Dead Space and my thoughts on EA.
17/05/2008 02:45 AM by [THA] Hamst3r
Dead Space is an upcoming sci-fi, survival horror, third person shooter set in space. It’s looking to be the definition of awesome. From what I’ve seen so far, the game looks great. The game takes place 500 or so years in the future. The future is very bleak, as everyone should know by now if they’ve seen a sci-fi film at any point during their lifetime. In the future presented in Dead Space we apparently have resorted to mining entire planets. Just hop in a space ship, fly over to a nearby planet and rip it apart! The story leads your character out to one of these planet-cracking space ships when you receive a distress signal from it’s crew.
The character you play as is a mining engineer named Isaac Clarke who has a very unique look to him. The suit he wears is not designed to be armor, but heavy-lifting utility suit. Isaac also carries a utility gun with a triple laser sight. Yeah, three lasers. The sight of it provoked an impressed, “Whoa!” out of me the first time I saw it in action. Interface-wise, there’s very little in the way of a Heads Up Display. Your health and Ammo meters are integrated on to Isaac’s suit and gun, so there’s nothing to distract you from the immersive experience.
Another big feature of Dead Space is something the developer is refering to as Strategic Dismemberment. Apparently you can blast bits and pieces off of enemies without actually killing them. O RLY? Yeah, really and it will benefit you to be studious about the anatomy of your enemies to make sure you shoot off the right parts to kill it. Shooting certain enemies in the wrong spots will simply make your situation worse than it already is. Headless creatures will rush at you flailing wildly. Pregnant creatures will burst wide open if you shoot their stomachs, unleashing a swarm of leaping leeches on to you.
Oh, not to mention, there are zero gravity sections in the game too.
Overall the game looks great to me. I can’t wait to get my hands on it once it’s released. There is one burning issue with the game though. It’s from Electronic Arts, better known as EA Games. To many gamers, EA is the epitome of evil. They’re the cancer on the gaming industry. When people think of EA, they think of rehashes, sloppy ports, yearly Madden releases and the acquisition or destruction of every publisher and developer in their path.
There are some people that refuse to buy anything EA touches. That’s tough to do. EA is everywhere. I too have a lot of negativity towards EA, but I do still buy games that they release. It’s a love hate relationship…
Let me put it this way:
My relationship with EA is kind of like if Hitler offered me a delicious brownie.
Since Hitler’s dead, for this example we’ll use Mecha-Hitler:
At first, I would surely hesitate to take any treat or morsel from this mechanized Nazi abomination. This is the reincarnated cyborg form of an evil man that attempted wiping out an entire race of people. Can he really be trusted? Well, even though he was a murdering fuckhead, his current gesture seems relatively honest and kind. So I’d take the brownie from his cold mechanical hands and eat it suspiciously, checking it carefully before taking a bite. Turns out there’s nothing wrong with the delicious treat. I find myself even enjoying the brownie, but it takes more than brownies and a bitchin’ mechanical laser arm to make me ignore all the shit that he did. I end up eating five or six more Mecha-Hitler brownies.
A bit later he would ask me to stay longer and chat, but I would have to decline the invitation. It may seem like a rude gesture to eat and run, but we’re talking about motherfucking Mecha-Hitler here. Who knows what comes next…the brownie could have just been an appetizer for an impact hammer to the sternum. Over the next few years I’d be invited back to Mecha-Hitler’s New York apartment to have a meal. Once or twice he’d try poisoning my soup or serving me a deceased relative for dinner, then try to redeem his actions with a plate of delicious brownies.
Dunno what to do. The brownies are really good, but everything else is poison and shit.
That’s kind of like my relationship with EA. I’d rather not like them, for all the shitty games, rehashes, rushed releases, horrible ports, studio acquisitions, etc…but you know, I’m really looking forward to Dead Space. I really liked Crysis. I kind of want BurnOut Paradise on PC.
So I just have to suck it up and enjoy the good games that they release. I don’t have to like them as a company though.
If you’d like take a closer look at Dead Space, the latest episode of GT-TV is almost entirely about the upcoming title. [Check it out]
My roflcopters just crashed and exploded into bits of lulz all over the place just now. But seriously I don’t have big problem with EA. They are big but I guess I don’t is inherantly a problem, even though it can create them. Their games are obviously hit and miss but the hits are often EPIC. So to me it’s up to the developers. Dead Space has alot of unique ideas taking inspiration from Aliens rather than Starship Troopers, scifi with a horror base. To me it shows that EA doesn’t always play it safe like big companies often are only capable of doing. =D
eat the brownie.
tis delicous XD
Yeah. I think what bothers me the most about EA are their acquisitions of other companies. They just keep buying other publishers and developers to make everything an EA brand. There’s a lot of bad stuff that can happen when big companies do this. It’s not happening too much right now, which is good, but I doubt that’ll last forever. Sooner or later EA’s going to want to consolidate all of their fragmented companies. They’re going to want to rebrand everything to be more consistent. I can see it becoming a problem in the near future. It might not happen, I’m no Nostradamus, but just taking a hint from the past of several other big companies, eating up all of your competitors and rebranding everything doesn’t work out well for the customers. :)
You speak truth. =D
Oh Hamster, surely you’re exaggerating? Not *every acquisition soon lost its personality and creativity? Why, I distinctly remember Bullfro… actually, bad example. But then there’s Lionhea… no wait, I’m sure I can think of something better. Um.
Yeah, fair point, really.
I’m not one to boycot EA, since —as you mentioned— they’ve published some great games. Excessive drm and copy-protection is where I sign off, though. I only half-tolerate Steam because it’s also very practical at times, although —not having an internet-connection on my own pc— I see the downside to it quite regularly. I can see dongles entering the world of gaming, though, and I really don’t want to see that happen.