Celebrate Halloween In Style – Scare the crap out of yourself with Dead Space
October 31, 2008 by Ben · Leave a Comment
Dead space is the latest terrifying release into the survival horror genre. Seemingly drawing inspiration from the original Alien movie, Dead Space puts you in the unfortunate shoes of a space engineer named Isaac Clarke. You are part of a team of three sent to investigate a distress signal, which as we all know is never a good start!
The source of the distress signal is a mile long mining ship, the USG Ishimura, which has been infested by aliens. You are soon separated from the rest of your team and must utilise your space engineer type tools in order to defend yourself from the onslaught of Xenomorphs trying to eat your brain. This leads to some very interesting, never seen before combat as most situations aren’t as cut and dry as your typical shooter. For example a quick headshot which would normally be sufficient won’t help you at all in Dead Space. Instead you need to systematically severe the limbs of your assailants to ensure they don’t keep coming at you. This is an unusual twist to the typical headshot routine and will force most gamers to rethink their strategy.
For the most part the fighting is extremely frantic and directly in your face due to the overly resilient and aggressive nature of your enemies. Luckily for you, in addition to your array of mining tools and flamethrowers your character has a few special abilities to keep the bad guys at bay. Stasis allows you to temporarily slow and stop time giving you precious extra seconds to dismember those nasty aliens. Telekinesis lets you move objects around and is useful for both puzzle solving and combat.
Bioshock Review
October 27, 2008 by Ben · Leave a Comment
Over the last 10 years, only two games have managed to invoke the sort of excitement in me that I might expect from a good movie or a really good book. Both were 1st person shooters and both consisted of one key element that kept me hooked throughout – the unpredictable and original storyline. The first of these being Half Life back in 1998. Never before had a game managed to actually increase my heart rate as I watched events unfold before me on screen. Never before had a game made me feel helpless – ‘Should I be running here or am I meant to kill that?’. In my eyes, too often do game studios churn out the same run of the mill rubbish, without bothering to put in that extra attention to detail to make you care about the story or characters.
Sure, after Half Life there were a host of add-ons and then eventually Half Life 2 – all of which were good. But by then I knew what to expect and it just wasn’t the same as experiencing the original for the first time.
Bioshock is a completely original storyline and from the very beginning it doesn’t take long for you to be thrown into the midst of the action, completely unawares. Instead of in game cutscenes, Bioshock follows Half Life’s example and uses a series of scripted sequences to take you from one element of the story to the next. In this way Bioshock brings back the unexpected, the never seen before feeling where you just aren’t sure if you should start running away from an in game character or if they are going to help you in some way. I actually found myself wandering through areas of the game in total amazement, like a young child might on their first visit to Disney World.
Bioshock allows the player to make a series of moral decisions on how they will progress through the game making it unique in this perspective. Given the choice would you choose becoming more powerful at the expense of anothers life? This would make your own life easier and certainly give you a serious advantage against the host of psychotic residents that you encounter on your journey through Bioshocks underwater city. Or would you show your human side and make things more difficult on yourself in the hope of eventually being able to help the victims of this dreadful city, whether you were to get out alive or not? Upon playing Bioshock you will find yourself pausing a moment to draw up the pro’s and con’s of your decisions – your choices ultimately affect not only your character, but the outcome of the game itself and thus your total gameplay experience.
Bioshock has just been released on PS3 and is now available on most other platforms at the budget price of only £27. Get it now and await the upcoming release of Bioshock 2!
