The open space sections in Dead Space are still unique (right? No other game does this kind of thing?) And while we always enjoy these unique and frankly, really good looking graphics, it's always frustrating to cruise around in open space - there's no sound, so you can't tell where damage could be coming from. Also, it's mostly floating explosives, so you have to watch all three dimensions around you, or face instant death. Just saying, they're nice sections, it's just also nice that they have limited appearances throughout the game. Makes the oxygen time upgrade on the RIG useless, though! Also, finding secret caches out there in the vastness of space is tough stuff.
Anyhow, in addition to open space fetch quests, we also run a few side missions while we're out here. Hooray for side quests! Or is this more detraction from a scary storyline? I can't tell, I'm too blinded by the lust for better guns. I've turned this game into Borderlands!
There's finally a large setpiece event, when we go down to the planet to attempt to shut off the marker signal for good, and our crappy ship breaks up on re-entry. Being co-op, there are a few moments when we spend more time blaming each other than flying the ship, because one person is flying the ship, and one person is shooting down mines - some of the events are scripted, and there's no way to avoid several of the impacts. We thought it was game over when the cinematic showed us crashing into a mountain peak and the ship breaking in half, but nope, that was scripted, not bad driving.
Down on the planet, we're stranded and alone and freezing to death, marching around an ice storm with no objective markers. We have no idea what number spells our certain doom via hypothermia, so we try to keep our temperatures (as shown on our health gauge indicator) above 20C. Probably we could go all the way to 0 before death, though. The blizzard happily conceals burrowing necromorphs, who pop out like lurkers to tear off limbs and spit acid. We slog from safe spot to safe spot like we're playing German Spotlight with growling undead. Another member of the 'crew' dies, and neither Xian nor I feel any remorse (Clarke and Carver don't seem too bothered, either) despite him croaking right in front of us needlessly. I turned on the heat, dude, why did you freeze to death? We head downstairs to find the last two thermal snowsuits, which the crew apparently didn't bother to do, leaving this last guy to die instead of even looking? What bastards. Why are we with these chumps, again?
Downstairs, we find a new enemy, and a text log that suggests that we throw something to make noise to distract them and then sneak past. Why... would I do that? I have a gun, and these guys only take one or two bullets a piece. I mean, we love sneaking games, but there's nothing around to grab with kinesis to throw, anyway! So we just run into the room with guns blazing and take out the whole lot of them systematically. Do you ever get the feeling that you're meant to play the game a certain way, and you just don't see it until you've already done it the hard way?
