Dead Space
Dead Space was a game I went into without high expectations and came out of it amazed. What I expected was a Resident Evil 4 rip off and what I got was an homage. Admittedly, I’m usually something of a cynic when it comes to anyone uttering the word ‘homage’, because that usually means one thing and one thing only. I believe it was Tom Baker who said it best:
"Most compositions of scripts are nicked from somewhere else. They don't call it plagiarism anymore, they call it homage."
The cynic in me was given a bit if a bitch-slap and told to shut up while I played this. What Dead Space showed me was, you can make a game that owes to several others, but still put your own stamp on it and still give the players something new. The irony of this game is, what I originally dismissed as a Resident Evil 4 rip off ended up coming off a lot better than the latter games sequel.
When I say the game plays similar to Resident Evil 4, I mean it’s the same over the shoulder shooter, hold one button to aim with infra-red, another to fire. Where Dead Space leaves it’s mark is in making main character Isaac Clarke more manoeuvrable. One of the things that frustrates about Resident Evil 4 is being pinned to the spot while aiming and firing. Dead Space let’s you move in any direction while aiming, allowing you to approach or back off from an enemy. Being able to jog backwards is also a welcomed addition as you can back off quickly if things aren’t going too well and you don’t have to turn like a tank.
The game adds a challenging yet simple strategy from the player. It’s not enough to simply blast these guys in the face. Instead what you have to do is dismember them. It’s a nice little touch because it adds a bit of challenge without being cheap. All the game really demands is that you have a good aim with some good guns.
The weapons are an interesting touch, because they’re not really weapons in the strictest sense. Isaac himself is an engineer, not a soldier, so it’s not like he’s an expert in a variety of weapons, but the game still manages to avoid the whole Silent Hill thing of being a rubbish fighter by having the weapons actually be futuristic mining tools. The Plasma Cutter and Pulse Rifles are all about cutting rock, but they make for an effective alien killer. Other weapons include the Ripper, which is basically a chainsaw, except that the blades that spin around are actually kinetically held about a meter away from the device, allowing you to slice away at your enemies from a distance.
Where Dead Space comes into it’s own is in the clever use of it’s setting. You’re on a damaged space station, and the threat of space is constantly hanging over your head. You can be walking down a corridor when an explosion will rip open the hull and expose the room to a vacuum. Suddenly you only have a short time to get out of there because you only have limited air supplies. You’ll spend a fair bit of time in open space and the game does a great job of making you really feel you’re in vacuum by having the sound effects all but bleed away, and Isaac’s desperate gasps of breath add a sense of panic and urgency.
There are also Zero-Gravity sections while are a lot of fun. Instead of floating about the place, you’re still able to stay on surfaces like you have gravity boots, but if you want to get to the other side of the room, you just push off of the surface and fly across the room. It’s a pretty amazing thing to see the camera move with you and the whole room turn on it’s side or upside down.
The enemies themselves are suitably creepy, both in terms of how they look and how they sound. The usual approach of just blowing their head off doesn’t work, because they’ll keep coming at you, even without a head. You have to dismember them in order to stop them and even then they can occasionally jump back up at you. There’s always a sense of panic as a section of the station goes into lockdown and you know you’re in for a fight with a whole crowd of enemies. You do have to modify your strategy slightly for the variations of Necromorphs you encounter, and the real challenge comes later on when you have several different varieties attacking you at once.
Boss battles were always fun, because they kept getting larger in scale. A Brute coming smashing through a sealed door felt very big the first time out, but soon that was eclipsed by the creature that kept regenerated it’s limbs again, then the Leviathan creature who filled up a whole room…a room that was about four stories high. Then there was the creature on the outside of the ship that was so big, we had to arm the cannon’s to take it out. After all that, the final boss battle seemed smaller and felt like it was just going through the motions, but for the most part, the battles were always memorable and fun to play.
The story is, admittedly, not up to much in this game, in fact, for the first half, it’s pretty non existent. You get the set up of coming to the rescue of a space station, then becoming trapped in it yourself, that Isaac’s girlfriend is on the station and that there is a strong distrust between the other two characters you arrived with, Hammond and Kendra. Really, the first half of the game is about going here and doing this, going there and doing that. It’s not till the second half that things start to get a bit interesting. Isaac’s girlfriend seems to be appearing all over the place, asking him to ‘set us free’. The tensions between Kendra and Hammond escalade to the point that you’re not sure which one to trust. There are some nice plot twists towards the end that I won’t give away, but it did make things a bit interesting towards the end. It’s just a shame that the story is absent for most of the first half of the game. Instead, what we get is a lot of audio logs that serve to sort of tell us what happened prior to our arrival at the beginning.
The odd thing is, that throughout all of this, Isaac never utters a word. Really, the approach to him is more the kind of thing your would expect from a first person shooter, where there is no character, it’s just a hand and a gun and it’s up to the player to react to things rather than watch a character react to them. The same things going on here, except it’s in third person. Very occasionally, you’ll see Isaac react to something, but really, apart from the ending, everything is up to the player to do, with Isaac quietly obeying. Surprisingly, this didn’t bother me as much as it usually does in games. I usually prefer a fully developed character, for example, in Dragon Quest: Journey of the Cursed King, I would have liked the main character to participate in the game rather than just be a mute who just goes through the motions. The story of Dead Space would have probably been a lot stronger had there been more focus on his character and things like his girlfriend’s appearances throughout the game would have carried more weight.
One thing that bothered me was the process involved in upgrading weapons. You did this by collecting nodes, and whenever you found a work bench, you could upgrade weapons, kinesis modules, and health and air meter. The problem I had with this was, firstly, the rarity of the nodes. You’ll be lucky if you have one or two by the time you come across a work bench. Secondly, in order to reach the actual upgrades, you have to fill in empty nodes, meaning your already rare nodes are being used for something useless. I wouldn’t have minded rare nodes if it meant I was guaranteed an actual upgrade, instead what I felt was a little sting on annoyance every time I filled one of those empty ones in.
But that was one irritation. The rest of the game plays brilliantly. It looks great, it has a creepy atmosphere and enemies, and it’s obviously made by people who love the horror genre. If you’re looking for either a horror game, or a survival action game, this is the one to go for.
Tomb Raider: Legend in 1000 Words
Tomb Raider had gone wrong. Angel of Darkness was a game that I was so excited about. Seeing Lara Croft on a next-gen console automatically meant in my head that the game would be bigger and better. It would look amazing, play brilliant and they would finally resolve the cliff-hanger ending of The Last Revelation. Instead what we got was a game with exactly one tomb in it and a lot of running around rooftops and gutters. Now, I don’t think it’s really fair to blame Core, the developer of the first six games. Really any blame for Tomb Raider going crap lay with Eidos who kept pushing Core to get a new game out each year and pushing them to add new elements them.
EIDOS GUY: You know what would be cool? A second playable character! The fans will love that!
CORE GUY: Uh…
Instead of revealing how Lara survived the ending of The Last Revelation, what Angel of Darkness did was hammer the nails into the coffin. I could see the tomb stone in my mind: Here Lies a Once Great Series. Of course, when a game is as universally panned as Angel of Darkness was, it’s not the publishers that take the fall, it’s the developers. Core were gone and the series was given to a new developer, Crystal Dynamics who started anew and gave us was Legend, a game that both was and wasn’t Tomb Raider.
If Angel of Darkness showed us anything, it was that the game no longer worked on the grid-based movements of the old games. Modern games demanded more speed, less chunkiness. While I would still argue that Lara handled a lot better than a lot of the older games back then (*cough*ResidentEvil*cough*), the old controls no longer worked. Crystal Dynamics tried to make everything play faster and smoother, not just in terms of how you played, but how Lara herself moved. Pulling herself up from a ledge, for example, stopped being a challenge and instead became a quick, athletic move. Lara would leap from ledge to ledge, swing on a pole, throw herself over gaps and dodge death traps, all without breaking a sweat. Lara became part athlete, part free runner, and as much as the environment was her enemy, it was also a tool to get from point A to point B.
At least that was the idea. In reality, the game play came off as too easy. In the new games, it doesn’t matter how high you are, the likelihood of you plunging to your death was practically zero unless you did it deliberately. In the older games, if you mistimed a jump or forgot to hit the walk button, you were history. You could argue that the older games would frustrate in this regard, while others would say it added a challenge to it. In Legend, you were never in any real danger, there never felt like any real challenge and whenever you died, it was usually over some silly little thing, like not pressing the right button during an interactive cut-scene. And on that subject, am I the only person that really doesn’t like interactive cut-scenes? I don’t want to watch the character do something, I want to do it myself.
Combat is rubbish, of course, but oddly, it’s actually better than it would be later on, in Underworld. At least this game doesn’t stick you in tight corridors where you can barely move. One of the boss battles here requires you to duck and dive a lot and it’s totally doable. Even in smaller areas, like the Bolivia ruins, there’s still plenty of room to move about in. The problem is, it’s auto-lock which for me is becoming more and more unpopular, because, like the interactive cut-scenes, I want to do things myself. While the game does offer you the option of manual aiming, it’s poorly executed. Lara is stuck on the spot while you aim and fire, leaving you completely defenceless and because you have to click the right analogue stick to enter and exit manual aiming means you can’t move in and out of it quickly, making it completely useless in any kind of combat situation.
As for the story, this is where Legends really comes into it’s own. Looking back, you can see that it’s all just a prologue to set up Underworld, but the story is one of the games strengths, and what keeps you interested in it even when the game play fails to. What starts off a hunt for a few artefacts in Bolivia, leads Lara to remember the ‘death’ of her Mother, following a plane crash when she was nine. What follows is a trip around the globe to find the various pieces of a sword…which turn out to be none other than Excalibur, the legendary sword of King Arthur - it’s real and it’s badass. Turns out the sword is connected to the disappearance of Lara’s Mother, who didn’t die, but instead was transported to Avalon. Time to get the rescue mission started.
And then the game ends.
That infuriated me the first time I played this game. Continuing stories are all well and good, but nothing angers me more than a story that stops right in the middle and says, “Come back in two years.” Now that we have the conclusion of the story in Underworld, my anger has all but died, but it’s just a shame that I felt that way, because the final cut scene is so powerful and emotionally charged it is a great ending in itself. Perhaps it was the game itself that angered me, being so easy to play that I never really had to stop and think about what I was doing and cleared it in just a few short hours. This was Crystal Dynamics first attempt at Tomb Raider and perhaps it was unfair to expect them to get it right first time. With each game they make, they become more like Tomb Raider, it’s just a shame the first one was a bit of a let down.
Terrible Trek #01
The Enterprise is closing in on a ship of unknown design. Alarms are blaring, everyone’s tense, and Sulu tells us main phaser banks are ready.
Hang on, I though you guys were on a peaceful mission to explore the galaxy.
Oh, whatever, it’s a dramatic opening to the episode.
Your standard beautiful Star Trek woman beams aboard and everyone on the bridge goes all gooey eyed…until she zaps them all! She checks Kirk out first, but he’s fallen in an unflattering position with his arse in the air, so she moves instead to Spock, stroking his head lovingly. That must mean something bad is about to happen because the music swells and we get the opening credits.
When we return, the crew is waking up. Kirk gets a call from Sickbay telling him to get down there immediately. When he does, he finds Spock lying on one of the beds, on full life support. Kirk asks what’s wrong with him. It’s here you finally realise that DeForest Kelly was the best damn actor on the planet because not only does he not laugh when he says, “His brain is gone,” he says it with total conviction.
Naturally they’re going to have to get Spock’s brain back, so they give chase and follow the ship to a nearby star system. They’ve got three planets to choose from and only have enough time to search one. In a scene that would put The Next Generation to shame, they talk and talk and talk until they finally decide which one to go for. After they beam down, they’re attacked by some cave men who last about a half second against Kirk’s phaser. They question one of the cave man who basically tells him that there’s hot chicks below that will kick their arses if they go down there. Kirk’s not one to turn down the chance for some fun with some hot chicks, so down they go. They bring Spock with them. McCoy’s hooked up a contraption that works as a basic brain. At the flip of a switch on a remote control, Spock can manage basic movements.
With every step forward he takes, Leonard Nimoy becomes more and more embarrassed that he’s a part of this piece of shit. And this is the guy who did The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins. What does that tell you.
By the power of plot, they manage to talk to Spock over the communicator. His brain is definitely down here somewhere, but before they can start the search they get captured by the afore mentioned hot chicks. They’re given pain-giver belts that could only look trendy in the mid sixties.
What follows is a five minute talking in which Kirk is trying to find a way to get to Spock’s brain. Imagine trying to have an intelligent conversation with a four year old in the midst of a temper tantrum. That’s what their conversation is like, though it does end with one of the most infamous lines in Trek history, “Brain and Brain! What is brain?”
Somehow, god only knows how, Kirk figures out that Spock’s brain is being used to run this whole underground complex. Kirk gets down on his knee’s and begs – I’m not kidding, he begs – to see Spock’s brain. Season one Kirk would be so ashamed if he could see what he becomes. When Kirk get’s too annoying, one of the hot chicks flips a switch on her wrist controls and Kirk, McCoy and Scotty roll around on the floor in agony. Watching William Shatner roll around on the floor in pain is always fun. He has a certain unique approach to it.
Later, they wake up and although their communicators are in plain sight, but there are some burley men in the way, so they deal with the situation in good old fashioned Star Trek fashion – they fight!
Kirk and the other’s continue their search for Spock’s Brain, again with the remote controlled body of Spock in tow, but when they finally get into the room holding the brain, there’s that annoying hot chick again, who hits the button and we get to see William Shatner’s interesting acting again. Kirk is in too much pain to fight the chick herself so he remote controls Spock, who, without a brain, feels no pain, over to her and has him restrain her -
Wait a minute, the bullshit meter just overloaded.
Kirk is in too much pain to fight her, right? And yet, somehow, he finds the strength to get a hold of the remote control that operates Spock, guide his body over to the woman, get him to wrestle with her, get the controller off her wrist and release the belts from their bodies. I can only assume Kirk is the Lord of Tekken or something, because that’s some serious finger-work needed there. And remember, this pain they’re feeling has been described as ‘every nerve in the body is on fire.’
Oh, whatever, let’s just get on with it.
It seems that while these hot chicks have the mental ability of a four years old, there is a contraption in this very room that gives them intelligence for a short time. It’s demonstrated on the chick, who suddenly becomes a mature, intelligent woman, but unfortunately the writing of this episode doesn’t become any more mature and her next conversation with Kirk goes a little something like this:
KIRK: Restore Spock’s brain!
CHICK: No.
KIRK: You must.
CHICK: No!
KIRK: YOU MUST!
CHICK: NO!
KIRK: Bitch, I’m Captain Kirk! Fucking do it!
CHICK: NO!!!
McCoy decided to use it on himself, and his intelligence is increased times infinitely. The Doctor gets to replacing Spock’s brain. It seems that they don’t use surgical gloves in the future…hey, it’s only the guys brain. There’s just one small problem – the knowledge McCoy has gained only lasts a short time, before it begins to leave him…right in the middle of surgery! But hey, Spock’s vocals been restored so Spock can talk McCoy through the rest of the procedure -
Hang on, they make it clear several time sin the episode that no one but the people of this planet have the knowledge to perform such complex surgery. How does Spock himself know how to do it? If he’s gained this knowledge in a similar way to McCoy, or as a result of being the temporary controller of this underground complex, why does the episode not say so?
Oh, whatever, there’s really no point in trying to make sense of any of this bullshit.
Surgery is finally complete and Spock sits up, whole again. He starts babbling about what a fascinating experience this -
Hang on, since when did Spock babble?
Oh, whatever, it’s the comedy end to a terrible episode. Just be thankful the end credits are rolling, the theme tune is the only thing season three didn’t fuck up.
BEST LINE:
It’s a toss up between “His brain is gone,” and “BRAIN AND BRAIN! WHAT IS BRAIN?!”
WORST LINE:
It’s a toss up between “His brain is gone,” and “BRAIN AND BRAIN! WHAT IS BRAIN?!”
As far as most fans are concerned, this is the point where it all won't wrong. Gene Roddenberry had pretty much turned his back on the show, only taking an interest when it suited him or when he had something to gain from it. While early Trek was excellently written episodes with one or two stinkers, season 3 was one big stinker with one or two good episodes. It also set a trend for the rest of the season, the socio-political commentaries that had made the show so popular amongst it’s dedicated fans were pretty much gone, replaced by pointless, meaningless, brainless (if you’ll pardon the expression) adventures.
Star Trek had had, for the most part, really good, well written guest characters. In fact, they were so good, they often took priority over the supporting regulars. The real tragedy with Spock’s Brain is that the guest character spends about ninety pre cent of per time screaming like a four year old having a hissy fit. The supporting regulars are given nothing to do either, Sulu and Uhura are stuck on the ship with nothing to do (it’s archive footage, for god’s sake) while Chekov is abandoned on the planets surface, tending to a campfire.
Even one of the principle actors has nothing to do. Poor Leonard Nimoy, he must have felt so stupid as the script and director demanded him to contribute nothing more to a scene than to simple take a few steps forward. His movements are so clunky and awkward, they make the characters in old school Resident Evil games look like free runners. And despite his attempt to portray Spock’s emotionless exterior, you can just feel his embarrassment with every scene he’s in.
But don’t misunderstand. This episode isn’t quite so bad it’s good, because it really is bad, but it’s the kind of bad you can point at it and laugh. There are plenty more episodes I could – and will – rip apart that are far worse than this. More than anything this episode is an embarrassment, but hey, at least it doesn’t have singing hippies in it.
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