The Fun Times

Surviving the action
There was a lot of good action in the game. Enemies come left and right, and there’s much more action than in the first game. After each wave of monsters that appear, and after you stomp on them, you get to feel pretty accomplished. And I like that. The challenge factor of the action was also more difficult in this game (e.g. guards that won’t die, and larger waves of enemies), and after having to die and figure things out (which ultimately I shouldn’t have to do and this game deserves much fail for that), I felt pretty accomplished.

Embedded UI
This was done well in the first game, and I’m glad they kept this in the sequel. All of the important UI elements (health, inventory, items, ammo) all appear as part of the natural interface of the game, and only appear when you “activate” them. The only thing to keep in mind is the game is not paused when you bring up these UI, so you will get hurt if you’re not looking (which is ultimately annoying and frustrating).

Horror tones like Silent Hill
The team who designed the mise-en-scene did a very good job. It made me think of how well Silent Hill does horror – through very subtle pieces in what the users sees (and hears). There’s echoes, music, silence, blood, interesting lighting, and little easter eggs that will make you keep saying “WTF” all the time. This was very well executed – the game designers placed the monsters and the puzzles in these areas to maximize the “horror” factor. They also did a good job of remediating the “Alien” series, as they mixed in the darkness, music, and monsters on a derelict spaceship.

The mystical blue/yellow/orange/purple line
Enough said. The best part of Dead Space returned and it actually curves around corners instead of being line segments. It’s still a great interaction that helps you to find where you’re supposed to go. They added other colors to help you know where the stores, benches, and save points are (in addition to the checkpoints).

Improvement Points

There is much to critique and hope for improvement in future Dead Space gaming:

Predictable Horror Movie Elements
I love watching bad horror movies, and horror/slasher movies in general. As such, I’ve picked up on some of their cues about what is going to happen: by watching the lighting, the framing, listening to the sounds, and just reflecting on the pacing of the movie, you can predict when the bad guys are going to strike. The same applies for Dead Space 2, except, that it is much more predictable than the first game. Silent Hill did a better job at true “horror” than this survival game – I wasn’t surprised too much at what was going to happen because of how I could “read” the game and figure out the next moves rather easily. While this is good for me the “gamer”, I would expect to find an improvement to the execution of the horror elements in the future to be much improved so I can enjoy the game as a “gamer” and as a “viewer”.

Can’t upgrade stuff you’re not carrying
This should have been very simple: if I’m carrying guns and equipment in my safe, I should be able to access them from the bench to upgrade them. Nope. I have to walk to the safe, drop my guns, pick up the guns I want to upgrade, then walk over back to the bench, upgrade them, and then put them back. Quite the hassle. I should be able to upgrade what I would like so that I can have fun using the guns that I want to take out those nasty monsters. My safe should be accessible anywhere. Period.

Pacing
The pacing can be much improved. Unlike a movie where there is constant “building” while the story moves forward to a natural conclusion, there is a constant “flip-flop” of pacing in this game. Everything starts off pretty quick, then goes pretty slow for a while, then back up again. This happens quite frequenly, and these peaks and valleys in the action are also dead giveaways to when monsters and “gobs of story” are about to be thrown at the user. I’d prefer a better pacing to keep me more engaged and motivated to get Isaac out of this mess.

Quite reminiscent of RE5 – and you know how I feel about that one
So as I was playing this, I couldn’t help but see RE5 in this game. The introduction of more action, interactive animated sequences (at least it was one button instead of randomly selected), and the feeling of being placed against many more guards than I should have to fight (for starters), all made me think that I was playing RE5. And the realization that apparently that the designers think that throngs of more guards makes for a more “engaging and horror” experience is not something I hope will continue. More guards does not mean more scary. Period.

Not really needing stasis
One important aspect of the first game, stasis, I kinda didn’t need to use in this version of the game. Most of the time the guards came out one-at-a-time, or in a giant row, which I could then take out quite easily. I very rarely used stasis (except for the Stalkers), which I then turned into cash to upgrade my guns. Stasis was pretty cool in the first game, and it was a little letdown to see that I didn’t pretty much have to bother with this.

Stalkers
These are enemies that hide and randomly come out of corners and attack you. Needless to say, they are the most annoying and hardest to kill monsters in the game. The “challenge” of them is where the improvement point needs to be noticed: it’s in the way they act and how the player has to change up things to defeat them. The player either has to die to figure out where they are, run around the room to figure out the “trigger point” to trigger the Stalkers to run at the player, or end up relying up luck and stasis to kill them (and they’ll keep running at you even without legs and still damage you – different from the other enemies in the game). The other thing that the player has going for them is that the designers stocked multiple of these enemies in areas where there are tall boxes in the room – a signifier that says that there’s a lot of enemies hiding (along with the fact that they use a signature scream when they are first spawned). Ultimately, I shouldn’t have to resort to death and retry or looking at the intricate locations of boxes in a room to realize what I need to do.

This game makes Galaxy Quest a reality
Many of the rooms and challenges don’t really make a ton of sense in context with the setting. Let’s put in a random lazer puzzle here, or let’s make you fly through some smashers, or even let’s go out into the middle of space and throw some random rockets (which the designers didn’t do a good job of introducing how to use – they should have said or shown how to “place” and use them) for you to use and try to figure out the puzzle before you run out of air and get attacked. To quote Galaxy Quest – “This makes no sense! Why would a ship even have this — because the writers wanted it that way!” *Facepalm* Another pure example of this are the hacking puzzles, a new puzzle added for this game. Just simply rotate the control stick until you get to a blue section and press A. Except that you have a timed puzzle and many red areas that you have to steer away from. And a lot of times you’re chased by guards too while trying to do this. The only help from this annoying puzzle, which is used way, way too much, is that the controller vibrates when you get close.

And you have to succeed 3 times to move on before time runs out, or you’ll have to do everything all over again.

Controls
While it’s good that the kept the same controls from the first game, I feel the design is still running into some simple problems. Having to use both triggers to shoot my guns? Lame. Why can’t we use the controls from other FPS/TPS games out there. I have to remeber a different control scheme from other shooting games to play this right. Also, I end up using my extra health and stasis way too much, because the buttons to use them are close to each other (stasis:Y, health:B) and that ultimately I end up confusing them, as other games have them marked as the reverse that Dead Space has.

Ultimately

Dead Space 2 has some fun going for it. Decent challenges and action, coupled with a decent story will make for a fun experience. But there’s a lot of minor annoyances that snowball quickly at points that break the experience (e.g. the very first set of rooms, combat, puzzles, etc.) of what could be a superior horror and survival game. But if you’ve played the first game, there’s some good easter eggs in there for you to keep you playing.

Pics

• Ambiance
• The Church
• Crawling
• Cutscenes
• Small Details
• Eye Lasers
• Quick Cutscene
• Floating Puzzle
• Hacking Puzzle
• Health and Stasis
• Laser Puzzle
• Rotation Puzzle
• Embedded UI

Interaction Culture Snapshot

So what is it that we do in this class? Well, this week, although it was an opening, we first learned how to start thinking about critique and knowing how cultural and critical theory can help a designer not only grow, but be able to critique a design from a much higher-level of thinking. This will help to generate further insights about design, what the designer is designing, and how what is being design affects the system it is in. One example: we took a look at fancy (i.e. awesome) shoes, and we able to critique them. Here’s the shoe I was handed (along with a preview of what I’ll talk about next):

Some of the thoughts I had about these shoes were: platform, 80s-style, thick shoelaces, amalgamation, combo of shiny and non shiny, entertaining, conversation starter, tread on the bottom goes onto the toes, hippy-like flowers, could see this as a DDR shoe, could be part of a set with a purse/satchel/manpurse, looks homemade, rich – the person hasa lot of money + DIY behaviors, the traditional tounge of a sneaker, some ankle supprt – the medium-high top, comfortable, yet warm, I wanna say disco, tight fit, not too many holes. Please feel free to add your two cents as well.

The goal of this exercise was to not only help open our eyes for critiquing purposes, but to also think the unthought and push this into the unknown.

HCI Theory Wrapup

During our first class with Erik, we were presented with the idea that this course will help us to find the metaphorical furniture of our brains and expose ourselves to these pieces. And by furniture, he means our own design ideas and biases. To first describe this, we did a quick exercise on how we work with other people: first, the goal is to draw a face with a friend, but each of you can only draw one line at a time. The face on the left (above) was the result of this process. The second face (right), was a result of taking the exact opposite approach in our heads to this design problem. It was pretty fun, and most of the class kept laughing while doing it. This was a fun exercise, which will help me keep liking the class, especially due to the high amount of reading involved. Images made with help of Ben

Capstone Fun

So, capstone finally started for our class, and I still have some questions as to how to approach or even get started with this giant project. So I am going to go and talk to some of my professors on this topic. It should be win – after all, the group I want to know more about and design for are cosplayers: these are the people who show their fandom by dressing up as their favorite anime and video game characters. There are few words to describe how excited I am about getting to know about this group, so I’ll save that for a future post. These will be under the category of “cosplay” here in the blog, so keep coming back for more.

Have fun! (^^)V

The welcome first began on last Monday, where I got a chance to talk to a small group as they were eating lunch during the first day of orientation. I could see myself in their shoes: worried, reticent, and wanting to go back home. We spent a good hour together just getting to know each other, and then we went back to orientation (I went to spend some quality time with my family).

During the next couple of days, our Ubuntu program kicked into gear: we went around the campus to show the students where important places are, and also where some of the best restaurants are, too. A group, myself included, ended up going to Nick’s on Kirkwood, where we got to get to know each other better. We also found out that another new person joined the cohort, making 37 excited designers in training. It’ll be great to see how they grow. Something else this week ended up leaving with me was how much the last year’s cohort cared about our group. I didn’t really get to see much of it because I didn’t get to establish the best of ties with my friend, and it also took a little longer for me to be able to trust the knowledge and experience of the previous class. The shoe is now on the other foot, and I can’t really anticipate how we were interpreted by the new cohort. Only time will tell.

For me, I’ll have to start worrying about how capstone will start kicking into gear, but once it has, be sure to look for weekly postings about it.

Smiles! (^^)V

Now, first, this description comes from watching it on laserdisc – a technology I don’t remember ever seeing before (it supposedly was the first DVD), but it looked awesome, so I went with it. We watched this movie on an epic large projection TV, and in complete darkness. The movie was full of 80s-ness, and the soundtrack was done exclusively by Queen. So I was thinking, “This should be good”. We then sat down for the rest of the night engaging in MST3K-ing comments of the movie, as it was suitable for these comments. If you don’t believe me, I’ve left a snippet of the movie at the end here for you to feast your 80s eyes on.

Also, with the sets, bad green-screening, and having Timothy Dalton in it (yes – James Bond), it contained all the elements of a worthy epic bad movie. Enjoy!

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Last week, I had the luxury of being invited to go on a road trip to Cincinnati to see Video Games Live (Wikipedia Link). They play orchestrated versions of popular video game music. It took around 3 hours to get there, and we also had the luxury of stopping at a Skyline on the way there (they have good chili if you like chili). The trip was a little long for me, as I was a little scrunched in the back of a Mini-Cooper, and there wasn’t anything exciting for me to watch on the way to and from the pavilion which was hosting the show.

The show was fantastic, and I recommend going if you like either video games or orchestras playing music (or both). Most of the set was from the big names in the industry (like Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Halo, etc.), and was quite entertaining. The show lasted for around 3 hours, and I had the chance to go backstage and see the performers and the host up close and personal. They even gave a double encore, which was even more worth the trip there. It was just that awesome. The pictures posted tell even more of the story.

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Last week, our HCI cohort decided to throw a surprise birthday party for one of our professors. We arranged for a surprise dance number, cake, presents, and the fun that would ensue for the night. Here are some pictures to bring this event to life again. Everyone had cake and was merry. Have fun with these pics.

So when we first walked in, I was quite surprised at how big and open the place was. Even though it was 11 in the morning, there were still some people around. We even got to see the employees change the menu over from breakfast to lunch – it is something you should try to see. Unfortunately, the menu is just a simple turnstyle, and not a digital menu. Anyways, we were able to sit down after ordering our food, and while we waited, we were able to watch some television on a large HDTV. This was quite interesting, as it especially brings home the fact of how more affordable technology is and how, for some, television can enhance the food experience.

After watching the television for a little bit of time, we decided to get something to drink from the vending machine in the store, and were quite surprised at the many different choices available to us. Not only were there the traditional choices, but there were a couple of nozzles that allowed us to choice from 3 drinks at the nozzle. If this were to continue in the future, not only will it be great to have so many choices, but it will also be confusing to find which drink to pick from. Hopefully, this will remain simple for the future, as this is an interaction I would like to keep simple.

In terms of the food, the food at Hardees was surprisingly good. It came in a basket akin to that from Friendly’s, and the cheeseburger and fries were better than most of the fast food restaurants I have been to. It was just something about how they cooked their burgers that just made the experience special for me. If you get the option to, try giving this place a try – order the little thickburger combo – it’s the one in the picture.

Happy eating!

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I also took almost 2 weeks off from blogging and work to go back home and enjoy Independence Day with my family. The experience was overwhelming. Not only was I welcomed home and missed terribly, but everyone was interested in what I was doing out here in Indiana. I was able to talk with much of my family, and also get a chance to play Bocce with people I haven’t seen in years. The trip was also quite relaxing, as I was able to sit back and play some games, but also just spend time with my family. I also got to watch the new Transformers movie, and also became interested in the series True Blood, which I’ll try and find the time to watch while I am back researching at Indiana. Above all, the most important takeaway from this trip was a deeper notion of what it is to be missed, as I saw members of family become overwhelmed that my plane was delayed and that I could stay with them for another night. That, above all (and seeing a good friend from high school) was the best part of being on vacation.

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When I went back home in early July, I was fortunate enough to be able to go on a road trip to play Dance Dance Revolution. We took a 45 minute drive up to Simsbury, Connecticut, to Blue Fox Rock and Bowl. It was a small place, and the machine was located in the back storage room. The machine was in superb condition, and I was able to have a lot of fun on it. What was also interesting was that this machine had all of the original Japanese marquees on them, while still being quite responsive to one’s feet. The other interesting part of this trip was the suspicious feeling that we shouldn’t be playing on the machine, as the bowling alley was completely empty and the back room was kind of sketchy. Not to mention all of the thunderstorms that happened on the way up to the bowling alley. Have fun with the pictures, and feel free to comment.

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When I went home for vacation, one of the things I enjoyed the most was being able to see the cat again. “The Little Lovin”, as I call her, was a rescue cat and is quite a joy to be around. Once she gets accustomed to you, you can be able to talk to her and she’ll meow back to you. Also, she loves to be around when we are playing video games, but she’ll want to bite you if you are singing in Rock Band. She also likes chicken (and any other type of meat), and will chase after treats thrown about the house.

The cat makes going home that much more special.