Behind The Curve - Dead Space: Extraction Review

So there's a lot of content on the inter-webs regarding new stuff. I know, because I spend a lot of time scouring blogs like Kotaku to learn about the latest releases, and to keep on top of the recent developments in my areas of interest. Unfortunately, most products are most expensive when they're brand new, so rarely do I get to experience anything while it is still new. A lot of gamers are this way I think, especially with video games, which compared to traditional games, experience a dramatic decline in sticker price as they age on the shelves of retailers. A title that costs $60 at release can easily be $30 within 6 months, depending on how popular it is. This being the case, I rarely play one when it's new, on account of the fact that I can sometimes buy 3 or 4 old titles instead of buying a new one. For example, if I wanted to I could go out and buy Dead Space 2 which came out today for $60, or I could go ahead and buy Dirt 2 , A Boy and His Blob , Vanquish , and still have a few bucks leftover for an after lunch coffee.

When I was younger, before all my dreams were crushed, I used to think the ideal job would be writing game reviews. I mean, to a 14 year old it sounds pretty awesome to play games all day and write what you thought about them. While the reality of that situation is a little more on par with the reality of being in quality assurance for a major publisher then it is with having free reign to the enjoy the bounty of the chocolate factory (wow that just sounds dirty when I read it back), Web 2.0 has given me the ability to live my childhood dream without having to slog through some grueling 60 hour JRPG to make ends meet. To that end, I'm going to write about some of the media I've enjoyed recently, and you can be sure that it's stuff that's been out forever and is dirt cheap now.

Dead Space: Extraction
(Wii, PS3)

The Wii exclusive prequel to EA's mysteriously under-performing multiplatform science fiction action-survival-horror game Dead Space, Dead Space: Extraction takes advantage of the excellent pointing capabilites of the Wiimote to deliver a pretty riveting on-rails shooter. With a story that picks up just before the events of the original, you play mostly as P-Sec Detective Nathan McNeil, as he tries to hold together a group of survivors trying to escape from a mining colony that is overrun with horrifying monsters referred to as "necromorphs", who begin appearing after the discovery of "The Marker," a bizarre obelisk found on the planet. There's a pretty diverse cast of principal characters which include a sleazy colony overseer with ulterior motives, a hardened soldier, and the helpless female love interest. The graphics are pretty decent for a Wii game (awesome overused cliche!), and sound effects taken directly from the original Dead Space will instantly put fans on edge. On top of that, the story moves along at a nice pace and the dialog and voice acting are high quality, so all in all this game earns fine marks for presentation. Additionally, the game is set in some kind of awesome British future where everyone has an English accent, which I think earns it some pretty legitimate science fiction street-cred.

The gameplay has it's roots in classic arcade light gun games like House of the Dead , so you'll spend most of your time blasting on-screen necromorphs, reloading your weapons whenever you have a moment of respite. Extraction implements a Gears of War inspired perfect reload system which allows you to get a faster reload if you hit the button again at a predetermined time indicated on the reload timer around your aiming reticule, so even reloading your weapons is an engaging activity. The weapons are mostly direct ports from Dead Space, and feature a variety of mining and maintenance equipment that have been re-purposed to cleave the limbs off of necromorphs, which it turn out is the most effective way to slay them. Your basic weapon is an unexciting rivet gun, but there are some more exotic guns thrown into the mix, like the ripper which shoots a buzz saw blade out and suspends it spinning in mid-air about 5 yards in front of you, the plasma cutter which shoots horizontal or vertical cutting lines, and its big brother the line cutter. In general, the shooting is well executed and satisfying, mostly due to the jerky movements of the necromorphs, which can make hitting them a challenge sometimes. You also have a stasis power that allows you to freeze enemies in place for a brief time, and a telekinesis power that's used for solving environmental puzzles, catching and throwing projectiles back at enemies, and also for grabbing a sometimes impossible number of ammo packs, weapon upgrades, and audio/text logs.

The campaign is split into about 10 chapters, each being roughly 25-40 minutes in length, and will take you just 5 or 6 hours to finish. After that, theres some unlockable difficulty settings and a challenge mode which is basically just a collection of high-score shooting galleries set in different locales from the campaign. The enemies come in a multitude of shapes and sizes, and in general they're pretty terrifying, but once you realize that the best thing to do is just shoot their joints and use your stasis to freeze the faster guys so you can proceed to shoot their joints, the combat can start to feel a little stale. This is compounded by the fact that during the game there are only 2 boss encounters, and one of those is an unintuitive mess that will leave you scratching your head while a giant plant monster bashes it in. In the end though, for the price I paid for it ($12.36 + tax), I'd have to say that I totally got my money's worth, and that it's pretty much a mandatory play for fans of Dead Space. Many people who purchase the limited or collectors edition of Dead Space 2 on PS3 will get this game for free, and it's also available for $15 on PSN so if you have a Move controller there's no reason not to play it on that console.

Next Time on Recidivism and Moral Inertia...

Full Circle - Magic the Gathering Online

I don't remember exactly when it was that I discovered Magic: The Gathering (MtG). It was sometime circa '93 or '94 , and I would have been in the 4th or 5th grade. Back in the day, cards like Sengir Vampire here were what it was all about. Big nasty creatures that took over the game when they hit the table. You maybe had 1 or 2 copies of them in your whole collection, and they were in some terrible junk deck next to a craw wurm. I played the game pretty heavily in grade school all the way up through highschool before I decided that it was too much trouble to keep up with all the new cards that were coming out, and all the crazy tech that was overtaking the after school meta-game. I played a few other CCGs over the years, especially after my return to tabletop gaming in my late teens and early twenties, but aside from the excellent Call of Cthulhu CCG that was supported briefly and then axed and then resurrected by Fantasy Flight Games, none of them left such a lasting impression as MtG.

Turn the clock forwards some 15 years to Summer 2009. In a stroke of genius, looking to revitalize the MtG franchise which had been stagnating for a number of years, Wizards of the Coast brought us Duels of the Planeswalkers for the Xbox Live Arcade. Here was an opportunity for tons of dudes like me who grew up and later abandoned MtG to come back to the game with a reasonably low barrier to entry (I think it was like $10 for the game)in the context of a videogame, which was a medium that we had already fully embraced. Shortly thereafter, WotC hit us with M10, a new iteration of their core set for MtG which contained many of the classic cards that we had loved so much in the early days of the game, along with some new ones that were pretty awesome as well (Baneslayer Angel, Anyone?). Between jobs, I managed to make time to make it down to the local store in Rochester for some release events for m10 to get my first taste of limited magic (sealed format, in this case).

It was like reuniting with an old friend, but there were a few growing pains. For starters, I was not a big fan of having to go to a store or later the Cornell Games Club in order to play MtG. In general, you've gotta play MtG in some cramped dump with a bunch of awkward jerkwads who don't know what manners or hygiene are. I myself may be an awkward jerkwad, but at least I shower daily and wear clean clothes. Anyway, the burden of spending 4-6 hours in some stinking pit every week to play MtG was a bit much for me, which is just the opportunity that MtG:Online needed to work it's way into my heart and wallet. Now I could have all the fun playing MtG without any of the hassle. If I wanted to drink a few beers and play in a draft tournament when I got home from work, taking the occasional smoke break between matches on the patio, I could totally do that, even on a Wednesday night at 11pm. It was totally liberating.

Which brings us back to Sengir Vampire. Recently, MtG:Online saw the release of Masters Edition IV, a cobbling together of old cards from sets that weren't meant to played in limited formats (meaning they wouldn't sell so well online), designed in an effort to slowly inject the online card pool with all of the cards that are available in paper formats. I played my first ME4 draft (you can see the picks by following this link ), and it was like this wonderful time warp back to a time when vampires weren't moody pretty boys and wizards didn't go to prep schools. It's nice to know that no matter how much the mainstream tries to ruin everything we've always held dear in an attempt to make it more palatable for the Dancing With the Stars set, theres still a giant corporate entity out there that knows they don't have to reinvent the wheel.

Intro

So I decided to do something creative in regards to what I spend most of my time doing, which is wasting my time on non-sense that is not making me more successful (in fact it is probably in direct opposition to my success) but is at least making me happy sometimes. This blog is about that.

The title is taken from Tycho Brahe's Penny Arcade news post for December 31, 2010.  Recidivism is also one of my new favorite words.  I keep bumping up against it while reading the background fluff for all of the Warhammer 40K RPGs (Dark Heresy, Deathwatch and Rogue Trader). If you know what any of that is, this is probably for you.

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