Dead Space

[liolio]

Chambers, I've a little question.
How long did it take you to finish the game on the "normal" setting?

 

[chambers]

Do you mean medium since I think you can pick easy, medium, or hard at first? I only played through it on hard and I think it took 15 hours, maybe a little more. Like I said before there are points where I just died repeatedly trying get through an area full of necromorphs. Most reviews say 10-12 hours for the campaign which I guess they did on medium.

 

[AlNom]

Yikes, just got this yesterday (360 version) in the mail. I also just got Fable II a couple days ago too. I'm a bit torn on deciding what to play heavily in the next while, but I did start both.

• Ambient sounds are freaking me out.
• I wish I could un-mod the suit, but it's still early (I made a dumb mistake )
• The Twinkle Twinkle Little Star video playback is one of the best ads I've seen in awhile.
• Although there are a couple complaints about the camera, I'm very much a believer that it aids in creating panic in conjunction with the sound effects.
• love the UI. Very slick and responsive without any lag. Framerate is also quite consistent. My only gripe is with shadowmap resolution. I wonder if a combination of stencil and shadowmaps might have worked well or better.
• I am taking my time with the game too. According to the save file, I am 45 minutes into the game and only just got back to
  Spoiler

  replacing that system board or whatever where the other two characters are directly across from you in another section
  in the first level.
• I managed to get my head ripped off once too

 

[Sigfried1977]

I agree about the shadowmaps. They are hideously low res at times. Regardless, it's still a visual tour de force and incredibly polished in just about every other aspect as well.
I think it's a bit too predictable to be effectively scary though. Just like in Doom 3 or RE4 the game throws enemies at you every chance it gets, and lots of them too.

Silent Hill Homecoming (fantastic looking shadows by the way) and Siren Blood Curse did a much better job in that regard.

 

[PARANOiA]

I'm continuing to truck through this game. My goal is to finish this before I buy Fallout 3, which comes out tomorrow here, in an effort to reduce my backlog.

Currently I'm on chapter 7 near the end, and it's been an extremely enjoyable gaming experience. The atmosphere is captured extremely well in a way I'd compare to Bioshock (though obviously very different thematically). I am finding it scary, and I feel a little sorry for those that don't - you're obviously missing out on the biggest "enjoyment" factor the game offers. A shame for you, but eh, I'm all good. There are many parts that I'll walk into and say out loud "oh man, I don't want to go in there!" That's what makes the game succeed for me.

The only real headache I've had with the game so far was chapter 5.

Spoiler

The "Nemesis' creature was incredibly frustrating wtih absolutely no sense of reward. Having to constantly run past creatures while getting hit in the back is not fun. Wasting precious ammo is not fun. Constantly reloading because of death is not fun. Do not do this in a game ever again!

I'm also starting to struggle to get by purely on found ammo, while sticking purely with the plasma cutter. That surprised me since I thought I was being extremely conservative.

Is there an easy way to kill those little spider things that crawl all over you and drain your health? When 20 pop out of a guy I honestly have to use 20 plasma cutter shots to kill them. My most hated enemy in the game so far. Reminds me of frogs in Daikatana.

Oh, Alstrong, one thing you may like to know: you can smash the black crates with green dots for goodies. I didn't know this until level three and was pretty pissed off.

 

[AlNom]

Oh, Alstrong, one thing you may like to know: you can smash the black crates with green dots for goodies. I didn't know this until level three and was pretty pissed off.

lol yes, it was actually one of the first things I did once I could do the stomp. Funny - they look like the original Xbox.

 

[ban25]

Is there an easy way to kill those little spider things that crawl all over you and drain your health? When 20 pop out of a guy I honestly have to use 20 plasma cutter shots to kill them. My most hated enemy in the game so far. Reminds me of frogs in Daikatana.

Hit them with the flamethrower. That should save you some ammo. Another option is to hit them with stasis and just run.

 

[ban25]

I finished the game a couple days ago and it was a marathon to the end (three chapters in one sitting). The story is gripping right up until the finish and I'm really pleased at how the story ended. I'm definitely going to have to come back and play it again on Impossible mode once I get through:

- LittleBigPlanet
- Fallout 3
- C&C Red Alert 3 (today!)
- Eternal Sonata
[...]

 

[betan]

Is there an easy way to kill those little spider things that crawl all over you and drain your health? When 20 pop out of a guy I honestly have to use 20 plasma cutter shots to kill them. My most hated enemy in the game so far. Reminds me of frogs in Daikatana.

Ripper or flame thrower. I find ripper slightly better, more efficient and certainly more fun weapon, but they both become useless when black monsters start to dominate along with speedy ones. Plus there is the "getting the ammo you don't need" issue to fuel your ammo problems.

 

[ban25]

Ripper or flame thrower. I find ripper slightly better, more efficient and certainly more fun weapon, but they both become useless when black monsters start to dominate along with speedy ones. Plus there is the "getting the ammo you don't need" issue to fuel your ammo problems.

This was my weapon loadout for most of the game:

- Plasma Cutter
- Line Gun
- Pulse Rifle
- Contact Gun

The contact gun in particular is extremely useful for several bosses and the large worm enemies that grab you.

 

[chambers]

The pulse rifle was always good for killing those little crawling things that get on you. One thing to keep in mind is that they come out of the fat guys if you shoot their torso and not the limbs, so dismember and don't hit the torso. Kinesis is very useful for picking up stuff and breaking open boxes as well.
Paranoia if you are playing it on a harder setting the game gives you much less ammo. I played on hard and had to sell ammo for guns I used little as well as buy a lot of ammo for the plasma cutter. It will get much harder when the enemies are all the tough black ones.

 

[Npl]

Heh, I use the Force-Gun (=equal to shotgun + grenade launcher) for the little spiders. You can kill a whole family of them with a single blast. And the Force-Gun is also usefull if you have lots of bigger enemys as a direct hit will knock them over and give you time to get some distance and reloading guns

I found little reason to use the Pulse-Rifle( except having no ammo for other guns), its pretty much useless IMHO.

 

[Malo]

The Ripper is the most fun weapon in Dead Space.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Just started playing now. It's pretty cool, they seem to have put a lot effort into the production. I love the HUD he projects and the quality of the character model is good. The actual mutant\alien\infected\xenomorphs aren't as good. It was really nerve racking at the start but now I have a weapon (Plasma Cutter) it's not so bad.

I had Fable 2, FarCry 2 (PC version), and Dead Space (PS3) all turn up on the same day!

 

[DuckThor Evil]

3h in and I'm liking it alot. It definately is scary when played at night with headphones. The ambient sounds are freaking me out! I'm only in chapter 2 at the moment, but haven't had any ammo issues yet, although my inventory is pretty much full all the time, eventhough I purchased a better suit.

heh I thought this is a first person game and was really surprised to see it's a third person game. The route quide thing is great and eliminates lot's of time that would otherwise looking at the map. The story feels interesting and the combination of video, audio and text logs is a nice way to tell it.

 

[DudeMiester]

Ripper or flame thrower. I find ripper slightly better, more efficient and certainly more fun weapon, but they both become useless when black monsters start to dominate along with speedy ones. Plus there is the "getting the ammo you don't need" issue to fuel your ammo problems.

Now I played on normal mode, so perhaps there is some difference, but I did notice that I virtually always got ammo only for the weapons I had equipped. When I finished the game I had excessive amounts of ammo for all my primary weapons. That is: plasma cutter, ripper, contact gun, line gun. Combined with the fact that ammo resets to one on any weapons you store in the safe (but only between loads), it made it a real pain if you want to change your weapon set for a particular level or area. You really have no choice but to stick with the same 4 guns the entire game, or else spend lots of money on new ammo every time you change your set.

I probably used the ripper the most, even at the end. I found that because it holds the enemy at bay, as long as your back is to a wall, it's rare to take damage until the ripper has had enough time to kill the enemy. If there is a lot of guys, just stand in a doorway while quickly sweeping back and forth, and they can't touch you. Also, you can fire a new blade before the current one expires, so you never have an opening. For those times where I messed up or was in a bad position, I took them out with a few shots of the line gun. I used the plasma cutter mainly for distance work, and the contact gun for big enemies. Worked out very well, I only died a handful of times.

It took me just under 20h to complete, but keep in mind I took a fairly slow completionist pace. For example, I translated almost all the graffiti I found. I can just about read the stuff without a reference now. Although, I didn't get the secret code, I'll probably do that the next play through.

Oh, the free level 5 suit from PS Store really helps too. Never had inventory troubles. But now that I have the level 6 suit unlocked, I'll be using that. Reminds me of the Combine uniforms from HL2.

 

[ninzel]

Wasn't there supposed to be a FREE downloadable suit for PS3. I went to the store and it showed them for sale for$2.50 each. Not much but it says free for limited time, I guess the limited time is over? The game just came out.

 

[kyleb]

Yeah, free until the 28th of October.

 

[Npl]

Oh, the free level 5 suit from PS Store really helps too. Never had inventory troubles. But now that I have the level 6 suit unlocked, I'll be using that. Reminds me of the Combine uniforms from HL2.

You played with a L5-Suit right from the start? Cheapskate

On ammo, I had big trouble in the first couple levels, I was even trying to save 1 shot per enemy through stomping (also you need less shots for dismembering arms instead of legs - only this means that the freaks wont slow down a bit). I ran past a couple of enemys aswell (those little spiders take too much ammo until you get the force-gun).
It got better after upgrading the cutter and selling nearly every healthpack for ammo and I had a steady surplus at the end.
But practically anytime in the game when I was surrounded by 3 or more necros it was pretty much game-over, which means most of the big open battles took me several tries until I memorized the patterns. You die pretty fast, atleast when playing on hard, but thats also what kept the tension up.

The final bossbattle was pretty dissapointing IMHO. Apart from beeing a pushover once you figured its pattern out, dying in the battle means you have to sit through minutes of unskippable cutscenes again and again.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I'm about 10h in and this is pretty close to being a game of the year... Absolutely incredible, I can't think of anything wrong with it and usually I'm able to nitpick atleast on something. The controls and button layout are perfect, it looks good, the athmospere is great, the story is interesting and the way it's being told works really well.

The weapons are really good, unique and different than in any other game. The user interface and upgrading system leave nothing to wish for more.

It's kind of like Bioshock in space expect everything is better. I LOVE IT!