The buzzword that the developers of Dead Space kept throwing around during a recent demo was “strategic dismemberment.”
Hitting the game’s alien enemies in center mass won’t do much of anything, they said. What you’ve got to do is take out their crazy tentacles and appendages.
“That gun you’re using looks quite conveniently spaced to that alien’s tentacles,” I pointed out. “Are some guns going to be specifically matched to enemy types?”
As it turns out: Yes.
Electronic Arts’ upcoming outer-space shooter, set for release this
Halloween on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC, is drawing many comparisons to BioShock. But for my money,
it looks more like a high-res Metroid Prime 3, with its
abandoned-space-station vibe and glowing blue futuretech scattered liberally throughout its environs.
Speaking of which, I was really impressed with how Dead Space handles
the issue of life bars and info gauges. They’re all on the back of your
character’s suit. Even when he’s running out of oxygen, the timer that
shows how long he has before he asphyxiates is shown in glowing type on
the back of his crazy space-corset.
Going hands-on for a brief few minutes after the guided demo, I was quickly thrown into a deadly situation and performed just like every other journalist in the room: Poorly. I got my ass kicked pretty hard by the swarms of aliens and their perfectly-spaced tentacles. Yes, I was able to fire off a couple of well-placed three-bullet rounds and strategically dismember the alien shown above, but soon after I was overwhelmed.
Is Dead Space brutally difficult, or are its designers just a bunch of sadists who enjoy throwing journalists into the hardest part of their game without any preparation? You never quite know, but we can all find out together later this year.
Image: Electronic Arts
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