Last week my work was reduced massively and this blog is late because Andrew Smith of Spilt Milk Studios visited. We were even sharing 'office' space which had some distracting elements to it. However, while the work might not have been getting done movies, games and drinking certainly did.
There has been a few revelations (Faster is AWESOME, Hobo with a Shotgun was SHIT) and we also finally got Resident Evil: Dark Side Chronicles finished. My previous stance stands, and I was really shocked at how little bonus content there was. The little there was was so incredibly cheap Capcom might as well have not bothered.
Once Resi was out of the way we took on Dead Space: Extraction, a present from Monsieur Smith to feed our light gun game habit. I'll say this much, this game is Fucking Quality, with a capital Q.
Dead Space is an odd franchise for me. If you've been reading my blogs for a while now you may have realised that if I like something I tend to throw myself whole heartedly into following these things. For instance I own all those little movies Ubisoft keep doing for Assassin's Creed and have been buying the special editions of the games. Dead Space on the other hand, while I thoroughly enjoy it, I just don't seem to be overly dedicated to it. I only got round to the second game because someone at work lent me it, but then I've also watched the Downfall movie.
The first thing that really struck me about Escalation is that the Resi games still strike me very much as arcade games, despite being just for the Wii. Dead Space on the other hand feels like a proper game for home enjoyment, that just happens to belong in the light gun genre.
The game just has quite a lot of elements that makes it that little bit more than 'just a light gun game'. For starters the voice acting is quite fantastic, not just of the main cast but nearly everyone involved. This is partly because there isn't just the focus on one player but a shifting focus as the game progressives, the opening level alone sells this mechanic as brilliant and really allows a cinematic feel.
But that brings us to a point where the game fails. The second player. If there's one thing that Darkside Chronicles does well is the feeling that there's two of you along for the ride. Dead Space fails on this one. Despite offering two player there are points in the game where you are quite clearly on your own and the second cross hair and gun is being controlled by no-one. It becomes pretty clear this is the case during the first level, though for 90% of the game there is usually a second person with you, it just seems strange. Then again where it's really obvious another person may well have spoilt the atmosphere.
But there's loads of little things that make up for it on top of what I've already mentioned. The 'glow worms' or glow sticks as everyone else calls them. Shake the wii-mote just like real life to light one, and every now and again give it another shake to keep it going. It even sounds exactly the same as a real life glow stick.
The hacking aspect of the game is quite cool. Sort of an Operation/Don't Touch the Wire board game style event, with each player taking turns to connect the nodes. The first few feel like filler, but then obstacles are introduced that slightly knock your health. Still a little filler, until it introduces the fact that enemies can attack you while trying to hack. Leaving one player to shoot while the other hacks then swapping as the hack continues. Pure genius.
Then there's the graphics. This being a Wii game they aren't exactly stellar, but they are pretty impressive for Nintendo's underpowered machine. More importantly, it still looks and feels like Dead Space, only slightly helped by the game featuring some of the environments from Isaac Clarke's first foray. Never done as an out and out cheat though. As Smith put it, it feels like the design team were given a layout of the colony and Ishimura and told to plan a game. Once they had their plan in place, inserted one or two nods to the main game, such as a door puzzle the team have to make sure is locked, that later on Isaac has to get open again.
If you're a Dead Space fan or just looking for a game for that neglected console under the TV I cannot recommend this game highly enough.
