to stay objective in the face of nostalgia is not ironclad but once again i'm in a very lucky position where that doesn't matter to me quite as much as others i only just recently got to play most of these games for this retrospective so i can't exactly say that i formed an overly emotional connection to dead space if this were a series i had more of a stake in you bet your sweet ass i'd be right there with you but that not being the case i honestly enjoyed myself this game may have half-assed barely functional cover-based shooting and you may need to fight people actually holding guns but on the plus side you aren't going to see these mechanics very often the bulk of your gameplay will still consist of cutting the living dead into pieces the added crafting system might be a shallow attempt at emulating a popular trend but to be honest once again i enjoyed it this may sound crazy but all the weapon customization sort of reminded me how much fun i had optimizing my arsenal and parasite eve and if you specifically don't like the idea of crafting the good news is i came across most high-end upgrades and weapon parts just through playing the game normally and picking up loot so if you don't like that stuff or hoarding resources you can still get a similar experience to someone who does so both camps lopping deserved criticism at ds3 are technically in the right here or at least i can see where they're coming from but from my personal perspective dead space 3 is a really fun game to be fair i think the story is what drove me through the experience most of the time but the gameplay was fun for me and despite a massive list of complaints here in this video i can't really fault it for too much at least mechanically speaking if you absolutely love the gameplay style that the series has developed for itself i can totally understand you not getting into this one on principle alone i may not agree with you in this specific instance but it is a sentiment that i am all too familiar with that being said if you like the other ds titles and have been wondering about this one after staying away because of all the negative reviews like myself i think you might be surprised here if i had to hold it up to the other games in the franchise it certainly doesn't have the slow paced and creeping horror of the first game and only towards the end does it even start to come close to the visceral and engaging combat from part two but as a very action heavy experience similar to the set-piece driven games of its time i think it holds its own honestly so this one's going to be a toss-up guys i may have enjoyed dead space 3 a lot more than i planned on but as i'm writing this i can't confidently say that you will there are a lot of issues present here that have never been problems in previous games and i think that speaks volumes for how much unfamiliar ground these guys were covering thanks to a little creative input from ea you know that company that made a career out of meddling with successful studios until their games start sucking and then closing those studios down because their alterations caused the games to suck visceral were clearly in their element when designing the first two games and part three is perfect evidence that they worked best when making the game they wanted to make and not some kind of carbon copy of the entire mid-2000s gaming market it may be overstated at this point but this game serves as a testament to how bad a creative work can turn out when the creative decisions are left up to executive types who wouldn't know a good idea if it blasted off their arms and legs with a plasma cutter so maybe give this one a look if you've stayed away for a while or found the footage in this video to be even a little bit attractive to your specific tastes it may be the worst game in the series but that definitely doesn't mean it's a bad game and in a bittersweet sort of way this lukewarm conclusion marks the end of my little romp through a series i just flat out ignored up till now and i will say proudly i am so happy you guys pushed me so hard to dive into the dead space franchise i have had some genuinely awesome moments with this series and found a level of fun that i never see anymore this was a great time for me and beyond that i was flat-out blown away at how easy it was for me to just fall into this world and its characters the fleshed-out nature of all the lore you'll find throughout these ds media releases made this one of the most real feeling and well-described fictional universes i've ever come across before normally how it works is a game will provide me with some cursory info and my imagination will fill in the blanks and build the rest up from there but i think this might be the first time i didn't have to do that everything from how the government operates to what clothes people wear and products they consume was laid out in one way or another and i really enjoyed that in closing dead space was an innovative and refreshingly unique spot on a timeline that most could describe as featureless it dared to follow its own unique gameplay style at a time when copying the guys next to you was the norm and the crazy part was it worked they found real success by sticking to their own ideas and it says a lot that they only failed when venturing outside of that comfort zone visceral deserves a lot of credit for what they accomplished and if you ask me the gaming landscape could use more companies like them so how about we hear it for a group of guys that had the balls to make a horror game when they weren't supposed to a third person shooter when every other release had to be first person and focused on an organically satisfying experience while the rest of the industry was busy trying to figure out how to combine call of duty with uncharted and while we're on the subject of gratitude and even bigger thanks to you guys for showing so much support up to this point and pushing me to keep challenging myself i can confidently say that my content is what it is because you guys have kept me moving forward and more importantly you've kept me honest i truly hope you ended up enjoying this detailed analysis of a franchise i might have missed out on otherwise and until i figure out what the hell i'm gonna do next thank you all very much for watching the dead space retrospective yo that was a bit of a trek huh well we finally made it to the end and i'm pretty pumped at what lies ahead i have a few projects i'm working on and i think you guys will really get a kick out of them but if you want to support future series retrospectives like this one i'd appreciate a quick trip over to my patreon page even if a dollar a month seems like too insignificant an amount to contribute to small creators like myself it can truly mean the world if that's something you can't do though just know i appreciate you all the same after all it's only the most dedicated to make it this far that tells me you genuinely enjoy what i do here and that does mean a lot and i think that's about enough appreciation out of me but i will see all of you guys next time so stay safe until then

Channel: Avalanche Reviews

Views: 1,291,225

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Id: JLT1Bc3MoVQ

Length: 208min 14sec (12494 seconds)

Published: Fri May 07 2021