Rebel FM
Rebel FM Episode 91 02/04/11 + Game Club: Dead Space 2 - Episode 1
You're reading right. This week we have a shorter main show with talk of Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, Killzone 3, the slightest hint of Deus Ex: Human Revolution and more, then move on to a few letters. Then, at one hour and ten minutes, we move on to what you've all been asking for: a special return engagement for Rebel FM's Game Club, this time for Dead Space 2. We cover chapters 1-3 (pay no attention to the ambitious mention of chapter 7 at the beginning), and if you want to follow along for next week, finish up through chapter 7. In case mention needs to be made, spoilers abound, though we mostly avoid any story spoilers beyond chapter 3. Enjoy!
This week's music, in order of appearance:
Death From Above 1979: Black History Month
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hello and welcome to every rebel FM episode 91, cat attack starting off with the cat attack. I mean, I think I goes with me as Arthur Geese. >> Hi. >> Matt Jandrenay. >> Hello. >> And once again, joining us, Rana Da. >> Hola. >> Is this three shows in a row for you? >> It is. >> So basically, this week's show is going to be a little different. We're going to talk about the games we've been playing. Sands of Dead Space 2. >> Oh, and Tyler says hello from the grave. >> Yeah, Tyler is dead. >> Yep. >> Also, so the way it's going to work is we're going to talk about games and playing without Dead Space, and if you don't want to hear Dead Space spoilers, stop the show right after that, because the second half of the show is going to be. >> Side beat. >> Part one of two of our Dead Space spoiler cast. >> So, essentially, this is a Rebel FM game club split single. >> Yeah, basically. >> For the record collectors among you that may know what that actually means. >> Because the four of us have beat Dead Space, so. >> Yeah, this would actually have a white label. Did we want to set a chapter limit on tonight's show? >> The first half. >> Okay. >> So the first half of the chapter, solar array. >> Through chapter seven. >> Yes. >> That's good. >> I like this one. >> That way, if you haven't finished, you can still listen. >> I think we, well, we do decide. >> I don't know, do you think we should generally tell people not to listen if you haven't finished, just in case we say something about how something affects the ending. >> I've never gotten past the first half. >> And I would say don't listen at all if you haven't finished, because we may want to relate something to the end of the game. >> That's what I'm saying. >> I don't want to have to, like. >> I don't want to have to, like. >> I don't want to have to, like. >> And the other thing is it's, you know, it doesn't take that long to play it, so. >> Yeah. >> Hopefully, yeah. >> If you're close enough to the, if you're, if you're at the halfway point, just like. >> You should finish it, because I finished it right after it came out, I beat it. And then I immediately started playing Dead Space One again, so yeah. >> But yeah, we should not talk about Dead Space One, because I've been doing that too. >> We talk a little bit about Dead Space One right now, if we wanted. >> Okay. >> I mean, how do you, let me ask you a question going right into Dead Space One. Is it, do you find it's hard for you to go back in some ways? >> Okay, so let me preface it just a little bit by saying that I sort of realized that our, like, Power Mac that we use for capturing video and for editing video, it just never really occurred to me, even though I think I installed Windows on it, that it's an amazing gaming PC, and so I do have this ridiculously good game of PC, yeah, it's a tower. >> I mean, it's not, like, the processor is good, the video card is so, so. >> It's got a nice Nvidia card in it. It's, I don't know, actually, to be honest, you could be right. I honestly have no concept, because I stop following this. >> What you're about to tell me is you started playing Dead Space on PC? >> I started playing Dead Space Two, actually, because we wanted to see what it looked like, and. >> Hot shit. >> Yeah, we maxed it out, like, we couldn't turn, we turned everything up and said it was amazing, and then I got a tweet saying, oh, you should turn on antistropic filtering in your, in your video card drivers, because it's not enabled. There's no setting for it in the games menu, and I was like, oh yeah, that's, that's exactly what's missing. I was looking at the image, and I was like, that is what it needs. It looked a little jaggy in the, in the distance, and sure enough, we pushed that up to 16X, and it was, it was amazing. >> Yeah. >> So it looked really good, and then after we played most of the way through the game, I was like, well, if Dead Space Two looks this good, Dead Space One's got to look just, you know, pretty darn close. >> And you hooked up an Xbox controller too, so you have the mouse issues with the first one, like I did. >> Right, exactly. So I hear that the mouse controls are not good in Dead Space One. >> The mouse controls in Dead Space One are a problem if you have V-Sync turned on inside the game itself, if you force V-Sync through the video card drivers outside of the game, it's not an issue. >> Well, well. >> But Dead Space Two does the same thing. >> See, I remember that. I remember people telling me that in Dead Space One, when I complained about this before, and I played with V-Sync in my card and in the game, no different. It felt like stick acceleration on a mouse. >> And V-Sync does the same thing on Dead Space Two on PC. If you have a turn on, it locks the frame rate at 30. >> Thank God. >> Oh, God. Our game was running, I mean, I didn't turn on a counter or anything, but I just wanted to see, because I had read Arthur's tweet about the V-Sync locking the frame rate. I turned it off, and I have a good enough eye to know that it was running at well over 100 frames per second, and everything looked like it was in fast motion, and I just had to, I was like, wow, that's crazy that our machine can do this, but-- >> It just looks like Thunderbirds or Team America or something. >> Yeah, but it was well over, like shit really was like going too fast. It was well over 60 frames per second. I have to wonder if it's because every game now is basically just animated, like keyframed with 30 frames per second as a target in mind, and so when you add more frames in, it doesn't look right. >> Yeah, I don't know, I remember the first time I ever encountered that with a game is when we saw gears running on PC. >> Oh, God. >> And I was like, why does this, I mean, it looks really smooth, but I was like something feels wrong for watching it. >> Me and Mass Effect that I really was like, okay, there are games I like at 60 frames per second, and there are games I don't, and these are, you know, the games that are really cinematic are ones that I don't, so anyway, Dead Space One to go back to our actual conversation. You know, I had a controller plugged in, so I wasn't getting the mouse issue, but it really is, I love Dead Space One, but the control is so improved in Dead Space Two just, you know, it's a different, it's a more actiony game, but to be able to turn around that fast and to fire that fast, like, it does feel slow when you go back in, but it looks so good on PC. I mean, that game just, it holds up really, really well. >> I didn't find the firing is a problem, but Dead Space One now going back, Kinesis feels so lame in the first one compared to the second one. Like you pull boxes and it has like a sluggish kind of tugged you, and it's not a snappy. And another thing that really bothered me is the only way to see how much ammo you have overall for a weapon is to go into the inventory. >> Yeah. >> I got so used to it being right there on my D-pad in the actual game and two. >> The other thing is that you can't, the reload is on X button or whatever. >> Yeah, that fucks me up too. >> Yeah, it'll totally screw you up when you go back. You hit it, you hit it to reload and it uses one of your health packs, and you're like, "God knows it." >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> So you have to really adjust really fast note to reload in Dead Space One, you hold down L trigger and press A. >> And press A, yeah. >> But, so yes, all of those things are totally, it's like they're obvious improvements in Dead Space Two. And so going back doesn't make it tricky to acclimate yourself to the controls right at the beginning. >> Right, and the type of monsters you're going to fight in the way you can fight them. >> Oh, I mean, honestly, that's the other thing is that the monsters are just not as deadly. I mean, particularly the leaper, which in Dead Space Two, if there's one in a game, it'll just destroy you. >> That's what happened the first time I saw one in two, I was like, "Ah, whatever." Because I remember them from one, because in one I would fight like four at a time and they would just run at you. >> Yeah. >> And you could shoot them. >> Really? >> But now the way they bound off the walls in two, they're basically impossible for me to fight. I run from those sometimes because I'm so scared of them. >> Yeah, you just got to stasis them. >> And they're really, really powerful too, if they do that leap attack at you and hit you. >> Yeah. Sometimes, and that happened to me too because in Dead Space Two, I was thinking to myself, "Oh, these guys aren't that bad," because I was thinking in Dead Space One terms. >> Yeah, and sometimes in Dead Space Two, the only way I would defeat those guys is hoping that they would jump on me and it would trigger one of those like, "I'm struggling with it on me." >> Right. >> Moments where at least I could then hurt them. >> Yeah. But not to talk about two. >> But Dead Space One, I don't know. I love the Ishimura. I mean, that's what it comes down to, really. There are definitely chapters of the game that I don't like as much. I'm definitely not into medical, even though that seems to be the one that most people like. I really don't like it the second time you go through it. >> I just find it really stressful. Plus in-- >> It feels like I was cocky to me. >> To Dead Space One. >> It feels system shock. The whole reason I don't like that part in Dead Space One is I really hated all the parts with the guy that you couldn't kill following you. >> Yeah. >> And that part is in the medical. >> Right. >> You know. >> That's the thing is that that-- >> It's also a leader in the game, I mean. >> Yeah. >> That boss battle is so easy, though. >> It is. I mean-- >> It's like, I feel the same way as you do. And I remember, Fresh was watching me play when I went through this part recently. And I was like, "I'm so stressed out. This guy just stresses me out. He's always on me." And he's like, "Yeah, but you know, like, you get in there and it's like, you just walk into the ice chamber. He follows you in. He stasis him once, run over and hit the switch and he's dead. You don't even have to fire a shot." I'm like, "I know that. Like, I know. I get it. It's just--" I mean, I guess it shows what a good job they did building the attention. >> No, it's true. I mean, I think there's just some innate thing in us as humans that we do not like being chased. [laughter] >> It's just my unstoppable thing that we generally shoot them with guns. They made an entire movie out of that. It was called Terminator, right? But I do love a lot of the sections in the game. I think Zero G is actually better overall in the first game. It's more puzzling. So I actually enjoy doing those things. >> It's true. There are times where you're like, "Where am I supposed to jump?" >> Yeah. You'll be standing on a platform where you can only look a certain number of directions because you can't look all the way up in Dead Space one. So you just have to-- you twist around the environment a bit more. I don't know. I feel like they'll-- >> They also made a-- >> I'm excited about Dead Space 3 because I think now they've got the controls all worked out for Zero G and that they can-- there are few areas that are sort of puzzle-y, Zero G areas near the end of Dead Space 2. And I think that we'll definitely see more inside of it. >> They've also-- >> You know what you're doing? Talking about Dead Space 2. >> I wouldn't think I will say that they did-- that I did like about Dead Space one. You know, we can talk about it more when we talk about Dead Space 2, but in one, I feel like they made oxygen way more of a scary thing than one than they ever do in two. >> Two is great. >> You're talking about two again. >> Yeah, I'm not saying we should talk about two. >> We're talking about Dead Space. >> All right, yeah. We'll just stop talking. >> That's it. >> Anyway, Dead Space 1 is going to-- >> Kabash on Dead Space. >> Yeah. >> Well, you should-- yeah, if you never played Dead Space, it'll go get Dead Space 1. It's like 20 bucks now. >> So-- >> Speaking of shooters, you were telling me that you played Killzone, Anthony? >> Yeah. I was elaborating to Matt why I think it's a-- why it is a great game, but why-- >> Oh, well, wait, great. >> Yeah, I think Killzone is a great game. >> Wow. >> Not excellent. >> No, no, no. >> Well, outstanding. It's like Killzone 2 and it's like it looks so good and it's totally-- >> You know, both. >> Well, it's better than competent in terms of a lot of things, but yeah. >> But I was trying to-- >> I was trying-- >> It doesn't feel right. >> I was trying to articulate to myself, you know, like when we write reviews, right? You know, you always try and think to yourself, like, "Why is it like that I feel the way I do?" And you're trying to find that sort of hook for your story, too, and, you know, and you're looking for these things. And for me, it was like, I realize that one of the things I liked about Killzone and why I liked it more than maybe some people will is the same reason I like to condemn, which is like, I really like games that do first-person stuff and they make it like it's like they make you feel like you're an actual human, you know what I mean? Like, I love Half-Life, right? I love Half-Life. But Half-Life is like the worst defender of making you feel like you're a sliding camera moving into a car or a sliding-- >> Yeah, even as a Half-Life-- >> --going up to a lot of fans, I feel like they're behind the times on that. >> BioShock actually had that problem a lot. >> Right, you know, and BioShock has those moments where they do a cool cutscene, you be like, oh, I'm getting knocked around, it feels like you're a human. And then all of a sudden, yeah, you'd go back to the sliding. >> You did, too. >> Exactly, you know, but in condemned, like whenever you take a ladder, it was like the first game I had played where I was like, holy sh-- well, I'd done it in the original Killzone, but in condemned, you know, it was like the first next-gen game I did where you're like, climbing a ladder, and when you swung that thing, it felt like you were just swinging like a fucking-- >> For me, the first one was Breakdown by Namco, actually. >> Oh, actually, yes, I put-- Breakdown was the one where you had like the Powerfist? >> Yeah, it was-- I think you did have a Powerfist. I'll remember his first-person puking, and then there's like-- and you do first-person daily combat. >> And it was crazy. >> And it's fun, and it's good until they insert two enemies at one time, and then all of a sudden, it breaks down, and-- >> Because you can't see behind you, so you start attacking the one guy, the other guy just comes up behind you and starts punching you, and it's a game over. >> Right. But yeah, it was kind of cool. >> Yeah, it was kind of cool. >> But see, that same thing, you just reminded me, like, when I was in college, because that's when I was playing Breakdown, I remember when I was with my friend, we were like, man, why is this game so badass? And it was because, again, we'd never played something that made us do first-person in a way that we felt like we were that person, because, again, all the others-- >> You didn't play Trespasser? >> No. >> Oh. >> Again, all the other games coming out at that time, again, you were just the sliding camera, right? With maybe a hand jutting out from your body that never moved, you know, and that's the thing I love about Killzone, is that, you know, I remember when I was playing the PS2 Killzone, the thing that I loved about it, and I still love in three, is like, oh, what? You mean my guy looks at his gun while he reloads it? Like, you know, most of the time back then, reloading was your gun disappeared from view and came back up, reloaded. You know, all of a sudden, people on Killzone were like looking at their guns, slapping in a clip, and it's just everything in Killzone with the way they do camera shake, the way they handle the way you go platters, just like when you take an explosion, I don't know. I just feel like they do human-on-human combat better than almost anyone else in my mind. Like, I'm not saying there are games like Halo and stuff that are awesome, but when it's just like that kind of like horrible, like, shittiness of like humans killing humans in really brutal fashions, like, guerrilla does that really well, like, the way that you see guys fall off railings, or you see your guys, like, you remember that initial teaser trailer for Killzone that, you know, everyone still mocks, but there's that part where your guy and that is, and that guy in the video is like, oh, take this bridge, and then you just take shots and falls down, it's like, there's moments like that that do happen in three all over the place where you're just like, man, this is fucked up, and it's just like, they just manage to hit these notes that make it resonate with like, the kind of wars we're going through today, like, even though it's supposed to be sci-fi, it just has this like, really gritty, human feeling, which I think makes the combat and all that, like, really outstanding, but it's the thing I was telling Matt that the reason I didn't love it as much as, say, as I love something on chart is they don't have a story that capitalizes on any of that. Yeah, I don't remember. I played, so I really didn't like Killzone 1 for, I think, reasons that I'm sure I've talked about on the show, and Killzone 2, you know, is beautiful, but I just, and I agree with all of the stuff you're saying about the first person's perspective, and it does, I think even Killzone 2 has a relatively good camera shake, and everything feels weighty in the scene. That's what I like, yeah, weighty. It's almost too, you know, because there's that, there's so much input lag in Killzone 2 in the single player, and they actually, in multiplayer, had so much less of it. They had, like, made it, you know, more closer to what you would actually want to play if you were playing a multiplayer game, that it was like, it made the single player game feel so much worse because of it. But yeah, I mean that. But Killzone 3, I was in the beta, and, you know, not only do the two stages in the beta, one of them was like a dam, and it was just really beautiful looking, and the game controlled, like, in a way that I was like, okay, I could get used to this. It sort of reminds me a little bit of, you know, like, the Crysis 2 demo that just came out. It's like, God, I hope it controls better than Crysis 2 demo. I think it's really similar. Like I think people that are really sensitive to input lag are going to, you know, the same way in Killzone 2, the way, you know, it's less than that by a lot. Arthur, it looks like he just had his soul crush. Yeah, see, again, I was never as bothered as Arthur was by Killzone 2, first of all, and three, I thought it was even better, you know. But yeah. But yeah, I've only played the game. What I'm saying, what I was telling Matt is-- It could be wrong. --on the way here is that, like, in theory, like, the Killzone universe could be really cool, and granted, it has a lot in common with, like, obviously, like, the rise of the fall, like, the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Nazism and stuff like that. Like, they're totally paralleling that sort of thing, like, you know, the hellghast going to extreme poverty after a defeat in a battle, basically, and, you know, then all that-- Absolutely. I think that their first tactical error was naming themselves the hellghast. Yes. Because it's kind of like evil. They sound so evil. Yeah. Yeah, but that's the thing is, like, at first, when you hear about the universe, and in the very first game, they're kind of exploring this idea of, like, who's really evil, who's really good, who's really bad, and in the new game, they don't ever have any of that. Like, they immediately-- It's just a reverse. --the only people you ever see are these evil people. Like, I was telling Matt, like, when you play some of the Killzone that has, like, this really, like, nasty kind of, like, human-on-human, like, for lack of a better term, like, really visceral combat at times, it's just like, I want them to explore the themes of, like, you know, these are humans we're fighting. They're not monsters, even though they're all wearing masks, that's the only way you see them. But it's like, I want them to explore the idea that, you know, the reason these people are all crazy and nationalistic is that they've been put in shitty situation. And like, you know, I wanted a section where I was, like, fighting in these crumbling houses, getting used to shooting everything as, like, come into a room, and I want a part where I accidentally shoot, like, an innocent woman, you know, or an innocent man, like, I want that to happen to where I'm like-- --I want it here first, Anthony, who wants to kill families. --Well, what I'm saying is, I wanted that moment where they make you think, like, even if it was scripted, like, like, someone does it, you know, they have a moment where your guys just go in and kill civilians, and your character has that point where he's, like, human, where he's, like, what are you doing, you know, this is how we do this, that's what they do, not us, you know, or they, like, some sort of-- --Yeah, and imagine, like, a first-person camera where your character's, like, looking down at his hands, going, what did I do, you know, something like that? --I mean, like, that's super cheesy, but you get what I'm going with, is that, like, they're-- --Nobody tries to do storytelling from a first-person camera, and for my money, it would be OK to take the control away from you. --I just don't-- --I don't agree with nobody even with that, I think that's a little-- --I'm-- --Go back to my point, the only thing I was trying to say is that I just don't feel that Killzone goes with any themes that make the story have any sort of, like, weight that makes it very interesting. --That's fun, yeah. --Like, in three, all they're doing is, like, yeah, they're bad, we're gonna kill them all, and in two, they-- and in two, they at least had the character Garza, who added, like, the Dom, like, I was telling him to remind me of Dom from Gears of War, he adds, like, the player, almost, like, human perspective, but then they killed Garza, so now they don't even have him, so the only characters you should laugh with are Dom, well, he killed him in two, so-- --I know. --But, yeah, so the only characters you're left with in three are these guys that are just, like, fuck yeah, meatheads, and that kind of gets tiresome, you know, like, especially because the whole idea of Killzone 3, if you played through two, is that at the very end of two, it ends kind of somberly, like, you're fucking stuck on this planet alone, cut off. And so, in three, it just, like, does this jumping around in time, like, six months earlier, or six months later, you don't find out anything that's happening, they elude that your guys are, like, struggling to survive in the-- like, the Hellgas jungle and stuff, but it'd be so much cooler if we got to explore that idea of these guys basically being, like, a hidden rebel force on this planet, you know, having-- how are they getting their food, how are they doing these things with the fuel, you know, but they don't ever explore any of these themes that could have made it, like, a potentially more nuanced story instead of them just always being, like, fuck yeah, kill 'em all, higs, higs, higs, you know, it's just, like, they just vilify them so much, and I feel like the very first Killzone did a better job, even if the story wasn't great in that either, but they did a much better job of, like, kind of having interplay with characters that made you think, oh, you know, like, I don't know, it just had more varied themes, but-- And this isn't a fair statement to make, but I'm going to make it anyway, like, I feel like I've been-- as far as first-person shooters go, I feel like the game I've been playing the most for decades now is Wolfenstein or Doom, you know, that it's just, like, the same thing over and over and over again, and, like, of course, there are very notable exceptions to that, but sometimes that's just how I feel, is that, like, you know, I've had enough of this. Yeah, I mean, I just, you know, I still think that it's fun, like, in Killzone, like, when I played something, like, Uncharted, I was playing that with, like, kind of the not as great mechanics, but the reason I was playing it is like, I was always just trying to progress to the story to see the next cool thing, and in Killzone, it was like, I couldn't wait for the story to end so that I could get to the next combat scenario that would actually be pretty fun. I actually-- I would disagree and say that Uncharted 2 has better mechanics than any Killzone I played yet. No, no, I'm not meaning to compare him like that. I'm just merely complaining for, like, the reason that I'm playing Uncharted is a story first, mechanics second, you know, and the reason I'm playing Killzone is totally, like, I love the combat, and I love the scenarios they set up, the little battlefield and the skirmishes they put you in, but the story, I could fucking care less. Yeah, I don't remember the story. It is totally throwaway now. I would be playing for the same reason I would play pretty much, whoops, any shooter game that has, like, quality mechanics or really-- Right, you're basically just playing it because you're like, oh, this next skirmish they put me in is really cool. So I guess it's only more-- it's more surprising when a game that you're playing for mechanics and graphics and that sort of set pieces, that sort of stuff, like, when it does have a story that turns out to be sort of okay, it's, like, surprising, I think it happens more often. I mean, I, to be honest, I usually don't like the Call of Duty stories at all. And I don't even-- I don't remember all that much of it. So I don't usually like Call of Duty stories, but I thought the Black Ops story was surprisingly like interesting. So did I. There are some of the other ones, and that was, you know, surprising to me because that I was, you know, expecting to not even want to pay attention to it, you know. Right, exactly. But, uh-- Killzone, I think, is in the other-- But I will say, just forget about it, just shoot the stuff. If you want to-- if you want a PS3 shooter for multiplayer, like, you know, I don't necessarily agree with everything that, like, Jim Sterling said in his review and destructed, right? But dude-- But I will say that that dude totally is right about the multiplayer. The multiplayer is really fun, and I know that I didn't talk about it too much in mind because I'm much more of a campaign person than a multiplayer person when it comes to shooters. But Killzone's multiplayer is probably one of the best multiplayer games you can play on PS3 outside of, like, a Call of Duty or something, right? Like, as far as-- Bad company too. Bad company too, as well. But Killzone is a different feel because it's-- the battlefields are much smaller. There's not vehicles, you know. I mean, there's the occasional vehicle like a mech, but it's not, like, battlefield. I think that it's the way the games are structured that's just totally different than anyone else. It's one of those things where, like, you think about, oh, not that many people ripped off advanced reload from Gears of War. I feel like that about Killzone's multiplayer where they put you in a map and you are given a quick objective, and then as soon as that objective is over, it switches to another one. And some objectives take, like, you know, two to five minutes to complete, and then you'll come up-- they'll load one where it's, like, over in 30 seconds. Right. I mean, enemy territory games have done that before. Really? Well. Well, that's where-- okay, well, that makes sense. But, yeah. I mean, uh-- Okay, well-- It's good to know that they're not the only ones doing that. Yeah, enemy territory Quakers, you know, the guys that made Brink, like, they were doing that with-- Okay. That's good. 'Cause I really-- that's when I played Killzone 2, I was like, this is-- This is great. You know, and they still have that in three, and they've added a new mode, which is really just a playoff of that same thing where changing objectives, except that it's progressing on a battlefield. And if you're really a badass, like, if Matt was, like, scored the most points in that section of the thing, when Matt would be in the cutscene where it would show, like, Matt's character with the tag where it was had planted in the explosive, and everyone would have to watch that. You know, as Matt's guy was, like, being a badass. That's cool. But, uh-- And so, like, 'cause the other times, you know, like, normally, it's just, like, well, I'm at the top of the scoreboard, I hope everybody else noticed that. Yeah. Well, and in three, one thing they've really improved, too, is if two you remember, like, the only way you could, like, get the, like, med-gun to actually bring people back from the dead was to sit there and suffer through playing a medic who didn't have, like, you know, certain abilities and stuff like that. Now, it's like-- it's just unlock points. So you play, and every time you reach an experience bar, you get an unlock point, and that can be spent on any class how you want. So far out of the bat, you're like, "I just want to grind on a soldier 'cause the soldier's the most fun to me right out of the bat." Then you get three unlock points. You can go spend those all on the medic and all of a sudden outfit the medic with, like, a gun and a healing weapon, and now he's, like, totally viable right off the bat, and, you know, you don't have to sit there and force your weight through a class that sucks just to make that class something you want to make it, you know? That's great. I like that. Me, too. And if you were to, or pre-order it off Amazon, you got, like, six unlock points to start with, so. But yeah, Killzone is a really, really good game. I mean, I think that it is, if you like shooting every PS3, there's, like, no reason not to play it in my mind. That's cool. Like, I figured I'd probably play it, but I'm not that open. But don't worry about playing with Move. Really? Yeah, I mean, with Move, it's totally fine. Like, it's totally functional, right? Like, I just, when I played, I was like, "Man, I would just never choose to play it this way with a controller instead." Like, for certain people that don't play shooters, it might be really cool because there is the option with Move to basically have it whenever you zoom in, it auto-locks on the target, like, and it'll basically just sit there fixed on them. Yeah, it's like Metroid Prime 3 and the re-releases of 2 and 1 when they came out on Wii where you would lock onto someone and then you were still aimed at- Yeah, I could, like, aim at their foot, I could aim at their head, but you're locked onto them. I think there are certain things that could make it cool like that, but- So, do you think that if somebody was really good at the Move controls, they would be at any kind of disadvantage? No. No. I mean, the one thing I will say is that they did a good job with the Move controls of giving you, like, the ability to change your dead zone and all those things to really, like, customize it, you know? Did they give you one of those wacky plastic gun things? No, they did not give you one of the wacky plastic guns, but you can play it with the wacky plastic gun. Yeah, I mean, I think that the wacky plastic gun was made for you. Yeah, no, I was just curious if they sent around the review kit that was like the game and the wacky plastic gun. No, if they're going to send that bullshit, they said it sent, like, a 3D TV along with it, too. It supports 3D if you have a 3D TV. Yeah, no. There's a lot. This will be the year where lots of 3D games come out. Right, but it's like, you know, hey, every, like, you know, all three people that are able to use that. That's cool. I want to go to one of those three people's house, but that's about it. Yeah. So, let's see how it's killing. Cool, man. That's awesome. I understand, Ryan, you've been taking a tour of Japanese games. Yeah, not. Okay, so when I was coming on the show this week, I thought the only thing I had played is Dead Space 2 and Dead Space 1, but then I realized we're not going to talk about it. Yeah, we're not going to talk about it. And then I realized that I had actually been playing Peace Walker. So as a Peace Walker, Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, I'm sorry, I'm talking fast and slurring here. I have a lot of UMDs, a whole bunch of them, and it's really sad to know, I mean, it's not surprising in any case at all, but it's really sad that they're locked to my PSP systems that I currently have. Yeah, exactly. They're going to, you can't play them on the next gen, on the next PSP. Yeah, like I would maybe consider sending in the actual UMDs to Sony to get a code back for a download. Like that is how much I would like to be able to, you know, Steam has, Steam has me spoiled and you know, just being able to load up your content on any device is just great. So anyway, I can't, I couldn't, I wanted to play Peace Walker, I realized that it was like the only Metal Gear ever that I didn't get right when it came out and play it. I just missed it because I didn't really want to play anything on PSP when it came out last year. But I decided that I did want to play it and I didn't want to get a UMD. And it was a real hassle, like on the PlayStation Store, if you go to the, you know, sort by letter and go to M, it doesn't even show up. It's really weird. And then if you search, I don't know, and then if you search, if you search by term, if you search for Peace Walker, then it comes up and there's a link to Peace Walker. There's a link to a few bundle, bundle packs that have different, like a digital comic in one. One comes with portable ops, and there's one that comes with portable ops plus, which is a standalone multiplayer expansion back for portable ops. If you click on just Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, it says this game does not exist. I never thought I'd say this, but I kind of hate digital distribution right now. Exactly. Jesus. So that sucked. And then I was like, okay, well, the price is going to be $29.99, which is like, you know, $13 more than I would pay if I just run to GameStop right now and drives by the UMD. On the other hand, I'm going to get a second game with it when I buy it because the bundles, they do show up. I'm like the solo game. So I decided to buy it with portable ops because I was like, found out that portable ops plus is just a multiplayer thing. I was like, I'll get it with portable ops. So I started to download it and it took a long, long time. And then I realized I had portable ops on a disc because I already had the UMD. So that was, that was retarded. I mean, sad, I mean, damn it. So peace Walker is actually really good. I played a bit of portable ops now. I remember that I had the UMD. And the thing, the main thing that they fixed is that the control is actually pretty darn good in this game. So what do you think about it? Like for someone like me who got kind of burnt out, like three kind of burnt me out and I didn't even really like want to play four. Do you think I would? Because I love two. I love two. See, I too is my least favorite one. So I think three is probably is probably the best game. All said and done, it's, you know, it has the most solid story. The boss enemies, Metal Gear Solid 3 has a really bad first hour, in my opinion. There's a lot of looking at the codec and listening and whatever. But then all of a sudden something really wild happens in a cut scene. And then they play the opening credits and it's like, okay, this is kind of cool. And then, you know, about an hour after that, it begins a really wicked series of boss battles and all the bosses are wildly different and it's cool. And I think the story by the time, I mean, it's still the thing I liked about Metal Gear Solid 4. That's the thing is that when I played the boss battles and 4, yeah, that's they're good in 4. So I hadn't played, I never played 1, right? I never played Metal Gear Solid. But when I played 2, I was like, oh, shit, this is my first time doing like a crazy stealth action game. Like that's what I liked it. And I saw past the like the fat dude on the roller skates and all that other bullshit. And then when I got to 3 and that chick drove a motorcycle up. She does like a 360 loop over. Off his body. Yeah. And I was like, nope. Yeah, that's in the first hour. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to argue with that. How can anyone? Everybody edits Kojima, that's what I'm saying, they all praise the storytelling, but she drove a motorcycle up his body. Praise the storytelling. The internet? I don't know any better. I guess. Anyway. Oh, come on. Kojima is worshiped online for his storytelling. Oh, I don't, I think he's, I don't know, I, I feel like Shane worships him and then everyone calls him a fool and says like, Bullshit, he's referred to as a visionary. Kojima? Yes. Yeah. By some people and other people. I don't know. I don't think you can generally say that he's, he's a visionary game creator and he does lots of interesting things. I think the general games press narrative is that Kojima is a masterful storyteller. Okay. Well, I disagree that I disagree and I disagree. I disagree that he's a storyteller and I masterful storyteller and I disagree that he's thought of that way by the most, I mean, most of the game. Let's say with Peace Walker, right? Yeah. So if I don't really care about the story as much. Are the, the scenarios and like, like kind of the, the covert stuff? Is it really like, is it, is it more of a covert game or is it more like four? Um, it's so, it's a portable game for some foremost. I mean, everything is split into really small chunks, like mission, you know, missions that are bite sized enough that you could actually finish them in a, in a sitting. Imagine that. But the cutscenes are not. So you, the game starts and you're like, man, I really have been watching this cutscene for like 25 minutes, holy shit, but you know, once, once, once the game is presented, keep in mind, I'm not very far. I just started. I probably put about two hours into it, but, uh, once the game sort of presents everything that it's got, you sort of get a hub area where you can do, um, uh, management of, you basically save recruits and then you put them onto teams that help you do R&D research better or, um, combat teams. There's like, this whole sort of assassins guild-esque, you know, mini game that is, is pretty rewarding and it's fun to sort of manage this stuff in the menus, if you like that sort of thing. That's how you unlock weapons and that sort of stuff. And then you pick missions from a mission select menu. So there is a single player campaign or it's not even single, it's saying single players wrong because you can do it co-op, I think I have a chance to do that yet, but, uh, you know, there is a campaign that has a, has a story and it's, I guess it's a little bit less silly than a lot of the Metal Gear Solid storylines thus far, um, and it's fine, but the missions themselves are pretty fun and I did a pretty good job of not killing anyone until a mission that I've been playing recently, uh, where shit just got too hot and I had to pull out my gun, but the whole point of this game is that if you, you get a score at the end of each mission and they are asking to be replayed, so I could definitely go back and try again and try to do it without, without killing anyone, um, the mechanic, so the reason I like it is that it controls really well. You move with the right stick, the analog stick and then, uh, use the D-pad or not the D-pad, the face buttons as like a alternate D-pad for, uh, aiming and some people hate that, but I've always been able to get into it. Just takes, it's definitely not as precise as having to analyze this, but. Like I used to when I played, yeah, I played so common, I've played, uh, siphon filter, like. Oh yeah, yeah. They use the up D-pad as an action button down this crouch and left and right if you hold them on the D-pad, uh, like access your, uh, item and help, or, and weapons menu. And it works pretty well and, uh, you know, graphically it's no slouch, especially on the PSP. I mean, it looks really good. That, that kind of dithering, um, that a lot of most PSP games have, but, uh, yeah, it looks good. It's, it's a, it's really competent. They, I feel like there's less voice than there was in the demo version that came out. Like there was a sort of part of the tutorial area where once you got to it, you're, this dude just spouting, started spouting off a bunch of crap, "Hey, shoot over here. You could shoot this and this and this." You could like grab it. I, I had just played it before I got the full game and in the full game, the guy's voice isn't there. Subtitles still come up, but they, I don't know if it was a size limitation or what, but they, they removed voices from the game, uh, from the demo, but it's, it's, uh, so far so good. I'm having a good time with it. I think it could be fun as a multiplayer game, but even as, you know, even playing it solo, it's, uh, it's, it's a pretty nice PSP experience. Um, it, if you don't like it, you know, if, to answer your question, I don't even know if you should worry. Like, I would say that playing, I'd rather you play Metal Gear Solid 3 and see what you think about that. Yeah, to be fair, the version of 3 I had to also was the, the, the recognized crap you want, but I could never bring myself to buy the new one because I didn't want to buy the same game twice. Right. Um, yeah, I don't, subsistence was the good one and I had the, I bought it the day it came out. Yeah, you have Snake Eater. Yeah. Snake Eater. Yeah. It's easier to play if you go back with subsistence and play it, but I, I think I did, when I played through it, I played through Snake Eater. I just got used to the weird crappy old school controls. I don't know. It would be really hard to go back now. I'm sure to that version of it. Sure. But, um, yeah, it's so far, Peace Walker is good. I'm not far enough in to say like whether or not it's super great or anything, but it's, it's definitely been a, I'm not angered about my purchase, even though it was really like the purchase was fine, yeah, but I did want, I just don't want to, I was, I guess, to use the Sony term future proofing myself to make sure that I could, you know, take this game with me. Maybe for the next one, you'll actually have to set a series of purchases to collapse on to each other before it dumps this game on. Right. Exactly. Yeah. It was off. I don't, I, what I want someone Sony to do is, you know, obviously this doesn't, wouldn't hurt or wouldn't help them, maybe, unless they, it caused people to buy more stuff from the PSN store. But I'd love if they had a guy on staff or a woman who watched person, person on staff, that, uh, watched the prices of games at retailers and then adjusted the prices on PSN accordingly. You know, I feel like the prices change so much on steam and that's really valuable. Like there's always a sale or the, you know, if you are, if there's a game you want on steam, you can just sort of keep your eye on it and, you know, there will always be a 30% off day or something. Exactly. So remember this is the one I want and you'll be able to give it a good price. Well, yeah. But I mean, even if they did that on the PSN store, you'd never find it and that's because their interface is terrible. Well, I mean, as long as you can search, I, I, yeah, I mean, their interface should be better. As a guy who really appreciates good UI, yeah, it's not good, but I don't really like a lot of the Xbox's interface either. So I don't feel like anyone's really got it. And that's not as big a deal to me as like how much I should pay for the games. And if, if they just adjusted the prices accordingly, because like literally I could walk into GameStop right now if it was open. So I guess not literally you can walk and get a store like 1799 used, maybe 1999 new. And the price was non-existent, I guess. And then 2999. Right. So I would have preferred to prefer to pay a lower price for it, but and I wish Sony cared enough about their customers to really make that digital store experience better. I don't know that it's care so much as a, it's hard to do a good digital store. I think that that's been demonstrated in B. I don't, it's, it's very complicated from a retail perspective to, to do a digital store that competes effectively with brick and mortar. Right. Right. The thing is like, you know that I, one thing I didn't say is that I'm willing to pay up to $5 more than the, the retail price at a store just to be able to get it digitally and take it with me. So I understand that they, you know, that the store gets, you know, the retailer gets a cut. So you're sort of bypassing the middleman, you don't want to make them angry, but there's just a big difference between paying $30 or something and paying like $20 or something. Yeah. And I think I would gladly pay more on the digital store for now, even though I think it's crazy because there's no packaging and stuff, but I understand the, the business of it enough to know that I, to me is worth paying a few more dollars just to get the digital version. How do you feel about the way the game's on demand on the 360 has evolved over the last year? So I have a small hard drive. I've never bought one because my hard drive is really small and I think the price is for Xbox hard drives are insane and I never did that. Now I have a memory stick, like a 32 gig memory stick that's plugged in, but I've been using it. Well, you can only use 16 gigs of it no matter. That is, that is one thing. And the other thing is that I've been using it for game and style, game and styles with the first time I've ever gotten to use it. I've never had the extra space and now I'm like, Oh, cool, I can install a game. It's really great. But I have an Xbox hard drives the, the expense of them. It blows my fucking mind just because it seems like a terrible business idea. Unfortunately, it's a fucking fantastic business idea. I'm just curious, I'm just curious, if you guys have a slim because, you know, on my, on my fat PS3, right, it's like super easy to pop out the hard drive. I don't know. Is it still easy on the slims to swap them out? I don't know about the slim. It is actually easy to swap the hard drive out, but you still have to buy like a 360 formatted drive. No, no, no, I'm talking about on the slims. I mean, that's some piece threes. Oh, yeah. You know, like everyone always talked about, oh, this PS3, I just bought a 500 gig laptop hard drive in third. Totally. Yeah. I think the last update kind of borked hard drive upgrades, but I don't know. It did temporarily. Fixed it. I'm sure they will. Yeah. But other than that, yeah, it's still easy to do that. Yeah. My PS3 still have the 60 gig that came with it, but I, I'm constantly. That's what I have too. But I'm always interested in, in, in doing that. Yeah. So I could buy more games digitally because I'm afraid, I'm kind of afraid of it going. Like there's, for some reason, my PS3 hard drive, I really don't want that thing to go bad. So my, my, I'd like to back it up soon. My PS3 occasionally has problems recognizing a Blu-ray movie right when I put it in the drive. That's the worst one. Oh, no. Yeah. And I, and I have to restart the system and try to get it to come up. So I'm like, I'm really, cause it's time to buy, it's time to buy a new PS3 and set that one aside. Yeah. The times when you really need the backwards compatibility or something. I'm totally keeping that one because it's first gen and it's like really valuable to me. Right. But watching Blu-ray movies on it is a good way to wear it out. Well, I hardly ever watch movies on it. That's why I was surprised. You know, my PS3 actually mostly collects dust. It actually makes me sad now when there are more PS3 games that don't install, like a big install sometimes because I'm like, fuck, this means it's going to spin all the time. It's going to spin all the time anyway. The only reason that it's installing is to minimize load times, like, that's just sort of the way it is. Hmm. Hmm. But yeah, I don't have any problems. I'm sorry. I don't have any movies or have become an issue. I've noticed. That's the scariest thing for me. I really don't lose my PS3 and like there's no way I'm still getting into the game. Wow. It's magically freeing having a non-backwards compatible PS3, I guess. Yeah. I've never had that. I guess this is that knock on wood like I've never had any problems with mine. Yeah. But you remember what it used to be like when you had a CE burner when you needed one of those things. Yeah. You burnt your first coaster and then every time after that you sat and watched that progress bar to make sure that nothing went wrong, and I don't know if it was like soul-crushingly bad. Honestly, the win at Matt's PS3 right now. When have you, how many times have you used your PS3 backwards compatible? I'm just genuinely curious because I have a backwards compatible. I went out of my way to get one, but I have used it quite a darn lot. Twice. Twice. I have a big PS2 collection and I do. Me too, but I've only ever actually used it twice. Yeah. I don't have a giant PS2 collection, you know, but like I do have some PS2 games and they do look better on my PS3 than they will any other way. I just don't want to plug it into PS2. Like, you know, I can really set the noise the shit out of me, but I can really tell the difference between an HDMI signal and a component signal. I really wish I couldn't, but I can and it's hard, it's hard to go back. And see, I know that, you know, like Eco and Shadow of the Colossus, I will play those again. You know, at some point. Yeah. When it released on Blu-ray. Exactly. In one month. You know, all the good PS2 games are slowly but surely, you shut your mouth. I'm right. There is a God of War collection. There is a Sly collection and there will be the Eco Shadow of the Colossus collection. And there is a busted ass Prince and Persian collection. Right. And there's a Splinter Cell collection. Which is probably going to be a busted ass or there will be a Tomb Raider one and I guess Beyond Good and Evil is coming out in HD. But none of those things. Zero Hope for Beyond Good and Evil. So do I. I don't know. I played it. I played it on PC. I played it on PC. Yeah. That's the same thing. I saw it. I saw it at CES. It's the PC version of the game. Exactly. Yeah. Well, whatever. It's fine. You know. I'm glad people get a chance to get it now if they have an edge. But they're hyping it up like some HD remake or like HD reimagining and it's just not. No. It doesn't have like higher resolution textures or anything like that. But. So I do use my backwards compatibility but I don't, I disagree that all the good games are coming out that way. I'm just obviously, I don't agree with that considering I have a ton of PS2 games. Like, I actually really like, I have the mark of Cree games too. And I know that those probably aren't going to be released in an HD collection and I like those games. Matt, have you been playing anything other than Dead Space 2 really? Yes. And this is a moment where you can start ignoring us again because it's an iPhone game. Okay. Well, you're going to speed it up. I'm going to speed it up. We're going to start. Fine. iPhone game. It's, I don't have that much to say about it anyway. It's Dungeon Hunter 2 which is a game loft game. I've thought about getting that one. Yeah. Game loft. It's basically, it's. Like another game? It's like Dungeons. Exactly. Like Dungeons. It's a Dungeons game. It's a, it's an action RPG and it controls fairly well. I actually tried some four player co-op today and it ran fine. You know, like on our Wi-Fi though, I haven't tried it over. Sure. That's fine on Wi-Fi. And yeah, I don't, it has the enjoyable aspects of a Dungeon Siege but of course it has some of the awkwardness that a game loft game always has. Things like, you know, invisible walls where it doesn't seem like there should be. And the biggest issue that I keep running into is like a Diablo game or like a Dungeon Siege. There's like a million barrels and pots to break everywhere. Only I'll run out to them with my character and swing my weapon and nothing will happen. I have to use like a special attack to hit them and it's because you have to be like the exact right distance and the hit boxes on the characters and the terrain and everything is really weird. So it's like, it seems like I sort of get stuck in this weird nether zone in between the jar and the world and like, I can't hit anything. I do like the game loft makes these games that are a little bit more ambitious for the iPhone. Even if they are obviously Aping like, yeah, I honestly feel like they'll eventually make enough money from these Aping games and they'll get enough people. I mean, their studios got to be bigger than like the vast majority of all iPhone developers. Eventually they'll be like, all right, you team that says you want to make an original game. Go for it. We've got everything else. We're making covers of every other game out there already. I mean, it'd be one thing if there were if the people that make Dungeon Siege were making Dungeon Siege for iPhone, but since they're not, it's kind of nice having someone around like game off to will give you these games. And I looked over Matt's shoulder and I thought it looked pretty darn good actually. The graphics are, I really like the environment and the, and your character is small enough on screen that your items and stuff, even though it's low res and low poly and everything like that, it looks good and the animations aren't too bad either. So I mean, it has like niggling control issues. I get caught, I get stuck on terrain a lot and I instead of like, it has, you know, like you expect in this day and age that if you run into a corner, your character will kind of mush around it and keep going, not in this game, you run into a corner and you're stuck. You have to back up, turn around and run around the corner. Can I just take a moment to express how impressed I am regardless of my feelings about iPhone games. Did I see so many of them running at seemingly 60 frames a second? This one doesn't, but yes. There are quite a few of them. It's not in space too. I totally see. Yeah. Yeah. Did space iOS. Yeah. Runs great. Um, the continue talking about the shitty game. How much is it because the game off, I was going to say, game off is one of the companies that does tend to make the quote unquote more expensive games on iPhone. It's a $5 game. Okay. And like I'm playing, you know, I've put several hours into it and like I can see myself putting several more into it. The single player campaign is pretty fun even if it's sort of straightforward and generic, you know, the, um, it's just, uh, I, I like action RPGs. I like being a lute whore, you know, and this game sort of fulfills both of those things. I think if I were a game loft, I would hire, I would look for two specific types of people to hire right now. And it would be, you know, one guy's and a hackers and designers and a game designer. Yeah. A game dev story. No, I, I would hire like someone from a, that, you know, someone from the God of War team or someone from a fighting game team, someone who really understands like the quality of controls, like, like the difference, you know, what, what a different kind of something crazy. No, not crazy. I just, I feel like the main thing is like the games look like, you know, you're like, Oh, this is like a weird game that looks like uncharted, but you know, then the controls are very clearly like, if you look at a screenshot or movie, it looks really close. But then when you start playing it, it's like, it's not quite right. And I feel like just having someone who is really good about that on staff, they would probably start really alleviating that problem. And then a, like a 2D and UI user interface menu sort of guy, because it seems like their 3D stuff is pretty good. I mean, at ripping off other stuff, right? And those, those, the areas that are lacking in eventually they'll get a copy that's so good that people won't be able to hate on it for it being a copy, like so far, none of them are good. And like, you know, there's a game that looks like soul caliber, but it doesn't play enough like it that anyone who likes soul caliber would actually want to play it. Right, or there's Uncharted, or there's one that's like GTA, or yeah. Exactly. So eventually they'll get it, you know, eventually they'll make one that people are like, fuck, this is actually, they'll call it good on its own merits rather than saying, well, it's kind of like an iPhone version of GTA. Right. Well, and this one, you know, the Dungeon Hunter apparently did well enough that they made Dungeon Hunter 2. There is just the one I'm playing. So yeah, so I, yeah, I want to hate Gameloft more than I actually sort of do because it's like you said, if, if you don't, number one, people can vote with their dollar, they don't like it, they don't need to be buying these games and two, it's not like anyone else is making the games for this, for this system. Right. So yeah, well, and they actually experimented with control issues or controls schema as well. You can actually play it kind of like you would a dungeon Caesar Diablo, you can tap on the screen to make your character run or tap on enemies to attack them, but I actually found the virtual stick to work a lot better. So that's that are there unless you want me to talk about wow, I know you do, I can tell are there explained to the world why you fucking rated two worlds to the way you did how could you do that to the hopes and dreams of fantasy game lovers talk about it at all. Well, you don't have to. I mean, I talked about it last week. I thought I saw someone pointed out and I because I forgot like that I actually summed it up well by saying that in a lot of ways playing two worlds to is like trying to kick yourself in the nuts backwards. There's fun to be had in two worlds to like there's some cool stuff like the loot system is is pretty awesome because everything you find is useful, like even trash, well, rather than talking about the things you like, you should tell everyone about what you discovered via the internet. So the console versions of two world to have a debug console. Yeah, you can totally bring up a debug console on the 360 version. If you hold down the left and right bumpers, hit start, then up on the D pad, then start then down on the D pad, it brings up a command prompt. It sounds like something they forgot to turn off. Yes. And you can turn on God mode. You can choose the lighting. If you have a keyboard or a chat pad, you can just type command straight in. Oh, it's shit. If you hit acts on the controller, it brings up the on screen 360 input. Wow. Yeah. You can totally turn off like lighting effects and anything you're saying or zoom the camera out like a thousand times the camera way out. You can turn gravity like way down like I did a 10,000 foot jump. Whoa. I mean, I know that they I know they don't do this like for achievement reasons and all kinds of other. No, the only thing that disables achievements is enabling cheat mode. Right. It's doing anything like a jump total. There was a couple weeks ago, I was on the on the mob cast and we were talking about cheats and I was like, you know what, that's one thing that I still love about PC gaming. Is it like, if I want to fuck around with a game and just like make shit go crazy, they're almost all PC games have a console or like text files that you can edit and stuff like that to just mess with stuff. And for me, that's fun. It like two worlds to do life of a game. Yeah. Now two worlds to has it. A console. Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah, I mean, it's it's I mean, it's cool that it's in there. Yeah. I think that there there are things to recommend two worlds to to some people, but it's such a quintessential fans of the genre kind of game and and I hate saying that because we make fun of that, but in some cases, it's true. Like if you're super obsessed with like fantasy action RPGs, then these are the same people that are going to be like, you know, whatever they liked risen, that risen game, even though that was broken all over the place. I would like murder a room full of people for a new oblivion game. Maybe this will keep you from murdering for a little while so you can get so you can wait till Skyrim comes out. So before I made you talk about this baby game, what were you actually going to talk about? I'm just going to mention that I played Deus Ex. No. Um, I want to hear about this and I can say very little about Deus Ex. I played actually about two and a half hours. I have never wanted to be able to mind meld with somebody more than right now. I can only talk about about twenty five minutes. If that of the game, all of which you've seen in the trailer that released today, if you looked at it, um, if I, if I offer sexual favors, will you tell me more later off the air? Sure. Cool. Wow. Really? Man. I mean, I'm pretty sure I talked with you guys about it last week. I would consider sexual favors if I got, you know, a copy of the game or something, but all you wanted to do is talk about it. The reason that I can't, I don't want to say very much about it is because these are the things I can't talk about. I can't talk about abilities. I can't talk about decisions that can't talk about any of that shit. I can't talk about anything that happens after the credits start. Wow. Crazy. So talk about what you can't talk about. So the parts that I played is it introduces Adam Jensen. It introduces story elements, it establishes that his wife works for Serif, the company that you see, it explains how Jensen is injured, it explains what happens to her kind of. It establishes relationships. The voice acting is good. I was very worried about the voice acting after seeing the last CG trailer because it was very pretentious and hyper melodramatic and lame. Very square. I was going to say it was a square trailer, so did they have an evil rival corporation called Sans Serif? I don't know yet. It's clear that this world, like there's a lot of resistance to augmenting and body modification, and that's going to be a big part of the game later, I think. I mean, I'm pretty sure. So far, really the only gameplay mechanic that that first 20 minutes explores is shooting and to be completely honest, in the versions that we played, the shooting was not very good. And that could be entirely a performance issue because, I mean, the game is still months and months away, probably the end of the year. But aiming is slow, it's sluggish. You don't aim down the sights by hitting the left trigger, it's by clicking in a stick. If in the final game you have the ability to use Southpaw sticks and Deus Ex, you have me to thank for it. I'm just going to say that on the record right now, because that was not in the game that I played, and I made a very specific point to mention it to the designers, and I said, why is this not here? They explained why it's in problem, and that dates back to Quake 3 on the Dreamcast. It shows a lot of promise in that first part, and the credits are actually really awesome, and the story that it establishes are awesome, but everything that you want to know that we could talk about from that part is in the trailer. So I feel bad for people that actually really had to write a preview for that by today. Yeah, that would have been awful, you're basically describing the trailer. There's just very little to talk about. That's a big problem in game media, and preview coverage in general. Just trying to drag out as many previews as possible. This week you can talk about the first 20 minutes, next week you can talk about the last week, but next week I can talk about the first half of Bulletstorm, so again dragging out coverage. I don't know if I'll write a preview on it, but I can talk about it, so that's pretty much it. I think we should take a break, unless you had anything else. Are we going to read letters, are we going to read letters, I'll go read a couple of letters. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. All right, so Brent writes in, and he says, "The historical events this week have prompted many accounts as reported and heard on NPR during my morning-and-afternoon commute. I can't help but visualize the myriad and intense emotional and cacophonous experience had by anyone being in the midst of these political events," because he's talking the title of this email, by the way, is "Egypt RPG's New." As an fellow enthusiast of the genre, for I'm grateful you cover both with humor and depth, I really appreciate your program. You put out despite your schedules, blah, blah, blah, blah. Wait, what is, what, what? What genre is talking about? I don't know. Yeah, I guess he's just, I guess he's just, I guess he's just, I'll be based on his title. Okay, not to make light in any way of what is occurring in many parts of the Middle East. I couldn't help but imagine an intense RPG with plenty of decision-making set in the backdrop of major political movement, something where your decisions did create an impact on the world you exist in, not as far removed as a fantasy RPG, i.e., do you intervene on the actions of a family member at the risk of a rally at the cost of your underground political organization? Do you take sides to gain information at the risk of seeming to betray your friends? There's so much rich and emotional game experiences to be had that needn't be an FPS or psychological horror. As fellow champions enthusiast of interactive media, blah, blah, blah, blah, I'd love to hear what you guys toss out some ideas in the vein of consequence-based RPGs outside what we come used to. That was Brent who works in fucking genetics, man, he's got a hardcore signature. I know. I like his postscript too. He's like, I hope Tyler and, I hope Tyler's idea involves something with the impact of organizing religion. To some extent, there are games that kind of tackle this very vaguely, like, like a- You don't have an evil sword that does that. Right, but that's not an RPG. What I'm saying is, I mean, there are games like Tropico was the one that came to mind where it's like- There is a fourth coming out too. Which is like, you know, you can create, basically, I mean, not to minimize it obviously, but you can create scenarios where you oppress people enough that things like what's happening in Egypt on a silly video game scale will happen, and then you have to decide whether you're going to like roll out the military against them. There are games that kind of simulate this in a very cartoony way. What was that game? It was like 2004, 2005 or something like that where you're trying to get elected, and it was kind of amazing at the time because you could zoom all the way out and like look at like a city or your country or whatever, and you could zoom all the way down into people and see what they were thinking, and like you were trying to gain influence to try to- Black and white? No, uh-uh. Tropico. No. No, this wasn't Tropico, this was like- I want to say that it was called Politico or something like that, but I can't remember, and I'm sure somebody out there can like you know recall what it can fill me in on what I'm trying to think of, but it wasn't a very big game. I think I remember like there- because me and a guy who used to work at games by a lot of people might remember Dave Kosak, we were really excited for this game and when it came out it was like some kind of ridiculous technical mess, and like it was just- it was awful, but the idea of it was like kind of like a long lines of what Brandon was talking about, and like you know, I guess for me I would just like it- I would like an RPG that was set in- I mean even if it doesn't have directly to do with politics, I would just like an RPG set in the real world, like real modern day world. I mean it's true like you know, well again because I know it's a sensitive topic obviously for people what's going on in Egypt and stuff. There is a certain degree of awesome like power in games when they allow you to make decisions that genuinely piss people off, or like you know having to put you in a political situation where you have to make a decision you know isn't going to be popular but you feel like you feel like it's going to be long-term successful, you know like SIV and stuff allows you to do SIV for a lot, you do certain things with the religion, like forcing a religion on your people, stuff like that, but it's true they never really did have that big of a consequence for it. Like you could force religion and there'd be one turn of anarchy, but you were never dealing with like oh well a secret sect of Christianity is slowly trying to you know bring about change and blah blah, it would be cool to see games that have those kind of social dynamics, not only because it's interesting, but it'd be good for more people to kind of learn about how those things influence them. One another thing I like about his question is that he brings up, and I've talked about this several times, is the idea of family and that your character has some kind of family and the choice that you make between like your political movement and the health and well-being of your family. Those are like, those are like consequential moral gray area kind of decisions that games just don't address that off. Yeah. The next question or letters from Adam, he says, "I was wondering what you thought of the balance between the difficulty versus the experience of a game. I started thinking about this recently when I started to play Dead Space One, knowing I can't handle scary situations while I figured I'd put it on easy. That way I still get to experience the game, but I'm under less pressure, to all of you feel the same way about certain games or is difficult to eat like a badge of honor. Sometimes I think difficulty can make part of the experience, though, too. It's tough." It can. Yeah. It depends on what you're trying to get out of it. Because if you're playing Dead Space for the thrill and the horror of it, and you're never pressured. Right. Then I'm not feeling that ruins it a little bit in Dead Space. But there are lots of games where I gladly play it on easy just to... I'm trying to think of ones in the past year or two that we did do this. Good. Exactly. Ghostbusters was the one where I put it on. Ghostbusters was frustrating enough on easy. Wow. That's not a good sign. I almost feel like at this point, if you're going to play the original Mass Effect and you haven't before, maybe easy would be the way to go. Yeah. That's probably true, too, because it's just not red faction gorilla. That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah. That one definitely should be uneasy. I played that one on Medium and totally enjoyed it. I'm not saying it's not enjoyable. I just die. I just wanted to basically fuck around and just the ability... He certainly loves you to do that. Exactly. Just being able to take more damage. It was like, "Yeah, this is fun." I didn't finish it either. I don't want to play that game again. Yeah. But I definitely moved that to easy really early on. It was more fun because of it. I agree. But I think for Dead Space, I would play it on Normal. And then Dead Space, too, I would play it on Survivalist. Yeah. I played Dead Space on Normal and I thought at least for me in my skill level or whatever with the game I had, that was kind of the perfect experience of not being too frustrated and not feeling like it was too easy either. Why are you glaring at me, Arthur? What are you talking about? Oh, because we're talking about Dead Space. Well, this question was about Dead Space. Jesus. What are we supposed to do? We're talking about something else. Okay. Well, there's this guy, Michael, who wrote in just clearing up how we were talking about Calvary versus cavalry. Yes. And it was cool because he says, "People mix it up often because Calvary was that that was the hill that Jesus was crucified on." True. From an ex-warhammer player, I hear more people say it the incorrect way than the correct way. It's also more of a tongue twister with our American accents to say it the problem. See, that would make sense why I always heard it mispronounced where it came from, which had probably nothing to do with the fact that people there are like the talk, like they're a rednecks and probably more from the fact that everyone was serious Bible bangers. Right. So they had always heard it as Calvary as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that makes a lot of sense. Um... Well, okay, I'm going to read this last one because it's a, it's a, so it is from additional pylons. Who's written to us before? Because I can't. I'm so familiar. That's a good struck additional pylons. I hate to ask for this kind of thing, but it could be, but could it be possible to give this a quick mention, which is this is the website, stopthemeter.ca. If you hadn't heard, there's recently been change in Canada's internet, the CRTC Canadian radio, television and telecommunications commission approved UBB usage based billings, basically ruining businesses for independent ISPs and services such as Steam and Netflix in Canada. Specifically, the Ontario ISP tech savvy, uh, is going from unlimited or 200 gigabyte bandwidth to 25 gigabytes. Um, so, you know, he just wanted people to kind of be aware of that, especially if they're Canadian. Yeah. And I feel that that's something... Yeah, and I would hate life if that was... Dude. I mean, the shit that we're struggling with here in the States, dude, I mean, like now... Right, but they've done it. The thing, we're lucky that somehow, because people are old and weird, we've got, you know, our normal internet is fine, but the wireless internet is going to turn into exactly that, the, you know, the cell networks. All right. I have one last, one last letter before we go into that space. This one's short. From James. "Has the name of a game ever turned you off from it? I just read a headline for a game titled "Anarchy Rain" and it made my gaming boner go more limp." Yeah. I never want to play that game nailed that Arthur played. Yeah. I was going to say, well, to me, that's totally happened. Yes. They're totally games. Like, for instance, I really am interested in what that studio that's owned by Kurt Schilling is doing. Right. Like, you know, they've brought all these people on board, but the very first name of their game is something totally awful. Like, it could not be more cliche. Whatever. Well, you guys tell me a couple of names. I think naming your game "Two Worlds 2" is asking for that. Yeah, that's a good point. It could have been "Two Worlds" colon anything else. It did invite the greatest strap I've put on a review this year, which is Second World Problems. Wow, there you go. Nice. Well, I mean, I can't play any games that start with either Todd McFarland or American McGee anymore, so. Oh. It's true. Whoa. Whoa. I mean, are there games that that's happened to you with? I mean, there are certain ones that totally-- I mean, that can be idiotic. Like Mario Party or other things, you know, like, you don't-- Can you not say the R word? Yes, I was, which is why I stole myself. But-- So here's that Kurt Schilling one, right? We've been wondering what that guy's working on. This is the name of his company's first game, "Kingdoms of Amillur, Colon Reckoning." Oh. Like, how? Wow. Fucking generic, is that? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's sort of like-- oh, shit. What's the fantasy MMO that "Trion Worlds" is working on? Rift. Rift. "Plains of Tellara." It's just like-- "Plains of Tellara." It's just like, I just-- some of these games-- The game is awesome, and I've seen it a couple times, and it intrigues me as a wild player. Like, the title is terrible. Yes. I mean, it's just like any time it's, you know, it's like hunted the demons forge. Yeah. And that's pretty bad, too. I mean, shit is fucking hard, though. I'm not saying that it is easy, but it's just like, just call it hunted. They should have just left it. They should have just left it. It hunted. And naming stuff is hard when you're one person trying to name something, and naming something that is going to be, you know, designed by committee is going to be-- Totally. It just seems like the simpler the name, the better, right? Hunted would be better than Hunted, colon, the demons forge. I would admit the-- had I not seen the game right as I heard the name, Bioshock might have rubbed me a little strangely. But at least it's one word. Yeah. I guess-- And like, you know, that's why when movies after a while, you know, they've been doing all the sequels and they come back and they do a remake, they just shorten it to the original title again. Oh, and you know what? Another game. A lot of people were shitting on Dead Space before it came out, because Dead Space seemed like super generic. It sounds so generic. It sounds so generic. Typical cliched fucking music. That's true. I still think it's a bad name. Like, you know, after even knowing why it's called Dead Space, I still don't like it. Do you understand why it's-- Tick. Their explanation of why it's Dead Space. Refresh my memory? I don't know. It's from the book, actually, and then I heard Jay recited, so I guess it's canon. The marker, there's a sort of-- the marker helps make the necromorphs. But there's an area sort of around the marker where you can't be necromorph-sized and that is the Dead Space. It's like the area around the marker where it has no influence. Yeah, that-- Yeah, I knew that. No. You know, it's true. But there are plenty of games, you know, and to have our weekly thing of why we hate Japan, I will say that a lot of Japanese games are the absolute worst about that, where it's just like Final Fantasy, Dissidia, la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. Yes. Dick Kockis. Just like-- That was a presidential candidate. It's just like, what the fuck? So let's take a break. Well, on that note, we're leaving for Rebel. Yeah, so send your letters to letters@eat-sleep-game.com. You can follow me, Chef Money. You can follow Arthur on Twitter, this is on Twitter, by the way, because what else do you follow, people? You can follow Arthur on AEGIS. I stumbled once and he calls the disaster this guy. Hard to please. Matt Shandenet, you can follow it, Talking Orange. And you can follow Ryan O'Donnell with two of us and two of us. Awesome. And now on to Dead Space. Stop listening if you don't want Dead Space Boy to listen. Nice to talk to you all. And take a break. Dead Space 2, you're listening to the Rebel event, temporary game club revival of Dead Space 2. Today, we're going to be discussing episodes for chapters 1 through 7, but we might delve here and there into the chapters beyond that. So if you're listening to this, fair warning, you should have played the whole game. We're just only going to go into detail about the first 7. Next week, we'll get into detail about the rest of it. Don't get any hopes up that this is the revival game club, but you know, in case we'd like to do this for you. So let's get started. And for us. Yeah. Kick it. Cold opening. What? Hell. No. How about that opening, man? That was like the best game opening I've had since like Mass Effect 2. Yeah, that was really good, actually. Yeah. Especially for you. Like where the guy comes up and I was like, what? What is it? What's wrong with his face? I was just playing everything. We just got to get you up. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy because it was the first time you really ever see someone change into a necromorph. Like if that vivid, that vivid, but yeah, you know. That is like that character is from Dead Space Ignition. Ignition is. You follow with his entire adventure. But Dead Space Ignition actually leads. His adventure. Right up to Dead Space 1. Yeah. And also just from a technical perspective, that's I feel like that's like Dead Space 2's opening salvo that like we have dialed things up considerably because you never see anything that close. Right. That's what I'm saying. When you see him rip apart, you're like anything could be going on with that guy's body going nuts over there. But this is like two inches from your face. It's just so fucking graphically impressive right off the bat. Not even just the graphics. I mean, I feel like when you get to Dead Space 1, the necromorphs are already there. And there's you kind of, I mean, if you read a bunch of the extra expanded content stuff, you might have some idea of how fast it takes for a human to become a necromorpher. You know, I at first I thought you had to be dead before you could become a necromorph. But no, this guy changes right in front of you and takes almost seven seconds. Well, like stabs his head. So I mean, like I think it kills him instantly. Yeah, that's an infector. Yeah. Stupid infectors. Yeah. Fucking bastard. It's not happening, right? And then after that, you don't have the ability to defend yourself because you're in a straight jacket. So how did you feel about that being defenseless for like the first 10 minutes of Dead Space turn? Well, it would have been OK if I didn't keep running the wrong way all the time. Way to go, Matt. See, I didn't have a problem with that. It's like there's a necromorph here on the right in a dark hallway. Here's a really brightly lit hallway where I clearly should be going down. No, I'm going to run toward the necromorph. See, the only problem with sometimes like this in games for me that kind of takes the attention away is I know that they've designed it so that I will be successful. So I know it's-- You'll die. I didn't capture you. I didn't die once. I know, but you can't. It's really-- So I guess-- That's the thing is like you-- when you know what you're doing or even if you happen to do it right the first time, you're right. It's clearly not the-- and I did it the right the right way the first time and I watched a lot before. I didn't feel defenseless. That's kind of felt like I was like-- I was like, I felt like I was on a Pirates of the Caribbean ride almost like we're-- You're totally defenseless. From a design perspective, I think that it's good that most of us met that was standing survived the first time because that belies like an underlying competence that Isaac has. Like he's done this before and that actually pervades throughout the game that Isaac has done this before. Like that he is no longer the terrified guy trying just to survive. Like he has a more important mission than that this time. Although in the first one, I never felt like he was particularly terrified either. I actually feel like he's-- I feel like he's more scared than the second one. Not because he is, but because they do a better job with like things where he freaks out. He's more of a character. Yeah exactly. He's got personality. And that's another thing is that it establishes Isaac as a character right away. It's nice to see him without his mask. It starts with you sitting at that desk describing the events of the first one though not in very much detail and then you see Nicole kind of walking up on him. I love that shot of Nicole coming up on him. Like if her getting up on the desk. Yeah. It's really incredible work. Like just like that building the background like the way they handle it of like you know just being both a you know a flashback but then also like having it interrupt the real space you know is like really I thought that was really powerful. One the problem here's a problem with the PC version is that background area looks like it looks like a projection on a wall instead of like part of the scene because the because when I played it on PC it was like it was so super high res that like it kind of ruined the illusion of the mixed scenes for me. I didn't notice that when playing it on PC I believe you I just didn't notice it. I don't believe you. You shouldn't. It was all I. So okay so you get out of the straight jacket. Well I mean no no no but I'm saying we're going to you run through with the straight jacket but then you meet that guy which is awesome. Yes. Well this is after you're going through the ward like the medical ward and shit is just going wrong everywhere. Right but I mean people that are listening to this have played so I know they know that but yeah right to me the most notable part of that next thing is the first human interaction you have. I think the most notable part about that whole section is that you've never seen a neck or morph outbreak in progress before unless you play Dead Space Extraction then you have. Right. But I mean it is nice because it does establish that like you you are there while the shit is going down not long after right I like the that they foreshadow a lot of the major plot points and gameplay mechanics that you'll go through so this is why we wanted you to play the whole game but like when you come into the room that's the okay well another good thing that's awesome is that you in a lot of places in this opening sequence you'll see areas like really really well designed rooms from a bunch of different angles so like you come out of your cell but then eventually you're in a room that's the top of the cell room where there's a bunch of computers and the this the ceiling of all the cells is glass so you can like walk above them there's like markers like built out of people like rubbing shit on the on the on the floor and blood everywhere and you know there's a there's this great foreshadowing where there's a screen there's one of the doctors is is interviewing Strauss who's the other one of the other four or three people that they're doing the experiments on to learn about the marker and he says to straws the doctor says so how's your eye any and if you play later in the game there's a reason that he's asking about his eye and it's a throwaway line that you wouldn't notice your first time through but when you play it a second time a third time you can't help but pick out all those things and go wow they were really paying attention to all these little details and also I mean the first time you play through you're a little too amped to maybe notice things like people people building clay and paper mache markers in the classroom yeah I mean I think that's part of the part of the reason why my initial reaction is to because I have only played it once is to jump right to the first human interaction because all that stuff's a blur I was pretty much just like oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit just move just move just move and the only time I ever gave a second where I was like oh I'm just gonna look around for a second one it was like the first time you meet a human because it's like really tense because that person obviously isn't exactly right I was looking for the pang trophy so I stared in every like possible corner of every room for hours and hours where is the pang trophy it's really really well done and I'll save it for when it comes up in the game fucker but it seems like it definitely seems like this area was designed I mean maybe this was just me faltering in but it seemed like there are definitely points where they want you to get hit like at least once so that like your rig goes down into the yellow or the red or it has to you have to get hit there's a yeah there's a quick timer where a necromorph grabs you and you have to jam X and then it with the door right I mean your rig has to be red because that guy says yeah your rig is red your rig is red and he tells you to go pick up the health back so right you have to be read by the time and it makes it feel it makes it feel all like such a natural flow even though it's scripted you know see that that we skipped something too which is that as you're running you actually cat battles as you as you're making your way to this room you actually encounter security guards yes and you hear tide men and you realize that not only is the shit hitting the fan with the necromorphs but you're marked yep like that they're they mean to kill you and they almost do accept those two guards get pulled up into the vents by a necromorph yes well the markers you know the markers built they don't need you anymore right I mean it just makes logical sense what I liked about that first time you meet someone though is that it's like the first time since like I mean dead space the first one has it a little bit where you see like the results of what it does to people like the marker it obviously sends out the signal that kind of makes people have dementia yeah but you see it kind of driving people insane and and they did a really good job with that and extraction if you remember like an extraction there's like all that part where people are cutting their own throats in front of you and stuff and in dead space one they did that a little bit like there was a part where you saw one person killing another and then they killed themselves but the but this is like seeing someone who wasn't like fucked up like visibly but like that first time when that guy cuts his throat and it's just so violent I was like man this game means fucking that's the thing I would like I'm gonna keep referring to the novel but that you never really think about it but in the novel there's a ton of people that kill themselves and they always slit their neck like slipping the neck is the way that people the marker makes people kill themselves so to see it so graphically and so early in this game you know if you if you had read the novel it's like oh shit yeah this is the markers influence is strong here holy crap right and it's man it happens really graphically in this like he's that's what I'm saying that it like shoots all over and it's gurgling I was like when I saw Arthur do the first time I was like and this game is not fucking okay think about it the gameplay of it too they just gave you the flashlight so they're like telling you aim at this thing you know that just happened in front of you and look at it and excruciatingly gory detail well and the thing is is that like I'm always the kind of guy who sort of fills in backstory in my head and like I never know if it's intentional or not but you know he does like this little gurgle at the end like oh shit maybe I shouldn't have killed myself like he's trying to stay alive or something right at the end but then it's too fucking late you know and it makes it seem that much more horrible and tragic yes so after that you come into the room with the the body suspended with kinesis yes you get your kinesis launcher and this is where the game establishes that kinesis is going to be your friend this time around yes this is worthwhile and not just your little garbage grabber and it was it was that and like you know combining the flashlight with the with the plasma cutter like very very clearly because it did that in the last one yeah but but I mean like the first game you get the you just find a place where they're sitting there and it says cut off their limbs there's like bloods right but what are they saying is that the plasma cutter had a flashlight yeah it's it's not so clear it's in the first game you kind of just think that the blue you know light that's coming out of the the reticle of your of your plasma cutter is the actual light source where in this one it's like no there's a flashlight on top it's like an indictment of doom three yeah for the incident but the way you get those but the way you get those first two weapons I was like oh this is fucking brilliant is an engineer he's going to engineer all his weapons throughout this game new and like I thought but I seriously like in the beginning of the game I was so excited that like that's the way that he was acquiring weapons because I was like this is fucking perfect it fits his character right so badass so you find the kinesis module inside a machine you rip it out and then right away it throws necromor statue before you have a weapon so that's that's a pretty great way of telling you well asshole you better start using this game doesn't have a tutorial in the traditional sense at all I love it it throws you right into the shit right away the ways it needs to be gamey like the the way that the tip of every throw will spear like shines brightly white just so you it's you can find it in the environment I mean I will definitely later on I was totally throwing things the spirits that didn't shine like mops are real mother well yeah mops are but but anytime there's a pole like spear like this is it always it twinkles okay cuz I definitely man I'm oh yeah mops in the end mops in the end or my weapon of choice as well but mop this is this is another room where you start on the bottom floor at the beginning and then shortly afterwards while you're still fighting enemies with just kinesis you're in the top room which is like a seating area where people can watch the operation taking place and it just there's a lot of care and in these early rooms like you really there's a lot of detail and it's really fun to look at like what about when you first walk into that into that room and I know I'm skipping ahead a little bit again but when you first walk into that room where the plasma cutter ears and the guys all oh god why am I awake yeah and just the fact that you didn't walk directly into the room with him no you walk by the lab exactly you see to the window then as you're turning the corner you see someone strapped on a gurney that's turned into a necromorph yeah I love my favorite thing about that room is I know you know when you when you actually are pulling the plasma cutter if you it's hard not to pay attention to the you know the necromorph coming into the room oh it's totally having the guy on the table but the next time you play it in your second time look at look at Isaac watch everything he does during that sequence the animations are just great like he you know reaches behind the thing looks over he looks very scared you know takes takes the thing you know you get to watch him fiddle with it and put it on his gun just the right moment hurrying as fast as he can he really wants to save this guy's life but he's he's like I have to make this gun happen otherwise we are both dead yeah anyway it's it's the animation that sequences yeah and well it's because like it shows that he made a judgment call you know like he decided that like it like I said he knew that he had to put the gun together to kill the necromorph and just as this guy is just gonna have to die if I can't get his tone when he entered the room he's like is that is that a plasma laser is that a plasma cutter yeah just that and he looked at the open guys chest and you could tell he was like well but I mean like the I also this is also the you know like the you haven't really done a hacking minigame yet but you know this reminded me that like I really love the hacking in this game because you don't see what his hands do what his hands are doing but you don't have some like awkward gaining press L1 then triangle then you know you just split ourselves lock picking you just assume you just assume that he's an engineer and he's badass yeah and then he knows what he's doing up with these reaches his hands up in there but again smart of them to not put the hacking minigame here because it would have you know removed the maybe it would have been a different sort of well you would have been focusing on the minigame instead of the fucking monster coming all the animations of the monster coming this chair and later on they kind of end up fucking you with the hacking minigame on stasis stasis one yeah you're getting that yeah yeah but what I was going to say was that just from the moment you get the kinesis weapon that it establishes right off the bat that there's no slow weed up to fighting like one necromorph and then going like five minutes and fighting like another necromorph they're throwing a lot of enemies actually yeah this is great on the job training so you get the plasma cutter let's see I mean it's very very shortly after that you make your way into the triage room which is where this the stasis is hidden it's like you know the last thing you must pick up there's there's hallways that you go through where you walk through a room in the dark and you know there's a fire everywhere and they do a thing where there'll be like a a soldier that's dead on the ground but he's got a video message coming out of his arm and you get this just recurring so you kind of get an idea of what's going on in the station there's all sorts of like cool story and environmental stuff but I mean basically the next major sequence is getting this one and I love what they do with this stasis thing too because it's like oh so here's the tech in use in the real world you know like quote unquote real world that people are in stasis yeah people are in stasis they use it for hospital beds you know and stuff like that I go okay the only thing I don't like about that sequence is if you miss the stasis when the guy is running at you it will kill you yes it is I died really I died the first time really don't like that well that didn't happen to me I mean the only thing I can think of is that at that point you're still Isaac in a hospital gown yeah and that is one of the more powerful necromor it's a it's a security necromor yeah and not just like I think it's just randomly there because they want you to realize you better fucking use stasis right yeah but you're right I get I get why they did it but yeah it just seems unrealistic because that never happens anywhere else in the game you know you miss your stasis and you die right away yeah but the room is good it does a good job of teaching you how to use the stasis after that part of it you know with a door puzzle that's really straightforward and the I think it's a really beautiful room the effects on that are coming off the stasis beds yeah are really nice and then like even there's like one stasis bed the one that you get that you hack to pull the thing out of it's sort of pulled out of the wall and you can look behind it and there's this really beautiful like yellow lighting that just you know most of the room has this blue greenish tint and seeing that yellow and then orange behind it like it's it's like you know if if you had a room that was mostly green and then there was like one red lamp in the middle of the room it just would tie everything together they really do a great job right color balance in this game so there's a couple more encounters obviously and then you get to reception which is where you get the engineering suit how triumphant did you feel when you finally got the engineering suit did you feel back to your badass so I felt like I would have thought that that whole him putting on the suit was a lot more badass if I'd never seen iron man but I felt like I was like I was just like a it's like iron man that's immediately what I thought it snaps up over his face and stuff I love the little detail of when you approach the the store for the first time it says like hello Isaac or something like I'm loading engineering and figuration yeah it's like oh well this is why the engineering suit is here because it recognized that he's an engineer but the first suit I actually put on was the zealot suit because really I got it in the DLC. It looks pretty fucking badass. I had it also and I put it on and I was like yeah this isn't my Isaac. I just feel like it's sort of skipping the foreplay to go straight to the thing that makes you look like Megatron. I did so I did have a bunch of DLC on me at that point so I was started carrying a had the plasma cutter obviously I also had for having a dead space save the old school plasma cutter which I banked and then I had the zealot force gun having a force gun early in the game is cheating actually I never actually use the force gun. The zealot force gun is insanely strong so it is really cheating but I did take it and I also had a pre-ordered from games stop specifically to get the rivet gun so I started carrying that early on. So the only non game included thing that I had was the refurbished plasma cutter. I didn't have anything because you didn't play dead space on PS3 and the version of it space 2 you played was PS3. So the only kind of dirty thing that I feel like I did was I sold back my plasma cutter and took the free refurbished plasma cutter for a little bit of extra money. I like the model and the new plasma cutter better that's why I couldn't do it. Because it looks like a flashlight with a laser tied to it basically. When you encountered the enemies in front of the window did you blow it out the first time that you did this? So you're walking down the hallway and I think it's one of the... You have to that's a decompression gameplay tutorial. Oh is it? Your character in all other... I could be wrong because I didn't wait long enough but in all the other decompressions you shoot a window and your character immediately starts getting dragged. And this one he grabs a countertop and he's holding himself up and I think that's to teach you this is going to keep going until you hit that button you shoot that button. So I'm pretty sure the first decompression you can't... That's a cool mechanic although I would say I failed it enough that I actively avoided shooting out windows. Right which is good though. I mean that respect for your environment helps develop it is a world that you're existing. Oh totally it's just yeah they did a good job of not making like the wind button in a room because I died. Well that's another thing about the sprawl is that this teaches you... This helps reinforce the story that this is like a civilian complex and not like a deep space vehicle. Yeah they didn't expect you to shoot guns. Not just that but this is... This is the remains of the first planet crack. Yeah yeah yeah. So it doesn't really have much gravity it doesn't have much atmosphere. We were invited out to play. An early version of Dead Space 2 was the first thing I ever saw in action of Dead Space 2 was a version of a room that had the deconstruction or decompression scene. And I can't remember what it said but they worked really long and hard on getting the art for the windows just right where it says future expansion on them. You know like they went through it you know before it said like dangerous weak glass. It's like why would they have... Why would they have weak glass on a space station. You know so they did a lot of work to try to figure out exactly what it should look like and I think they did a good pretty good job of what they ended up with. In that first decompression room I think the most amazing thing about it if you sort of know the decompression part of it is coming is how the lighting changes from when you first walk in to afterwards when you know the shield comes back down and there's like chandeliers swinging in the room that it's really dark and ominous and it sort of clues you into one of my favorite things about the game is once you have kinesis you can do this in Dead Space 1 too but there's there's lights everywhere and just like you can shoot them out and they'll change their flickering you can like pick them up with kinesis and throw them across the room if they're loose and uh it's just really fun to play with the lighting in this in this game in this game. It's true in Dead Space 2 is the first game that sometimes I would actively kinesis lamps and carry them with me for extra light. There we go. There were there were times uh there was one time where I didn't realize I was standing next to a decompression window or breakable window and like uh and I blew up something that also blew up the window and you just sucked right out. No uh I I shot up I looked up really fast and just like shot once and hit and hit it and like barely kept from getting sucked out. I felt like such a badass like because I literally like looked up and panicked and pulled the trigger and like this just happened to be correct. It just happened to be correct. It wasn't an intentional aim but it did make me feel super badass. Yeah I started liking the rooms more when uh because I was afraid of the sort of wind button thing as well. I really started liking them when I was in one of the ones much later I think it was in the it's the decompression room in the solar array um but there's uh I happened to be standing close to the window because I was dodging. It has there's leepers in that room there's the little exploding babies and there's those fucking annoying sack guys that come at you with trying and exploding sack and I I was like doing really well I took out both of the leapers and then uh I was running away from some of the babies and I ended up standing next to the window when one of the sack guys came up from behind me I didn't even notice and he slammed his thing down broke the window I got sucked right out and I was like well that's cool if it's not just me doing the decompression if they can activate it that's actually pretty cool and you know it's not like that guy actively decided to walk over the AI to knock out the window but I happen to be close enough and it was a pretty cool sequence right on so after this is the first brute battle yes um the big three legged bros boss through bra bra so this is uh one thing I will like a complaint or criticism I will sort of level against the dead space too that is a very gamey that the first one did is that you have Dana like the the woman in your in your your calm trying to direct you out and literally every time or at least for the first third of the game every time she's directing you to something something will invariably happen that will mean that that isn't going to work to get you out yes and I get that from a from a play design perspective but as a narrative device it feels really tired not only that but there's almost like one point where it feels like they almost acknowledge how stupid it is like it's specifically the part where they're like I'll never mind this is way later in the game but it's I'll say it anyways it's just like they do it at other points of the game too where they're like well at least you won't have to go through medical oh you have to go through medical yeah that part made me laugh I guess but it's just like there's a joke like that in the iOS version too when the guy's like oh man the door is locked you're gonna have to go back through the mines and grab the key if you go down the elevator just kidding man I'm gonna open the door for you and you know yeah they never do that in dead space too no I mean it would be nice if like yeah if instead of like you getting cut off every time they were just like maybe it happened once and they're like shit now you're gonna have to go the long way and then you just have to go the long way right I do and actually you do that after this after you beat the brute and it destroys that shuttle like it's like well you're gonna have to go through this waste treatment thing and go through this other facility and you do that but there are just so many points in dead space too where it's like oh well this is our plan this how we're getting off but this thing came up so I actually have to deal with that sweet but this is our new plan oh but then this thing came up I know Isaac's Isaac's definitely got a lot of hope but at times I'd be like well I give up yeah I mean it's it's a roller coaster ride I mean but that that's what makes I think that's part of what makes Isaac seem that's part of what makes you understand him just sitting down at the end of the game is because like he's been through so many ups and downs like every single thing he's ever done has gone wrong it's like all right you can give up now dude I just feel like there's got to be a better way to explain the level situations that you want to do then saying oh well this thing just went wrong so we're gonna have to do this other thing yeah like even if it's down like they would just have to change the writing a little bit because fuck if I would even notice you know that I'm going through these other levels instead of going in a straight line yeah so the brood is basically just an exercise in stasis although it is cool to see it knocking down pillars no it's it's it's harder I mean I died more times it took me longer to beat that guy than I like care to admit the first time I fought him it actually took me a while because you're still getting used to the way that combat is a little different the main thing I think is that you have to lead with stasis and you definitely don't do that in the iOS version and you don't really do it quite as much and you wait to stasis until you actually need to right in front of you where I didn't I hardly use stasis all in dead space one I know I only did it it was like an oh shit button more than anything else but in this like I missed his legs a lot like that guy moves a lot and he's fast and uh you know my first time of playing him yeah I would shoot stasis right through his legs and I'd be like yes damn it yeah you know but it does it it clues you into something that I think is really important at least it's important to me when I play the game is with that in in the first game you start with four stasis shots and they last a really long time and in this game you get one or two two two and they last very short amount of time so you start putting those points those power nodes into stasis very early on when you play this game it never upgraded my stasis are you guys crazy I maxed mine out honestly I had even took me a while to really upgrade my weapons the first thing I upgraded and this was after when I first started dead space too and I was playing on a debug system uh I started on survivalist yeah survivalist um and I was going through and doing okay until the second until the middle of the second level like when you get off the train and you're dumped off and you're hanging from the thing that's the beginning chapter three right uh the necromorphs that come over and bat at you on survivalist they just fucking cut me in half in one hit I never upgraded my my stasis or kinesis and after that I mean I upgraded the shit out of kinesis uh see I think the way you just said that people in the radio can't listen can't see your face but the way you said oh I think you really need like that's how I feel about stasis like I feel like you don't make nieces to be upgraded I do not take enough advantage of stasis except where I absolutely it was required to use it until the very end I use stasis so much and like right it's like the first thing I did when I got to a bench is I put I think I had like four six nodes I put them all in stasis say I think that's that's a testament to the good amount of ways you can get through situations because I didn't do stasis orkinesis I went weapons just made myself hardcore and I just made sure that I was fucking and that's definitely an improvement over the last one where I think that there are many more viable ways to play through like to deal with encounters than there were in the last game I really appreciate not ever having to put points into air in this game yeah yeah so that that was nice I was like all right well they should actually give you an achievement for maxing out your air it's like like an achievement called something like a easy breather there's maybe more like oh you know like I've met you've already maxed out everything else for obviously like so this is the last thing you're possibly ever gonna put points into you it's funny because there's like no reason to it's funny because you know like after I was done with the game and I told Ryan and Jay fresh I was like yeah I just finished it was awesome they're like so what did you use to play and I said well the first thing I upgrade was stasis and oh and I upgraded my suit all the way you said I maxed out my rig and I was like you maxed out your rig and then there's a whole bunch of like four air slots in there what are you crazy yeah and then I went oh well I didn't put any in an air like it was so obvious that when I said maxed out that I didn't mean air you know I didn't bother to communicate it yeah I couldn't believe it I thought you were crazy so we fought the brute yeah yeah and then you you kind of make your way into a tool shed and you come out in Cassini tower or like the apartment apartment complexes in the mall where shit's going down right well I mean you pass by one of many fucking human people mover sections right like the moving sidewalk fuck moving sidewalks you mean how they just use your exploding arms yes charge at you is like three times right you can uh so in that that that room I think is really good there's the there's a walkway coming towards you and it moves way too fast if you activate it I mean I think you have to act well it's also one of the first wet places I think where the game is jarring because of the environment and what I mean by that is that is that the tv turns on it fucking made me jump because I was like all right I'm going through it's very quiet and then the tv senses that you're there and it's like commercials really really blaringly loud and you're just like mother fuck yeah the other thing I think the thing is that you can avoid the walkway there's like a barrier in your way but you can just use kinesis to pick all that crap up yeah I ran I ran up the walkway you can also use your melee attacks to bash through the glass barriers on the walkway so you can just like walk on and walk right off the other side if you want oh because all the environments are destructible so if you actually make use of the tools you've got you can really work your way through the environment I avoided the walkways I was so after this you're making your way to the train station you go into the apartment complex yeah you said you see shit going seriously wrong you never heard this many people screaming in a dead space game before except maybe an extraction and like the people that are people in there locked behind the doors right you see a lot of like little intimate moments that develop this place as like a place where people live like you see a woman screaming for her mother and her husband pulling her away saying that she's going in that room and like more for the bathroom exactly yeah um you walk by the laundry go through the laundry sequence that's a great sequence I love uh you know the laundry room has that terrible sound because there's the one machine that's still going with the baby crying yeah noise and you you walk to the door to try to open it and the lights turn off and you're like shit but then you get this great moment where you realize oh my god my visor lights the world around me like you you know you're gun if you pull it out it's a light source but your visor is a light source and it looks so cool on the walls and I think that's really the first scene where you know and then you this is another one of those things that I think the people picking it dead space too could fault it for which is that you go to the fucking door and it says power issue and then the lights go out for when you don't do anything like you do literally nothing except walk up to the door then the lights go out then you're attacked by a million fucking necromorphs and the lights don't go back on well but it's like two scorpions like one of some of the more dangerous necromorces spitter and then there's your fun though they're like the spitter and you can use this ammo spitters are fun or the lights are on spitters are fun when you're also fighting them and you have time to sit there and focus on them this is also one of the first rooms though where I'm pretty sure the quarantine is lifted before you're done fighting the enemies I did I don't I don't think it is I think I didn't even remember being quarantined I thought it was just a power outage it's not a quarantine all I'm saying is that the lights come back on and everything starts working before the combat is over I but the door doesn't open until everything is dead I don't think I or maybe I just didn't pay enough attention to the door because there were things trying to shove them just saying like they do they do there are a few moments of like the quarantine I mean if you play the iOS version it's like a drop in the bucket well there's yeah but even dead space one did it as well where it was like there's a quarantine now but in that game specifically it's like the quarantine goes and then as soon as the last the last bullet goes into the last guy it's like quarantine lifted and you know you're finally safe yeah whereas in this game like the quarantine will lift and you're not done with your combat scenario yet so they do it to like lock you into the room to get you to start fighting but at least it's not you know controlled by the moment when your bullet hits the enemy right for the most part for the most part so you go through more residential areas there are more examples of necromores popping out and just like sort of I do if we're gonna just skip forward I do like this one scene with really good lighting where you're in a hallway in this like uh this giant lcd screen flicks flicks on right and that's that has another people mover I think yes that's when I said my word it would terrifies you oh yeah well that's not the first one anyway yeah that's the second one you go why won't play the game once get off my bag sorry I think I thought you were talking there is a tv screen right that's on in the room you were talking but it's the one that flips on and blabbers at you it like that's 20 decibels yeah it's crazy it's like the is that right after you see the ship collide with the building and he is Jesus Christ yeah yeah yeah and like the the giant tv screen after it turns on like I'm looking at this thinking like man this is one of those parts in a game where they had to be really careful with how this works because it's like epilepsy warning when I first saw it I was like man the lighting in this game is super fucked oh that's the tv yeah uh this is one of those parts that teaches you to listen for audio cues I think pretty well because you hear the the oh the chirpy noises from the exporters down the hall you're like oh okay well they're coming this way but I can handle them and then you hear one immediately to your right so after that you get to the tram station I emptied this entire area of bodies before I before I went any further because the very first time I played it I didn't and I fucking paid for it uh see well any time I see the infectors any time I see the infectors I drop everyone else and just focus right so the thing is the infector doesn't appear until you get to the door of the tram and the door is locked it doesn't open until it's a glass window and you get to see him infect one guy right it's like the infector even though you've seen him so now you understand yeah so if you're if if you're smart this is a situation that will demonstrate to you that when you see an infector your first priority should be to get rid of the bodies but or kill the infector I was gonna say I just stasis him and then hit him with a uh line gun mine or any attack that you can to get rid of the infector again the pulse rifle takes them out super I like though that the infectors stasis them right away you can stasis them while they're still connected I'll say though the tongue that like connects that this establishes infectors for the first time is like an enemy at to worry about in combat though too because in the first game they kind of came at you and were like rawr but now they're like I was more scared by them in the first game actually I think they were more I don't know there's something about it or more or definitely they yeah and they were they were like the scariest enemy in the first game whereas in this game all the enemies are amped up and so like ridiculously hard even the normal enemies that when an infector comes like I still prioritize them early because I don't want to deal with any more of that crap but I feel they go down really easily they just couldn't tie you up the way in the first game they can this one where they actually latch on to you and you're like oh fighting them off what something we didn't discuss before but this reminds me uh is that this is the second time that you have a Nicole hallucination I think like the first time you're going through a hallway and you hear there's an elevator first she's in the elevator behind you this is in the hospital right and that's the first one and then I mean besides the one in the very first three ones this is like the third one so yeah the first one is in the elevator where she like comes at you with her glowing tv eyes yeah the second is where you're going through the hallway and you can't really understand what she's saying and I think that that's kind of an issue I love it that the audio that you can't hear what she's saying well but if you have subtitles on it tells you exactly what you're saying and I feel like that's important to know see that's that's exactly why I like it like I I deprioritize legibility and a lot like when something in specifically when something's supposed to be scary I think a lot of times things are more scary if you can't hear what exactly would it say and not only that sometimes I think that things can be more beautiful if you if they've got a little dirt on them and I know instinctively that if I really wanted to know what it what was being said I could flip the subtitle well and eventually when you need to know what was being said they laid out very clearly it does be clearly the times when you would walk into a room and she'd be all over the computer screens and you couldn't really understand what she was saying I was like well I really want to know what she's saying and I'm listening really really hard but I don't understand and I just assumed that was intentional so that they didn't want me to understand or I'd feel like if they didn't want you to understand or they wouldn't put it in the subtitles I just I feel like it's it's really valuable information and it's really valuable sort of perspective on his state of mind and the things that that are tormenting him during the course of the game that it's useful and implied I don't think I was missing I could pick out enough of it where I didn't feel like I was missing anything and then I had to work harder to hear it and that made it really I thought it was awesome I really like definitely creepy hearing the twinkle twinkle little star right yeah I mean that's yeah that's a very dead space one as you're walking into the tram station you see her against the wall opposite the tracks and as she's a really good hallucination yeah as she's coming forward and she sort of screams then that's when the train goes by with the flames all back in time freaked me out yeah sound design in this game all the time is fucking with you working the visual that train station is like a great example of why the sound design is so good every it's like everything that there's a visual for that seems like there should be an audio component has one like every screen that's ticking along has a bunch of sounds to go with it there's the columns every column is like a big led screen with like an ad on it and they all make appropriate sounds really really good sound design in this game I mean the first game had it too but yeah just crazy good well and then you know like we go right into like the awesome sound design with the crazy train sequence and I mean yeah like you fight a lot of necromorphs up and down the train but after you hack it and you start it and everything like the like this being your your first encounter with the anti-grab jump it's kind of like the halo jumps later on the game you know like I the first time that I saw that that the whole like jumping from one train car to another like through the zero g did anyone get killed by the door no uh-oh I'm pretty sure i got but what I did like about that was unbelievable like it was so like the only word that comes to mind is visceral and that's because I'm not thinking real well right now but like the it felt so powerful to me that whole sequence I was like Jesus Christ Isaac just did that that though that that's what I'm saying because when I did it I was like he opened the door and I was thinking well if I opened the door in a moving train and I saw that there was a gap I'd be like well I guess I better wait this out to the end and I asked all just like without hesitations like well doing it yeah what the fuck I think the most impressive thing about that sequence is that it's like it had it it's super visceral and it's not long and there's there's a there's a you know it's like the first part of it when you get on the train not that amazing but it's you know it's a fun combat room but then as soon as you do that zero gravity jump like right after that is when the thing starts to crashing to crash and you do the sliding puzzle that's like the uncharted one where you jump between the two buildings after the thing starts to fall over and then there's the the hang combat sequence where you're taking out the enemies that you were saying yes see one hit well no for me I played it on like whatever the normal is Arthur played on the hard one where they were killing his ass in one hand except not yet like going through the train I survived no I just mean it for some of the hang part so at the hanging part yes I was like all right I can deal with these guys from far away oh fuck that guys on my left he's jumping at oh I'm cutting half so we're using stasis at all during the sequence I want to say yes I had to I was so desperate that I did but yes when I had upgraded our stasis so we have you know three shots or something and they give you like three or four spears to kinesis too right yeah although that that gets that gets yes but all that gets increasingly hard to think about is things closing on you and you slowly move into you have about 12 seconds when you first fall that is like set up yeah well no it's it's the time you have to grab all the stuff you just that's what I mean set up yeah you hit x because a bunch of if you shot any of the guys during the the falling sequence or the the sliding sequence at the end of the train ride I didn't know that if you shoot them they will drop pickups and so you you they'll be right underneath you and you just go like xxx and go bring me bring me and then you grab a few of the spears and kinesis like a box of the boxes that are around you grab up all the ammo you can and you have just enough time before that first sack guy comes around the corner then you snip off that dude sack pull it towards you shoot him in the head that right there that's none i don't fuck around with their sex and then this time which is another thing that's sort of important throughout the game which is like the ability to prioritize under pressure oh yeah to formulate strategy under pressure and it has to be yeah it under pressure on the fly if if you don't develop that skill early on and this is probably the reason why they put you in the sequences because they're teaching you to prioritize enemies and not only that the whole time you're swinging so you have you can't just like aim at something and they're just like right on it you're in you have to compensate for i don't know man when i when when i did it it was like i did not prioritize i tried to prioritize but i very quickly went from prioritization to anything to live moment so i was like this guns out i think that's one of the things about dead space too that makes the combat feel good because the controls are a little are kind of have some reasonably high latency like the aiming isn't that fast but the enemies are designed to round it so well and the encounters are designed in such a particular way that you can rely on strategy more than twitch yeah it's all about like having you know having the right ammo in the gun right it's more and timing more than twitch see but it's got a good twist i think the twitch is actually i was gonna say because i because i play with twitch a lot more because i am not a person that is good like in fighting games or in games like this one like kinesis then i immediately think i will grab that rip it off shoot in this guy that just never occurs to me i'm always just in the moment like anything to live your new game plus your second playthrough is going to be great because you are not going to be scared in the same way you're going to have all those leftover powered up weapons and nodes for your second game and you'll you'll just be more willing to experiment with with the other yeah i got really good the end of the game especially like one good reason to upgrade your stasis is because you can stasis people then you have a few extra seconds to shoot off their limbs and then like grab the limb out of the air and shoot it out yeah see i i was never that bad is yeah but but see like i'm not that's so much fun you gotta be doing that that's just it like you didn't upgrade your stasis so that made it so you weren't that bad ass you didn't have to talk about grabbing limbs after shooting them off yeah you don't even need to stasis something no you don't know if you're fast enough but i'm saying like stasis means that like you actually have the the time to if you're not like super twitchy like there goes the limb oh i've got it you're dead you know like if you can't do it that fast that is one of the most satisfying kills i've had in a video game this entire year is just knocking off like blowing off a necromorphal and hitting the B button right away pulling it in and just nailing them against a fucking wall it feels great so good there's just a really great feedback loop in combat in this all right so so you did you defeat the brute or you don't you better or else the game's over and then the the train comes crashing down in a very spectacular animation and of course things didn't go quite according to plan right so now you get to go through a fucking sewer what i will say i like us she's like where are you how did you get there he's like long story one one thing before that i think this game more than the last game it's very easy if you're not being thorough to miss blueprints and man it was uh schematics sorry schematics and and man if you miss the pulse rifle in that room there yeah you're gonna be bummed like the pulse rifle is fucking awesome in this game so very useful i got the pulse rifle schematic i did not come across a store until after the first time you meet the pack did that happen to anybody else yeah i don't think i had the pulse rifle the first time i thought the pack i could swear the first time i played through the game when i had the pulse rifle no you can't have the pulse rifle because the pulse rifle is in the train room and the first time the pack is in kit chapter two i i forgot how fucking terrifying the pack is when you don't have a pulse rifle i don't think they are i use the force gun or it's just i use the plasma i think there's too many plasma cutters yeah there are one many safer stasis though they're right there aren't no i i just well when you have upgraded stasis it does a bigger effect as well so yeah but for me with like not upgraded stasis like it's just like it's just always to have a bigger area of effect honestly with them if i can get them to come in a line i just punch them just get there's that i mean they're really good at fucking avoiding punches you gotta you gotta take care of them at a distance and just use you can use the plasma cutter their one hit kill it's really straightforward or pulse rifle i pull out the i pull out the force gun and i'd wait for them all to get up on me and like even if they started leaping at me and i just fire and i'd kill like five of them with one shot keep in mind when if you're listening to this when matt and i talk about the force gun we're talking about the zealot force gun which is the win but way more powerful than the record yeah see i think you should discount talking about the zealot force gun use suns of bitches it's awesome it is fan it is so fantastic where i almost feel like it's sort of fun it fucks up the balance of the game it does but i had already played it before so i'm talking about my more more recent playthrough um so i would for me it made the game more fun because i had a panic button that i could go to great you know like i would try to do lots of really cool combat things i'd be like all right i've got you know like pull this the arm off the sack guy and use that try to shoot off somebody as all this arm stasis oh shit there's three guys on my ass turn around force gun they all shatter into pieces okay get on with the game i agree that it's yeah but there's a lot of dlc in the game if you're having a problem you could buy a weapon that's strong if you really cared to do that so after that uh the first this is the first time you meet the puker at the beginning of chapter three which and the way you meet it is fucked up because you see the dude pulling himself through the doorway like queerly steaming from something and then you walk past him and look through the doorway and you see the puker like holding another female nurse and puking all over her are you not remembering this i don't know i thought this happened much earlier in the no this is definitely chapter three wow for some reason this i don't remember this scene at all it's not a powerful one for me to forget but i don't remember it god you guys are awful yeah i mean first you're going down the hall and there's like a neck or morph on the ground that's playing dead but then you're you see the shadow of someone being puked on and then he drags himself through the doorway a puker you mean the things that shoot balls at you yeah i thought you fought those earlier no you don't this is the first time you meet one i thought we just said that they fought we were wrong first time you meet a puker we were wrong according to the guy that's sitting in front of you yes according to the walkthrough that is in front of me to guide our our our way through the thing is that there's pukers and there's spitters so there are two different types of enemies the spitters look more like regular uh necromorphs with the blades on their arms but they spit um and then there's pukers which are the ones that are more gangly with the ball head and slightly more knees and like and they are the pukers so there's two different enemy types it's hard i don't remember meeting a spitter there are spitters trust me you can try you can look at your guide yeah the spitters are all over the place especially they're also playable classes and multiplayer both of them spitters and pukers yeah i mean the puker spit they do i'm telling there's also but there's also but there's also spitters the just spit especially like at the end of the game you know like the the necromorphs that are like mostly black like they have like all black like yeah no burnt or bloody people whatever the tough necromorphs yes totally spit at you yeah there's spitters yeah i've been spit at by necromorphs with blades on their hands before that looked like regular ones like when i got a distance when i got a distance from them they would spit out of their chest a tiny one you got a computer typing dead space to spitter dead space to puker and google and see what you do that so this is the first time you meet a puker uh that's quite an introduction if you're not careful you'll fuck your shit right up yes see i didn't realize for a long time that you could stasis or yeah kinesis has his spitted him i didn't know i just dodged him j fresh do it yeah and it's like an instant kill weapon you got it and it's sometimes more useful because you can instant kill other things that are stronger than him right or there's a dead space wiki yeah of course there's uh and then there's uh you can uh if you time it just right the splash damage on the puke ball isn't up there you can kill like three things yeah like three things at once yeah so it's a really really like power and i like that you gotta uh it it doesn't go if you're far enough way even though he spits it at you it goes straight at you right but when you throw it at him it's a lob so you gotta like aim a little up and then throw it and there's a little bit of technique so there was more than once where i tried to launch it at somebody and it landed like halfway but yeah you're like oh yeah that's always fun they but using the uh like the what do they call them the little um i don't know the name of them but they're the pod guys that you have to destroy they're they they're like little pimples and like mines yeah and they're like mines and they you know oh yes yes it's just spit out their little they make a little explosive yeah a little explosive you you know you can grab the thing that they shoot out to and shoot it at other things and yeah i like that the necromorves are uh with your kinesis like ammo just as much ammo as they are enemies i like that the pukers uh projectile will destroy any necromorph like in one hit yeah that's what you're just saying sorry i was looking at spitters i don't think spitters are in the single player they are i wasn't saying shot i'm looking at this from the i've i've definitely been spit out by things that weren't the standard spit out of their chest guys here there i have to i've been spit out by like pay attention this time non-play you'll you'll run it um oh yeah so anyway anyways more importantly where are we arthur screwed me up but we could just cut to the trash compactor and like there's a room you know so this is the the part where you go on to the shopping plaza and the first time you meet the pack i thought the pack was in chapter two no chapter three okay anyway so you go by the stores and like there's the little daycare at the other side yeah but you're not ready to go into yeah yeah uh this is before you have the pulse rifle i felt that the pack was kind of terrifying without a pulse rifle but that could just be me um yeah man plasma cutter yep i mean you can like like if you shoot the plasma cutter like yeah cut off one limb and they're dead use it in horizontal mode go for the legs so this is also where you go on do you see the larger shopping concourse yes it's called the concourse yeah there's a throwaway uh what he called easter egg in there if you walk by the hair salon the bottom rightmost screenshot uh of an imit a dude with a crazy fohawk is steve propusses the director of the game oh is it yeah that's hilarious this is also where you see uh ass lights be boy yes he's uh yeah he's uh like a giant statue and if you dismember him you get an achievement or trophy that is trying uh light light light head light head the milo or something i never really tried to interact much with the environment if it wasn't giving me exactly on your set on your second playthrough do more of it it's really fun there's also that great i love when you look out of the main windows in the concourse and you see tideman on like a giant on super new screen the the screen that's over the entire city yeah uh huh it's a really really incredible vista and like if you it looks good no matter what machine you play it on but that if you play on pc one of the great things if you can max all the settings is some of those vistas that look good but a little bit bat painting-ish in the background look crystal clear and perfect into the distance and it's it's a real treat to look at them if you have the pc version i'm sure you're already appreciating that so you find out uh that the thing that dana was leading you to was a uh unitology recruitment center she's like yeah you're going to apartments it's right through the unitology recruitment center just uh go right on through that and as soon as you get in there you realize that shit is fucked up because you see bodies with the purple hoods on that are dead they clearly killed themselves i love i mean the church like all the audio logs that are in there you really can get a good background on the on the story and you know michael altman and some of that stuff if you sit around and listen to all of them right cool any i mean you see that the earth gov has been sort of trying to push unitology like to marginalize them and that they're fighting back however they can um there's totally one of those situations where again i was glad i read the dead space novel yeah for sure he's just talking about altman it's fine yeah right although i mean you do you do eventually get a sort of decent view of altman through some of the uh the later stuff in the game they mention a few times that yeah i mean they do there there are lines that sort of describe a little bit about what um it was like but the novel paints it totally i mean the novel yeah it makes altman seem like a totally different character yeah it's really hard to not spoil the novel yeah you should just read it it's good yeah because you can't really talk about altman without spoiling the whole novel but anyway maybe i'll buy that and read it on my kindle you should it's good so you go into the recruitment center there's another chance to use decompression honestly i didn't use compression as much as i probably should have but also later on in the game when i tried to it definitely killed me a couple of times that's also that's one of the first rooms where you start doing more of the engineering type puzzles where you're pulling a battery out of a compartment they do a really good job with the level design in those rooms where you know you walk into the room where you do that and right away there's like a flash that's right to your left because the thing sparks in a panel shoots off and that's the spot where the puzzle actually takes place and the lighting on the on the screen they where the where you grab the the new battery from is definitely the most lit one and then you turn around and put it in there's a window right there that shows you the the door that you're turning on the power to like just like really you know solid level design game design stuff in those puzzles there i think this is the first part you go into a maintenance shaft no it happens very it happens very early but the one thing i didn't like is that i thought they they liked the way they colored the maintenance stuff i did wish that at some point in the games they would have made me feel like maybe they weren't totally safe there was one point where you see like the shadow yeah we see a shadow but it gets very clearly established and nothing's ever going to attack me there did you ever totally turn around in a maintenance shaft it's kind of funny yeah i tried yeah you can you can turn completely around it's it's like oh i i totally don't have a lower half of my body i'm violating the laws of physics yeah it's pretty funny but i do love those shafts though i do too if you're gonna make a maintenance shaft make it look that awesome and make you crawl through it and not one of them looks the same they all look totally different and you know the fucking necromorphs use the shafts and i want i'll use the shafts so is this the uh the garbage compactor yes that's the next like major landmark there's oh there's one really cool room that we're skipping it's a really dark room and it's got those like air puffer things and the sound design is like all crazy and eventually you flip the lights on at the end of the room i don't know there's just a it's a sort of throwaway random room but man it's even a really cool throwaway random rooms yeah yeah there is like in the beginning the showers that turn on oh yeah jump that was such an awful awful sound the nice thing about the the areas surrounding the compactor in the compactor itself is the the sound uh i i think the room before running before the compactor is the one that has there's a video playing of the guy telling you like take off their limbs see i was able to use kinesis and i let's attack him to the wall and he's clearly dying dying right there i'm going to bleed out like i the last one they clipped me pretty good i hope this helps you right i'm a little surprised that they waited so long to explain that to you like uh it's an advanced combat mechanic sure but just that it's so important yeah it's true i'm glad that you're low on him oh i'm glad they describe it and figure it out yeah because in dead space one they pretty much tell you in like the the first time you see one you fight one and then right afterwards you you're like either told or you find an audio log that's like shoot off the limb i mean they do they do the exact same thing in this game but what they don't ever tell you to do is use your kinesis to grab those limbs back and fire them they do tell you very early on use kinesis to pick up things and use them as weapons but they they wait till this point in the game to tell you the next two with their yeah do it with their blades um but the the other great thing in this room is that this the sound is like you're hearing all this like awful stuff you're like what the hell is going on here the room doesn't look like there should be this like crazy wicked sound going all the time but you walk one room further and it's the trash compactor and it's like the sound you know they put a low pass filter on it just right so it sounds like it's coming through that wall i mean it's a really scary set of rooms but it's just the sound and the compactor itself has no enemies in it at all i mean it's a really it's kind of an easy section in terms of combat there's not that much there but it sounds horrendous the whole time and they do that in that space one a few times too that are really good where it's just like heavy machinery going and you're just like it throws you off because you're used to like Arthur said looking for our audio cues so much that all of a sudden when they take that away from you you're like fuck yeah i'm so tense because i'm worried something's gonna sneak up on me they do the reverse of that a few times like there's one hallway i think in solar array later where all of a sudden the the the air falls out so you're in the vacuum all of a sudden and you have to go down the hallway and at the end of it there's a hacking sequence and this is the first time you haven't had sound to do that and there could be enemies coming up from behind you that you wouldn't hear so yeah the way they play with sound and the using it as a notification the surround sound too like i don't know i really wouldn't want to play this game in stereo i know i know how you could do it no so this is uh the first part where you have zero gravity like there's another part where you're in a vacuum but you're not actually in zero gravity um and this is where the first indication that zero gravity gameplay has changed from that space i love like while you're moving around in your suit like all the little jets that pop up right that your suit is clearly designed to do this so cool aka iron man yeah yeah or an astronaut suit it makes all of the suits in the game see more like spacesuits like as we understand them yeah yeah yeah um when you go in that you know there's the the compacter room itself and then there's the room where you actually turn on the car the carbine the carbine and get the thing moving so that you can move forward it's like a hallway and i often forget that that room is also zero g you have to be standing on the ground to open the door and to press the button at the end but i myself like flying down that hallway because i can so exactly i only give up zero g when i absolutely have to open the door like i'm gonna fly down this hallway for you guys all right it makes me sad we skipped one of my favorite little set piece moments that's totally intimate which is where in the first department complex right after the shit is at the fan and you hear all the screams you're walking past this uh area that's supposed to lead into a greater town square in this graded gate has crashed down and you see a woman dragging herself oh yeah along the ground crying to herself and finally she just curls up and dies yeah i tried to shoot her and wouldn't let me yeah there's just a lot of parts like that in the in the beginning of the game that you see less and less often yeah and i and i would be because at some point there's you're going to places that are less popular popular right i'd be curious there's less humans left and i'd be curious if they just learned a lot about that i mean what they did make dead space extraction extraction has this is why i loved extraction yeah because it has all these moments like that that they learned to be intimate and i'm glad they used out extraction is like a sort of test scenario for this kind of stuff and so few people played it sadly um so after you go to the trash compactor you're going through another residential area but this is like unitologist housing right this is this is there i mean the department lay out handles everywhere yeah but jay fresh always makes the joke oh all right it wasn't his joke it was one of his co-workers but he's like man if i ever moved to the sprawl i would fucking just open a candle store man bank there's candles all over this bitch what about a shroud store yeah there you know uh so you go through there i mean there's more you meet the uh the little necromorphs again here the the little tiny triangle yeah i know yeah the tripod are you looking at this and there's more ways to get rid of those now than there were in the last one which is kind of nice well and they they definitely hurt you a lot more than they used to in the first game in the first game it was so viable by a full pack of them you're just dead that's yeah in the first game i would just be like oh there's a group of them i'd run into them and then just start mashing x to kill them yeah but in this one it's it's like no yeah one of them one of my favorite little like throwaway moments in this one is you go into one of the apartments and there's a dead guy on a couch and he's got a full screen like projector that's like showing um like the equivalent of home videos and uh if you walk right over next his his bed is right there and his wife is in his bed in the bed dead clearly this stuff and it's just a random room that you don't need to go you also see the little things explode from a dead necromorph right in this area yeah you encounter Nicole again yes in a room eventually we get to some of the craziest early combat sequences in the game right they're in the um courtyard areas of the bottom part of the towers right right right so you you end up fighting a couple battles and i don't want to mix them up the second one is the one that really drives me nuts it's got like seven or eight leopers in a row two pregos and uh and like four regular necromorphs as well no it's more it's just pregos and leopers and the exporter yeah i think one exploding pod guy if anything else but that's the second one the first time you fight in the courtyard it's like a regular necromorph an infector um some of the pod guys right this is the courtyard where there's a marker with a marker replica yeah you know it's the first it's it's right where the entrance to the actual church proper is i think we're skipping around in weird ways no well i mean the thing we just i think we skipped we know we didn't skip anything so i think this one that i'm thinking of is actually this okay yeah there are two major battles in the court this is the lobby with the marker yeah the lobby with the marker and there are two battles there one when you go in and one when you come out right yeah i accidentally started talking about the church somehow and we're not at the church and then as you go through there and as you finish that fight assuming you don't get fucking murdered which is probably probably the first time and if you're not careful then the infector that comes out will go around that entire perimeter and fuck your shit up by activating a ton of other necromorphs um uh you go through a lobby area and as dana's talking to you tied me chosen uh not tied me but a gunship yeah tied me with gunship tied me with gunship shows up and knocks out the window and you can get fucking killed by that gunship if you're not careful right uh so that really i just figured it was scripted not to hit me i wasn't really about it at all kill you if i was shooting shit out of you because it's actually a really nice room it is like if you could stop and look around for a minute without getting shot by a gunship it would be a really beautiful look at so after you escape from the gunship you have arrived at the church of unit topology yes is it and i honestly think that we should stop here this is going to stop probably not any uh we've been talking for like an hour so yeah so now that what you didn't hear when we're talking off mike is that i think we're going to split it into three episodes now because of there clearly we have a lot to say about it and we want we want to do as much as we can maybe we can i think it's just fair to say that this this game really like it starts off with a bang and it just keeps going through like this whole first third of the game i just felt like it was one incredible amazing sequence after another keep in mind the only time the game loads is when you die like you never see a break the only thing you know you'll like you can miss the word chapter whatever popping up on the side of the screen if you're not paying attention because it's oh so so you're wrong in that the game loads every time you open a fucking door yeah no i i meant visible loading and if you aren't installing this on your 360 or if you're playing on ps3 occasionally that can fuck you a little more than it might otherwise i'm ever since metroid prime i'm used to that but uh yeah this is as good a place as i need to stop and we'll pick it up again next week love it are you happy fuckers i uh i know i'm sorry if we're making you talk about it longer than you want or but one thing i would know i i love talking about it it's just late it would be cool if we could integrate um like if if you've been listening to us and you think we're going too fast or too slow or if there's something that you think we should have mentioned like send in that thing and we'll you know mention it sorry but i i want to hear what other i mean i know that we all like this game a lot and i get the impression that most readers also really like this game and we haven't even talked about weapons like at all right and i think that i mean feel free to talk about your own dead space experiences actually i think i might do an individual post for you to talk about that you could either do that or if you want to send in letters to letters that eat dutch sleep dutch game make sure in all capitals if you want them to have a chance of being read you mark them dead space too like i need to know that that's what this is about yeah good idea for us we'll move on good idea all right yeah yeah bye so so so so