DEAD SPACE

Honest review  by: QUIK

My friend Robert has been telling me to try this game for a long time. I picked it up for the PC and according to him the graphics were much better then the Xbox 360 version. I only played the demo version on the 360 and I wasn’t impressed at first. Warning: Do not play the demo of this game, if you like horror shooters you must own this game in your collection, the demo is a disappointing experience compared to the game itself.

Let me compare this game to another horror shooter I’ve played called Doom III. Dead Space does everything right where Doom failed. The atmosphere of the Ishimura (the ship you are on through most of the game, think Event Horizon for comparison) is absolutely brilliant and scary (in a good way) compared to the world of Doom. The enemies are unrepetetive, the pace at which they are introduced in the game is perfect leaving you never bored with the same type of enemy or how they attack you. After the initial scary mood of Doom passed I would literally walk into a new area, empty the clip, clear the room and move on to the next area. Dead Space doesn’t do that. You always have to be on your toes because even when walking through an already cleared area there’s a chance a monster will jump out of a vent and attack you. The enemies will even appear in some places and “play dead” suddenly jumping up at you when you walk past them too closely. Honestly when it comes to enemies in this game and how scary they really are this game gets perfect 10/10. I couldn’t ask for more.

The story is absolutely brilliant. You begin not knowing anything about the world (unless you saw the animated movie or read either books or comic books based on the Dead Space universe) but by the time the first chapter ends you will want to know everything about it. I get excited and happy every time I found a text, audio or video log. Learning about this world was almost as equally fun as playing in it which recently I only experienced with Mass Effect. I won’t spoil any of it here because I want you to experience it the way I did, through in-game logs (and eventually Dead Space wiki hehe).

You play Dead Space in a “over the shoulder” third person perspective (think Gears of War). At first I wasn’t very happy about that. I figured if this is a horror game it would be much scarier to experience it “through the eyes” of the main character. I disagree with myself now. I think the tpp was a very good idea now. “Why such a change of heart Quik” you might ask. Well, let me tell you dear and loyal fan of yourgamesux. There is no visible UI in this game. No health bar on the bottom, no ammo info in the corner of the screen. Everything you need to know about your character, weapons, inventory is part of the game and your character. When the protagonist Isaac Clark checks his inventory he sees a holographic projection of his items and obviously you see them as well. You know Isaac’s health by a “health bar” right on his back (the game explains why it’s there but I won’t spoil it for you, just pay attention to the posters on Ishimura, it will make you chuckle) and when you aim with a weapon the ammount of ammo left will show right there on the gun. Through keeping all of the player’s UI right in the game the creators of Dead Space made sure you are never taken out of the fantasy you are immersed in and it made the game that much more scarier. Yet another area where Dead Space wins and Doom III failed.

I highly recommend picking up this game. At the time when this review came out you could pick it up on Steam for $14,99 and that’s 15 bux well spent my friends. Now I can’t wait to finish the last chapter (I never even bothered finishing the last boss in Doom III) and play Dead Space 2.

One last thing I want to say to all of you Halo fans:

Left 4 Dead 2

Honest review by: QUIK
                     
I have become a zombie otaku(fanboy) recently. I read The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks and it rekindled my love for all things zombie. I love the canon of slow zombies that are not very mobile but are still very dangerous and have began a level 4 epidemic. A simple scratch or bite can infect you and have you increase the numbers of the walking dead army.
Left 4 Dead 2 spits on that canon and stomps on it with it’s corpse-rotten foot as if it was a finished cigarette.
Zombies are fast, very fast. They can bite you all day long and as long you got a first-aid pack along with your companions and some pills, you will feel right as day. You are immune. In this version of the zombie apocalypse the only survivors are immune. You run around from safe house to safe house picking up unlimited ammount of ammo and guns and a limited amount of medicine. Does this sound right to you? Think about every day you commute to work or school. Do you see more pharmacies or gunshops? You can pick up your basic non-subscription medicine (including bandages) at every gas station these days. Living currently in EU where we do not have a second ammendment to the constitution I doubt I would even know where to look for a gun in case of a zombie apocalypse (I guess the only thing that comes to mind is undead cops). I am being picky, sure, but for some reason the more realism I get in a zombie game the more I love it. That’s why I would absolutely love an MMO based on the canon described by Max Brooks. I do digress though. Fast zombies are trendy these days. I guess it started with 28 days later (although I am sure someone will correct me on this) and continued until now, with the last example I can think of being I am Legend with Will Smith. I know those creatures wouldn’t be called zombies by some by a lot of people call them that. I honestly hope that shows like Walking Dead (and the amazing comic by Robert Kirkman) will make film makers and game designers realize that slow but strong in numbers zombies can be more terrifying then a sprinting undead (and somehow seem more realistic).
”Quik, did this game have any redeeming qualities that made it a fun playing experience?” I hear you asking. The answer is yes, quite a few in fact. I like the level designs. They are fun, often dark (I loved walking around through dark underground areas in this game with nothing but a flashlight) and give you a realistic feeling of being out in the open or inside buildings. If you accept the fact that these zombies can move quicker then most alive people their classes are a lot of fun. Me and Fated yelled out the names of the special classes of zombies every time because if not taken out quickly, usually they could have done a lot of damage to the team. I absolutely loved the writings on the walls inside the safe houses. Remember how I said I love realism to my zombie games? Stuff like that is great, obviously communication would be very limited in that scenario and survivors would try to give loved ones who potentially survived a chance to find them.
Speaking of safehouses I would love to give an award to the most useless weapon in this game to the shotgun. Absolutely useless. Inside buildings pistols and mellee weapons seem to be a lot more effective and a lot quicker to use, out in the open the accuracy and range of it makes it even a more useless weapon.
I guess the best part about this game is how much fun you can have with friends or even strangers through online play. Many different modes also provide many hours of additional entertainment.
Do I recommend picking up this game? Sure I do. I will say wait for a nice promotion on either Steam store or wherever else you purchase your games and buy it, if you like zombies, first person shooters and multiplayer fun you will not be disappointed. If you can talk a friend or two into picking it up as well, you can be sure that you will have a blast with them.
Whoa… lower the brightness on your monitor … I think I hear a witch.

Honest review by: FATED

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. The experience you get playing this game depends entirely on the camaraderie and availability of friends. Having one or two good friends to play this game with you will mean hilarity, excitement and lots of good times. Playing this game alone is nothing special.

The game plays very well, the danger builds as your health drops and you run out of health packs. It is full of really great moments where your teamwork or lack of it makes for frantic and sometimes scary gameplay.

Sometimes the game is frustrating, where one of your teammates doesn’t take their time, running ahead and getting into trouble while everyone else is carefully exploring a building. This game is not for lone heroes. In particular, the game leaves you defenseless against most of the special undead. A smoker constricting you, no, that sword in your hand is useless. A charger bashing you against a wall, sorry, that chainsaw isn’t going to help. A jockey on your head, in your panic you simply cannot raise your shotgun up and take care of the problem.

I understand why these concessions were made, for the sake of making teamwork a core of the game, but it gets old having to cry for help while watching your character helplessly dying under the claws of a hooded hunter.

The melee weapons are of dubious use. They’re great for taking out regular zombies but your three friends will have shot them already, and you mostly got in their way as you rushed toward the pack. I stepped in front of a shotgun burst far more often using my sword than I actually managed something useful wielding that relatively cool weapon.

Getting a jockey off my friends head simply took longer as I ran up to take swings with a crow bar, when I could have solved the problem from far away using a gun. Bottom line, the melee weapons are a cool gimmick.

The stages are great, but their ending aren’t always so. In particular, if I ever have to run and collect any more gasoline cans, I’m going to cry. Go to your mall, take a good look around. Tell me how many 5 gallon cans of gas you find. In addition, NASCAR fans, what is the capacity of a race car fuel cell? If you answered 60 gallons, apparently you win the L4D2 mall game. You cannot leave the mall until you get ALL the gas into the car, even though you could drive 100 miles away on the first one. Bad game design.

There’s another stage, where a generator won’t run until you get its tank to full. It needs to lower a bridge or something. I’m pretty sure 1 gallon would be enough there too.

The challenge would have been much better to frantically search for one can of gasoline, and make it as rare in that mall as it would be in a real one.

Bottom Line, this is a very fun multiplayer game, to be enjoyed for the thrills playing along with friends. There are some flaws, some silly plot twists that make as much sense as a B-movie, but overall it’s really fun. So should you get this game? If you have friends willing to try it, absolutely; otherwise, forget it.

Happy 2011!

Salutations and best wishes in the year 2011.

I appoligize for the lack of posts in the last quarter of 2010. It was mostly my fault, I wasn’t feeling all too well and with holidays and me trying to catch up on some games I had no time or energy to write.
On the upside, I finished a few games and played quite a few more and I plan on writing reviews for them at least once a week this year beginning with this week. Hopefully, this will be a year filled with content for yourgamesux.