Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’d love to sit in on a game-name brainstorming meeting some time. Like The Thing, But in Space? “Nah, too prosaic.” DoomShock? “Might be true, but we don’t really want to get sued, do we?” Stampy Guy In A Funky Welding Mask vs Horrible Flesh Beasts From The Stars? “That’s far too exciting. Can you make it blander? Y’know, like really bland – so bland that people forget its name the second they hear it, and forever refer to it as ‘thingy, the brown one with the guy in the funny hat?’” How about Dead Space? “I’ve forgotten it already! Bingo!”

The odds were against poor Dead Space from the start. That said, the popular misconception is that this spooky FPS-but-with-more-shoulder shooter didn’t do terribly well. This affords it an underdog status, and the devoted, word-spreading fans that accords. The reason I’ve been playing it recently is, in fact, an impassioned monologue by an oft similarly-opinioned friend as to how great it was.
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The first issue of the Dead Space comic is up over at Newsarama, for free. It’s a special thing, drawn by one of my personal favourite comic artists, Ben Templesmith, and written by the excellent Antony Johnston. I believe the full piece is collected as a hardcover from Image, which you can probably get your local comic shop to order for you. AMONGST OTHER COMICS. Yes.

After a year in which EA have suffered more than even the usual number of curses by beleaguered gamers, it is perhaps only fitting that they’ve announced a game set in that disagreeably toasty place o’punishment that Bible-lovin’ folk reckon the rest of us will spend our final vacation in. There were rumours of a Dante’s Inferno game earlier in the year, and now we get the official announcement, website and trailer.
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Okay, that’s just going for the fancy pun-based headline as is RPS’ wont – it’s not dead, dead. But I’ve been thinking about EA’s recently released Dead Space’s chances, and this post was prompted by Yahtzee’s Zero Punctuation annihilation of it – which I’ll embed beneath the cut. He takes it apart – which is his wont, obviously – but it’s a game that seems to be slipping past everyone’s attention. Which seems somewhat odd. I mean, big-budget, hyper-slick action/horror game. It’s not exactly Dwarf Fortress.

I’m saying “wont” a lot in this post.
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Holy wow, I’m stunned by how many plot spoilers and visual giveaways EA have managed to cram into their Dead Space launch trailer. Half the game seems to show up in this two minute edit-splatter. I’d suggest you only watch this if you have have zero intention of playing this (rather good) ultra-violent space shooter.

The reason I know how spoilery it is, of course, is because I’ve played the game in question. My review is in the next issue of the best PC gaming magazine there has ever been: PC Gamer UK. It has their Fallout 3 review in there too. The magazine is out on 23rd October, and Dead Space comes out on the 20th of October on PC.

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Three! Count ‘em. These new bits of in-game Dead Space footage show off the ways in which you can slay, eviscerate and dismember your mutant/alien adversaries. Some of it involves shooting with space weapons. I know, I was surprised too.
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Today’s second snazzily-produced developer-diary trailer comes from Electronic Arts, with the lead designer and executive producer of Dead Space talking about an element of their game that they’re particularly proud of: zero gravity. It’s a fun concept – allowing a game set in space to actually take advantage of the particularly properties of space to make up some of the game feature set. It’s not something we often see, but it looks like the Dead Space team have made some creative use of it. Incidentally, the release date of Dead Space has been brought forward to October 14th. Looks like that’s going to be a busy month…

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The Dead Space game footage trailers seem to be rather randomly edited. They show some scenes that seems clunky and ill-advised, and some that just seem incredible. This latest trailer is a mixture of the two including both lacklustre meandering and one fabulous scripted scene which is definitely a MAJOR SPOILER if you intend to play the game for surprise horrors. It sent shivers down my dorsal bits.

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This new piece of Dead Space in-game footage is gruesome and gory, and really rather more fun that most of the other stuff we’ve seen so far. I’ve heard some mixed reports from people who’ve had time with this game, but I have to say I’m still anticipating something rather entertaining. Tiny writhing stuff exploding out of the corpse of your enemy is the new…?

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Dead Space’s comic connection proves to be more than Antony Jonhson and Ben Templesmith’s prequel comic. Warren Ellis, the Stalin of Southend-on-Sea, has just mentioned on his mailing list that he wrote a whole load for the space-survival-horror. Full quote beneath the cut…
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