Volitions Advocate on 15/10/2009 at 19:35

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Taking heed of the advice from the online reviewers to rent-first-then-buy I went to blockbuster this weekend and rented it.

The plan was to stay up all night fueled by Swedish Berries and Monster Soda and beat it with a friend of mine in co-op mode.

First thing I'll get into the game play itself.

As far as a rail shooter is concerned, this game easily beats out everyone I've ever played, easily beats out any of the arcade hits like Time Crisis, Area 51, or House of the Dead. Screen spamming with your lightgun is not the answer here.

the shooting is typical of the original Dead Space game, with Strategic Dismemberment being the game here. It gets slightly difficult to do, however, because your targeting reticule is easily the size of the entire monster you're trying to kill. The reticule is a circle no matter what weapon you're using, with a sort of graphic representation on the inside of what the business end of the gun looks like. for the plasma cutter you've got your 3 vertical dots. for the plasma rifle its got the triangle. etc. To engage the secondary fire on all weapons you turn the wiimote sideways. which makes sense in terms of the plasma cutter, because of the pattern changing from vertical to horizontal. But from a *feel* standpoint, it doesn't make sense with any of the other weapons. Luckily I was just using the wiimote and nunchuck, and not the wiizapper or whatever TF it's called. I couldn't imagine how annoying it would be to turn that thing on its side everytime you wanted to use a secondary firemode.

We didn't make it through the entire game the first night, we got about halfway through chapter 6 when the game froze and decided to go to sleep. The next day I played it on my own and found the experience to be a great deal more enjoyable.

With 2 players I constantly lost track of which reticule was mine even though they were different colours. and fighting over ammo sucks because with 2 players you share the weapons you pick up. but you dont share the ammo, which means you can't chose to have one guy use the ripper, force gun and flame thrower. and thus only pick up the ammo for those weapons if you want to use the line gun, plasma cutter, and rifle. and the nature of the game means you have to have fast reflexes in order to grab the ammo as it goes across the screen, so you don't really have the time to delegate who picks up what ammo if they're short on a specific type. You just ahve to grab what's in front of you before it disappears off screen.

which brings me to the story of the game. I went in expecting more of the subversive shenanigans that came with the original dead space, really looking forward to the logs to be found to further expand the story. First problem is that getting the logs isn't easy because its just like grabbing ammo. if you miss grabbing a log you ahve to play the entire chapter over to get it again. and you can't review the logs you find in the main menu of the game. for a game that is this story driven I find this to be a major flaw. On the other hand.. the logs are so useless anyway that it reallyd oesn't matter. Most of the logs are just text logs, which once you pick up the rail stops and you have as much time to read them as you want before moving on. Unless of course you manage to pick it up while a necromorph attacks you. in which case you can't fight back with the text window open. so you close it and can't retreive it after you've killed the monster.

The contents of the logs are your usual "OMFG MY LEG GTFO *splat* AARRARAGHAGHAGHGHGH" when it comes to audio logs, which are a pain in the ass because if you pick one up it plays through the speaker on your wiimote instead of through the TV. which means you're holding it up to you ear to listen, which means you can't continue spamming the screen for ammo or shooting monsters. also if you're playing co op and you pick it up but not your partner, it only plays through your wiimote, not theirs as well.

This game held very little of what the original held in terms of hidden plot and easter eggs. The only thing i managed to pick out was the Acronym that the titles of the chapters spelled out. Which I picked up on since Dead Space did the same thing. Although at least in Dead Space you only find out what the secret message is (if you missed it) during the last chapter, in extraction you know it by chapter 8, and so the easter egg is spoiled before you find out what it is.

Despite the flaws, this game certainly had its moments, the first couple levels that take place on Aegis 7 were great, Although i had hoped that exploring the colony would take a different form than a light gun game. The rest of the game you're on Ishimura and basically going through all the areas that you've already been through as Issac, except before he's been there. Which gives us a couple cool moments like being on the bridge without a gaping meteor hole through it, and a section of the ship prior to the hull failing and sucking all the air out into space.

The 9th chapter is especially intense as you play a character who has basically got to go through the entire ship all by himself to turn off an automatic defensive cannon so that it doesn't shoot down your escape shuttle (the same one you turn back on as issac to shoot down the meteors only a few hours later)

Gameplay: for a light gun game 8/10

Plot: 5/10 they coudl've done a lot more and tied the stories together rather than regurgitating what we already knew happened.

Graphics: as far as the Wii is concerned... 8.5/10 I understand that it's going to be less flashy because it's on the wii, but I've seen better looking Wii games.

I did enjoy it. and I was still left with the same emotional response that Dead Space gave me.

discuss if you like.

PS. I apologize for any blatant typos or punctuation mistakes. I'm typing this from school on my lap on a netbook.

swaaye on 15/10/2009 at 20:07

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I tried this game on a couple of friends two weeks ago. We were burned out after about a half hour. I couldn't help but feel that the game just screamed to be let loose into a fully-controllable shooter. The on-rails stuff just isn't that fun, and all the on-rails looking around is disorienting. It's like all you control are the guy's eyeballs and hands lol.

Wii is sure turning into the ultimate platform for light gun shooter fans though.