Dead Space

The Overview

In the dark and distant future a corporation, Concordance Extraction Corporation, sends a giant mining ship to some planet in some system somewhere to mine stuff. During the mining operation the colonists discover some huge evil looking artifact and as always happens in cases like this they dig it up. Once again as always in cases like this bad stuff happens (the dead come back to life as horrible murderous creatures), first on the colony and then upon the ship where the evil thing has been transferred. The ship’s crew has been stuffed full of an unpopular popular religious group, Unitologists, who as it turns out have their own machinations for the artifact and are unable to believe it could be causing the bad stuff.

The game starts with our hero and others arriving at the giant planet cracking ship to see what has happened to everyone. Our dear hero is especially concerned since his girlfriend was on the ship and sent him some horrible “we are all going to die” message. So they board the ship and then stuff happens.

The Good

The UI for health, ammo, energy etc is slick. The health and energy are displayed on the players back, the ammo comes up as a 3D display over the gun being used and videos are projected off the player like a holographic display. Doesn’t distract the player from the gaming experience helps it feel more like it’s you in the game.

The weapons are fairly interesting and all have an alternative fire mode so it’s like having twice as many guns.

You collect items as you progress that allow you to upgrade you weapons and armor. 

The levels have a coherent feel to them. It doesn’t seem like each level was done by a different person/group in a void.

Several times during the game you enter areas where gravity has failed or is turned off and you play in zero g.

The first couple of times the monsters attack it can be rather freaky and make you jump in your seat.

Big boss fights.

There is a couple of amusing mini games. 

It’s very pretty, in a evil alien monsters want to eat you kind of a way.

When you beat the game it awards you with bonus items (cash, upgrade items and a new suit of armor)  and the ability to play through again with your charecter retaining any upgrades.

The Bad

The story seems like one we have heard 100 times before. Even the twists and turns when they come aren’t all that exciting. It helps to watch the animated feature that was released at the same time but really all that did was make me wish I could have watched a movie of the game instead.

You unlock all of the weapons quickly. I think you have them all before 1/3 of the game is complete. I kept waiting to find some cool new weapon but nothing else came along. I have always thought you should save a BFG for the end of the game or at least space them out more.

While the levels are coherent it does get rather boring after a while. Oh look another dark grey hallway leading to a slightly larger dark grey room. There is more variety towards the end, but I don’t think I ever had that oh ah feeling when I walked into a room.

The combat gets boring fairly quickly and while there is probably a dozen monters to fight it’s always pretty much just freeze them (did I mention you have some sort of physic abilities?) then shoot the legs til they fly off and then chop off an arm or something to kill them. 

It took me 12.5 hours to beat the game on medium.

There is no multi-player. In the year 2008 no multi-player. I am sure there was reasons for it but come on man 2008.

My Experience

I played through the whole game on medium on the Xbox 360 over a period of about 3 days. As stated above it took me about 12.5 hours to beat it.  I then played another hour or so through it a second time to test out the upgraded armor etc.

Conclusion

If you can rent it, borrow it (as I did) or get it cheap ($20)  somewhere it is worth playing through. 

If I spent $60 bucks for a game with 12 hours of game play I would fee like I got robbed.

I gave it a B-. I really felt like I should be harsher but it had it moments and since I didn’t actually pay for it I couldn’t hold the price against it.

Share/Save

The Dresden Files

The Overview

The show, based on a series of books by Jim Butcher (also called The Dresden Files), follows Harry Dresden a wizard who makes his “living” as a private investigator. Harry’s life has had it problems, dead mother, murdered father, uncle who raised Harry after his father’s death was the one who murdered his father, Harry self defenses his uncle to death with black magic which puts Harry in the bad graces of the High Council of Wizards. The High Council, the controlling body of wizards, looks poorly upon the use of black magic let alone when it is used to kill, so Harry is not on their favored person list.

Several years after his uncle’s death Harry moves back to Chicago, takes out an ad in the yellow pages under Wizard and takes cases as they come to him. Living with Harry is “Bob” a long dead, immaterial, and once powerful wizard who is trapped forever inside his own skull for his own transgressions with black magic. Bob was responsible for training Harry in use of magic and now helps Harry out with the cases that come along.

Most of Harry’s work comes courtesy of Lt Connie Murphy of the Chicago PD who uses him as a consultant for unusual cases she comes across. Serious and professional, Murphy doesn’t really believe Harry is a wizard but as long as he helps her close cases she doesn’t care.

The Review

The series is episodic so there is not much carry over from week to week. I really prefer my sci-fi to be serial in nature but it’s not unusual for a series to be more freak of the week in the beginning and then evolve towards a long term epic storyline. Since the series got the boot it’s probably for the best since it really stinks to get pulled into a series only to have it canned leaving things unfinished (any sci-fi fan gets dulled to this pain after a while).

The pilot episode was cut from two hours to an hour, had parts re-shot and shown as the 8th episode. This seems kind of representative of the series, a certain amount of confusion of the mythology or what the show is supposed to be. There is maybe two episodes where Harry really does something “Wizard”, one of these being the previously mentioned pilot. You get the feeling they wanted to tone down the wizard part and emphize more the investigator part. Rather disappointing but more main stream which should equal audience which should mean not being cancelled.

When the series started I filed it away in my “I will watch it but if it gets cancelled I won’t be upset category”. As the series went along through it grew on me. Not sure what it was, could have been been Harry as the down on his luck guy who is always willing to put himself on the line to help people out, Bob the witty and kind of sleazy sensei , or just Murphy. Probably all of that and the interest in seeing where it would go. Would something happen with Harry and Murphy? How much more of the world of magic are we going to see?

Regardless of it being unfinished and a bit uneven it’s good stuff and worth watching.

Where

The series is out on DVD. I assume it costs some amount of money and can be obtained at a place that sells stuff. A store yeah a store or maybe a website.

You can also watch the whole series on Hulu for free.

To seem cool I have embed the whole first episode here for your viewing pleasure.

Share/Save

“Those who can — do. Those who can’t — criticize. “

This is not a site for Opium or it’s various derivatives, nor does this site have anything to do with drugs (at least in the chemical sense).

It’s Opiate like “Opiate of the masses” (not so much in the Karl Marx way).

To me media (movies,TV,books,games, music etc) are an opiate for the masses.

And I am OK with it. 

My Promise to you!

I am going to ramble on about what I feel like. Most of it will be sci-fi geeky kind of stuff (since that’s who I am). 

There is no guarantee it’s going to be what’s new and hot, it’s just what ever I am reading/watching/playing at the time.

I am not going to go out of my way to find stuff I don’t like to make fun of it (IE no country music, no romance novels, no sports games), but if it’s something that I have seen hoping it wouldn’t suck (Punisher War Zone, the Indy movie I try to forget) I will abuse it.

I am going to user a letter based system (A, B etc etc). I understand taking a several hundred page book or a TV series with a 100 episodes and boiling down to a simple grade is kind of a jerk thing to do. What is the other option?  I have read reviews where they avoid a simple grade or score and actually expect you the read like a whole page to understand the reviewers feeling. What a pain that would be.

I am going to take into account how much something costs. What I would expect from a $10 video game is much different then what I would expect from a $60 one.

I am going to take into account what seems like to me like wasted potential. The Punisher War Zone movie was frigging horrible, how with the budget they had and the recent “renaissance” of comic book movies did they come up with such a steaming pile of feces?

Everyone has their own predilections. I have mine, you have yours. Keep that in mind.

Share/Save