E3 Conferences Round-Up – EA

E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is arguably the biggest and boldest annual video gaming convention ever to grace the planet. Held in sun-drenched Los Angeles; the big guns of the gaming industry including Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony showcasing brand new hardware and games. The event is a pantomime of lights, music, noises and good old’ fashioned video games. Held exclusively to the press and industry members, the entire convention is streamed online for all us norms to watch at home. And that’s exactly what we did. People from all around the globe watched with bated breath waiting for what the next big announcements were coming to PC’s and home consoles over the next few months and beyond. This is a list some of the notable games and software that hooked us to spend all our hard earned money on the most expansive and by far best consumable media there is

Electronic Arts are known for their prowess when it comes to the best and most loved sports games; epic racers; superb shooters and massive hits. EA may have been voted as one of the worst companies for two consecutive years but you can’t overlook their sheer scope and outlook and how it continues to make some fantastic games. From the Sims and the ‘FIFA’ series, to ‘Need For Speed’, to ‘Battlefield’ and ‘Dead Space’ and ‘Mass Effect’, EA know how to create a good franchise that will sell and please.

After a short teaser of a new, hotly anticipated ‘Star Wars: Battlefront’; a woman with a cello on a moving plinth came out to open with a trailer for the action role-player ‘Dragon Age Inquisition’ that showed off sprawling scenery and a seemingly endless world. This segued into demonstrations and a behind the scenes looks at the new ‘Mass Effect’ detailing how the improvements BioWare have made for the new consoles.

One of the most popular EA games, ‘The Sims 4’ showed the infinite creation tools in making your Sim and ultimately their stories and adventures. The showcase was a bit cringey but at least it covered all the bases of the new Sims, there is still that traditional Sims element of being to create whoever you want – be it yourself or as the trailer showed, President Barack Obama – and whatever house you want and how the life and death of a Sim pans out.

Criterion are responsible for some of my favourite games in the past. I loved smashing cars off the road in ‘Burnout 3: Takedown’ and ramming Lamborghini’s in an Aston Martin police car in ‘Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’, so seeing new content from Criterion got me excited. In early stages of development, this new game is built around extreme motor sports. From launching speedboats off waterfalls; flips on an all-terrain quad bike or blasting through snow-covered trees on a skidoo; full of crashes and smashes and those sort of adrenaline pumping moments that have come from the Burnouts and the Need for Speeds albeit on larger scale with a wider scale of vehicles at ones disposal. Although not a lot was shown, this is going to be one of them games to watch closely to see how it comes on and what it does exactly that splits it apart from other games with element like this in them.

‘Mirror’s Edge’ was teased at last year’s E3 so it was slightly disappointing that it was still in early stages of development. Regardless of this, ‘Mirror’s Edge’ was a game that has a impeccable sense of speed, momentum and weight that I haven’t really seen done elsewhere. ‘Mirror’s Edge’ is going on six years old now and along with some inconsistencies (as well as pretty poor gun-play), it’s showing its age. It still looks fantastic and when you’re in the swing of things, plays like a dream, so when sequences of new and improved game-play and graphics was shown in another one of these ‘behind the scene montages’ the next ‘Mirror’s Edge’ looks like it’s on form to being what it originally set out to be. The clean utopia is back with the stark red hints is back and brings in elements that play out the best approach for combat; keeping everything that Faith does fast and agile without ever stopping.

The biggest hit of EA’s press conference was the almighty ‘Battlefield Hardline’; a new take on the first-person shooter that doesn’t rely on the military backing that happens so often. This is a gritty, urban cop’s vs robber’s simulator that borrows from Battlefields of old. It is invigorating to see a game where you can choose how to tactically take out the enemies in a trade of mayhem from the right of the law for once. But having the choice of playing dirty is always going to win votes. The demo showed team of bad guys against the team of police trying to stop them from running away with the loot in a 32 player melee. And the bad guys do not go without a fight. Played in a similar vein of the Battlefield 4’s demo at the last E3, the demo has explosions, massive gunfights, car crashes, a crane taking out a building; it was just utter destruction. Rocket-propelled grenades create escape routes; debris allows access to other parts of the level, player’s zip-wire onto motorbikes. It looks fast, immense and purely epic. Gun-play is typical of your generic military shooter but it still allows you to use them in interesting ways such as shooting whilst zipping down a wire or out of a car as it hurtles as the police pursue. This type of game hasn’t really been done before and it’s invigorating to see a game where you can tactically plan your battle I And of course, it ends with the bad guys being taken down. ‘Hardline’ was released as an early closed Beta on PC and PlayStation 4 which stalled both EA’s Origin service and PSN. People want this game and like last year, ‘Battlefield Hardline’ will be fighting it out with Call of Duty for the best first person shooter of E3.

Notable Mentions

Bruce Lee is in the new ‘UFC’; ‘Madden NFL15’ and ‘NHL 15’ have been given an overhaul. But the big surprise in these sports game segments was ‘PGA Tour’; described as ‘Golf without limits.’ Yes they showed the simple courses but when a battleship rams through the middle of one course and runs aground, you think “wow. When did golf get so interesting?”

‘FIFA 15’ has again improved the details of strides, ball trajectories and more realistic players. The lists of tweaks that have been added to ‘FIFA 15’ only seem to be the tip of the iceberg. Football games, I find, have a certain level of excitement; the gripping tension of scoring one goal, not knowing when or how the other team are going to fight and claw their way back. These added details will then add to the atmosphere of an already great franchise.

Who Was Not Mentioned?

It was announced earlier in the year that Need for Speed won’t be releasing a game in the coming months. Need for Speed has been one of those franchises that release a new game every year with varying degrees of success. I enjoyed ‘The Run’ but not as much as ‘Hot Pursuit’. And ‘Most Wanted’ felt like a clone of the Burnout game a lot of us felt we needed. This isn’t such a bad thing as developers are releasing racing games over the course of the next year or so that look to fulfill that need for speed. With ‘Drive Club’, ‘The Crew’, ‘Forza Horizon 2’, and soon to be Criterion’s next effort, Need for Speed won’t necessarily be sorely missed. It would have been nice to have heard from a Need for Speed but Criterion’s extreme sports racer will keep me ticking over for a while.

I felt like EA needed more in the press conference. It’s understandable that games are in development and at this time when the PS4, Wii U and XBOX ONE are still in early years of life; progression may take a bit longer as the new hardware is utilized to the best of its ability. But as it panned out, the reveal of ‘Battlefield Hardline’ showed that EA aren’t taking things lying down and it will be one to watch over the coming months. The sheer exuberance of it made it the ultimate highlight of the showcase.

 

 

Words by Jimmi

E3 2014 Conferences Round-Up – Microsoft

E3, or the Electronic Entertainment Expo, is arguably the biggest and boldest annual video gaming convention ever to grace the planet. Held in sun-drenched Los Angeles, the big guns of the gaming industry including Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony showcasing brand new hardware and games. The event is a pantomime of lights, music, noises and good old’ fashioned video games. Held exclusively to the press and industry members, the entire convention is streamed online for all us norms to watch at home. And that’s exactly what we did. People from all around the globe watched with bated breath waiting for what the next big announcements were coming to PC’s and home consoles over the next few months and beyond. This is a list some of the notable games and software that hooked us to spend all our hard earned money on the most expansive and by far best consumable media there is.

 Computer giant, Microsoft had a bit of a tough time last year. They had launched their new XBOX ONE and had been feeling the heat of the backlash from fans who weren’t particularly interested by it always online features, compulsory Kinect, TV connectivity and social aspects. They were then blown out of the water when Sony revealed that its next-generation games console would be cheaper and had none of this. As a result, Microsoft did a 180 degree spin over the course of year that seems very far away from their original idea by removing the Kinect, allowing used games and so on. Never-the-less, Microsoft had to pull out all the stops for this year’s press conference. And they did…

Arguably one of the biggest franchises ever, Activision’s ‘Call of Duty’ kicked off E3 with their upcoming Advanced Warfare as a timed exclusive. Set in the near future, the game features the traditional elements of a first person shooter packed with mech-suits, drones a plenty, jetpacks, fancy, new age rifles and walking robot things; very reminiscent of games such as ‘Titanfall’ and later ‘Killzones’’. Although admittedly, ‘Call of Duty’ is not everyone’s cup of tea, the gameplay demo does look brilliant. It has a high quality of polish that you would expect from a console of this high spec and visually ‘Call of Duty’ hasn’t looked better. Dialogue is bit cheesy and best described as ‘American gun-ho’ (“You gotta go now… It’s okay. I’ll see you on the other side” FOR FREEDOM!!) which I feel is the suit of every military shooter ever made; it was like America was made to win wars but only in fiction. But that aside like Call of Duty’s before it, ‘Advance Warfare’ sets to sell millions again and be just as popular and for that reason alone, it was a worthy opener.

A colourful, over-the-top, somewhat tongue-in-cheek take on the traditional monster shooter. ‘Sunset Overdrive’ doesn’t take itself so seriously and from what we saw, the new first party exclusive is refreshing and exciting. We’re told that energy drink have been polluted and are now turning people into disfigured mutants that are slowly engulfing Sunset City. And the best way to get rid of them is by blowing them to high noon whilst grinding hand rails and zip-lining with a crowbar. If the game is anything the trailer sets it out to be, ‘Sunset Overdrive’ is going to be packed with one-liners, epic combos and comic-book violence. Although not particularly lengthy, the demo was full of quick paced action that emanated a great, chaotic and simply fun tone.

The franchise that started it all for the original XBOX as a console way back in 2001 was announced to be released on XBOX ONE letting owners play the entire Master Chief saga in HD from start to finish. ‘The Master Chief Collection’ starts with the very first ‘Combat Evolved’ right up to the most recent ‘Halo 4’. The collection boasts user-created playlists allowing players to choose which moments of the story they want to play without having to go through the entire narrative first. Maps have been recreated especially for the ONE. Halo was one of those franchises that didn’t move me until I played it. The settings and vistas looked amazing on the older original XBOX and 360 and they are only set to get a lot more attractive in the newly retouched worlds for the ONE. Although nothing new for XBOX fans that have stayed true to Halo throughout its rise, this is surely going to be a big hit for those who want to re-live one of the best shooters ever created whilst keeping them tied over until ‘Halo 5: Guardians comes out in 2015’ or simply get into the franchise.

One of the sure-fire hits of last year’s E3 closed Microsoft’s conference. Ubisoft’s third-person-shooter-cum-massive-multiplayer-with-elements-of-role-playing set in an infected New York shows a co-operative mission that highlights a lot of smaller details that can be missed on first glance. Last year, this insane attention to detail was picked up and this year was no different. From bullet holes in glass windows, the closing of the doors on cars for added protection and the tiny details on the head up displays such as holographic maps and recreations. Although heavily scripted – I as well as the rest of the gaming community know for a fact that no one talks the way the players did in the demo in actual online games – the look and feel of this game looks enticing. Ubisoft came under a bit of scrutiny from players of ‘Watch_Dogs’ for not looking like the E3 gameplay footage and we’re hoping they’re not going to pull the same stunt on ‘The Division’ because it looks incredible at the moment

Honourable Mentions

The next ‘Forza Horizon’ is set to expand on what was created in the original with new weather dynamics, day and night cycle and tonnes of new metal from the likes of McLaren, Lamborghini and Ferrari to create this petrolhead’s paradise.

Capcom went one further with titles. Their new DLC for the epic zombie-slayer ‘Dead Rising 3’ is called ‘Super Ultra Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix Hyper Edition EX plus α.’ It mixes all of Capcom’s greatest characters and lets you use them to, well, slay more zombies.

Moon Studio’s ‘Ori and the Blind Forrest’ and builds upon what was done by games like Journey and Limbo by looking simple yet gorgeous and full of life and maybe even spiritualism in this side-scrolling adventure platformer. Playdead, who also made ‘Limbo’ also showed ‘Inside’, a game with a similar look and dark feel.

Microsoft also showed off a plethora of independent titles in a montage (Stylized as ID@XBOX) with turn based beat-em-ups such as Aztez; side scrolling platformer ‘Might No 9’; real-time strategy, ‘Plague Inc: Evolved’; and ‘Grave’ which looks to be a horror adventure game.

2012’s Tomb Raider reboot scored highly so it was not a surprise to see a teaser trailer for Lara Croft’s latest instalment title ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’.

Who Was Not Mentioned?

Erm, the Kinect. After last year’s E3, Microsoft was adamant that the Kinect’s features with the XBOX ONE would make gaming and home entertainment experiences better than ever before. Every XBOX ONE up until recently came with a Kinect camera. Now it has been turned into essentially a peripheral add on, the price of the ONE was slashed and it seemed the Kinect had been all but forgotten about. Without the mention of Disney’s and Harmonix Fantasia: Music Evolved and Dance Central – which primarily uses the Kinect – for a brief moment, then there wouldn’t have been anything at all related to the Kinect. Neither were there mentions of the TV features that littered a good part of the conference last year. Not that this phased anyone as the now-Kinect-less and cheaper console now means that it brings it on par with the PlayStation 4.

 

So Microsoft well and truly turned it around this year. No seething fans, no ridiculous inclusions that some people won’t use and no Kinect. They played it safe and in return showed some epic games excited us all. ‘The Division’ looks fantastic and Assassin’s Creed Unity shaping up to be another classic (more from that on Ubisoft’s conference) but as personal favourite highlight, ‘Sunset Overdrive’ proves that something fresh and exciting can always be a unique selling point.

 

 

Words by Jimmi

AverMedia Game Capture HD Review

Jimmi takes a look at the AverMedia Game Capture HD video game capture device whilst playing through popular games such as Grand Theft Auto V and Killzone 2 in this exclusive review!

No spoilers!

So Jimmi bought Dead Space

I will obviously keep spoilers to a minimum; we know how much we don’t like them.

Recently, I had been thinking about getting a first-person shooter for my PlayStation 3 as a means of verging away from just playing driving and racing games. I bought this up with Kat and she recommended that it could be a good idea, as long as I stayed away from any Call of Duty game. I thought this was understandable as I think I’d only get a Call of Duty game if I really had to and if it was insanely cheap. Going through lists of potential contenders, she mentioned that she watched someone else play Dead Space a few years ago. Although it is a third-person shooter rather than a first person shooter, it does have guns, explosions and action and so it ticks all the right boxes to be an enjoyable game. Seeing as Dead Space 3 has recently been released, I decided to look into it a little bit on Wikipedia before venturing out and what I read sounded alright. Browsing through the High Street chains that weren’t closing down, Kat and I looked to see if we could find anything that resembled a good shoot-em-up, but we weren’t initially looking for Dead Space. I browsed over the original Borderlands, Far Cry II and even F.E.A.R as they all seemed to be high on action but they seemed a bit out of my budget in the case of the first two or weren’t favoured well in reviews in F.E.A.R’s case. We carried on searching through the second hand shops until I came across, lo and behold, Dead Space for a bargain £5.99 in Chatham’s branch of Cash Converters. I asked more about it from Kat and she said it was terrifying. Not knowing whether this is because my girlfriend has a low tolerance for anything remotely scary, or that it was genuinely pants-wettingly horrific I was hesitant. So what was I to do? Go with what Kat says and miss out on potential bargain. Or spend the night awake reliving the terrors that she foretold me about?

Bugger…!

We got back and rather than sliding the disc into the PS3 as soon as I possibly could, I thought I would look up a review or two. Gaming news and review website GameSpot gave it a rather high 9 out of 10 in 2008 and Metacritic has the PS3 version marked in the realms of 88 out of 100, which shows it must be a very good game. Reading over the GameSpot review, I started to feel the surge of fear and regret even more as I glanced through their article. Here are some quotes that stuck with me:

“something terrible has happened”

“preserving the horror experience”

“grunts of pain”

“feign death among the corpses of their peers to rise up and attack when you least expect it”

 “Even more alarming than their ghastly appearances and uncouth manners is the fact that they are quite intelligent”

And, even more terrifyingly;

“it can continue trying to eat your face”

Oh dear. Never the less, I decided to see why it was rated so highly but was still adamant on playing a nice game like Flower or Eufloria. But no, Kat wasn’t having any of it. She wanted me to play this £6 blood-orgy to see what it was like and to see if it lived up to what she could remember. Or she wanted to see me soil myself and poke fun of me. Of course, it wasn’t until after we got it back from Chatham that she told me things tend to ‘jump out’ and that you have to ‘watch your back’ which made me feel a lot better about returning it and getting my money back. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for cheap scares. They are and can be genuinely funny. But the way she was describing it to me wasn’t coming across as funny. It coming across as terrifying. I had unwittingly bought a survival horror game…

So, I started the game and made a new profile for the save data. The first cut scene started and immediately the living daylights were pulled out of me by the vibration of the Dualshock resting on the case… Yeah, this wasn’t going to be my thing, I thought. To cut a long story relatively short, you play as Isaac Clarke, an engineer on-board a mining ship called the USG Kellion. It receives a distress call from Concordance Extraction Corporation (CEC) and naturally, the crew of the  go to see what all the fuss is about on-board the recently crashed and seemingly abandoned USG Ishimura that was dispatched by the CEC. As the Kellion approaches, it malfunctions as it came into dock on the Ishimura. Isaac space-suits up and he and the crew begin searching the wreck. This serves the tutorial level to get used to the controls, which are actually for a game of this calibre, very simple and there is a lot of help to get you started. For example, pressing R3 shows a navigational line to follow to the next objective which is very handy as there is no traditional head up display or map to follow. The map, inventory and useful tidbits of information are bought up as a hologram in front of Isaac. This also includes video and audio logs, computer screens and various interactive parts that you come across as you venture through the horror. This first bit was fine. It didn’t look like a survival horror game at all. It looked like a cross between Red Dwarf set in the same distant future of WipeOut. However, I was thinking why did we, of all people, have to go towards the distress call? Why didn’t we just fly past the world and go to a nice beachy moon that has two suns and many alien bartenders serving alien martinis? In fact, I would have rather bought Alien Bartenders, had it been a real game but Dead Space was the game I bought so I duly had to carry on.

After getting to grips with the controls, you eventually get onto looking at a computer screen in a small room to find out the status of the ship you have just boarded. When everything seems fine, a lock-down of the area happens. Orange lights begin to flash and you, as Isaac, cannot escape this room as the crew outside begin to panic. You can only look on in horror out of the windows as something drops out of the ceiling. Between the slow strobe of the warning beacon and the darkness, we see one of the crew being horribly eaten by a mutated, clawed thing as blood splatters onto the window whilst the rest of the crew start to open fire and run away. The only way out is through another door in the room, thus separating Isaac from the crew. This shook me up quite badly as I had no idea what was to come next. The flashing lights and the discordant music only added to the drama. As you run down the corridor, things only get worse. You were being followed by one of these things, that we have all come to know and love as Necromorphs which are the mutated remnants of the Kellion’s crew. Isaac takes a beating and manages to get into the safe haven of a lift. The doors shut out the Necromorph and all is calm until it tries to break in again and eat the soft squishy stuff in Isaacs head. This was really ‘new pants’ territory! I just knew it was going to happen… The Necromorph however is no match to the heavy lift doors and so as they slam shut, limbs fly all over the encloses space as blood rains all around. The lift opens up onto a new floor and even more disturbingly, a dead body. Learning that the Necromorphs can feign death and that things can pop out, the corpse made getting the first weapon, the Plasma Cutter, a whole lot more distressing. I unwittingly used all the ammo and Isaac’s right boot to make sure the corpse was as dead as it could be. I’ll admit I was a bit confused as to what to do and at this point and I really wanted to stop playing this and put on a different game that wasn’t going to scare the bejesus out of me. The blood-curdling screams overheard in this room were not nice; to say the least and I had no idea how to get out. Luckily – after about six minutes of franticly looking around and panicking like a headless chicken, whilst have a small meltdown thinking that the guy in the corner was going to rear up and attempt to ingest me – the clue was right under my nose. The doors opened and, say it wasn’t so; another Necromorph was outside the door eating another dude’s face. And yes, he wanted seconds! Having no ammunition, I had to resort to using the R1 function to beat the living snot (or Necromorph equivalent to snot) out of the mutated-face eater with the Plasma Cutter. It eventually went down dropping ammo and credits, because, y’know, these were people once upon a time. And now they resemble something between a zombie and very hungry praying mantis.

It was horrible. But, you know what? It was very satisfying. It was gross. But it was brilliant. It is a bit of a gore-fest and if you don’t mind that then this game can be very addictive. The mechanic is actually pretty cool too. For example, the Necromorphs will not back down under a shot to the head or torso, as you would expect a zombie or a Nazi to. It requires you to dismember their limbs with the array of tools and weapons at your disposal. They’re a bit unorthodox as guns when you think about it; however they do the job very well. As you progress, you can upgrade your weapons, armour – or RIG (Resource Integration Gear) – and inventory just as upgrades work in other video games. Credits can be used to buy more weapons, health packs, statis packs, oxygen refills and lots more items found in the in-game store that will help you fight through the hoards and waves of undead space zombies. You can also keep your items in the stores safe, leaving it for later when you may need it rather than clogging up your inventory, which after the amount of different pickups you find, you will have to make room for. If you want to get rid of them altogether, you can sell them for credits to spend on better weapons or something that will come to be more useful later on.

There are a lot of handy abilities that build up some interesting puzzles too. The statis packs you encounter give you the chance to slow down time to either attack a Necromorph or get through jamming doors or past quick enemies; kinesis lets you pick up objects to clear a path and gives you the capability of throwing them at the undead; and zero-G lets you stick to surfaces and leap from one wall to another when gravity is taken out of the equation. And these can all be put together to create conundrums that leave you standing around thinking what to do but having to remember that you could be eaten at any moment. It makes you think quickly but cleverly. All the guns and weapons have a primary and secondary fire mode too. The Plasma Cutter can be fired either horizontally or vertically, depending on which Necromorph limb you want to slice off. The Line Gun fires a larger area burst of energy than the Plasma Cutter but can also deploy a mine that goes off after a few seconds. I found this out the hard way as the shiny blue object it fired out of the front of it looked too enticing not to check out. Yep, cue an explosion and Isaac flying onto his back. Oxygen and statis can also be replenished at various stations dotted around the ship. Save points can come thick and fast so you can always save your progress as you carry on or on some levels they can become scarce so you have to battle your way through, just to save the game but chances are, if you’re looking for one, there will be one around the corner and hopefully not being guarded by a Necromorph.

It does make for a very interesting game. It is terrifying because you don’t know what is around next corner and the visual and sound add to a fantastic bone-chilling atmosphere which is stunning. Lights flicker on and off and walking around can trigger a quarantine lock down, which normally means something is going to happen. You normally see Necromorphs moving in the darkness but aren’t necessarily sure as to whether it is actually what you think it is or whether it is some poor chaps mutilated remains still twitching. Either way, they’re going to be either stomped on or de-limbed. Level two, however did not favour well with me. After going through the labyrinth of corridors, part of the mission required me to remove a blockade from the medical unit of the ship. Seeing as I don’t particularly like medical things, I thought this was right up my alley. Walking around, seeing remains of the people who looked like they were half way through surgery is very unnerving. There’s one section where you watch the Necromorph tear into someone and actually turn into one and another where you hear the heavy dull thud of something banging on metal only to discover it’s one of the demented crewmembers banging his noggin on a wall, only to watch him collapse in a pool of his own fluids as you get closer to him. It is a scary game without a doubt. But you can take it with a pinch of salt. It is actually rather funny if you allow it be, in much the same way a ghost train at a fair is funny. Quite a few times I would burst through doors, aiming in anticipation shouting ‘c’mon you mother-flipper! Let’s be avvin’ yer!’ and shrieking ‘ahhhhh, kill it with fire!’ as I blast a horrible scorpion like beast with the Pulse Rifle or Flame Thrower. The ragdoll physics are sometimes laughable too. As you walk over or continue to dismember the dead, the bodies normally leap around uncontrollably. It can be hilarious watching the dead Necromorph bouncing down the corridor but also discomforting because when you do it unintentionally you do think it’s still alive. And so you unleash your weapons full force on what is essentially nothing “wasting” valuable ammunition (I use the quotation marks because making sure the thing is dead is not wasting in my book). And when they do attack you when you let your guard down, boy do they go for it. The cinematic is gruesome but hammering ‘X’ can make you fight off the snarling creatures and drop kick them in a shower of blood and gore. I have only played about two hours through the story and I have gone from being tempted to take it back because I didn’t want the pleasure of knowing what happens next (I even went as far to say to Kat that I won’t be buying a game on her recommendation again) to changing my opinion entirely (and also retracting my statement). I have come to accept my fate. I am going to work my way through fighting these horrible things and hopefully I should emerge the other side a better person. Or white as sheet unable to close my eyes at night. And herein lies the problem; I see it getting much worse in the process. Well, Necromorphs… Let’s be avvin’ yer!

Oh, and another thing. If at all you do buy Dead Space, I can assure that it will be worth it especially if you can find it for £5.99 or less because it is a lot of game for not a lot of money. Amazon has it for about twelve quid currently, but I would recommend you look around Cash Converters, CeX or even the pre-owned deals in GAME. GAME currently have it for about £8 pre-owned online and you can even download it off Steam currently for £9.99 if console gaming isn’t your thing. I urge you to play it because it is a quite a different gaming experience which, if you’re like me and seem to be only tied down to one genre, you will come to know it and even love it. It is no wonder then why it was rated so high and received countless awards and the atmosphere it creates is very immersive which makes it very reminiscent of sci-fi horror films like Alien or The Thing. The original has created some sort of a legacy and as a result Dead Space 3 has rocketed into the UK Gaming Charts at number one! However, if you do get scared by the sound and visuals (the sound was highly praised by critics) then follow this simple tip. Just turn the music volume down, turn on the subtitles and (even if you own it then try it anyway) play some cool Jazz in the background. I can tell you the experience I had it will be a lot better and more relaxing if you’re a bit faint hearted; it changes the situation of waiting for something to jump out at you into something almost bearable. Everything is a lot better when done to Jazz. Including killing space zombies! I might have to try that whilst playing Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I’m petrified that even Jazz won’t do the Redead justice. Man, are they screwed up!

Posted by Jimmi

You can read the GameSpot PS3 review by clicking this handy link.