Dead Space 2, Sweet Options

[AC9breaker]

My copy of Game Informer came in yesterday and man what a treat.



Some key points that got me excited from the article.

1. Issac is back and gonna be leading people
2. Issac mentally unstable
3. Issac is gonna have personality and have some dialogue
4. You won't be errand boy and can send NPC to do menial tasks
5. Balanced pacing instead of constant pressure of fear
6. Smoother controls and greater accessibility
7. Actual control in zero gravity movement instead of just jumping from point to point
8. Plasma Cutter won't be nerfed, other guns will be more awesome
9. Online is totally gonna be included
10. Horde mode and possible L4D versus mode?
11. Release date, sometime 2010
12. i excite

[Scan_Man]

Yeah I was waiting to beat it to say something. But, yeah this game is freakin awesome. I'm playing on PC because I like to crank the graphics up.

The experience, to me, playing through this game feels like a Universal Studios ride. But, if Universal Studios did a haunted house. The pacing, the sets, the lighting, how each area establishes a certain mood to influence your emotions. Certain parts feel like an action game, where you just mow through enemies. Then others are there to try and jump scare you. And you have the moment that are there just to creep you out. I love it.

This sequel pretty much fixed what I did not like about the first one. In the first one the combat and action felt stiff (bad PC port?), while also feeling secondary to the objective seeking, puzzling completion, and backtracking (which I can no longer stand in these types of games). This one strikes a nice balance, while virtually eliminating backtracking. This game is less scarier than the first, but I think that has to how each area sets the mood. After a while you can tell what they will throw at you just based on the mood of the environment, and sometimes music. Like, all those elevators and being teased with the power being cut, you know sooner or later a necromorph will fall from the ceiling while you are riding one. Day care area, you know just going to get something weird, nothing really jumping out at you (did anyone else feel like they were in Rapture when you get to the multipurpose room?). Long Space Elevator ride with convenient windows as another example. I like the variety here, instead of the game just trying to make me poop my pants.


Graphics are excellent. Though I wish Anti-Aliasing worked through the graphic card control panel. Jaggies stick out like a sore thumb in some parts. These Xbox 360/PS3 multi-platform ports never seem to have it because on the consoles they sometimes can't afford good Anti-Aliasing while still able to maintain a decent framerate and be cross-platform at the same time. The consoles tend to have a blurring effect so you don't notice the jaggies too much. The PC has this "blurring" effect stated as "Anti-Aliasing" option in the settings. But, it just makes edges looked like they are smeared with a thin layer of Vaseline. Which looks like like crap, much like how most of these multi-platform games look like when you playing them in 1080p on consoles compared to PC. I recommend turning this off until driver support/patches offers a real Anti-Aliasing solution. Textures were blurry as expected of a console port, however cranking up anisotropic filtering to x16 in control panel fixed that. Textures are so detailed, and look fantastic at AF x16 compared to default and high settings in the in game options. With the "Anti-Aliasing blurring" crap off, the lightning effects and shadows cranked to max the game looks pretty damn crisp.


While you get better graphics on PC version if you have a decent system, there are some bugs/oversights present. For instance, you cannot get the new game+ goodies. EA acknowledged this on release and is suppose to be patching it soon. We coming up on two weeks now though. Hardcore mode can be cheesed, since a bug allows your save count to reset every time you exit the game.

Also, as of now PC will not be getting the DLC. I don't get why they would alienate the PC user base like that. But, we will see. The PS3 version comes with Extraction. So it seems like the best deal if you are putting down $59.99. I opted for PC because like I said above I prefer cracking up the graphics. I also prefer Mouse + Keyboard controls for these types of games.

Anyway, very good game to start the year off with. This year is looking just great as last year for games.