Alright, the difficulty is cranked all the way up, and it's still not scary. We die more, yes, but neither of us are scared. Xian still hates the regenerating monsters, but he hasn't quit the game abruptly due to terror. The only moments of terror occur when the game regretfully informs me, "Your co-op partner has died," and I still have the ability to run around and shoot the critters gathering around my ankles. Usually I turn around to see Xian trying to fend off a huge necro that's putting a spike through his head, or flailing around as smaller necros systematically tear off his arms. I lift my gun, but since the game has already told me there's no saving him, I just shrug sadly.
"How are you doing over there?" I venture hopefully.
"NO, NECRO, I NEED THAT ARM," he wails.
"So I guess we're not doing so good."
"GET THIS GUY OFF ME!"
"He's already tearing off your face, dude. You're already dead, the game is already restarting from checkpoint. This is just punishment. If I could take an action, I'd mercy-shoot you to prevent you from turning into a necro."
Mostly inarticulate yelling in reply.
The story continues to be inscrutable, and now that he's not scared, he's finally more alarmed that it's not clear or cohesive. Someone once again sends us off on another fetch quest, and immediately a ton of necros leap out as if to distract us from the incongruity of it all.
"Wait, why is Isaac, the engineer, sent to do this and no one is coming with? I'm not even on their stupid team," I ask while shaking off mini necros.
"Yeah," Xian muses, using his always-preferred shotgun. "Was it always this unreasonable in the other Dead Spaces, and we just didn't notice?"
"We were spending most of our effort just getting out of each room alive," I agreed, double-tapping everyone that was down. "We didn't exactly have time to ponder the why of it all. Although I do remember you bitterly asking why you had to cross the necromorph'd daycare last game."
"And did you give a satisfactory answer?" Xian asked, stomping into the next room.
"I didn't have to. You got exploded by a babymorph-bomb and then turned the game off to cry."
"Good times," he says, sounding a touch resigned as he raids the lockers and absently blasts a necro with his shotgun after it bursts out of a vent. "Did we get the stupid part to fix the stupid spacecraft?"
"Yeah, I grabbed it. Is the next part on this floor?"
"I think it's on the other side. But I hear a lot of gurgling noises."
"Yeah, they're still out there. But I'm sure they're just waiting for us on the other side."
We brute force our way through the next sections, both irritated at the way the rest of the so-called crew is doing a total of diddly-squat while Clarke and Carver are wading neck deep through necros to repair and fuel the spacecraft. After all that, Ellie sentences us to death by accident by firing up the shuttles thrusters and has no way of turning it off? I mean, Ellie, you're supposed to be the love interest here, but you're not really supporting that cause, because I'm starting to hate your stupid ass.
This part is the worst. I'm not scared of horror games, that's not my problem. My gaming weakness is timing games. If there's a rotating fan that you have to time just so in order to get through or it's certain death, you can bet I'm going to fail that thing like twenty times in a row. The next part is supposed to be hectic and harrowing, but I manage to die on every single jet of flame that you're supposed to time your way past perhaps ten times. I can hear Xian gritting his teeth on the other side of the Skype as we start the sequence over for the thirtieth time, when he says "this time, wait for the jet of flame before running?" The regenerator necro isn't even scaring him anymore, he just flicks a stasis shot at him every time he shows up - and we know where he's going to show up, because we're only making incremental progress through this sequence.
Ugh, the shame. It takes nearly half an hour to get through the stupid thirty second sequence. Turning down the difficulty wouldn't even help, because I'd always die to the flames, which are one hit kills, not difficulty-dependent. It was so late afterwards, we just saved and quit.
