Week 5 - Beast Mode

This week I went the distance by completing 2 games! I beat Dead Space 2, and Dead Space Extraction. I also cleared out all the basic Dead Space 2 trophies, so all I have left are difficulty trophies. Extraction I just cleared the story, and got whatever came with just going through the game. I ended up walking away with 50 trophies for the week, which is about the amount I walked away with the whole month of January. Anyways with two game down that means I have two reviews for ya this week!

First I’ll start with Dead Space 2, because I’m really excited about this game. Dead Space 2 is the best game I have played since I’ve started playing video games. If you didn’t think the first Dead Space could have been any better you’re mistaken! This one improves soooo much on the first Dead Space it’s almost a shock. I was anticipating this game but wasn’t anticipating on it being this good!

*Spoiler Alert*
They kept the same necromorphs as in the first one as well as added different ones, such as pukers and spitters. They also added in crawlers, which are these scary little babies that crawl on the ground (hence the name) there heads are 180 degrees then what they should be, and they jump on you and explode! They aren’t all that dangerous by them selves, but they comes in packs of like 10+ so if you don’t take them out fast they can eventually swarm you. The also made your melee and your stomp faster which can be very hand when trying to stomp a necro to death when under stasis. Your stasis now recharges when in a safe spot, and it recharges one section (4 when fully upgraded) every 2-3 minutes. They added new weapons as well as brought a lot of the old ones back. I got the rivet gun for pre-ordering… and it is useless I wouldn’t recommend it. The detonator, which allows you to place mines strategically that work as trip wires. They also built off the first Dead spaces story, which was a plus in my book, and I didn’t think it would be possible. Isaac did destroy the only marker (what causes dead people to turn into these necromorphs) in the first game. They also made it so you can respec your power node upgrades for a small fee. The final big addition to the game is Isaac now speaks, and thank god for that. Brings humor to the table in a scary game such as this, and it also gives the players somewhat of a connection to Isaac.

On to my quick little review of the game

Review:
Sound - Like the first game the music drew you into the game, while making you piss yourself at the same time. When the game got intense the music got intense, and a lot of the times I needed to pause it to slow my heart rate down as my adrenaline was a pumpin’. They also brought back the surround sound ambiance. I can’t remember how many times I turned around because I heard a wrench fall or something walking on metal behind me. A lot of it did seem rehashed, but there was definitely some parts that I haven’t heard before that still got me checking my tale side.

Lighting - This department lacked a bit in the game, but honestly it didn’t bug me that much for two reasons. 1 you were on a space station (almost like a small city), and you started here when there was people a live. Really it was needed for the game, but it wasn’t all bright lights and shiny stuff. After you got further in the game the lights started to shut down and you could realize that after a while the station was losing it’s power, and you started having flickering lights, and other things that can’t make you nervous. There was even some hallways you would look down and see movement, but not shoot because it was to dark to know what it was and you wanted to conserve ammo.

Gameplay - This is what they improved on enormously. First off they kept the same menus/HUD design, so no menus or having to stop your progress to search your bags, logs, or mission. They also kept the same upgrade system, but tworked it so it would be slightly different. They added new node slots in your weapons for such things as alt fire and special abilities. For example the contact beam has an alt fire to send a shockwave radius around you, upgrading it’s special made it stasis anything that was hit by it. Some things they improved on was making Isaac less sluggish moving when melee attacking or stomping, but it still kept that strong stomp feeling. More enemies introduced in this game made it feel like a whole new game, and made you think of new strategies to take them out. If I’m correct I believe there were 6 new enemies, and they are Crawlers, Stalkers, Pukers, Spitters, Pack, and Tripods.

Playability - The first Dead Space the controls were real sluggish, firing, stomping, reload, etc. would sometimes feel delayed after pushing the corresponding button, but it seems it was Visceral’s main goal to fix this. I have yet to come across something that doesn’t feel right. On top of that that got rid of the button combos, which took a while to get used to due to just finishing the first one. Instead of having to hold L1 + square to reload you just need to push square, and they also added a quick stasis like they had in the first one for healing. Just hit triangle and it would use a stasis pack for you. All around this game improved in this category. Definitely an easy game to pick up and play, the controls didn’t feel wonky at all.

Story - This is what has me jumping for joy in this game, the story was phenomenal New york Times best seller quality here. Again I don’t want to give to much detail if you haven’t played it, but I’ll give you the run down. Three years past since the Ishimura incident, and Isaac is brought to the station to help is mental conditions. The game starts off with the station being under attack, you have no idea where you are or how you got there. All you know is the ship is being overrun by Necromorphs… Isaac’s battle instincts kick back in as he tries to uncover what has happened to him the past 3 years, and how the Necromorph’s spread after he destroyed the only “Marker”. You meet a bunch of new interesting characters a long your way that help you out, and all the mean while you get to hear Isaac speak for the first time, and what comes out of his mouth is nothing to be sad about.

Replay Value - Unlike the first Dead Space this one came with multiplayer, so the replay value is a higher than the first game. Right now I hear that the humans are highly favored making the multiplayer uneven. I’m sure after a few patches that won’t be the case. I have yet to play the multiplayer, and not sure if I will. I am certain though this game will stay on my shelf forever just because of the single player experience. It’s not a short game, it doesn’t feel short, and the fun factor will be there for a long long time. With no doubt in my mind this will be game of the year in my own mind, and hopefully everyone elses. Hopefully it wasn’t released to early in the year to be remembered.

Now that my review is done I will go through my platinum strategy.

Platinum Strategy:
Well I must beat the game on hardcore and Zealot, now I was expecting Zealot trophy to pop once Hard Core trophy popped, but people are saying they don’t stack. That means I’ll need 2 more flythrough, but you know what I’m not made about that. Anyways I plan to do Hard Core first, because when Hard Core is complete you receive the unlockable weapon Hand Cannon… video by HayabusaDGO

Hand Cannon


Allowing me to go through Zealot with it, which would make that a breeze. This is because Hand Cannon is a 1 shot kill, and I also won’t have to purchase ammo/reload.

How do I plan to beat hardcore with 3 saves? Well the first 8 chapters are rather short and easy, a few parts here and there that are difficult, but nothing that was close to killing me in my first play through. My first save will be in the beginning of Chapter 8. Chapters 8 - 11 seem to be a tad long, and 12 is an extremely hard part, so I might save at the end of Chapter 11, and at the beginning of chapter 13. I will have to take it slow, and make sure I conserve my ammo. Like in Dead Space my main weapons will be the plasma cutter and the Force gun, but unfortunately the force gun doesn’t come into play until chapter 11. Therefore I plan to use the contact beam until chapter 11 (for it’s alt fire). I will also have the detonator to accompany me, because it helps against the Stalkers. I also plan to upgrade my health and stasis before my weapons, and that’s because I hear they hit like trucks in Hard Core. I will also be keeping 3-4 of my highest health packs in my inventory at all times in case things get hairy.

After Hard Core it will be just a simple run through NG+ with my Hand Cannon and fully upgraded armor. Should take me 7-8 hours to beat Zealot.

After I cleaned up all the Dead Space 2 trophies I decided to try out extraction since I wasn’t around my recorder to start Hard Core. Dead Space Extraction is a rail shooter, and honestly I’ve only played rail shooters in the arcade. This one is different in many ways though, and some were good and some were just down right annoying.

First off Dead Space extraction had a storyline to it, and I must say I was very pleased with that. Most rail shooters your just shooting things, but in this one your getting the story of what happened to the USG Ishimura before Isaac and his team landed there. The cool part was you got to meet Nicole for reals on this trip, and half the game took place on the Ishimura giving you that of, “Oh hey! I remember this place in Dead Space!”. Extraction did a great job of linking stories together, and the story is huge pluses in my book… That is mainly why I play video games is for great stories. One of the bad things is it being a survival horror series you had to pick up ammo, logs, weapons, upgrade, and etc. as well as a rail shooter, therefore unable to control the camera in your favor to pick said things up. A lot of the times I ended up missing a few things because the camera didn’t stay long enough for me to loot the items on the ground. This was really annoying, as sometimes I would get three seconds to loot eight items. Also when I was given the option to free roam it was also timed, and you had the option to move the camera up, down, left, and right. Up and down worked fine it was fast and responsive, but left and right it was so slow you only had time to look at one side. I was playing with a DualShock, so I can’t tell if it would be the same case when it comes to the move.

Review:

Sound - The sound isn’t as great as Dead Space or Dead Space 2, and it wasn’t very suspenseful because of this. Also it being a rail shooter I knew it wasn’t gonna spawn enemies behind me, so they would all be in front of me. I’m sure the sound would have made it more scary and more on the edge of my seat, but oh well.

Lighting - was also lacking. It was missing the flashing lights the power outages and just the scary factor. This kind of sucks as both sound and lighting is what makes these horror games so scary, and this game was lacking in both departments. Not much else to say, yea there was darkness but you need more than just dark to be scary.

Gameplay - The gameplay was lacking severely, and this might be why I’ve never been into rail shooters. It just felt that every level was the same, and it might because there is no freedom to explore or find the objective yourself. Some of the bosses were confusing so many tedious steps, and if you did it wrong you died or ran out of ammo. One boss required you to use the horrible free look. Just ruined the experience for me. At the end of this game I was thinking to myself I am seriously just playing this game for the plat and the story, and other than those 2 things this game was no fun to me. The game also lacked in length, but that was fine with me as I was getting bored and felt it was kind of repetitive by level 8 (out of 10).

Playability - I was very disappointed in the controls in this game. They weren’t even comparable to the ones in Dead Space because of how much they changed. I don’t know if I was disappointed because I was using a Dualshock instead of a Move controller, but I feel if your going to implement the DualShock into the game you should probably make sure that it is usable. The buttons were responsive, but I had to turn my curser sensitivity to max and that still wasn’t enough. I’m assuming using the move this would have been a lot better as you’re the controllers sensitivity.

Story - This is where the game really shined for me. There were little intertwines to this story and the Dead Space 1 story. Going into rooms you saw in the first game, as well as meeting Nicole (Isaacs… dead girlfriend), how the wall was welded shut (mission in the first Dead Space was to blast through a welded panel), and others that I don’t want to give away. If you plan on playing this game I suggest you play through Dead Space 1 first and then you can be like oh hey, and it just makes Extraction more fun to play. I must that was the only way I was able to make it through this game.

Replay Value - haha, I don’t think I need to say much about this… Like the first one you have to go through it once to replay the game on it’s hardest difficulty, and that is a poor excuse for replay value. Normally you wouldn’t have to do this, but if your going for the trophy (like myself) you need to. I can’t say this is the worst rail shooter I have played, it’s definitely the best one I’ve played. I think the genre just lacks in almost every category.

Platinum Strategy - Well basically I have to play through this game more than twice, once to unlock impossible, once to beat impossible, and replay levels to get all the collectibles and 5 stars for the round. Basically that’s all that is needed for this platinum. There are also challenges that need to be completed for each level, and you must beat the best score. Some people say this is the hardest part about the platinum, but isn’t that big of a deal. They are just short parts that were throughout the game put into how well can you do this one part. Other than that the platinum should be pretty simple.

I am planning on getting 2 platinums this month. Dead Space 2 in week two of February and Extraction in week 3. Depending on my work schedule and determination these might be switched. (no determination no Hard Core mode). I might even end up getting both in week 3, but I’m hoping that won’t be a problem.

Now I didn’t forget Demon’s Souls. As I promised I completed a level this week 2-2 and was able to record it. I made sure to carry the Crescent Falchion +1 that I received from 4-1, as it helped with the bear bugs and Flamelurker due to it‘s magic damage. You could also upgrade the winged spear to the Moon Winged Spear, but it would require you to find Shards of Moonstone in 3-1 I believe. Flamelurker isn’t easy, and he did kill me twice, this was my first time facing him and he gave me some problems. The sucky part is I died with 15000+ souls and on my way back to him I fell off a high platform and died again, therefore losing all those souls. I also talked to Patches the Hyena and recommend you don’t attack him, as he sells heavy arrows in the nexus which will help us. Just do what he asks you to do and forgive him for what he does to you.

Due to Flamelurker giving me some problems I used a method to make it easier for me. Normally I would kill him the old fashion way, but I was running short on time (had to be at work) so I said screw it and made sure I downed him so that wasn’t all a waste of time. Anyways heres the video on how to get to him through the tunnel and the Flamelurker fight for that…

How to get to Flamelurker - Long Path


Flamelurker - easy fight


That concludes the end of this weeks Trophy Hunting and Blog, hope you guys enjoyed my reviews and videos. Next week I’m hoping to have videos up for Dead Space 2 Hard Core mode, as well as the platinum! I’ll see you all there!

Trophy Counter:
Trophies: 1152/2012 Platinum Trophies: 18/32