First Impressions: Mirror's Edge & Bioshock 2

Dr. Potts has already talked a bit about Mirror's Edge so I won't go into a whole lot of detail about the game, just my general thoughts after having played for just about four hours.  And last month (technically in March), SneakyTiki got me Bioshock Infinite for my Nameday so that influenced me to have a go at Bioshock 2 and after five hours, I would like to talk at you about it.  Yes, I ended a sentence with it.  Again.

I can fully understand the appeal of this game as it fulfills one of the core reasons why I play video games: Mirror's Edge allows me to do something I cannot do in real life.  

Presently, I have played through the tutorial and, I think, the first four levels.  The tutorial threw a lot at me, almost too much for my liking.  I agree with Dr. Potts that Portal does a better job of introducing the player to game mechanics and I feel that the tutorial stage should have been a whole series of levels and not just a series of jumps (good, now you know that one), wall climbs (now you know that one), falling rolls (good, you didn't die, moving on) and wall-to-wall jumps (did you accidentally make it up the wall and not really know what you did, that's okay, moving on).  And that's just dealing with the terrain.  You are also given a very rudimentary crash course in assailants, disarming said assailants and avoiding them.  The tutorial/training course takes maybe 10 minutes and at the end, I feel like the game expects that I now have a firm grasp on being able to complete the game.  Not true, at least in my case.

So far, I get the impression that the game is broken up into sections.  First, there are the sections where you are chased by Blues (coppers) and shot at extensively by them and helicopters.  I somewhat understand them being included so that the player doesn't linger and they add a sense of urgency to get through the stage.  The down side is that I am not having fun.  I feel like these stages I could play in any first person video game and are not special to Mirror's Edge.  The other sections are chase stages, where you have to get from point A to point B while following someone who is just a hair faster than you.  There is still that same sense of urgency, but instead of being shot at, you run the risk of losing sight of your target.  This is what is keeping me playing the game, to have the chance to free run through a level with the only threat of death being my own stupidity as I jump a fence only to fall thirty flights down and hear by bones shatter and body splat as it greets the pavement.

One very interesting thing that I had to do with the game was lower a lot of the video settings.  This game came out back in 2008 and I would like to believe that my laptop is capable of running a game that was released four years before  the components were created could handle the graphic requirements.  Initially I had "everything" turned up to max (except Anti-aliasing which was at 2x), but I began experiencing sever lag whenever I was being shot at by more than one source.  The skipping/lag became so bad that I was unable to time my jumps, which is a rather important ability in a game that centers around parkour.  I then went back into the settings and turned down texture detail and graphics quality to medium and was forced to turn off anti-aliasing and "phy sx" support.  I can now play the game while being shot at by five coppers and a helicopter without having to worry if the game is going to start skipping as I approach that highlighted red board leaning haphazardly over the side of the building leading me to that other building across the street and two stories down.

Oh, and lastly, I have noticed, perhaps not too surprisingly, that I get motion sickness after playing for about 3o minutes.  The effect is more pronounced when I play on my laptop, but on the TV, I can play for about an hour.  So there's that too.

I won't talk to much about Bioshock 2 as I ended up talking more about Mirror's Edge than I had planned and I don't feel like editing down or breaking this up into two posts.  In short, I am very much enjoying Bioshock 2.  I have played about five hours and after the initial disorientation at the beginning, I am having a lot of fun.  I enjoy being back in Rapture and once I figured out that the prologue takes place before the first Bioshock and then the rest of the game begins after those events, I was able to enjoy the game even more.

What I find interesting, is that I had a preconceived notion/impression that Bioshock 2 received bad reviews.  That people did not like taking control of a Big Daddy, that the gameplay was redundant of the first game, that the story did not offer anything new to the world of Rapture and that the game needed a constant internet connection all played towards the game being a disappointing followup to the masterpiece that was the first Bioshock.

As it turns out, at least according to Wikipedia, Bioshock 2 was actually a very good game that expands on the universe.  As is the case with any game, there are going to be negative reviews so maybe that was where my pre-playing impression originated from.  So it turns out I am not as alone as I thought I was going to be by stating that I am currently liking what Bioshock 2 has offered in the way of story, game play, voice acting and music.  It feels good to be back in Rapture.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

While I Look Around For My Possibility

A Review: Dead Space (PC)

Yes, I know that Dead Space 3 came out a couple of months back, but you know what, I heard that the original Dead Space was a fun/frightening game and I had really wanted to play it for some time.  Then, Steam had a sale last December (or was it November?) so I went ahead and purchased the initial two games in the franchise.  I began playing Dead Space last year in December and only in the last couple of weeks did I pick the game back up with the intention of taking the game to the end.  So now, here it is, everything that's already out there in the intertubes about a game that came out back in 2008.

But why bother reading a review of a game that came out 5 years ago that everyone and their third cousin has already played and written about?  Because you value our opinion.  And because some people may not have played it when it first came out (like this guy right here) and want to know if the game has held up since it's release.  Yes, yes it has.

You know what.  I'm not going to give our standard "Full Review."  This game's already been reviewed into the ground and the last thing the Internet needs is another review.  I'll just talk about things that I really liked (and didn't like) about the game.

The universe.  I like the universe created for the series.  Even though my experience in the universe is only based off of one game and the information is limited to what is found on the USG Ishimura, USM Valor and the Aegis VII Colony.  There are allusions to things happening on Earth, but not many and those are mainly snippets of information about the Church of Unitology.

Actually, the Church of Unitology is something that I was only slightly disappointed in.  Upon hearing about the Church of Unitology (from in-game, not from the mock-Chick tract that I got from PAX in 2010), I was really hoping that it wouldn't be a pseudo-Scientology-type religion, which it did turn out to be, but only in the way that there are special tiers that members are able to attain within the religion.  That's really all I know about Scientology and I'm not about to assume that I know more.

Back to the game.  Another thing that I really liked and felt was a bit of a departure from other survival horror-esque games.  Your character, Isaac Clarke, isn't some bad ass super soldier sworn with protecting the world from unnameable evils.  He's a middle-aged repairman/engineer whose girlfriend is on board the USG Ishimura, which is purely a coincidence (at least it is after the first game).  And your primary weapon?  It's a Plasma Cutter, which uses plasma energy to cut rock.  Yes, eventually you're able to purchase a legit non-mining tool/weapon.  Even the other mining tools that would be used/described as "magic" in another game, are explained well enough that you don't question why a miner would have the ability to have kinesis module or the ability to slow time at a directed object.

Oh, another thing was this:

 What are you looking at?  It's a maintenance inspection card for the elevator.  We've all seen them anytime we go into an elevator and probably shrug them off.  I'd just gotten into an elevator and while hoping that a necromorph wouldn't pop through the ceiling and attack, I noticed this little thing that wasn't anything beyond set decoration.  But, for me, it helped to maintain my investment in this universe.  That, even in this fictional universe, it is good to know that elevators are still maintained on a regular basis.  It's little details like that that help me to enjoy the game for more than what it is.

I also really liked the layout of the ship.  That it seemed plausible that the layout of the ship was how it was, um, laid out.  I don't know how else to explain that.  I never questioned why something was where it was or what it was that I was doing and why.  Every mission within the ship was pretty straight forward.  Can't send out a distress signal?  Go find out what's wrong with the communications array.  Even the NPC's started getting annoyed at how many things seemed to be going wrong and how much time it took just to get something done.  I liked that.  A lot.

Oh yes, how can I forget the intro movie.  Shots of the USG Ishimura with a slightly creepy woman singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."  Each line sung sounds like it's an effort just to keep going and to finish.  And, upon hearing the song over and over, I began to wonder if the words were the actual words as they almost sounded too creepy to be from a children's song. Alas, the words are in fact the real words, which I thought was pretty cool.

Science? SCIENCE!!

Lastly, I'll talk about my time playing the game and how I went through it.  I spent 23 hours playing the game, but only 14 hours was saved, meaning that I had spent 9 hours trying to get through different areas many, many (many) times and failing.  Specifically the first time with the ADS Canon and when you run into The Hunter in the large medical bay.  Conklederp can attest to my bouts of "Fucking fix it Hammond!  I don't care about your hangups, fucking. . . fucking damn it!" and "Run, fucking unlock the goddamn door!"

In the game, there are a number of weapons that you can purchase from the ships store, although I stuck with the the Plasma Cutter and the Pulse Rifle.  I did purchase the Ripper, although not really knowing how/when to use it, I sold it back to the store, probably to purchase additional med packs or power nodes to upgrade my equipment/gear.  For the most part, I didn't feel the game was too difficult, with the exception of the two mentioned times involving the ADS Canon and The Hunter and having played through the game on Normal/Medium difficulty.  Even the final boss held to a distinct pattern that once I got over the massiveness of the thing, I was able to calmly defeat the creature.

I will add that there were some aspects of the game that I didn't actively "participate in."  Apparently using parts of the necromorphs as projectiles with the kinesis was "a thing."  I rarely used the kinesis module except when moving heavy equipment or to acquire items that were out of range.  Also the secondary function on the Pulse Rifle apparently could do a lot of damage and the only times (used twice) I was in close quarters and when it fired an energy pulse into the air, I thought it was being used to light dark areas, so I practically never used that function.

Lastly, I will say that while Dead Space was a fairly frightening game, it didn't have a lasting sense of fear and terror.  This is most likely due to the fact that the game primarily took place in outer space and the monsters were horribly 'mutated' humans.  They were nothing that I could possibly run into, in a setting that I will probably never be in.  Those elements made the fear only present in the game and not outside of it.  That's not a criticism about the game, just something I felt like pointing out.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Slaves of Fear