Dead Space: Extraction

GameFly finally decided to make good on their promise to actually send me games from my GameQ and gave me the chance to play the new Dead Space prequel Extraction.

Now I've been waiting for this game to come out for quite some time because it was built around being a co-op game and those are the types of games that couple gamers like Meghan and myself are going to be attracted to. Much like Resident Evil 5 this game delivers on the teamwork front.

Unlike the Resident Evil style over the shoulder shooters that lent itself to the original Dead Space, Extraction is a rail shooter. So fans of the arcade style shooters will feel right at home. This is a good thing and a bad thing for the game.

On the positive side, this takes away some of the confusion and disorientation two separate players can fall into on occasion and there will always be a clear progression path forward; no more running around labyrinthine hallways to find your next objective. To be fair though, this was pretty well eliminated in the original Dead Space with the waypoint system.

As a negative, it eliminates some of the horror and scare factor because you can't control how your avatar moves. There's no biting your nails about going around that next corner because, well, the camera will swing around that way when it's good and ready. And not before.

On the flip side of the camera coin, the camcorder-style movement of the camera can make it difficult to pick up items as they're occasionally only on screen for a split second as your avatar whips his head to the side to see some necromorph that's burst through a window. Whenever the camera was moving erratically Meghan and I found ourselves using the kineses module on random parts of the screen on the off chance we'd pick up something - and we had much better success with this method!

Most parts of the game where action is happening items are hard to pick up like this, but there are gear up closets and stations where one player will be able to move the camera and both players will be able to pick up gear. Take full advantage of when this happens as it only lasts for a few seconds.

That being said the fun factor is just as high as with the original, especially now that it's a co-op game. That was my one big beef with the original Dead Space game: Meghan and I both loved the game, but we couldn't play it together. But throughout Extraction the game offers up situations where you'll have to take turns fending off enemies and welding a circuit or work together to efficiently weld a plate over an air vent to keep creatures from swarming in.

The nostalgia factor is here as well. Granted, the original Dead Space hasn't been out for too long, but it's still fun to see familiar locations like the shuttle bay and the entrance hall to the medical facility. There are also a few recurring characters throughout the game that really help to intertwine the two games.

Many of the weapons, too, have returned from the original game. Instead of starting with the Plasma Cutter you start with a Rivet Gun which fires a single rivet like a bullet. This gun is also your main tool so getting rid of it is really not an option. You can acquire old favorites like the Line Gun and Flamethrower (Which, unlike the original game, can be used in areas without an atmosphere); and there are new heavy hitters like the Force Gun, a powerhouse that blasts everything nearby with a wave of concussive force.

The bosses can be difficult without the Pulse Rifle, as you must shoot a very small circle on a moving tentacle to stun them before they smack you for massive damage. If you can't use the Pulse Rifle or don't have excellent aim with the other slow-firing weapons the bosses will likely be very frustrating.

If there is anything negative to be said about this game as a two player shooter, is that both players are essentially controlling one person, so your arsenal of weapons is still limited to four weapons. One advantage of having a friend you're used to playing with in games like this is that you can divvy up the different types of weapons depending on who likes what gun, but throughout the game we were constantly finding ourselves debating between which guns to keep and which to discard.

All in all a very fun game that I would definitely recommend to those who game with another =)

The Old Republic vs. World of Warcraft - Round 1

So I've been following the development of the upcoming MMO The Old Republic reasonably well but there still isn't a ton of information. As the game isn't slated the be released for another year that is to be expected.

ToR has a few things over WoW already, but this is also to be expected. As a 10 year MMO veteran I've come to expect that the next generation of MMOs will be successful if they follow one rule: Take all the things that players think is tedious and hinders the gameplay experience they want and get rid of them.

WoW toppling the previous MMO big dog Everquest back when it released is the most classic example of this. In EQ it took an obscenely long time to level - think years, it was nearly impossible to do anything meaningful by yourself and while the game may have been balanced in a way, it definitely was not balanced in a way that you could pick up a player you liked regardless of class and do something new and interesting. In fact, near the time I quit playing each successive expansion that came out was tailored more and more towards the powergaming elite who spent so much time playing the game to stay competitive that maintaining a job of any sort and in some cases even a sleep schedule were impossible.

WoW destroyed all of these MMO archetypes even when it was still new back in 2004. And if a new MMO is going to stand up against WoW not only are they going to have to smash some MMO concepts in favor of the player experience but they'll have to make sure it works - without making it just another WoW clone.

ToR has a pretty good start in this regard from what I've seen and my main focus for this entry will be in terms of the game's story.

WoW has always had story built into their game content, but when you decide to level a character the vast majority of players want to get through it as fast as possible. This means that every page of quest dialog and every place in the world the NPC you're dealing with has is completely ignored. WotLK did a better job of this by using phasing technology to give the players a first hand view of many events that had transpired in Northrend leading up to the quest they're currently working on. Even so, most of these cut scenes were riddled with dialog bubbles you'd have to read if you wanted to know what was going on - dialog bubbles that could be easily ignored if you have a television in the room to keep you occupied until you get dinged with a Quest Complete! message.

ToR has made the commitment to not only be an intensely story driven game, but they've commited to having every PC and NPC alike in the game full voiceovers. If you tried out Age of Conan when it went live you may remember the gloriously vibrant starting isle of Tortage where every NPC talked to you in full voiceover. Once you departed from the isle, however, everyone but your storyline NPC fell deathly silent.

Aside from the full voiceovers ToR offers completely different sotrylines and game experiences for each different class in the game. So if you play a Bounty Hunter character and later decide to try out a Sith Warrior you're storyline and game experience will be completely different. No more agonizing because you want to level a shaman but dread suffering through the same starging zone - again!

But I don't want to ruin the whole thing for you, so I'll let the developers themselves show you what to expect from ToR.