The Nerves

This weekend, after playing through Mega Man Legends 2, I figured it was time to try something a bit more modern with Dead Space. Okay, well I was heading for that direction but instead, to ready myself for DS, I tried the demo for Dead Space 2. I know, it doesn't make much sense, and from what I've heard, the first is darker than the sequel, but before devoting my sanity to the original, I figured I would at least try the gameplay first. The result? I clearly don't have the nerves the play through this game.


When playing through games that attempt a little horror in the midst of pure action, your nerves are usually wound up already from merely needing to pull the trigger so much and wishing it was as sensitive as the fabled hair-trigger. But you're never really scared, and the most you'll get scared is probably during multiplayer when you're zoomed in with a sniper and some guy comes up and snaps your neck. That surprise can make you jump, but you usually get used to it. When I played Bioshock for the first time, I had difficulty dealing with the atmosphere, more than the splicers jumping out of nowhere. The creepy whispers, maniacal laughs, and the insanity of Atlas ended up being more scary than some of the bad guys. Though to be fair, there were plenty of rooms that were scary without things running at you or hearing anything, such as the one room with a tonic in the table in the corner and water on the floor with columns and wireframe mannequins. Okay, I'm sure I didn't describe that well enough, but the point is, once you get the tonic and turn around the mannequins are suddenly splicers, that aren't moving, just standing there. Creepy.

While playing through the DS 2 demo I realized that I was already going into this game with the mindset that I was probably going to get a little freaked out. From all the reviews I've read and seen, as well as descriptions of how the game feels, I had pretty much accepted that this game was not really for me, mostly because of the dark nature of the game. But still, I was being pressured by one of my friends to play the game. Starting off the demo I chose to play as cautiously as possible. This sort of made things worse. I was on edge, ready to move as soon as I saw anything else move at all, and my finger on the trigger ready to blast anything back to hell, be it friend or foe. There are a few things that didn't help this cautious atitude, the lack of HUD, the slow movements of Isaac, and of course the bad guys.

HUD-less

Without a HUD I definitely felt helpless at times. The demo was only about 10 minutes long, but not having anything at all definitely helped the loneliness and made me move slower. The HUD has always been a friendly reminder that despite being alone, you at least know what you have in front of you. You can see an obvious health meter, some sort of meter to indicate whatever else you have at your disposal, ammo, and sometimes radar. Isaac is greedy and keeps all of this stuff from you inside his helmet. You're left with a health meter that crawls up the spine of his suit, and you have to aim your weapon to see how much ammo is left. These are definitely cool features, but I think I would trade them in for the comfortable screen-hug that is the HUD.

I mean just look at this screenshot. This is all you get in the game. Wouldn't that freak you out a little?

Slow and steady

Isaac moves slowly. Pushing the analog stick forward feels a lot like pushing a boulder along, but it's probably more realistic. If you need to run, and you probably will, you can press a button to make the engineer move his armored butt into a jog, which compared to his dainty saunter feels like running. While walking the hallways slowly, I even tried moving slower to try and keep myself ultimately aware of my surroundings. Everything seemed creepier moving slowly. Why? Because all of the bad guys seem like they are moving at light speed in comparison to you, making you feel helpless as you pull the trigger frantically trying to fire rivets into the various body parts of the necromorphs. I thought moving slow would give me time to heighten my senses and get a better idea of my surroundings. Not so. My nerves were probably even worse off moving at that speed. Since Isaac rotates so slow, when you hear something move or break something from behind, by the time you turn around it's already on top of you, probably dismembering you in some way.

Baddies

The scary part of any horror game should probably be the enemies. Not just how they look, but how they approach you and how they interact with you. In DS, you can never really be sure anything is dead until it's in pieces. I found that out after coming across the first enemy in the demo. Five shots in the head put him down, but one step away from the body had him attempting to rise up again before planting my boot in his face. I probably should have expected this, but for some reason I still was shocked by it. Plus, sometimes they would attack in hordes, and since Isaac moves so slow, even while rotating, it's hard to deal with the numbers unless you can eliminate them efficiently. Plus, they are just freaky looking. Splicers were a little messed up, like genetically altered people would, but necromorphs are like what would actually happen if Bruce Banner was blasted with gamma radiation. Nevertheless, the delivery of the bad guys can definitely make you nervous. I walked through a few corridors with tons of stasis chambers, expecting something to jump out, but nothing did, which made it worse. And then when one finally did, I jumped anyway. Lame, I know.

In retrospect, I'm probably not the best person to be reviewing horor games like Dead Space. I'm not a huge fan of horror movies, and it probably also doesn't help that I live alone and if I were to play through the game and freak out, I would have no one there to hold me talk to, reminding me that I'm not an engineer trapped on some creepy, rust bucket in space with the augmented bodies of humans that aren't quite dead and not willing to die. Of course, being alone would probably allow me to hide my fear, though not posting this would help even better. I mean honestly, I was a little freaked out playing through the Phendrana Drifts lab section and Phazon Mines in Metroid Prime, so clearly this is probably not my thing. Despite this, I think I may indeed try to play through DS at some point, just clearly when my nerves aren't so fried.

Question: How do your nerves deal with scary games?

Dream on.

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