Apparently, there’s a bunch of Christians praying to a golden bull so the economy will turn around.

::cool voiceover :: Your name is Isaac Clarke. You’re on a stranded space ship infected by tissue-reanimating monsters. You’re in Dead Space. And all you have is your space suit. And this laser beam. And this time-freezing save-your-ass device. And a gravity gu… it’s not a gravity gun? this kinetic beam that works exactly like a gravity gun. :: end voiceover::

EA’s Dead Space is wonderful, frightening romp of guts, squishy sounds and everything that’s both gross and exciting. In short, it’s worth the price of admission, especially if you can’t wait until 2010 for Half-Life 3.

Here’s my reviewer creds:
Playtime: 9+ hours on medium, 3+ hours on hard
Version: PC (appears to be unpatched)
Resolution: 1600×1048 - so sharp the pixels hurt god’s eyes
Number of Crashes: 2 (but one may have been my fault)
Do I intend to finish the game? Hell, yes!

As Isaac Clarke*, you crash your ship onto a bigger ship and are being chased by freakazoid mutants, being given mission by the freaked-out co-workers who are smarter than you, and you’re trying to find your freaky blond girlfriend in all this mess. In short, you’re simply fucked. So like our favorite every-man, you pick up the nearest crowbar… er, laser thingy, and start showing them you’re not going down without a fight. Because, if you do go down without a fight, there’s no game.

The Positives
My first impression was first, “Holy shit, I don’t think they’re going to pull this off,” fully expecting disappointment. But they - the game designers - did pull it off. And they did it wonderfully. The arenas are fun. The gameplay rocks the adrenal glands and the fear factor gives you the heebie-jeebies. Even the mini-games are well-integrated into both the plot and the game. So what’s really good about this game?

0) The artwork of the cool super-suit. If you’re a fan of Jack Kirby’s artwork… just shut up and buy the game. You’ll LOVE it. Especially when you upgrade. More than half the time, I’m running around playing Orion from the New Gods. The only thing missing is the Boom Tube and Darkseid pronouncing the death to the universe.

1) The death scenes. They are easily some of the funniest things you see in the entire game. And when you do something stupid, well, you pay for it. And pay well. Plus the reload time on my machine and where they restart you is acceptable. Definitely none of this stupid “Too Human” Valkyrie nonsense.

2) The mook introductions - every time a new mook gets put into your sites, it gets a decent introduction - with the exception of the Tall Thin Scarecrows and Pregnant Fat Guys. But then, do you really want to be introduced to a pregnant fat guy?

3) The hint mechanism - on many FPS “do this quest, do that objective” you simply get lost. When PEBKAC shows up, there’s a “hit this button and go do that” mechanism which is not only built into the game mechanics, but the story logic explaining technology which works well for me. Think Google Maps in a Head’s Up Display. All FPS should have this.

4) The good news is that you don’t have to hack doors with your electronics skill.

5) More good news, there’s no fucking ship AI needing circumvention.

6) The story… well, the first part of the story. You see, there’s the religion and it believes you have to die to go to heaven… *eyes glaze over and snore.* Seriously, it’s a decent take on the heaven hypothesis, but frankly, you had me at “stranded on a space ship.” The back story is great, and as you go running around, you’re following the footsteps of others who are doing the same. Once again, we see religious people doing stupid things (because - say it with me, “religious people don’t think”) and causing others to pay for it. One engineer guy, who is figuring most of this out and spoon feeding the info to you through text and voice messages, you actually get a nice emotional payout on, making the game almost transcending.

The One Negative
Which really introduces the one any only complaint. Polish. the difference between a really good game and a great game is polish. EA is notorious for not polishing, and Dead Space is a great example of that. Everything is almost transcendent. Like the two crashes I encountered, or the occasional power-box that refuses to hook up, or the slight lag I experience when walking up ramps or the I-stomped-a-body-and-the-rag-doll-is-sticking-to-me, or why can’t I crouch: it’s almost mind-blowing when an event occurs and you’re like, wow… look that and then… one small niggling thing crops up and frustrates you.

Like the “get to cover” when crossing the starboard side of the ship. No gameplay mechanic was introduced about “cover” in the entire game. There’s no crouching, so why is there this gameplay artifact of… well, it sticks out like a sore thumb. But thank you for the air supply out there facing the right direction. Also, the game gives a decent illusion that you have choices, but I’ve not really tested them thoroughly, so I can’t tell if there’s a duality ending yet. Needless to say, if I get the final battle and have an either/or choice between good and evil… well, I’ll be disappointed.

But here and there… like when you enter the command deck and look out the window, or you remove the glowing green balls, you get a good experience of “If the entire game was like this, this brand will be set for life.”

OK, issue 1.5: the mission hint button is the same location where FPS normally puts a crouch. So, if you instinctively want to crouch during a firefight… well, you just triggered a head’s up display giving the enemy time to take your head off. Yes, I’ve died a couple times due to this.

Issue 1.75: the ambient sounds and music is missing some pizzazz, but it’s not obtrusive to game play - again this is polish. Not design flaw. Not game play is fucked. Polish. This is the reason why Valve takes as long as it does to launch a game.

Character Improvement
I was curious when the first thing I picked up after a weapon gate was money. All I know is that if a vending machine was in my way of getting more bullets to survive - that vending machine would be going down, bitch. Seriously, I know that game designers want to slowly introduce bigger and badder weapons, but the flame thrower sucks, the saw blade ripper sucks… why buy them? I figured contact energy was the same, so I’m saving up for my Level 5 suit.

The customization method is cool, but if you’re going to have these methods, then give the users a little wider choice. And more than one power-puck at the beginning. The game play will not suffer if they have 2 or 3 at the beginning so they could individualize. And for the love of imaginary gods, why do we need upgrade slots that do nothing. Just knock it off already.

Conclusion
Highly recommended for those that like horror and action. If you loved the Half-life series, you’ll enjoy Dead Space. Currently, it’s $44.95 at Outpost.com.

*Isaac Clarke? Isaac Asimov and Arther C. Clarke… nice combo.

OK, so let’s look at the changes in my life in the last week. I’ve finally found a lawyer I like, but we’re playing some serious phone tag, so once again the friggin’ book is delayed. Finally got a haircut, which always coincides we me feeling happier since I don’t have so much weight pressing down on my brain.

But the real improvement is my phone. Now, I don’t believe my G1 is a complete and total improvement - I believe it’s a sad state of affairs that I can’t play games on my phone. No, REAL games, not just casual bubble popping, match the color and shape games. Granted, those seem to be making the most money these days, like Bejeweled.

So I don’t interact with my phone as much and frankly, the interface, while beautiful needs the equivalent of a shell (like a unix shell, not sea shell… well, that too, but I mix my metaphor with my reality if I think too much on that) for ease of use.

What could we do? Neopets for adults… well, mature audiences… no… basically an interaction toy that show other toys, like how Spore was marketed but on the G1. With fun. But not Pokemons. A player can interact with the toy solo and if he wants, he could play against others.

Strange, somehow I still feel I’m talking with the wrong metaphor. OK, let’s try this again, but give it a gameplay context.

So, let’s say you’re a wizard of a city state and your job is to make your kingdom powerful and big. Other players are the neighbors around you. On your G1, you could play solo where you work to improve capitalize on your resources. Cooperatively, you could work commerce and trade with other kingdoms. Large scale decisions for cooperative play comes to bare with world-events, say disasters (dragons, barbarian hordes).

Over time, it could become a fairly complicated and decent play.

On a G1… you know, the *cool* phone.

*SIGH*

Last post on the subject basically focused on my summary of the issue: we’re divided by cultures, and because we fear being alone, we group together in social clumps. Add to the fact that the cultures are diametrically opposed by a lie: we don’t know the future and prophesies are used to scare people into doing what the prophet wants them to do.

By consistently stating a prophet will come, religion lurches forward desperately grasping at each new potential prophet and then denying him/her when he/she outlives the social clump’s usefulness. Again, we see the divisions occur, like Orthodoxy vs. adaptative sects.

Inherently, people aren’t evil. At least I don’t believe so. Most of us deliberately set out on a path to do good things for all of the world. After we’re encultured with memes, we begin to perceive good and evil in others based on attributes: monotheists believe non-monotheists as bad, types of monotheists fight over the nature of bad and good monotheism, and sects of monotheists fight within themselves. The bigger issue is that we crave the emotional charge to get us in motion that comes from viewing the world in black and white. Black and white issues announce clarity.

But we don’t live in a black/white world. And it’s not gray either. Thinking an polarity doesn’t help. We live in a world with complex rules, and to initiate changes requires us to engineer such change so that it won’t be destructive. In Bill Maher’s Religulous, Maher isn’t outright rude to his interviewees - but when someone is offended by simply asking questions, I can see why people are so diametrically opposed to the movie by itself.

Zen teachings force students to a cognitive dissonance forcing them to think. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” is a question using the trappings of language against itself.

We, that is the non-extremists, need to have a series of zen koans ready to crack extremist point of view.

Next Post: a list of those questions.

“With, without.
And who will deny its what the fightings all about?”
-Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, Us and Them

So Bill Maher’s Religulous put me in the tailspin that I expected it would. We have roughly 1.5 to 2 billion people fighting over the existence of 14 million. One side believes they need to die, the other believes they need to overcome… and then there’s confusion with the temple of the mount and wailing wall. Frankly, I don’t get it, but I do understand history, and George Santayana - “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

One of the core tenants about Religulous isn’t about the stupidity of religious people (yes, I call it stupidity), but the need to confront these people, like a psychiatrist guides a patient to confront their issues. I wonder how many psychologists and councilors go home after a long day’s work and think, “What a bunch of stupid fucking ‘tards?”

I was chatting with a good friend about why other terrorists don’t get on planes, land in the US and start blowing themselves up. I believe its because once you get to the US, it’s a completely different Earth than the rest of the world. Yeah, we’re imperialistic assholes that have a penchant for bombing brown people.

NPR’s All in the Media today ran a piece on how cable news is fracturing the need to be unbiased. We’ve known for a long time that Fox is an unbiased source, but the reason why people watch it is because it wont challenge their “views” - it’s never going to show a soldier crying as his face gets shot off. We listen to the music we like most. We watch the shows we like the most. We subscribe to the earthly world view that makes us comfortable.

The difference between faith and rationalism is that faith requires you to lie to yourself and hope for the best. Rationalism forces you to prepare, and sometimes causes nihilism which is an emotional land of hopelessness. JMS has an important saying here, but there’s something I use to address hope in a life of reason.

Human’s evolved on this planet for 200,000 years and have roughly 50,000 years of culture. While atheism has been around on and off for thousands of years, it’s rarely been a political movement, and when it’s been included as a tenant of politics, well, how do YOU summarize Soviet Russia and Soviet China? Not the most enlightend of societies.

And slowly, atheists are fighting to gain hold of people’s hearts and minds, but… I wonder if it’s worth it? Once you reject your dominant culture, you’re very likely to not want to join groups again without a healthy skepticism. So, not only do we have to move extreme believers to less irrational, but we also have to move the less irrational to the skeptic, and the skeptics to the active atheistic culture.

The Bright movement is one way for “conciousness awareness” - and it’s doing a very good job at it, but it’s not going to be enough. There’s literally billions of monotheists out there which can’t, won’t or are not allowed to go to the-Brights.net, let’s alone access to the internet.

Plus, there’s the last issue: no one likes being told that their big, invisible buddy is a myth. When you do, you risk death, anger, and other stupid responses. Very few atheists I know have the missionary spirit in them: “Sir, have you heard the good word about Darwin?” seems that it just wont work, does it?

(To be continued)