On a hijack, did anyone else read the RE books? Some were good, some were meh. I did have a huge crush on Rebecca by the end, though.
Well I have been playing Dead Space…I’m not that far into it; the last time I played, I had just activated the train system by using the “stasis” gun on the big cable thing.
My thoughts: good graphics, but textures and atmosphere copied from DOOM 3. I’m sick of futuristic-spaceship atmospheres in games, mostly because it’s a big cop-out; it’s really easy to invent lots of fake cables and panels and switches and ventilation shafts and pipes and shit and throw them in every single area and call it level design, but it is not creative level design. Give me the Resident Evil mansion any day.
The enemies are startling when they jump out but after a while you can immediately tell when one is going to come, from the changes in lighting, sound effects, etc (exactly like DOOM 3.)
This game is kind of fun but not that scary and very un-original.
I still contend that Clock Tower is the scariest scary game of all time. Being chased around and not having any weapons or means of self-defense whatsoever, save from very occasionally being able to use the environment around you (like a fire extinguisher) to buy you a little extra time to escape, is scarier than wandering around a spaceship with a gun, blasting aliens or zombies or alien zombies.
The first Silent Hill was also great, as was Resident Evil 1. A “survival horror” game is much scarier (and more challenging) when weapons, ammunition and resources are extremely limited. That was the case in those games, but not this one. Dead Space seems like another third-person shooter dressed up as a horror game.
The thing is, I don’t even get the sense L4D tries to be scary (even if you think that other survival horror games try and fail, instead of succeeding). It’s an action shooter with zombie movie overtones, but that’s not enough to make it survival horror. It’s more like Doom (1/2 OR 3, in my opinion) than a survival horror game.