October 2008 Archives

This week, I've been playing Dead Space, as a break from the frustration (and fear/tension!) that Silent Hill Homecoming is responsible for.

I have to say that in every way, Dead Space is a design masterpiece.  It's just plain well-crafted.  EA clearly let its best people work on a project they wanted to work on and gave them proper funding to do it.  But, I haven't finished the game, so I'm not going to review it yet.  Instead, I'm going to talk about what a complete idiot I am.

I did a few dumb things - or didn't do, more importantly - and I blame myself entirely.  First up is 'Crates of Stuff.'

Items have been feeling really scarce lately and in frustration I shot at one of the light-up crates.  It broke, revealing an item inside.  Wait, what? These things have STUFF inside?  What the crap?  I should've figured it out earlier, what with them being ALL OVER and also having lights on them.  So I missed out on all sorts of ammo and healing stuff throughout the game.  Again, this is my mistake.  As a gamer this is embarassing because I should be able to spot the Crates of Stuff after years of doing it.  At the same time it's a compliment to the designers that they created something that fit in the world without sticking out like an item.

The other thing concerns Alternate Fire.  At some point in the game, a little tutorial box popped up telling me I have alternate fire on my weapons, and I thought, "I don't have much ammo, and I'm between savepoints, so I'll wait and try it out after I save."

Then I promptly forgot about it, utterly and completely until... Chapter 6 of 12. Yeah, I'm not almost done, but I feel like a tardhole.

I kept bitching about how my circular saw didn't have a projectile function.  Hit right shoulder button - Oh hey look!  I just launched a whirling sawblade!  I thought it was weird that my plasma cutter only shot in a vertical line.  Hit RB - fwip! - horizontal shooting!

The third and final dumb thing I did while playing Dead Space is related to the second and just about me as a gamer.  I tend to get into ruts and just do things a certain way in the games, and then forget about my other options, moves, paths.

So, I'm fighting this tentacle-tastic boss that any hentai monster would be proud of, and it's getting really frustrating.  I'm swearing, annoyed, low on weapons.  So, I put the game down, and go read some boards.  Then it clicks.

First, relating to the second thing, this is where I figured out I had way more ammo than I thought.  That was one mistake. The other is this whole "kinesis" thing they give you.  I've used to pull platforms, grab items, but I never thought to use it to catch the crap this guy was throwing at me and throw it back at him!

Not only did I get a much easier and more entertaining battle from this, but I also, spoilers! got a secret acheivement for catching his explody goo lumps.

So, I regret the mistakes but I'm also liking the game even more now. It still isn't scary, but is it ever a fine piece of work.

So, Nintendo has formally announced the DSi, the upgrade of the insanely successful DS.

I'll admit, freely, that I was wrong to question the necessity of the DS.  It has become a solid successor to the GBA that is selling way better than I could've thought.  That said, I can't see the point of the DSi. 

So, what's different?
Two cameras have been added, and the GBA port has been removed.  There's an SD Card Slot. The screens are slightly bigger.  There's also an online store.  Of all these changes, the only one I don't question is the screen-size.

This might be due to a skew of the people I spend my time around, but almost everyone I know with a DS owns a few GBA games.  No one is happy about the absence of the GBA port around here.  I'm betting Activision is a little grumpy about it too, what with the Guitar Hero On-Tour games using that port.

Then there's the cameras.  They're .3MP.  They're not big enough to be actually useful for anything outside of in-game use, so how are they going to integrate them into games without it being chintzy?  The microphone use has been weird at best and embarassing at worst.  But then it's my own fault for playing WarioWare in public...

The SD Card Slot is there, I presume, to support the online store.  Gotta have some place to store all those downloaded games!  It's actually not a bad solution, seeing as its not proprietary, so maybe I don't have any complaints there.

What I really, really do not like however, is the online store.  From what I understand - and correct me if I'm wrong - is that Wii points and DSi points do not transfer, and neither do the point cards.



What the hell?  Really, Nintendo?  Do I have to have a different card for each too? And a different "user number?"  How does Nintendo even have a website? They're so internet and technoconvergence-phobic that it's almost hard to joke about anymore.  Microsoft had no problem integrating the Zune pass and Xbox Live and as a result has gained a faithful Zune user in me. 

I personally will NOT be picking up a DSi right away - if ever.  Nintendo needs to move forward if they want people to drop another $180 on a relatively unchanged DS.