Dead Space - A new System Shock?

june gloom on 31/12/2008 at 08:15

Mouse is only too slow for me during the big gun turret sequences. Usually I keep sensisitivity at half, but I have to crank it up to max for those parts. No big deal.

Jason Moyer on 31/12/2008 at 08:51

Quote Posted by Sulphur

I was wondering about that. I don't think the game's camera setup is particularly suited to 4:3 screens, which might be why people like JM are bitching about it. It certainly didn't annoy me that much on widescreen.

That could be part of it. I've seen widescreen screenshots and it doesn't seem nearly as bad. I really think the camera works great during combat sequences (it's basically the same as RE4, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, etc), it would just be nice if it zoomed out when you're not in aim mode so you could see more of the environment. I think I'd be more inclined to spend time exploring the levels if I weren't fighting the camera so much while moving around.

bikerdude on 31/12/2008 at 13:32

Quote Posted by addink

* And then you continued with points that were were rather immature and aggressive
* The 3rd person thing is is basically part of the game. Yes you are right that potentially the game could be a lot better if it allowed a 1st person view, but again it doesn't make the game a steaming pile of sh*t.
* All the points you made had long been discussed in this thread.
* Then again, this is better. Less immature, even though you do seem to like words with an asterisk in 'm a bit much. But apparently you're angry or something.
* Indeed not being able to try a game without buying it is annoying. It seems to me that they try to ride the hype they bought/created for as long as they can since the actual games generally can't live up to it.

- ...and being acerbic isnt..?
- Its does if the implantation of 3rd person view is so bad as to make the game practically unplayable.
- I did a search prior to posting the other thread, but for some reason it didn't turn up this thread. (the search engine on this forum can be a bit random sometimes)
- When I have been F**ked over by not only the publisher, but the shop I bought it from, your dam right I'm going to be annoyed.
- after having a pop for most of the post, common ground has been found then...

Quote Posted by Fafhrd

what the fuck is wrong with you that maximum mouse sensitivity isn't fast enough?

Quote Posted by sh0ck3r

the mouse sensitivity only seemed adequate after Eva's suggestion (forcing vsync in your GPU control panel and not in the game). Without it, it was way too slow.

well Fafhrd, max mouse sens isnt fast enough for me either. but Im gonna see if forcing it for the gpu panel will speed things up.

Quote Posted by Sulphur

As this game was designed to run on HD capable consoles it seems incredibly shorted sighted to not have correct support for wide-screen resolutions...

Quote Posted by EvaUnit02

* Go into the Control Panel mouse applet and disable "pointer precision".
* Overclock the USB polling rates by hacking usbport.sys; 1000Hz/1ms is the ideal variable. You can do this natively from Razer or Logitech mouse driver control panel applets.

thanks, I had forgotten about the mouse polling - as most games for me havent required this.

Fafhrd on 7/1/2009 at 05:31

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

As this game was designed to run on HD capable consoles it seems incredibly shorted sighted to not have correct support for wide-screen resolutions...

Umm, it DOES have correct support for wide-screen resolutions. 4:3 is not widescreen (and I'm pretty sure the 360 version will letterbox when playing on 4:3 screens, at that).

Just finished my first go 'round, and: Damn. Much better than I expected. And I have to say again: the stability and smoothness of it is AMAZING. Other developers/publishers, take note: If you MUST do cross platform development, put in the effort that [gasp]EA[/gasp] Redwood Shores put in. Not a single crash in 10 hours of gameplay, and nary a detectable dropped frame.

I mostly side with dethtoll on this one. While it doesn't quite reach "new System Shock" levels of great, it certainly tries a damn sight harder to get there, and in many ways succeeds, than BioShock does (AN INVENTORY! With limited space! And ammo that only stacks to a certain point before needing additional slots! Scarcity of resources! An upgrade path that requires serious forethought, and leaves room for potential 'Shit, I have to start over' mistakes, though strategic planning should be able to get you out of most of those.) The panic of being COMPLETELY OUT OF AMMO when locked in a room with one of the big rumbler beasts that only takes damage from behind, forcing me to constantly hit it with stasis and STOMP IT TO DEATH is like nothing BioShock ever managed to pull off.

And the sound design is EXCELLENT. Thief 1 and 2 had better, obviously, but this was incredibly good. Environment based audio occlusion, oh how I have missed you! And I have to make a special mention for the light design. The use of colour temperatures is pretty amazing. The way that as soon as you open a door, and see the colour move into the cold end of the spectrum, you know that it's either a: A big ass room (the bridge and hydroponics being examples of note) or b: Space (see a) and/or a vacuum, is great, and I can't think of another game that has used lighting in quite that way before. There are some exceptions, of course. The large engineering spaces typically have warm, dark lighting, but that serves to make them FEEL claustrophobic, so when tentacled baby monsters come flying out of the darkness at you, it's a freaky ass thing.

The only thing that I didn't like was trying to aim the damn guns whilst being dragged or otherwise held by the goddamn tentacles. And not being able to skip some of the lengthier 'You have been gruesomely torn to bits, and now your bits are eating each other. And now something else is eating your bits. YOU HAVE DIED' cutscenes. But those are far from game ruining nitpicks.

I haven't been this immersed (especially not in third person) and entertained by a game in a while (STALKER was the last thing that I can think of, and even that was a bit of a chore during some stretches). I almost want to dive right back in to Round 2 (or an Insane playthrough), but I think I'll hold off until after Mirror's Edge.

EvaUnit02 on 7/1/2009 at 07:04

Quote Posted by Fafhrd

Umm, it DOES have correct support for wide-screen resolutions. 4:3 is not widescreen (and I'm pretty sure the 360 version will letterbox when playing on 4:3 screens, at that).

(http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php/Dead_Space) Correct. Biker should've done his homework next time.

Jason Moyer on 7/1/2009 at 07:52

So apparently the 360 version will do letterboxed widescreen if you play it on a 4:3 CRT. Why the hell doesn't the PC version support this?

Fafhrd on 7/1/2009 at 08:59

Because you can choose a widescreen resolution and use the monitor's settings to resize the image properly? (Also because the letterboxing is handled automatically by the 360's graphics APIs and doesn't require any additional coding on the part of the developers, unlike DirectX 9.)

Volitions Advocate on 7/1/2009 at 15:23

Quote Posted by Fafhrd

I almost want to dive right back in to Round 2 (or an Insane playthrough), but I think I'll hold off until after Mirror's Edge.

Skip insane. go straight for Impossible. the difficulty scaling is the best I've ever played in a game.

sh0ck3r on 7/1/2009 at 21:18

Levels 1-3 are shit, levels 4-6 are ok, levels 7-11 are pretty decent and level 12 is ok.

Pros

-graphics are satisfactory (above Fallout 3, below Unreal 3 engine games), with some excellent lighting effects here and there; engine is very smooth
-sound can be quite effective
-innovative use of zero-gravity
-pleasantly immersive from about the half-way point and on

Neutral

-no real soundtrack
-breadcrumbs

Con

-generally restrained feel to gameplay compared to SS2 or even Bioshock
-power node system is flawed in that there is no need and little value in putting nodes into stasis, kinesis, air or hit points
-having to save at select points, which are sometimes not distributed that well
-game environments feel very sparse, pared down and repetitive, especially at the beginning; they could have used more detail
-there's not a lot of interacting with objects; too many simple button-pushing quests
-controls/views are unacceptable on the PC; they would be WAY better if I could switch my field of view/aim faster out of the box (I must disagree here about the port being THAT good); enabling v-sync thru the graphics card does alleviate the issue somewhat, though controls are never silky-smooth
-strong console feel (i.e. no jumping/no walking over ledges)
-strongly derivative (i.e. its final cutscene vs. SS2's)
-sound is sometimes annoying and the fact that it stays chaotic until the merest enemy in the area is defeated can seem excessive
-breadcrumbs can be problematic in zero-grav
-timed zones are irritating, though thankfully rare

june gloom on 7/1/2009 at 23:59

I'd like to ask again, what the CORNFLOWER BLUE FUCK makes DS' ending so "derivative" from SS2? For starters neither are all that much alike and for another thing they're both common horror (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwistEnding) tropes.