Dead Space 3, Day 4

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?

Dead Space 3, Day 3

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.

Dead Space 3, Day 2

We are really big fans of Visceral Games and the Dead Space franchise, so we don't harbor any anger or resentment for the lack of .... "Dead-Space-ness".  Just a vague sense of... boredom.  A lack of edge-of-our-seats, pants-wetting terror that was what provided all the entertainment value in the first place.  It's just an emptiness, not a disappointment.  Like, we watched an episode of River Monsters that was more harrowing.
Anyway, we're cruising through the game at a good clip.  I had expected us to be moving faster than last game, because when Xian is alone, he often will just hover in doorways before going through - sometimes refusing to go through at all, saving and quitting the game instead.  Did I mention that we had quickly made it to Chapter 5 in our very first day, while in Dead Space 2, it took over a year?  This time, we're moving incredibly fast, partly because I'm an active participant; once a room is empty, it's time to move onto the next, so I open the door and trigger the next wave of baddies.  Not that he needs time to sit and cry anymore, most locations are well-lit and, according to Xian, he doesn't fear being overwhelmed by baddies if I can save him.
We discuss it idly while riding one of the interminable elevators in the game.  Were there this many elevators before?  It feels like we've spent a solid percentage of our time riding back and forth in elevators.
"I told you, people have been saying it's not scary," Xian said, pacing back and forth in the tiny elevator.
"And I was telling you, it's not about adding multi-player.  Look around us.  We're fighting real humans.  They've taken away the 'last survivor, backs against the wall' mentality," I disagreed, reloading both weapons in irritation.
"It's still perfectly acceptable gameplay," he said as we exited the elevator, resorting to one of his favorite gameplay aspects, stomping corpses.  "It's just maybe a little disappointing that it's not scary."
"I don't know, the human opponent does kind of affect gameplay," I countered, spotting the orange sight-beams of enemy military.  "It's an irritating chest-high wall, Gears of War knockoff," the crouch mechanism is dumb, so I strafe out of cover between volleys to pick off enemies.  "I'm not a military man, I'm an engineer, dammit!"
"Well, I am," Xian says, taking care of the rest of the gun-wielding enemies.
"Then why do you have a plasma cutter, may I ask?"
"I have no idea.  But the plasma cutter used to be the best weapon of all."
"But now with all this customization of guns, looks like that's not true anymore."  I spot a necromorph crawling out of a nearby air duct and wait for it to get to its feet before stasis-ing it, alerting Xian to turn around.  He puts a thousand bullets into it.
"Overkill much?" I joke, but the 'doubletap' rule is standard for zombie games, so despite criticizing, I stomp every corpse in the room once.
"They all drop a ton of stuff.  Look, got all that ammo back."  Not that I could see what his drops are, but the baddies did drop ammo for me as well, and the universal ammo clip made it so I was stuffed to the gills with ammo for every gun.
"Hey, why can't I give you this stasis pack?" Xian complains.
"My inventory's full up," I replied, staggering over to him, loaded down with health packs and ammo.
"Heal yourself, already!" He demands, and I remember that he can see my health if he can see my back.  Thanks, full immersion.  Since I don't feel very threatened by the enemies, nor punished by the death sequences, I haven't been using my health packs.  When we die, the screen merely turns red and informs you that 'Your Partner Has Died' or 'You Have Died', with potentially a torso-less Isaac lying on the ground.

Dead Space 3, Day 1

Can you believe it?  I forced Xian to set up a skype recorder, so we could make an awesome video of first reactions to what I was assuming would be an epic opening set piece, and.... nothing!  I feel so ripped off.  If I had only recorded our first playthrough of Dead Space 2, it would have been amazing.  Alas for missed chances for us, back then, and for Dead Space 3, now.
I had heard that there was some light outrage, something about the game giving up on being scary, complaints about multiplayer, something.  I wasn't concerned, because I never felt it was the solitude that was scary.  After all, Xian never actually played the game alone.  I felt that the atmosphere could still be there, with two people.  But no, it's not about the multiplayer.  The game isn't scary because it has, in fact, abandoned any pretense at atmosphere or scary.  It has become full modern RE, or even worse, Borderlands.  The opening sequence is so not scary, there's no words for it.  You just roll up to a brightly lit spaceship armed with full guns, ammo, and health, as some nameless person that's probably going to die anyway.  You go ahead and click that link back at the top.  Look how dark it is in DS2, first of all.  You can't see anything properly, except for the gruesome death of the only person that is helping you, right off the bat.  You're a crazy man, one hit from death, in a straitjacket.  That's right.  You don't even get use of your arms at the opening of Dead Space 2.  You don't get kinesis or the plasma cutter until after... well, some gruesome stuff happens first, I'm not going to lie (like I did during those parts to reassure Xian).  But it was more memorable than Dead Space 3, right?  Man, in the middle of that video, it is so dark, you can not see a thing while reloading your gun, since the gun has the flashlight on it. So you unload the clip into one creature, and then all is dark for the entire seconds of reload - you just have to hope that the other one didn't close in on you in the pitch darkness.
And where are my super-creepy Nicole hallucinations?  And super-punishing deaths?  Sometimes, the deaths in DS2 were so bad that Xian would shut off the machine and we'd all have ice cream instead.  In Dead Space 3, we were at Chapter 5 before we knew it.  By Chapter 5 in Dead Space 2, we had already seen a man slit his own throat, crashed a tram and had to fight off brutes upside-down, been through the creepy ruins of a city, been through an even creepier church of Unitology, been swarmed by a pack of scary zombie children and then shot them out an airlock, and finally betrayed by the only lady helping you and made a harrowing escape.  Just to fight a boss.  These are the kind of cinematic setpieces I'm expecting from you, Dead Space.  I don't want to play another Gears of War.  Or what this is really turning into: Borderlands.  Because of their new crafting system, I find myself wishing more necros would show up so I can get my hands on more materials to craft more awesome trinkets.  That's bad, Visceral - wanting more necros should be counter to your goals.  Or is it?  I hear that you want to 'appeal to a broader audience' to sell more stuff (or someone has told you to do so), is this the way you're doing it?  It really feels like you've taking away the 'Dead Space-ness' of it all.
Well, we will turn it up to a harder difficulty and see how the rest of the game goes.

Dead Space 2, Day 5

Today is not going well so far.  Xian has barely booted it up and looked a few empty rooms before Isaac has a hallucination and Xian now refuses to move forward.  Nothing helps.  We paused to look at kittens on the internet for a bit, but there's still a lot of crying and whining when we resume.  The game allows him to save far too often - why even have those save slots?  We barely killed even one creature since the last save point!

We reach a window with a live person on the other side, and for a second, I thought that it was going to be another ugly cut scene and that the evening of Dead Space was going to get cut very, very short.  But, it turned out to be our pals.  Of course the door's jammed, so we can't actually join up.  That'd be sensible, staying in a group with all these monsters around.  And the last thing we want to do in a game like this is be sensible!  So it's through the processing plant for Isaac to get to the other side.  Nevermind that it's not meant to be crossed by an actual person.  Again, see note on sensibility.

Xian is creeping along a metal walkway when the plant comes online and he freaks out badly.  Nothing's attacking, I try to reassure him, but I think both he and I know that a game like Dead Space would only be making this much noise if they wanted to obscure the sound of a monster about to attack.  And sure enough, two more inches of creeping along results in dark creepers bursting out and running straight at Isaac.  They pretty much give Xian a heart attack - they're pretty fast.  He doesn't lose much health, but he says he lost a few years of his life, and can't afford to see that scene again, so he goes back to the last save slot from two moments ago and saves yet again.

Time to get through the processing plant.  All the grindy bits you'd expect from an acme cartoon are off, thanks to Ellie, but guess who shows up and turns them all back on?  That... one guy... who's out to get you... for some reason that I forget.  Whatever his motivations, the plant is on and ready to grind Isaac up to a pulp, and only his stasis and very slow mini-jets are going to get him through.  Xian is much better at these timing-or-death things than me, and is vastly less stressed by them.  He marches through steadily.

Ok, criticism time, are you ready, Dead Space?  I've lavished praise on you for your setpieces and immersiveness, but your weakness seems to be those menus that you've been so good about avoiding.  There's not many, but the few that one is forced to deal with are actually pretty obtuse.  I like the pictures of items, but the way they are laid out makes it somewhat difficult to determine what you have in inventory vs. what is for sale vs. what you have in storage, and how many slots of each there are, etc. etc.  Just a side note.

During this time, Xian has made it all the way through the processing plant without even dying once, killing another one of those gigantic blobs that flings homing bombs along the way.  Go figure that you'd have to fight two of those in two consecutive chapters.

We met up with Ellie and Stross and reached chapter 9 (of 15, I looked it up) and things are now progressing more smoothly that Xian has somewhat accepted his fate.  He has to repeat one sequence a few times, with a window blowing out very close to where he was standing, and there was another gigantic room full of hunters, but he made it with minimal death.  But he called it quits after he had to exit a tram he was travelling in with Ellie and Stross to do some manual repairs.  Always a bad idea in Dead Space.

Dead Space 2: Day 4

He forgot about the hunter that came that jumped out from nowhere and murdered him last time, and made the exact same gruesome mistake right at the outset of this session.  You'd think the graphic punishment for failure would have left a stronger impression, somehow.

In the 'mainframe' room (I don't have any recollection of what it is we're trying to do, as usual) we get another call from our authority figure who is trying to remotely shut us down.  We have to crawl around inside the mainframe to get into tiny, claustrophobic rooms to pull out some fuse-like instruments.... at least I think that will get us what we want.  Xian mutters: "Exactly where I want to be during a deadly necromorph crisis - crawling around in a cramped, dark tunnel."  He also mutters: "Why does everything in this game have to sound like a monster."

When a dark slicer comes boiling out of the walls not two feet away from him, Xian throws one of the big panels at him, and that actually stunned him for long enough for Xian to pour some pulse rounds into him.

I've got to admit, even though I did some extensive crawling around in the ductwork earlier in the game, it's a pretty harrowing camera angle.  We had to crawl back and forth between the two cramped rooms before we figured out that we had to replug the fuses in a different order, a la Star Trek relay chips.  Once we achieved that, of course the path opened up and we saw at least one large slicer walking around outside the fuse room, and Xian decided 2 very important things: 1) this fuse room we were in was lovely and perhaps he could make a permanent home of it, and 2) the pie I had made earlier was getting cold, and someone probably needed to attend to it immediately.  "What's so good about outside, anyway.  It's perfectly delightful in here." (He also cried into his pie)  Caution was hardly warranted, as it turned out - he didn't even take a sliver of damage from the two slicers that were meandering around outside.  We had to punch out five separate circuits (destroying = forward progress, I guess), and that somehow angered the necromorphs greatly, who would come tearing around the corner with each break.

When those were dealt with, the security system finally shut down and we were relieved to finally get through the door.  Naturally we should have suspected something was up - as soon as the door opened, a bloody corpse fell on us and, well, let's say he was displeased with the way it seemed like the corpse was grabbing him around the neck.

We actually had to start leaving ammunition behind!  Good sign, or bad sign?  There were plenty of fiends in the next room, and he managed it in the first go with a relatively minimal loss of health.  After that, we finally made it to the solar array!  We just hopped outside into a vast region of space that housed the massive solar array mirrors that collected solar energy.  Two of them were out of alignment, so we reset them (there was a gigantic arm that flung mini homing bombs, but he turned out to be not a huge deal if you keep the jet pack strafing to max).  Meanwhile, audio reports from Ellie weren't terribly encouraging - she advises us to ... hurry.  Maybe she mentions it with a touch more urgency than that.  It might help to explain why Isaac decides to hurl himself off the solar array tower towards the station many millions of miles below.  Mini-game of dodging!  Exciting!  And blood-smeared, when Xian messed up.  Great landing, Isaac!  Gotta love this game's setpieces.

And, back to the trasport hub, where we get on a transport and get the hell out of dodge.  HAHAHA, if you thought it was going to go that easily.  No, of course the whole area blows up, gets de-oxygenated, and Isaac has to fight off an endless wave of increasingly dangerous baddies as Ellie tries to hack a door!  What did you think was going to happen?  It takes a couple of restarts, all of our health packs, and all of the ammo we just bought at a shop to get through that mess, and we're stranded back in the factory, where Ellie just spent her morning hacking her fellows to distinct pieces.

We spent some time hovering around the entrance to a blood-soaked room.  Xian is not very keen on crossing bloody rooms.  I was encouraging, but he decided enough was enough.

Dead Space 2: Day 3

Not only are we finally in chapter 7, but it didn't even take much coercion to get him back to work on it!  So, progress is being made on all fronts.  I did have to talk him into leaving some of his spare ammo behind in stoarge.  I like carrying ammo myself, but leaving ammo drops on the floor is just bad form, and I think everyone here knows it.

Chapter 6 ended with us reaching the transport hub and all the power being shut off by some unknown (or unremembered) authority figure with ties to the Unitologists.  We reunited with Ellie and CrazyMan, and Isaac actually said some stuff.  This is probably a far cry from real character development, but relative to regular old Dead Space, hey, I'm quite enthusiastic about it.  We agreed to team up with Ellie to do.... something.  With the solar array panels.  Look, with the objective tracker, sometimes I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the details of the mission.  The elevator was broken when we got there, and we had to go downstairs and fix it (because Isaac is an engineer, see?).  Xian was truly paranoid the whole time, but get this - no one showed up to fight!  Even on our way back, only one scorpion tried to stop us.  Of course, when we got in this massive elevator to the sky, it was much too large for no boss to be jumping us during the trip.  So I suppose it was anticlimactic when large beasts tried to get at us through the windows and the oxygen all escaped.

At the top of the elevator is a generous ring area, where we thought we'd be facing off against a boss due to an array of consumable items littering the area.  Oddly enough, no one was there.  We headed over to the restricted area for the solar array station, which was apparently manned by one Howard Phillilps, who we get to know, despite him being very dead.  The door to the array wouldn't open without  his rig, so we carried his dead body over there to activate it.  Next, it wanted a verbal access code, and we looked around, thinking it was another puzzle, but those laser beams were defeated by simply chucking something through them.

The AI security is making a huge pest of itself with these laser security beams, sometimes activating them just as we walk by and doing massive damage.  She's got a holographic figure that kind of lurks after you as you move to room from room, watching you trespass with her hands on her hips and reporting her security responses.  What I'm saying is, she's getting on my nerves.  And one straightforward setpiece moment was ruined several times in a row when Xian got caught by a security beam set that was supposed to activate behind you and trap you with a monster and a blown out window.  He can handle those two things, but the beams activating on his face kept killing him first - Xian kind of... creeps along, so the game sort of expects you to have moved to the middle of the room, and he's still standing near the entrance where the beams activate supposedly to cut off your retreat.  Anyway.  She disengaged the life support, so we had to run down a hall way and "engineer" (remember, do a little mini game where Isaac pulls out the wires from a glowing panel) something, only as soon as he put his hands on it, a Hunter came out of nowhere to blindside him with a huge shriek of noise and sudden violence.  Xian threw up the controller and declared the night over.

Deadspace 2: Day 2

He grimly got back to work today, resignedly saying the following: "Every time I restart this game, it doesn't matter how long it's been, I've actively forgotten how to play."  We saw an actual living woman, but of course only spoke to her through a barrier, and she not-so-politely declined our request to join forces.  It was nice to have someone to talk to, though.

We found ourselves near a store, and he bought himself some new guns, since we were previously trying to navigate these dire halls with just the plasma cutter and javelin.  I'm pretty sure I've shocked myself using the javelin, so it's not my favorite.  Also, there's only 5 shots available on it right now, and the reloading is terribly slow.

As soon as we were out of the store, a number of necromorphs came roaring down the hall, including a spitter and a pregnant.  It was a very wide and long hall, though, so he was able to dispatch them efficiently.  There were a few booby traps, though, which took a chunk or two out of his health.  Also, while he was busy with those, a few more necromorphs got the drop on him.

The objective trail led us into a brightly colored elementary school, and you know things are gonna get ugly in a place like this.  We saw a living woman through a window that we could not communicate with, and you know that's going to end badly, too.  Yup, she cuddled a necromorph baby, and they both blew on up.  Gross.  And, of course, you know that's not the last we're going to see of those babies.  As you enter the nursery area of the elementary school, a whole horde of them come crawling out of the duct-work.  I didn't say that game wasn't predictable, I said I enjoyed the delivery of the story.

Next up was a children's theatre, and Isaac needs to take a convoluted path to get to the stage area - as usual, Xian took it very slowly and deliberately, first vanquishing the necromorph children that came crawling over the stands, and then a dark spitter underneath the bleachers.  He got a really good scare from a cardboard sun backstage that dropped in his face, and we had a momentary hallucination phase-out.  Nothing too scary, this time.  When he activated a control panel backstage and all the obstacles retracted, we knew things were about to get serious, and tons of babies and children came pouring out from the stands toward the stage.  Had to repeat that one a few times, but the death sequence was not too bad - the sight of Isaac blowing up is actually really tame, compared to some of the bad stuff that's happened to him, honestly.  We also found what appeared to be a stasis "bomb" - a lamp-like object that you can blow up or throw that creates a stasis field.  Awesome.

We got out of the elementary school and finally reached the transport hub, where we met up with Ellie (the lady from before who declined to join forces with us) and Stross (our CrazyFriend).  "Meet up," meaning that they were somewhere Isaac couldn't reach, and instead we faced off alone against a Brute.     Xian called it quits after a few deaths.

Dead Space 2: Day 1

So amused by my journal-style musings on AC:R, I'm re-forcing Xian to play Dead Space 2 so I can observe and actively blog about the happenings.  We are in the sixth chapter, I believe?  When we booted the game back up, I recalled the reason we (he) had stopped - he had thrown the controller down, angrily declared this room to be impossible, and vowed never to play again until "this game stopped being unreasonable.  Or scary."

So you can see how it took some extensive coaxing to get him to even get back on the horse, so to speak.  I used every trick in my repetoire - cajoling, imploring, appealing to his ego, outrageous flattery, the works.  He walked into the room in question, got murdered by the first enemy, and quickly decided to backtrack and find a store.  We went back upstairs to a residential area and he got the life scared out of him by an alarm clock that went off suddenly, and gave up that notion immediately.  He gutted his way through the room of death - two pregnants, six lurkers (the legless tail creatures that crawl on walls).  And wasted a sizeable amount of ammo and at least one health pack while he was at it.  But, we were through, and on our way to a store, a bench, and a save spot.  In the hallway before the bench, though, there was the tell-tale sound of enemies and what appeared to be living nodes on the walls and floors.  Not one to be taken by surprise in a game like this, Xian grabbed the nearest dead body to use as a test dummy, and sure enough, the little nodules were booby traps that exploded on contact.  Xian inched his way down the corridor using every body piece available to spring every trap.  At the end of the corridor there was a locked closet that could only be opened with a power node - in my memory, these were always good rooms that were largely worth the one power node price of admission. Xian, however, seems to recall at least one of these rooms which was "filled with nothing but monsters".  I tried to talk him out of being so negative, but it was useless.

The next room was filled with fire, and he had to manually de-oxygenate it to continue.  In this game, of course it's never as simple as that - I'm sure Xian was also not surprised when some rocket-tentacles showed up to impede his escape from the oxygen-less room.  In the elevator, Isaac had another nonsensical conversation via radio with his only friend, CrazyMan.  You've got to appreciate the fact that they put in effort to give Isaac a human personality, right?

The next room was a maze of crates, and a lot of wheedling and encouragement had to happen before he would so much as set foot inside.  It sometimes makes him feel better if he looks up the walkthrough and is more mentally prepared for what's about to happen?  So he left it on pause while he did that.  He inched around crates and for a time, he refused to go further.  I reminded him "the only way out is forward," and he gave it a go.  Alas, it turned out the monsters lying in wait were the raptor-hunters, who we met once before in a similar maze atmosphere.  We should have guessed.  These creatures are two-legged and extremely fast, tearing straight for you and knocking you forcefully into a wall, stunning you for a moment.  Too many of them on you at once certainly means death.  They also like to lurk behind corners and peep out at you to see if you're looking before charging.  It took two tries - and the death sequence was  extremely unpleasant.

He called it quits after that.