NO SPOILERS NO SPOILERS! Hide your spoilers away.
What? It is a spoiler? I don’t think so. :retard:
Warn the posters before talking about plot points in games that are still new.
[spoilers]This forum could really use spoiler tags, in this format.[/spoilers]
Dead Space 2 Thread, where we Discuss dead space 2, come back when you finished Maxey.
I’m just saying to warn people before discussing plot points.
Eh, some people just don’t have the time to play a 7-8 hour game in one sitting.
Anyway, if the game didn’t scare you, and you’re a cautious player, then I suggest trying to play more recklessly. You may not get scared but at the very least you’ll be startled.
No, the actual game mechanics don’t set out to scare you. At every turn you get empowered. You earn more money to buy or upgrade your weapons. I’m not going to start playing the game in a specific way to try and scare myself.
Another part of the reason it’s not scary is because I’m sure I played this game before, Dead Space 1 before it and Doom 3 before that. Everything from the story, to the monsters and setting is generic, possibly even clichéd.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m enjoying Dead Space 2, and Dead Space 1 was also ok. But only when looked at as an action game, like Resident Evil 4 or 5 or even Gears of War for example.
Except that they do, hence DS2 being referred to as a ‘horror game’…
Then you’re not going to find it scary.
Have you played Amnesia? The game that basically TELLS you the best way to scare yourself? If you have, or even if you haven’t, would you just say “fuck you game, i’m gonna ignore your stupid guidelines and then bitch about how unscary the game is”?
Moving on.
Just finished the game on PC. Loved it, but i can’t really mention anything that hasn’t been said already so i think i’ll just leave it at that.
On the topic of how scary the game is though, i will say that i jumped a ridiculous number of times throughout, much like the first game, however the only scary bit was near the end running away from that persistent bastard. You know the one i mean 
Foam fingers are very useful.
Y’all know what im talking 'bout AWWWYEAHH
You have waaaaay to much time on your hands if you can do this. Go outside, get some friends, or get a job.
Saying that is just like saying I’m going to play BFBC2 like I play CoD and then complain about how it isn’t as fun as it should be.
Also, the game mechanics are UNDENIABLY intended to scare you. Hence all the devblogs about how they try to scare you in Deadspace1 and the startling zombie attacks and the spooky atmosphere and more.
Played it til the end in 8 hours. Amazing. It’s like the first one, just better. I’ve already tried the MP, and was surprised, of how well it works. There is some sort of addiction of it, and I think I will have many happy hours with it.
And in the SP, im gonna play it on hardcore, I want to see what you can unlock, if you play it til the end. I hope I can finish it. Otherwise, I’ll just google it :retard:
[COLOR=‘Black’]I was a bit dissappointed, that there weren’t many “huge” bossenemies, like in DS1, you had to fight mostly against normal enemies. Moreover, it’s annoying, that you have to hit enemies a second time, when you’ve killed them, to get credits, ammo and medipacks. These 2 things bother me a bit.
Still, it’s a great game, and I don’t regret, that I paid 45€ for it.
I don’t know why, but I didn’t find it scary in the slightest when I first played it. And I’m usually a total pussy when it comes to scary games. I am a cautious player and a lot of games have still scared me. 
But now that I’m doing my New Game+ run for the new RIGs (which is pointless seeing as EA left them out of the PC version and, as far as I know, have yet to patch them back in. -_-) I find the game a lot more scary. I dunno if it’s the fact that I know what’s coming already but I forget when exactly it comes, or what, but it’s a lot more scary now that I know what to expect. It’s very strange. O_o
The only thing about the game that truly bugged me was the, eh, “self-mutilation” scene. (I don’t know how to word it without it being a spoiler.) I dunno what it is, but something about that whole deal just makes me sick to my stomach. There’s certain types of gore that make me curl into a ball and certain types of gore that make me laugh and cause more. Blowing off necromorph limbs, killing defenseless Half Life 1 scientists with tripmines, and beheading Russian soldiers with saw blades are the kinds of gore I love. But self-inflicted, or cold and calculating, slow agonizing gore are the types I can’t stand. Like the SAW movies. That whole Dead Space 2 scene fits in with that for me, I guess. Maybe it’s that the characters seem realistic? I thought of Isaac as a real person. I could have imagined him standing next to me.
Sorry for the TL;DR. Skim what you will. XD
The only game that has ever scared me was Doom and that was when I was 5. I wasn’t expecting anything since the first doesn’t really scare me either. But as games they are both awesome and the second has me hooked. I’m in chapter 7 and still loving every minute of the game.
Is this game better than Dead Space 1? Because I’m playing it and, well, I’ve got to say, its just a disappointing copy of something between System Shock 2 and Event Horizon. Pretty much exactly the same story line, setting and core objectives as the former, but just far, far less complex.
Horror? Pfft. System Shock 2 did horror. SHODAN was horror. The Many was horror. Dead Space just make aliens jump out at you to scare you, but then gives you all the ammo you would ever need to blow them to crap.
I don’t know how or what some of you are basing your perspective of scary on. But here is my take on it. In any survival or horror game, this is the formula that I have, that should be maintained: game 1 make me jump out of my seat. Game 2 keep the scary atmosphere, maintain the (oh shit, ah jeez whisper response to the current situation of the games plotline. they can make me jump out of my seat every so often after the first game but other then that they just need to keep the (this is still some scary shit going on here man I don’t like this one bit lets keep moving and get out of here I want to home stay awake for 3 days then go to sleep, maybe then I wont have nightmares Lt. .) Game was perfect, not much you can do with zombies. horror/survival games with multiplayer. Unless somebody wants to do this game with battlefield sort’ve. My only real beef with multiplayer is the fact that dismemberment is now in my honest opinion null. Worthless now that you have actual sentient intelligence on the other end running circles around you instead of head on straight and true, giving you a perfect target. zombies in multiplayer need to be able to be damaged easier. Humans are even more gimped now then before in singleplayer.
If you see anyone effectively dismembering consistently near on perfection I call cheats. Unless of course you have true retards on the other end consisting of the entire zombie team and they are running perfect lines.
The dev team obviously understands the formula. They aren’t the “stupid” that I consistently see making games now awadays. I just hope that they dont eventually dissapoint.
Eh. You have given no reason why it wasn’t scary. And it’s storyline seem simple to you because you aren’t digging deep enough. Deadspace makes you hunt for plot information. And I really doubt it was that similar to those things you mentioned. And I googled System Shock and it didn’t look scary for shit. But it was old. So you are probably just being overwhelmed by horror nostalgia. Just because you played a game when you were five and it scared the shit out of you doesn’t mean it was a scary game. When I first played HL1 I nearly pissed my pants in Office Complex.
Maybe the reason so many people are upset is because they are playing on normal. The normal settings is far far too easy. Try turning up the difficulty and you’ll probably find it scarier.
Really? So, that thing that moves you exactly to where you need to go? Does that require you to think? Or what about the characters making all your objectives for you? The audio recordings provide a background to what happens, but they’re irrelevant; they don’t convey any necessary information, and everything you ever need to know is spoon fed to you by your companions. Its shallow because, when compared to System Shock 2 and Event Horizon, it is simple.
Tell me, does the following seem familiar?
That’s System Shock 2. Its pretty much exactly the same as Dead Space, just that DS doesn’t have psy powers, regen chamber thingos, hallucinations and, most importantly, SHODAN.
Okay, lets unpack this. First, stop making sweeping and uninformed remarks. I played System Shock 2 last year, so that would make me 19. Not 5. Secondly, try playing games, rather than just Googling them before passing judgement. I Googled Zune and just saw a whole bunch of hate threads, so it must be bad, right? Thirdly, I didn’t explain how it wasn’t scary because I didn’t want to write a small essay on why it wasn’t. But since you asked so nicely…
Dead Space 1 (not 2, since I haven’t played it, but I doubt it differs substantially) fails at horror because it fails to create the state of mind required for someone to undergo a truly ‘horror’ experience. Hitchcock understood this when he made, well, all of his movies, but Psycho or The Birds aren’t really comparable. Event Horizon is probably a closer example, and is something which Dead Space 1 actually ends up being very similar to, but I’ll discuss that later.
Let’s talk generally about horror and what it entails for a moment. Horror is, at its simplest level, a genre concerned with making the player feel scared. But too often that’s where the development ends; most emotions in games aren’t particularly fleshed out, but its horror where its needed most. Simple emotions like happiness can be easily conveyed, so can immediate feelings of sadness, and there’s a whole article somewhere on the internet which talks about how games convey a feeling of gratification from completing specific tasks and goals. That’s easy stuff. Where it gets more complex is in emotions like love, fear or hatre. Its hard just to hate someone from a ten second cutscene, but you can make someone happy. Hate requires a deep set up, requiring us to understand certain things before we can learn to hate them. If anyone else watched that Avatar review on Youtube (by the same guy who did the Star Wars reviews), you’ll remember where he talks about how the villain is set up as the stereotypical mega anti-hero to convey hatred from the audience. To get to that point, however, the film needs to go through a long set up, full of dialogue, imagery and character interaction.
Horror, finally, is an even more complex version of an emotion, being a state of mind. It comprises of a number of complex emotions, coming together to not only scare the pants off the player, but truly scare them. That’s a feat few films or, more topically, games has achieved. What I believe makes a strong horror game, and where Dead Space specifically fails, is below.
1) Isolation
The best way of conveying horror is to isolate the player. Helplessness is absolutely essential to truly scaring the player. While its certainly possible to still have a horror film with the audience experiencing it through a group, such as Alien, its more common for films featuring groups to focus on isolating individual characters to convey horror, like Event Horizon and Sunshine. Isolation works because, when you’re alone, you’re at your most vulnerable emotionally. You’re more susceptible to other emotions, and you are intrinsically more likely to be scared while by yourself.
Dead Space fails on this level easily by keeping you in constant contact with, well, everyone it can get its hands on. Granted, I’m only up to Chapter 7, but right now I’m constantly yelled at by pretty much everyone. System Shock 2 did this perfectly; you run through a bunch of levels at the behest of your saviour, finally get to them and find out that she killed herself after seeing what the super-evil SHODAN had planned. At that moment, where you are completely alone, you experience true horror. Or get damn close.
2) Helplessness
The feeling of helplessness is crucial to horror. Kryptonite was used to make Superman experience horror just because it meant that he was no longer able to blast his way out of threatening situations. Alien was great at doing this because nobody was able to kill the Alien, meaning that they were completely helpless against it and likely to die at any moment.
Dead Space, on the other hand, throws so much ammo at you that you absolutely don’t know what to do with it. And, if you don’t have ammo, you can just buy it with the thousands of credits you get. I have never run out of ammo in normal situations, and the game makers make it virtually impossible to do, since every single enemy drops ammo, and there are ammo pickups every ten meters. That means that all but the bosses are easy as shit to kill, meaning that the feeling of horror goes away immediately.
Ironically, Dead Space actually does this really well at the very beginning of the game. When you first get off the tram and are chased down a corridor without any guns by a couple of angry aliens, you are at your most helpless. You had no information, everyone you knew had just died (as far as you knew), and you were being chased by enemies you had no way of killing. Run like hell Clarke. Run like hell.
3) Atmosphere
Now, there are a lot of things that something in the horror genre has to do right, but the most basic of these is atmosphere. You can’t have a horror game in a sunny field with happy bunnies. Doesn’t. Work. Space ships basically write themselves in terms of atmosphere, and this is something Dead Space capitalises on well enough. There is organic stuff everywhere, lots of dead bodies, blood splatters, random humans killing themselves and lots and lots of jumping aliens. My only criticism is that it looks pretty much exactly like System Shock 2. Pretty much down to the random organic growths.
Oh, and another thing; the music is used extremely poorly, mostly because it is always used to signify danger. If the player knows exactly when danger is coming (because he hears music and always knows that that means danger), then there’s no horror, because he knows exactly when its coming. Its like someone coming on screen before a scene in Event Horizon and saying “look out! Scary scene ahead!”.
4) Misc.
There are a lot of other things games, films and books do to get given a ‘horror’ title. So much of it comes down to a ‘je ne sais quoi’ quality that it is almost indefinable what makes it so compelling as a horror title. That said, there are a few things Dead Space does that do the opposite. The bread crumbs thing is one, the shop is another. Granted, Resident Evil 4 did the shop and that was still quite a good horror game, but here it just seems horribly tacked on and doesn’t fit at all with the setting. Not only can you purchase enough ammo to fix your danger needs, it just doesn’t feel very convincing. Why would a ship have a shop selling ammunition? Would the company not simply provide all the ammunition its employees needed? Further, why have a credit system at all? Why do you need currency on a space ship? Do oil rigs have their own currency? Do submarines need vendors? It just doesn’t make sense.
I’m sure there are more things that I’ve forgotten, but there are more than enough reasons to make the basis of my point clear. Dead Space is, at times, scary, but its not a horror game. You sometimes (but only sometimes) sit on the front of your seat, and only do you sometimes feel any of the emotions I listed above. More often you feel frustrated and bored, running around corridors and killing the same zombies you’ve been killing for the last 8 hours.
I’m playing Dead Space 1 on hard, and its still ludicrously easy. Though inconsistently frustrating in parts. AKA, terrible pacing.
Oh wow, people in this thread actually think Dead Space is a horror game. Come on, who doesn’t realize it is a really dark action game with occasional surprise enemies, and is good fun nevertheless.
That bit scared me to death too! x]
Damn, what the hell is your problem about the horror? I can understand that you all didn’t find it scary at all. You really have to be alone, you must use headphones, it should be quite around yourself and the most important thing, you MUST PLAY IN A DARK AREA!
Then you can enjoy the game and the horror. When you’re playing while your friends are watching you, or the room is as bright as heaven, it’s just not that thing…
Ok, back to topic:
My favourite part of the game is chapter 10, but I really don’t wanna spoiler around here
But in germany we can’t play the multiplayer, ‘cuz the EA-Servers are still offline here, I hope it’ll work when the game is out here, I had to pre-order the game from an shop in austria. Just because of the fuckin’ bavarias and their shitty appellation process, hate them!