EA games have typically been questionable.  As a publisher, EA has managed to piss off a huge portion of its fan base.  As a developer, it’s been known for pretty lackluster titles.  EA’s head hauncho, John Ricatello, said that he regrets some of the choices that EA has made in recent years.  He felt that EA had homogonized their development studios and stifled their creativity.  He pledged to turn things around and give more freedom to the devs.

The developers of Dead Space were practically given free reign while working on this game, did EA’s change in philosophy help to create a good game, or is EA still struggling with it’s 180 degree manuever?  Hit the jump to find out.

Like many people, I wanted to like Dead Space, a lot.  Fortunately, EA didn’t disappoint.  Great gameplay mechanics, an incredible atmosphere, and a fairly immersive story make Dead Space one of EA’s best games…ever.

The basic story is that you play Isaac Clarke (get it?  Isaac Asimov…Arthur C. Clarke?  Yeah, it’s not very clever), an engineer dispatched with a team to track down the Ishimura, a Planet Cracker class mining vessel that they had lost communication with.  When you board the Ishimura, you find that the crew has mutated into horrible creatures bent on killing or assimilating anything they come across.  There are a few twists in the plot, some predictable, a couple of them not.  The characters, unfortunately, are mostly unlikable.  Isaac must be a descendant of Gordon Freeman, because he doesn’t say a single word in the entire game.  Other than that, there are two characters you are working with from the original team that are almost always in another room chatting at you over comm channels.

Some would argue that the story feels derivative.  Some say that it’s an homage.  Either way, Dead Space will feel familiar, especially if you’ve seen Event Horizon and Alien(s).  It came across as paying tribute to it’s influences more than stealing from, so it ended up working for me.  But each person will probably have their own take on it.

The game focuses on “tactical dismemberment”.  Headshots and bodyshots will do little to stop the oncoming tide of enemies.  Removing their arms, legs, and sometimes heads are the only efficient way to stop them.  The weapons you are given consists of a variety of engineering tools:  a plasma cutter, line cutter, flame thrower, saw, and a few others.  The only real “weapon” you get is a Pulse Rifle, presumably from the security staff on board.  The gunplay is pretty standard fare for a third person shooter.  It features an over the shoulder perspective and most weapons have a laser sight to show you where you’re aiming.  Turning is slow and cumbersome, but I think that was a concious design decision because it increases the sense of claustrophobia and makes for some pretty intense moments.

One of the highlights of the game, and something the dev team should be lauded for is the HUD…or lack of one.  All of your relevant information is viewable on Isaac’s RIG (read: space suit).  His health is a glowing indicator on the spine of the suit, ammo counter is displayed in a hologram above your weapon, etc.  There is no meta-data presented on screen for the player.  Even terminals, videos, and your inventory are displayed through holograms in game in real time, meaning you can’t pause the game to track down something in your inventory that you need.  You either need to be prepared before hand or be able to move quickly and track it down in your inventory while your enemy catches up to you.

Overall, the game isn’t “scary”.  There are a couple of times where I practically threw my controller at the TV when something jumped out, but those moments were few and far between.  Most of the time was spent staying on edge, always waiting for something to jump out at me.  After an hour or so of keeping your nerves on end like that will make someone rather anxious.  I could really only play for 1-1.5 hours at a time before I got too uncomfortable to play anymore.  I’m not sure if this was the developers intentions, but the anxiety was palpable…though at times, a bit distasteful.

There were a few things that I found to be rather ridiculous.  Imagine that you just beat the game.  The game tells you “Congratulations!  You won!  Here’s some stuff, you get some credits, this neat teddy bear, and some pie for your time spent warding off this horrible alien infestation.”  You think to yourself, “Fantastic!  This is great, this pie will really come in handy on my next playthrough.”  Then you are presented with the option to play on Impossible mode!  Oh yes…that oh-so-frustrating difficulty level needed to unlock the last of your achievements/trophies.   You fire it up only to find…your inventory is empty…your upgrades have been reset…nothing carried over.  In Dead Space, items and upgrades only carry over when you play on the same difficulty.  Now, I understand this was to prevent people from fully upgrading their items and equipment on Easy then jump into Impossible mode to tackle it…but they could have balanced Impossible with that in mind and let us keep our stuff.

That brings me to ridiculous note number two.  Impossible mode unlocks when playing through on Medium and Hard.  This makes me question why anyone would bother playing through Hard at all.  None of your items carry over, and you can unlock the rest of the game on Medium…so what’s the point?

In either case, gripes aside, Dead Space far exceeded my expectations.  With a full series of animated comics, an animated film, a sequel, and a movie all in the works, this franchise looks as though it’s going to be around for a while.  It might be the shot in the arm EA needs in order to kickstart their in house development teams into producing some quality games.  Between this and Mirror’s Edge, I’m hoping the trend continues!

I’m back!

Anyway, look at this deal!  Found over on Kotaku, Tabula Rasa is on the cheap at Amazon.com, for a mere $0.96.  Yes, that’s right, that’s less than one dollar.  It also includes a month of free play.

If you were ever interested in at least trying out Richard Garriot’s space FPS-wannabe MMO, now’s the time to do it…before they decide to shut the game down permanently!

Tabula Rasa on Amazon.com

I remember, a few years back now, when I had first heard of Spore.  A buddy at work sent me a 22 minute YouTube video of Spore being demo’d.  I sat through the entire video in awe of what I was seeing.  Now that I’ve had a chance to sit down and try it out, does it live up to those wild and crazy expectations I had when I saw that video?  Hit the jump to find out.

The answer to whether or not it met my expectations is…sort of.

The very first thing I noticed after installing the game was how long it took for the game to load.  Once inside the game, load times are reasonable, but firing up the game takes enough time for me to go upstairs, get a drink, go to the bathroom, and sit back down just as the game is launching.  The second thing I noticed was the first menu.  There are three options that read, “Play”, “Create”, and “Share”.

Does that sound familiar?  Because it sure did to me.

Anyway, after getting past that, I dove straight into the cell stage and haven’t looked back.  In the cell stage, you play a rather simplistic organism on a 2d plane, very similar to those old flash games where you were a fish eating smaller fish until you grow, only to eat the fish that were bigger than you, you eat meteor fragments (life came down on a meteor in the game) and other critters to collect DNA.  You then use that DNA to buy new parts.  You start off with a few limited body parts that you can add, but as the game goes on and you defeat other enemies, you are awarded with additional body parts.  Some make you move faster, some offer passive defenses, some are new mouths, etc.  By the end of the cell stage, I had some flagella, a jet (similar to an octopuses jet propulsion), several spikes, and a probiscus.  My character was an omnivore, but I focused on hunter.

This is one of the things that I really enjoy about the game.  In each stage (there are 5 total), your playstyle determines what bonuses you get in the next stage, and what types of items are available to you (whether they are religious or military for instance).  So, if you play aggressive in the cell stage, you start off with carnivore mouths in the creature phase.

After putzing around as a cell for a while, I was finally able to move to land.  This phase plays similar to any standard fantasy MMO…but without all of the players.  You are given abilities that you can use to woo nearby creatures (singing, dancing, posing, etc granted from items like better feet, hands, and mouths) or you can use your body parts to attack and shred your enemies to bits.  You are given small objectives to complete (like impress 3 of a specified creature, or kill 5 of them).  Again, how you play the game here determines what happens in the next phase.

Now’s a good time to talk about the NPCs in the game.  Spore has a massive database called the Sporeapedia where all saved user and Maxis created creatures, vehicles, and buildings are stored.  The game pulls from this database to populate your world, so you might see a creature your friend had created, or several you had never seen before.  Definitely a cool feature of the game that keeps the scenery fresh.  There were definitely moments where I sat back and exclaimed, out loud, “WTF?!” while laughing at some of the creatures I came across.

After performing enough tasks and evolving enough, you move into the tribal stage.  Your evolution is pretty much done at this point, and you are given one last chance to make changes to your creature before moving on.  From here on out, however, you are stuck with your decisions.

The tribal stage is like a mini-RTS.  You are given a small tribe of your own creatures and you must either destroy or convert other villages.  Resource gathering is limited to food which is used to buy new units and buildings.  You gain buildings, weapons, and tools as you interact with other villages and can use them to enhance your creatures for specific roles, you can also equip your creatures with items that boost their social, gathering, and combat stats.  This is where the game begins to falter, as gameplay starts to feel shallow.  As I was playing it, I had a strong urge to stop playing and pick up a full fledged RTS like Starcraft.  However, I continued on.  After converting or destroying the 5 (or was it 6?) villages, you move to the Civilization stage.

Again, during the civilation stage, I felt like it was lacking.  Resource management was next to none existant, aside from the need for “Spore bucks” which you got by capturing resource nodes called “Spice geysers” and by building factories.  Very similar to the tribal phase, your goal is to convince all of the other cities that you’re way is best through either peaceful or violent means.  You get to design your own buildings as well as ground, sea, and air vehicles.  This is where your creativity really starts to shine.  Much like the creature creation section, differently parts increase the stats of your vehicles making them better at one thing or another.

This is where I’ve stopped, I have yet to make it to the space age, yet I’ve heard it is by far the deepest and most challenging aspect of the game.  So I look forward to that.

Aside from the shallow gameplay at times, another complaint is the lack of customization…yes I know, “Blasphemy!  This is Spore afterall!”  But that’s kind of my point.  There’s this incredibly deep and rich creation tool that gives you access to a huge amount of customization options.  But it still feels lacking.

I really wish there was more to each phase.  Some added depth would have been welcome, yet, the game’s ambition is still impressive.  It’s definitely fun and a title I’d recommend to just about everyone.

My guess is that, given how they handled The Sims, we’ll see a slew of expansions coming down the line in short order that will, hopefully, resolve these two qualms I have about the game.

Anyway, here are some screenshots to illustrate a creature, building, and vehicle I made in the time I’ve been playing.

It’s worth noting that I tracked these screenshots down on the Sporeapedia at http://www.spore.com and searching for my username, kainpaladini.  These are uploaded regularly and automatically, which is spiff.

Looks like the Xbox 360 exclusive DLC for Grand Theft Auto IV is going to be released at some point in November.  The only real information we have on what the content will be is that there will be two seperate ten hour episodes.  There has been speculation on wheter it will be new cities, new side missions, or something else entirely.  Looks like I need to get around to beating this game so I can check out the new stuff.

Kotaku recently reported that 7-Eleven will be carrying the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion at release.  This, in and of itself, is pretty interesting news as most 7-Eleven stores don’t carry games and those that do carry a limited selection.  According 7-Eleven, the majority of their core demographic are gamers…which makes perfect sense.  So they will be choosing the 7 highest profile games of this winter and releasing them in stores available at midnight on the release date.

They also reported that 7-Eleven has a tentative release date of November 4th for Wrath of the Lich King.  This number has been tossed around a few times in the rumor mill and is also the popular choice for a release date at sites like Gamestop and Amazon.  The problem with this release date, however, stems from the fact that November 4th is also election day in the U.S. where we will be choosing the next president of the United States of America.

Now, World of Warcraft is easily one of the most popular games in history and currently has over 11 million subscribers.  A fair number of those reside in the United States and are probably between the ages of 18 and 24.  I’d guess somewhere between two and three million in the States.  I’m throwing random figures out there without anything to back it up, but that’s not the point.  The point is that for those in that age bracket, this is arguably the most important election that they’ve seen in their life time.  And while I’m certain that there are several responsible adults out there that will be voting on election day, I can’t help but imagine the possible impact the release of the expansion for WoW could have.

There’s no data to back up any sort of claim I’m making here, however I’m sure there are thousands of people out there who might vote, but will be swayed to stay home by the promise of level 80 sooner than others.

This is a problem in my eyes.  I attempted to start a discussion on the official World of Warcraft forums pleading that they reconsider such a date, here was my post:

So, I normally don’t start these types of posts because I think they are silly. Matter of fact, if someone else wrote this and I were reading it, I’d laugh it off…however, I think I have to say something.

Current rumor and speculation is that WotLK will be released on November 4th. Of course, that’s all tentative and might not even be true…however, it’s worth nothing that November 4th is also election day in the United States.

If this were any other game, and if this were any other election year, I would probably laugh it off as unfortunate coincidence. However, the fact that this is one of the most widely played and popular video games of all time and the fact that this is arguably the most important presidential election of my life time up until now makes me believe that releasing on November 4th would be a terrible idea.

I realize that there are thousands of responsible adults that will still go out to vote even if the expansion is out that day, but there will be so many that don’t, content to sit at home and level their way to 80.

Those who agree with me should band together and collectively ask Blizzard to reconsider the release date, even if it’s by a single day, for the sake of voter turn out. Hell, turn it into a publicity event, announce that you are intentionally delaying the game for the sake of the election. That could turn into some very positive press.

Please give serious consideration to releasing your game on any day but November 4th and I will be extremely grateful.

The post was quickly deleted, probably because it was speculating a release date which is most likely against their policy in some way.  I wasn’t really torn up over the fact it was deleted, but my message is still important.

So, while it’s highly doubtful that anyone reading my blog currently works at Blizzard…if you do or if you know someone who does, please consider postponing the release.  As noted in my post on the forums, this could even turn into positive publicity.

As a friend of mine suggested, there could even be some rewards available to those who vote and provide proof that they did.  Perhaps the game will be made available on November 4th for those who voted and for those who didn’t it’ll be available on November 5th.  That idea is just an example, it’d be loaded with problems, but I’m sure they could come up with something.

What are your guys’ thoughts on the matter?  On a day as important as election day, should companies release products that have the potential to keep thousands, if not millions, of customers in their homes that day?

The developer’s blog for the XBLA game Castle Crashers has been updated today with a post saying that the patch that will fix the game’s XBL woes is in the works.  The game works perfectly fine in single player and offline multiplayer, but the online multiplayer has some issues.  The hosted games will crash out, and have apparantly deleted player’s save data.  Hopefully they will be able to get this out quickly.

Bethesda announced today that Fallout 3 on the PS3 will not be launching with trophies.  When asked about it, the response was in essence “Maybe later.”  Not very good news to someone who had planned on picking it up for that platform.

That begs the question though, does Sony need to change their policy regarding trophies?  Currently, they aren’t required.  Microsoft on the other hand does require that Achievements be included in every game that lands on its platform.

When it boils down to it, I think Sony made a mistake by not making them a requirement from the get go, and will need to buckle down and change their policy to remain competitive.  For someone who owns both platforms, deciding which one to buy a game for can come down to features like trophies/achievements.  In order to hook players in and really give the an experience comparable to the Xbox 360, something needs to change.

I’ve always been resistant to social networking sites.  I always viewed Myspace as a “friend whoring get-together”, however newer social networking sites are more than just collecting friends.  Sites like Facebook are working to keep friends and family members in touch over the intarwebs in real time allowing you to see what your friends are doing at any given time at a glance.  I’ve been more accepting of this type of movement as it really does help us stay connected rather than just be large conglomeration of strangers.

Enter Raptr.  It shares a lot of the same principles as Facebook, allowing you to stay connected with your friends in real time, but it does so much more.  You can create a list of all of the games you own and games you want as well as share these lists with friends.  You can see stastics regarding games, how many people are playing what games and how often, read and write reviews of games, etc.  There’s even a client you can download that will automatically patch games as new content becomes available for you and keep track of your playing habits and upload it to your profile so you can keep tabs on how you spend your time.  The client is optional of course.

I’ve been in the closed beta for a few months now and I’ve watched it grow from a wire frame of a site into a living, breathing community and I’m proud to have been a part of that.  Raptr is now public and ready for an open beta.  Looks like there are about 2,000 spots open on a first come first served basis.  So be sure to check it out, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on how things go.

Here’s the official announcement:  http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-9877079-52.html