If you're low on money, you can always just smash up an ATM. In Dead Space 2, I mean. I'm talking about the videogame Dead Space 2. Because 13 years after the game came out, players have stumbled upon the discovery that applying a bit of percussive (or ballistic) maintenance to t
If you're low on money, you can always just smash up an ATM. In Dead Space 2, I mean. I'm talking about the videogame Dead Space 2. Because 13 years after the game came out, players have stumbled upon the discovery that applying a bit of percussive (or ballistic) maintenance to the game's various inanimate objects can yield significant rewards... Read more.
Those who subscribe to Amazon Prime Gaming are being treated to Dead Space 2 as a free game. It was originally released for PC and consoles in 2011, was met with glowing reviews, and has gone on to be considered one of the best horror games of all time. But is it worth getting Am
Those who subscribe to Amazon Prime Gaming are being treated to Dead Space 2 as a free game. It was originally released for PC and consoles in 2011, was met with glowing reviews, and has gone on to be considered one of the best horror games of all time.
But is it worth getting Amazon Prime Gaming for Dead Space 2? Well, it just might be. If making your way through eerie darkened corridors in a space station under attack by unspeakable abominations sounds like your sort of thing, then you're sure to have a good time. It's not really the kind of game where you need to have played the first one to enjoy it, either.
This is one of several games to be included in this month's Amazon Prime Gaming offers, with The Curse of Monkey Island being another one that's particularly noteworthy. It's the third game in the Monkey Island series and a point-and-click adventure that's filled with piratey goodness, as well as just the right balance of charm and mystery.
The first Dead Space turned 10 years old last month. It took me a month to get through the first two hours when I first played it. Every time I jumped back in and clumped down one of the USG Ishimura s dark corridors, a monster would pop out of the vents and I d jump up, smash th
The first Dead Space turned 10 years old last month. It took me a month to get through the first two hours when I first played it. Every time I jumped back in and clumped down one of the USG Ishimura s dark corridors, a monster would pop out of the vents and I d jump up, smash the pause button and find an excuse to do anything else but play it. Many fans loved that sense of dread, but for some players it was simply too stressful.
All our data showed the number one reason people bought Dead Space was that it was scary, says Ian Milham, who was developer Visceral Games art director at the time. And the number one reason people didn t buy Dead Space was that it was scary.
When it comes to Dead Space, what dies doesn't stay dead for long. Dead Space 3 launched in February 2013 and EA has said nothing since to indicate it's ready to revive the science fiction horror series. We've already explored the Dead Space 3 the developers wanted to make , but
When it comes to Dead Space, what dies doesn't stay dead for long. Dead Space 3 launched in February 2013 and EA has said nothing since to indicate it's ready to revive the science fiction horror series. We've already explored the Dead Space 3 the developers wanted to make, but what about Dead Space 4? It turns out Visceral had ideas - some properly exciting - for a fourth game in the series. Unfortunately, Visceral never got the chance to turn them into reality. After Dead Space 3 flopped, EA put the studio on the Battlefield series with spin-off Hardline before assigning it a Star Wars game that was eventually cancelled. Now, Visceral is no more.
Visceral is dead, but those early ideas for Dead Space 4 live on in the mind of Ben Wanat, who was creative director of Dead Space and is now creative director at Crystal Dynamics. We spoke with Wanat to find out more.
By the end of Dead Space 3, humanity is facing its doom. It's in this hopeless situation that Dead Space 4 was to be set. The idea came from the flotilla section in Dead Space 3, and had the player scavenge supplies in order to survive. "The notion was you were trying to survive day to day against infested ships, searching for a glimmer of life, scavenging supplies to keep your own little ship going, trying to find survivors," Wanat explained.
Image source: The Elder Scrolls Wiki What happens when PR goes awry? Not slightly sideways, as we saw recently with the leak of Rage 2 (which is probably the best thing that could have happened to it anyway) but completely, irretrievably wrong, in a way that inspires conversation
Image source: The Elder Scrolls Wiki
What happens when PR goes awry? Not slightly sideways, as we saw recently with the leak of Rage 2 (which is probably the best thing that could have happened to it anyway) but completely, irretrievably wrong, in a way that inspires conversation and funny stories for years to come? Game publishers do their level best to keep the hype machine running along smoothly and inoffensively—that may be the most important part of all—but sometimes, out of malice or greed or plain old good intentions, the bus goes off the cliff and there’s nothing to do but hold on and ride it to the bottom.
That’s when legends are born.
Daikatana: John Romero's famous bitch-botch
Back before the turn of the millennium, John Romero proclaimed that he was going to make you his bitch. "Suck it down," he added, presumably to ensure that we were all on the same edgy page. Three years later, Daikatana finally came out, and... well, there was some bitching, alright, but it wasn't quite what the ad had promised. The infamous FPS wasn't as bad as people sometimes like to pretend, but the pre-release hype (which was also wildly premature—the ad was followed by multiple delays) set the bar so high that anything short of perfection would have seemed a letdown. And the final product, while far from a disaster, was also far from perfection: Reviews weren't great, but the reaction from gamers was absolutely savage.
Romero ultimately apologized for the ad, acknowledging that it soured his relationship with the gaming community. Ion Storm Dallas closed less than a year after Daikatana's release.
Aliens: Colonial Marines - The actual gameplay demo that was not, actually
Pre-release press demos for Aliens: Colonial Marines promised a game of impressive—some might say cinematic—visual fidelity, but the final release left players squinting and scratching their heads. Opinions varied on the degree, but the general consensus was that the visual quality of the released game fell well short of what was promised in those "actual gameplay" demos. The difference was enough that the UK's Advertising Standards Agency forced Sega to add an after-the-fact disclaimer to Colonial Marines promotional videos, shortly after which a lawsuit was filed over claims of false advertising.
It eventually fizzled out but not before Sega and Gearbox pointed accusing fingers at one another ("It's Randy doing whatever the fuck he likes" remains one of my favorite lines from a leaked internal email) and while Gearbox was ultimately absolved of legal responsibility, the stench of that swim through a swamp of ugly recriminations lingers.
Dead Space 2 - EA pulls a “How do you do, fellow kids?”
For some reason, Electronic Arts decided that what Dead Space 2 marketing really needed was a literal "your mom" joke. The company released a series of videos in which middle-aged women were given an eyeful of interstellar trauma victim Isaac Clarke hacking and blasting at hordes of sticky space zombies. Clips of gameplay were mixed with shots of their horrified reactions: One participant described the game as "purely crap" at the end of her session and predicted that such games would leave us at the mercy of "a society of criminals."
The campaign was built on a framework of all the worst gamer stereotypes—Women! Old people! Games cause violence!—and didn't even attempt to make a save with an ironic twist at the end. It was embarrassing, and frustrating: Dead Space was a splattery mess, but it was also a top-notch survival-horror game with a dark psychological edge, and the juvenile focus on the worst excesses of guts and gore did the sequel a real disservice. (Also, your mom told me she actually loved Dead Space 2.)
I liked Homefront, the Red-Dawn-but-North-Korea shooter that THQ pushed out in 2011. It was monumentally stupid and overwrought but so was Red Dawn, and the shooting bits were good enough to make it a “forgettable fun” kind of 6.5/10 shooter. (Interestingly, our reviewer, the redoubtable Norman Chan, saw it the opposite way: Intense story, “ho-hum” combat.)
Speaking of monumentally stupid, THQ released 10,000 red balloons as a Homefront publicity stunt during GDC 2011. The balloons rose majestically into the sky over San Francisco, but instead of rising high enough to break apart (or at least go away), crappy weather conditions brought them down prematurely in the San Francisco Bay. It was a hell of a mess. THQ claimed the balloons were biodegradable but city officials didn't care: The publisher had to pay to clean the mess up and ate a $7000 fine on top. Homefront tanked, too.
There's more...
Horse armor - The world's most infamous cosmetic (which you can still buy)
Before nickel-and-dime DLC was a routine part of the gaming life, there was Horse Armor, a $2.50 outfit for your mighty steed in Bethesda’s open-world RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The steep price for a simple cosmetic did not go over well, particularly since you couldn't even use it to flaunt your affluence and/or financial irresponsibility in front of your friends, enemies, and indifferent strangers: Oblivion is strictly single-player, so the only person who would ever see your horse in her fancy new outfit was you.
To its credit, Bethesda did a good job of owning the error—eventually. Its 2009 April Fool's gag (Oblivion was released in 2006) included a half-price sale on all Oblivion DLC except Horse Armor, which was actually doubled in cost. More recently, it added Horse Power Armor to Fallout 4 via the Bethesda Creation Club. But it also never stopped selling horse armor, and it still goes for $2.50. There’s probably a lesson in that.
Mass Effect Andromeda - My face is tired
The point of demos and early access availability is to get people interested in your game: They try it, they like it, they tell their friends, everybody preorders, and it's happy faces all around. Mass Effect: Andromeda is a case study in doing it wrong, wrong, oh-so-awfully wrong. Origin Access subscribers got a one-week head start on the journey to another galaxy, and almost immediately began dunking on it: It wasn't exactly broken but it sure as hell wasn't right (well, okay, some of it was broken), and the legion of memes it spawned—including one courtesy of our very own Tyler Wilde—was the last thing BioWare and EA needed, especially since fans were already uneasy about the state of the game and its ugly, tired faces. Glitchy visuals weren’t Andromeda’s only problem, but they set a pre-release tone that the game was never able to overcome.
Battlefront 2 loot boxes - The microtransactions heard ‘round the world
An exclusive licensing deal to make Star Wars videogames in a post-Lucas world should have been a golden goose for EA. Instead, after setting a promising pace with a rejuvenated Star Wars: Battlefront, it set the game industry on fire with Star Wars: Battlefront 2—and not in a good way. The planned implementation of loot boxes and premium currency outraged fans and forced a days-before-release walkback, which was bad enough on its own. But it also attracted the attention of politicians around the world, leading to multiple inquiries and threats of legal action reminiscent of the videogame violence moral panic of the early '90s. Many gamers also very vocally took up the cause, seeing the legislative pushback as an opportunity to force real change on the industry.
The reaction from publishers has been somewhat less than graceful so far. Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson reiterated the company’s (and industry’s) position in a recent earnings call that loot boxes are not gambling and said that it will "push forward" with them in future games no matter what people think. Executives from other companies have said much the same. But some sort of compromise in the way loot boxes work seems likely: Belgium's Gaming Commission recently declared that three out of four popular games from EA, Activision, and Valve (FIFA 18, Overwatch, and CS:GO) contain loot boxes that contravene the country's gambling laws and warned that hefty fines or even prison sentences could be applied if they’re not changed or removed. Ironically, the one game that was found to fall within the boundaries of the law is the one that started this whole damn mess in the first place: Star Wars: Battlefront 2.
And because our console cousins deserve some love too, we've got a pair of honorable mentions ahead...
Sony PSP Black/White Campaign - Yeah, that's racist
To herald the launch of a white PSP in 2006, Sony rolled out an advertising campaign in the Netherlands that included an image of a very aggressive-looking white woman holding the face of a visibly frightened black woman. It was not good. Sony denied any racist intent but the subtext, intentional or not, was about as subtle as a kick in the junk with a steel toe boot. The backlash was immediate, and Sony quickly killed the campaign.
I mean, holy cow.
Xbox One is always online - Get with the times, chumps
“We have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360,” Microsoft’s Don Mattrick said during an E3 2013 interview with Geoff Keighley, addressing concerns about the Xbox One’s always-on requirement. (Start around 1:30 for the relevant bit.) “If you have zero access to the internet, that is an offline device.” It wasn’t an entirely unreasonable point but it came off as cavalier and dismissive, especially after he followed up the remark by basically implying that only chumps don’t have access to the internet. Xbox fans weren’t buying what Microsoft was selling, and possibly even worse, Sony used Microsoft’s struggles at the show to put on a master class in ownage.
Dead Space 2 is available now on Steam for just $5.00/£2.49 —but be quick; it won't stay that price for long. Dead Space 2 sees you reprise your role as Systems Engineer Isaac Clarke three years after the horrific events on the USG Ishimura. Expect more of same atmospheric horror
Dead Space 2 is available now on Steam for just $5.00/£2.49—but be quick; it won't stay that price for long.
Dead Space 2 sees you reprise your role as Systems Engineer Isaac Clarke three years after the horrific events on the USG Ishimura. Expect more of same atmospheric horror and monster-stomping action, only this time around, Clarke's a little less taciturn when he encounters more of those murderous Necromorphs.
If you've never explored the original game, you can add that to your library for cheap, too. The Dead Space bundle—which boasts the tense prequel, too—is available for just £3.74, a whopping 81 percent off its usual retail price.
Last month EA closed Visceral Games, the studio behind Dead Space and Battlefield Hardline. Electronic Arts' vice president Patrick Soderlund confirmed the closure and confirmed that the design direction of Visceral's Star Wars project will undergo a "significant change."
In the words of one plucky commenter on the Dead Space 2 customer reviews page, "Don't be sad that it's over, be happy that it happened."
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Today's Deal: Celebrating the launch of the Dead Space animes, Downfall and Aftermath on Steam, save up to 75% on the Dead Space™ series !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Off
Today's Deal: Celebrating the launch of the Dead Space animes, Downfall and Aftermath on Steam, save up to 75% on the Dead Space™ series!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Tuesday November 28th at 10AM Pacific Time. Video content not available in all territories.
Today's Deal: Celebrating the launch of the Dead Space animes, Downfall and Aftermath on Steam, save up to 75% on the Dead Space™ series !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Off
Today's Deal: Celebrating the launch of the Dead Space animes, Downfall and Aftermath on Steam, save up to 75% on the Dead Space™ series!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
*Offer ends Tuesday November 28th at 10AM Pacific Time. Video content not available in all territories.
Electronic Arts closed the doors on Visceral Games yesterday, bringing to a close the studio whose (relatively) recent work includes Dante's Inferno, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, Battlefield Hardline, and the Dead Space series. Following the announcement, Zach Wilson, who wor
Electronic Arts closed the doors on Visceral Games yesterday, bringing to a close the studio whose (relatively) recent work includes Dante's Inferno, Army of Two: The Devil's Cartel, Battlefield Hardline, and the Dead Space series. Following the announcement, Zach Wilson, who worked briefly at the studio as a designer on Hardline, took to Twitter to offer some thoughts about where it all went wrong.
Wilson's opening tweets say it all:
In follow-ups, Wilson said that he's "back of the napkinning" the numbers, but added that they're close to the real thing. "I don't know the exact marketing budget but they're frequently close to the dev cost (I have heard this anecdotally)," he wrote.
Sky-high budgets are also why developers are launching their own digital storefronts, rather than simply relying on the simpler and far more ubiquitous Steam.
"Do you hate uplay? Well, the pub gets 90% of the $$$," he tweeted. "EA makes $30 per copy after retailers and console makers take their cut. Then consider that a chunk of the game was sold on sale ... Through Origin they get 90%"
Wilson's tweets don't directly address the reasons for Visceral's closure, but they do paint a very grim portrait of the state of the business, and the extent to which major publisher releases are either big hits, or big busts. If a mid-tier game like Dead Space 2 can knock out four million copies and still be considered underperforming (and keep in mind that EA reported two years after its release that the original Dead Space had sold roughly half that number), then the bar is incredibly high. Any new project that looks like it won't be a huge hit, or won't have a long tail via microtransactions and DLC, suddenly starts to look like a risk from that perspective.
And if, on top of that, the game in question appears to be in trouble, as Kotaku suggested in its report of Visceral's closure yesterday, then risk-averse publishers (which is to say, all of them) aren't likely to wait too long before they take action.
EA have just announced that they’ll be “ramping down and closing” Visceral, the studio behind the Dead Space trilogy. Visceral have been working on an untitled Star Wars project, described as an “action-adventure”, and Amy Hennig, formerly of Naughty Dog and Crystal Dynamics, mov
EA have just announced that they’ll be “ramping down and closing” Visceral, the studio behind the Dead Space trilogy. Visceral have been working on an untitled Star Wars project, described as an “action-adventure”, and Amy Hennig, formerly of Naughty Dog and Crystal Dynamics, moved to the studio in 2014 to work on that project as senior creative director. EA’s statement regarding Visceral’s closure suggests that they’re unhappy with the status of that game and they plan to “pivot the design” to fit “fundamental shifts in the marketplace”. Full statement and thoughts below.
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. Nostalgia is supposed to be about the things of our early years, but recently I’ve been feeling nostalgic about games released much more recently than my usual r
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Nostalgia is supposed to be about the things of our early years, but recently I’ve been feeling nostalgic about games released much more recently than my usual rose-tinted diet of Ultima and Daggerfall. I’ve only gone and started missing Dead Space like it was a childhood friend. … [visit site to read more]
With 2013's Injustice: Gods Among Us, NetherRealm Studios showed it was more than capable of putting together a solid fighting game featuring the DC Comics pantheon. More than that, the developer capably made it stand out from sister franchise Mortal Kombat with its own distinct
With 2013's Injustice: Gods Among Us, NetherRealm Studios showed it was more than capable of putting together a solid fighting game featuring the DC Comics pantheon. More than that, the developer capably made it stand out from sister franchise Mortal Kombat with its own distinct features and mechanics. For an encore, Injustice 2 further builds on the foundation set by its predecessor and steps forward as a truly superheroic effort.
For Justice
The original Injustice featured a grand DC Elseworlds narrative of a world ruled by a totalitarian Superman and while that plot featured several twists and turns, Injustice 2's Story Mode seamlessly continues this tale with an easy-to-follow recap. Injustice 2 takes place in a post-Regime world with Superman safely imprisoned and Batman desperately trying to pick up the pieces of a world still shaken to its core. His efforts are quickly stalled by a supervillain gathering, the Injustice world's take on the classic Society, which would herald the arrival of extraterrestrial threat and perennial Superman baddie, Brainiac.
With Batman's team overwhelmed, there's a certain pattern the narrative starts to follow. The heroes have had their differences and it looks like now it's time to come together to take on the real villains. Then everyone hugs it out and everything's okay again? In actuality, much like the rest of NetherRealm's Injustice narrative, things aren't that simple. The story that unfolds surrounds the increasing complexity of the classic good vs. evil conflict, as well as what it means to truly deliver justice. It's an eye into Batman's perfectionist (and somewhat naive) view of what justice should be. It's a continuing look at why Superman has pursued the path that he has (albeit one that does Wonder Woman's character a disservice by making her into a Lady MacBeth type). But more than anything, it's the desire from all sides for things to be the way they were and the heartbreaking realization that there is no going back. Fixing things isn't as easy as remembering that everyone's mother happens to be named Martha.
Of course, between all the deeper themes, there's an outstanding, action-filled superhero story that culminates in epic battles unfolding through cutscenes and through standard gameplay.
One big improvement from the first Injustice game is that the quick-time events of the original story are gone. Instead, they're replaced with chapters that center around two characters. Whenever a fight is cued up, the player selects between one of the two heroes, with some of the story's dialogue unfolding differently depending on the character chosen. The choices take a much more extreme turn towards the end of the game, but the story remains cohesive throughout.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Besides the Story Mode, Injustice 2 also offers the standard single-player mode, but this one comes with a bit of a twist. Playing off the Brother Eye satellite used in the game's story, Multiverse mode offers up contains the standard Arcade mode, where players take on one opponent at a time. However, there are also other Earths that open up with different scenarios and different opponents. Beyond having their own versions of the game's fighters with their own distinct looks, Multiverse mixes things up by occasionally tossing in game-altering conditions, like hazards, boosts, or souped-up opponents.
Multiverse is a great example of using an online connection for something positive, adding in new worlds every day with a finite time to complete their missions and collect their rewards. Some of those worlds have rarer rewards that are worth pursuing. The game even offers a social element to help make Multiverse hopping a little more fun with the Guild system, where groups of friends can earn rewards by completing specific Multiverse tasks. The whole Multiverse package is a robust expansion of the Arcade Mode concept that gives it a much longer life, though anyone with an offline connection can still play the normal Battle Simulator.
Clothes Make the Hero
Let's discuss those Multiverse rewards. They come in the form of Mother Boxes, as Injustice 2 is the latest game to get into the mystery loot craze. With a full comic book universe to play with, the Mother Box rewards dig into the rich DC Comics lore and give each character a dapper new look. The most interesting element, however, is that each piece of gear offers RPG-style boosts. Some of them offer advantages specifically for Multiverse Mode, while others can help give a little boost during multiplayer. What makes the gear system particularly cool is that it gives the sense that a player's fighter is progressing and growing over the course of invested hours. There's a sense of something to aim for, in addition to the usual character ending and the like.
The one problem with the gear system is that oftentimes, a cool Epic or Legendary item will get opened up, but won't be accessible until that particular figher levels up. And sadly, the characters level up about as slowly as the Batmobile with a flat tire. Getting to actually play with that awesome piece of gear will mean hours of grinding and that's when the Multiverse can start to feel tedious.
There's a sense of accomplishment once that gear is finally available, especially for those that want to take it online or assign it to an AI squad that can fight other players' AI squads in simulated combat. The latter is a particularly nifty feature that adds a fantasy element and a cheap way to earn extra experience or loot.
Of course, those that are looking for a more even playing field can also play multiplayer without gear benefits. After all, some people just want to see who's the better player without fancy toys.
Fists of Fury
Speaking of Injustice 2's fighting system, it feels like a further evolution of NetherRealm's distinct fighting style. A friendly tutorial explains everything in great detail, gently explaining how to perform combos, overheads, throws, specials, and anything else required of a NetherRealm fighter. Dashes and slides can cover much more ground, with environmental cues also helping cover a full screen's worth of ground in a moment, helping quell the rise of trigger-happy projectile spammers.
Given that combos are often the bane of the novice's existence, Injustice 2's eloquent explanation of the overhead and other moves that bounce opponents off walls is a godsend. The game encourages players to experiment with juggles, whether it's a simple light attack combo or a cool special move that catches an opponent in mid-air. This complements the rest of the game's mechanics smoothly, including the theatrical Super Moves and the returning Clash system. The latter goes a long way towards giving the game its identity, even if they start to feel old upon repeated viewings.
For All Seasons
Injustice 2 feels like a step up from Gods Among Us in every way imaginable. It's a far deeper experience, follows up wonderfully on the last game's story, and also gives reasons to keep coming back for repeat visits. The rich cast of fighters all have their own distinct styles, but they're all wrapped up in an easy-to-learn fighting system that's just plain fun to play. NetherRealm has a true grasp of what makes the DC Universe special and this game is as much of a love letter to that world as it gets.
Resident Evil 4’s influence has become immeasurable since its release in 2005. Games like Gears of War and Uncharted owe much to the game that revolutionized third-person action controls. However, one popular sci-fi horror game would look a lot like an entirely different sci-fi h
Resident Evil 4’s influence has become immeasurable since its release in 2005. Games like Gears of War and Uncharted owe much to the game that revolutionized third-person action controls. However, one popular sci-fi horror game would look a lot like an entirely different sci-fi horror game if not for Capcom’s reinvention of its seminal series. I got the opportunity to sit down with Dead Space designers Ben Wanat and Wright Bagwell to talk about the early days of development and how Resident Evil 4 helped them shape their own horror series out of another.
"When Resident Evil 4 came out, we were just awestruck by it," Wanat told me. "We were all playing it and we were like, 'Holy shit, this is a really awesome game. They're actually trying to tell a story; they've got some cool cinematics; the gameplay systems are fixing a lot of problems, bringing it into this action realm but keeping this intense horror feel to it. It was this amazing combination and—oh, the enemies were so freakin' cool."
Then Resident Evil 4 came out and we were like, 'Oh. No, this is the shit.'
Ben Wanat
Wanat didn't shy away from admitting that Resident Evil 4 is one of his favourite games of all time. And it's clear looking at Dead Space that he wasn't alone at EA Redwood Shores (now Visceral Games).
"It's pretty obvious when you play Dead Space, to look at it and go, 'Yeah, it's almost like they decided to make Resident Evil 4 in space,' which is exactly what we were doing."
A shock to the system
But it wasn't always that way. Early on in its development, before Resident Evil 4 had even been released, Dead Space was a completely different game. Rumours have circled around the sci-fi horror game's early days, reinforced by similarities found within Dead Space. During our discussions, Wanat confirmed them to me.
"Originally, we were pushing around this idea of maybe we could make System Shock 3. And you can look at the Dead Space blueprint and be like, 'Oh, this is kind of like System Shock,'" Wanat said, smiling.
"To do a System Shock 3, you're really tackling a monumental task, to make people happy with a sequel that wasn't made by the same team as the original," he explained. And while the game didn't make it out the door and live on as the third System Shock, Wanat said that a new entry in that series was the goal they shot for early on.
"It was like, 'Everybody, get your System Shock 2 copy, play it start to finish, and let's figure out what we're going to do,'" Wanat said, recalling the early days of development. "Then Resident Evil 4 came out and we were like, 'Oh. No, this is the shit.'"
However, Redwood Shores couldn’t just change the name of its project and work on something completely new.
"It was at a time at EA when there was no appetite for original IP. It seemed like everybody else was doing it except for us," Wanat lamented. While Redwood Shores created games based on James Bond, Lord of the Rings, and The Godfather, Wanat said the desire to make something original was fervent within the studio. And Resident Evil 4 was the catapult they needed.
"We were so hyped about Resident Evil 4 and we got obsessed with improving the mechanics," Wanat said. The team truly wanted to develop a first-rate survival-horror game. However, convincing EA to bet on an original idea wasn't going to be easy, and it was something that co-director Glen Schofield, now the GM of Sledgehammer Games, would work on for a long time. Schofield would break the ice on the idea, show some promising progress, and over time, slowly build the confidence EA needed to give the project a thumbs up.
"Eventually everybody accepted it, they saw how cool the things coming out of it were. That confidence continued to grow," Wanat told me. "Having that group there from the get-go and building this stuff without a greenlight was a little weird, but it's probably what got that whole thing working because we could all put our expertise into a pool and make something tangible.
"And once people saw that it was a real thing, they got it much easier than if you were trying to say, 'I want to make this totally scary-ass thing,' to which they'd look at their portfolio and say 'Nope, scary-ass thing is not in our language.'"
The executives weren't the only people impressed by the Dead Space demos. Wright Bagwell, who was working on another game at the time, played through one of these demo levels and was so enamoured with the experience that he absolutely had to work on the game.
I was like, 'No, I want to work on Dead Space or I'm going to quit.'
Wright Bagwell
"One of the level designers came over and said 'Hey Wright, we're testing this out. I want you to come into this dark room, I'm going to turn the lights off and turn the sound up really loud.' And we played through this demo level, and I remember feeling like I was going to shit my pants," Bagwell said, laughing.
"I was working on another game that got cancelled, and EA was trying to get me to work on something I didn't want to work on, and I was like, 'No, I want to work on Dead Space or I'm going to quit.'"
So Bagwell joined the Dead Space team, and at this point, it was starting to come together. Controlling Isaac was becoming a smooth experience, thanks to some of the big improvements to Resident Evil’s formula that the team was working on. Wanat specifically pointed out the ability to move while shooting. Despite the relatively simple-sounding nature of this change, it wasn't as straightforward as flipping a switch and letting someone walk around.
"I love in Resident Evil 4, the tension of not being able to move. But it caused a lot of problems for us to put movement in because we were making a new game," Wanat explained. "The enemies couldn't follow the same formula. It breaks a lot of the mechanics. We didn't know it was going to happen until we did it and were like, 'Oh, I think we broke something fundamental about the tension,' so we had to get it in other ways.
"It was like, 'It's a game changer. Let's embrace it and make this the best, polished survival shooter. Let's try to be the gold standard.'"
Space to grow
The move from System Shock 3's first-person view to the over-the-shoulder perspective that we know from Dead Space was something else that Wanat was increasingly happy about, as it allowed players to more easily care about Isaac.
"Even though Isaac didn't have a voice in the first game, seeing him and seeing him get grappled and eviscerated, I felt like there was a better chance to make a connection with the character. And that kinda gives the player a sense of who he is and the place he's in that we could have missed out on if we went the first-person shooter route and—man, we ripped off so much stuff from Resident Evil 4," Wanat stopped himself mid-sentence, laughing.
"But in a way, the modifications we made to the formula gave it its own style. Things like the outer space setting gave us a way to include new mechanics that weren't really available for the time and setting that Resident Evil took place in."
Dismemberment by way of plasma cutter, perhaps Dead Space's defining feature, was one such mechanic that joined the movement system to set itself apart from its Earth-based counterpart.
"It was very interesting to get those two things together and see that something special was taking shape," Wanat said. "But we do owe tremendously to Resident Evil 4. We were really big fans. We had so many of those water-cooler moments after that game came out."
Dead Space released in October of 2008 and was met with an overwhelmingly positive critical reception, in addition to sales of over two million copies. When Dead Space 2 was announced less than two years later, it was no surprise that EA wanted to push the series into a more action-focused direction to appeal to a wider audience. Bagwell moved into the creative director's chair, charged with a delicate balancing act of making sure there were moments of adrenaline-surging panic, but also time for the player to relax among the nameless horrors and dismembered limbs.
Despite its obvious inspirations, Dead Space had become its own thing. The studio was no longer praying at the altar of Resident Evil 4, but Wanat says there were some leftover influences that didn't make it into the first game.
"We didn't really have the ability to do any elaborate cutscenes," he explained. "I mean, we looked at Resident Evil 4, and we thought those were elaborate at the time. I love the intro. They're in the jeep, a guy goes to pee in the bushes, it's this really cool moment. And we couldn't really do those things, but we all wished we could. So in Dead Space 2, you get a lot more character moments and those over-the-top moments."
I think in Dead Space 3 we kinda destroyed what we had because we pushed too far on it.
Ben Wanat
Like its predecessor, Dead Space 2 garnered high praise from critics and, according to EA, sold nearly two million copies in its first week of release. However, that success wouldn't carry over to the third game. With less positive reviews and significantly less sales, Wanat, the creative director of Dead Space 3, expressed disappointment with how it closed out the series.
"I think in Dead Space 3 we kinda destroyed what we had because we pushed too far on it, but it was a deliberate decision in each of those instalments to make it faster, more relevant to a broader audience," he said. "It's a hard thing to do, to make a horror game have mass appeal. They're two diametrically opposed things."
Wanat and Bagwell went on to co-found Outpost Games, a developer that's currently working on a multiplayer survival game. Not much is known about their upcoming game, but the two designers wouldn't be surprised if Dead Space fans found some pieces of the sci-fi horror series woven throughout it. However, speaking to Wanat, it sounds like he's not quite done with survival-horror.
"Personally, I've got so much of that stuff in my system, that one way or another I will make another survival-horror game because I can't stay away from that kind of creative expression. That's just part of my DNA now."
Today's Deal: Save 75% on Dead Space™ 2 !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time
Today's Deal: Save 75% on Dead Space™ 2!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
Below you will find the 25 best horror games ever released on PC. To ensure the list was as accurate as possible, the compiler was locked in a dark cellar with a copy of every game in existence and a computer capable of running them all. Two weeks later, the following article was
Below you will find the 25 best horror games ever released on PC. To ensure the list was as accurate as possible, the compiler was locked in a dark cellar with a copy of every game in existence and a computer capable of running them all. Two weeks later, the following article was found written on the walls in blood (the postscript was recorded on an audiolog). The writer was nowhere to be seen.
Today's Deal: Save 75% on Dead Space™ 2 !* Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are! *Offer ends Wednesday at 10AM Pacific Time
Today's Deal: Save 75% on Dead Space™ 2!*
Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!
It isn't often we see the words "Origin" and "sale" next to each other, but this week is the exception: EA is running a week-long Player Appreciation Sale which discounts some pretty hefty games in the publisher's lineup—titans such as Mass Effect 3, Crysis 3, and Battlefield 3.
It isn't often we see the words "Origin" and "sale" next to each other, but this week is the exception: EA is running a week-long Player Appreciation Sale which discounts some pretty hefty games in the publisher's lineup—titans such as Mass Effect 3, Crysis 3, and Battlefield 3.
Here's the full list of games on sale and their prices:
Battlefield 3 Premium—$25
Battlefield 3—$12
Battlefield 3 Premium Edition—$30
Crysis 3—$30
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Edition—$40
Crysis 3 Digital Deluxe Upgrade—$10
The Sims 3 Seasons—$20
The Sims 3 University Life—$28
The Sims 3 Supernatural—$15
Dead Space—$6
Dead Space 2—$6
Dead Space 3—$30
Resident Evil 5—$10
Mass Effect 3—$10
The Walking Dead—$10
Batman: Arkham City GOTY Edition—$12
FIFA Soccer 13—$20
Command & Conquer Ultimate Collection—$15
Hitman: Absolution—$15
Saints Row: The Third Full Package—$25
Assassin's Creed 3—$35
Assassin's Creed 3 Deluxe Edition—$56
Darksiders 2—$18
Dead Island GOTY Edition—$10
Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City—$25
Normal and special editions on sale? And they're big games? I don't want to spoil this rare opportunity to enjoy a good Origin sale with cynicism, but it's hard not to chortle lightly at the convenient devaluing of nearly half the games EA offered SimCity players for free earlier this week.
When EA spoke of a future business strategy where "all of our games" include the dreaded m-word, reactions weren't exactly positive. CFO Blake Jorgensen shared that original statement during the Morgan Stanley Technology conference last week, but he's now used another conference—
When EA spoke of a future business strategy where "all of our games" include the dreaded m-word, reactions weren't exactly positive. CFO Blake Jorgensen shared that original statement during the Morgan Stanley Technology conference last week, but he's now used another conference—the Wedbush Transformational Technology conference—to redact that statement. As Gamasutra reports, Jorgensen says he meant microtransactions will figure into all mobile games instead of EA's entire lineup.
"I made a statement in the conference along the lines of, 'We'll have microtransactions in our games,' and the community read that to be 'all games,' and that's really not true," he explains. "All of our mobile games will have microtransactions in them, because almost all of our mobile games are going to a world where its play-for-free."
Jorgensen uses a different term for paid content on the PC and console platforms: extensions. "You're going to see extensions off of products like Battlefield Premium which are simply not microtransactions," he says. "They are premium services, or additional add-on products or downloads that we're doing. It's essentially an extension of the gameplay that allows someone to take a game that they might have played for a thousand hours and play it for two thousand hours. We want to ensure that consumers are getting value."
Though there is some difference between types of paid content, it seems like Jorgensen is mostly just side-stepping the phrase "microtransactions." Whether calling them microtransactions, extensions, or micro-extend-actions, EA (and, arguably, most other big publishers) will continue using whatever works to leverage the popularity of its games and sell additional content.
Update: despite earlier declining to comment, EA have since told Eurogamer that the report is “patently false”, while Viceral’s UI lead has tweeted that “The reports of our death were greatly exaggerated.” Perhaps it would have been better to say that when a whole bunch of people
Update: despite earlier declining to comment, EA have since told Eurogamer that the report is “patently false”, while Viceral’s UI lead has tweeted that “The reports of our death were greatly exaggerated.” Perhaps it would have been better to say that when a whole bunch of people asked the first time?
It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This franchise is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet its maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Its metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, it’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! It’s f-ckin’ snuffed it! This is an ex-franchise!
This post brought to you by a sense of humour from 1969. You know us Brits, always with our Monty Python gags. Perhaps it’s the only way I know how to pay tribute to Dead Space, the EA action series which has reportedly uh, taken a holiday in the wake of lacklustre sales for the recent third game.
Dead Space 3 's demo version will be available via Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on Jan. 22, though a news release from Electronic Arts this morning says that a limited number of Xbox Live gamers can get access to the demo a week early. Early access will be awarded through th
Dead Space 3's demo version will be available via Xbox Live and PlayStation Network on Jan. 22, though a news release from Electronic Arts this morning says that a limited number of Xbox Live gamers can get access to the demo a week early.
Early access will be awarded through the site demo.deadspace.com. The news release said codes would be given out "while quantities last," up to Jan. 14, and that the early access code expires Jan. 22. An Origin account, or registering one, is necessary to get an early demo code. Oh, and you must be 13 or older, which is interesting, as this is an M-rated game.
Anyway, the demo will feature Isaac Clarke and new co-op companion Sgt. John Carver battling necromorphs on an ice planet, sounding similar to what EA showed off way back at E3 in June. Co-op play will be a feature of the demo, EA said.
The demo news accompanied this trailer, a recap of the events in the first two games. It still gets you current without giving away too much from them, but for those still playing through, I guess this gets a qualified spoiler alert.
There's some kind of preorder bonus at the end of the trailer. Skip ahead to 3:27 if you're interested in it but don't want to see the series recap.
