Good show guys, and I liked Andrea too but I admit it might be that her melodious voice harmonizes well with Garnett's dulcet lower tones... o.o
Ahem, moving on
MiniBossBattle said:
Jeff is still the best when he is in full whimsy.
Ah crap not quite moving on. Yes! I love that Jeff isn't embarrassed to speak with genuine passion for games he loves, not sure if I've heard such true sincerity on any other podcast. I don't usually say stuff like this about grown men, but it's so cute =P
Okay moving on for real!
Dead Space. I totally get where y'all were coming from from the 'scare/action' parts of the game. It does follow a path pretty much where they just increase the numbers or difficulty of the baddies (fucking black necromorphs ahh) as the game progresses and it just becomes about beating a certain room or two to make it to the next checkpoint or save point.
That being said, I love the tension the atmosphere and battles create but I like the game for that rather than any compelling shooting mechanics.
While the limb-cutting is great and definitely adds tension as you don't want to waste unnecessary ammunition, in a way it cheapens encounters to the point where I feel tempted to reload to a previous save if I "wasted' a certain amount of shots by shooting the torso or whatnot.
Now I don't reload mind you, but it feels like it comes close to treading the line. Which is stupid in a way because you can just buy more ammo (which I do) but that pisses another part of me that wants to hoard credits for Power Nodes.. Goddamn min-maxing..
Aaanyway I quite enjoy DeadSpace 2 and don't regret my purchase at all, but I can totally understand why 3 people don't like it heh.
As to shooting games, I think we're stuck there for any foreseeable future. A shootemup action blockbuster movie might have a lower bodycount, but it's also only a couple hours and they usually try and shoehorn some story in there.
True Lies is pretty ridiculous in action sequences but it tweaks that little testosterone baby inside nicely.
For most shooters there's even less story than that sooo they need something to fill up your time with I guess.
An alternative I see would be to have fewer enemy encounters (maybe 2 or 3 at a time mostly) but you'd have to spread the levels out much more (with compelling environments or narration, no less) to try and compensate for the time-lost.
And of course if you reduced enemies you'd have to fall back to almost a Rainbow 6 system of dying freaking fast with probably no health regen (or a 'bubble' system like Resistance at the most) else there'd be no risk and the player would just cruise through.
Ugh I dunno. Even in that example I can see why Devs would rather take the time to polish a really great level and use more enemies to slow your progress down rather than spend time/money on environments you might not even be looking at all that much. Of course if you spew too much narration between fights you run the risk of boring a player too (Perhaps some people's dislike of Metal Gear series.)
For me, Uncharted/Half Life kinda games are the ones that I find more interesting than a straight up shooter like CoD/Halo. While they admit they need a strong shooting component, they try and give some quality breaks either through narrative or puzzle sequences.
Uncharted 2 wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the sheer quantity of dudes you have to fight. It's ridiculous. By the end of the game I was sick of it. I think I would have liked the game twice as much if it had had half the enemies.
This is true, though for me I'd be happy with 2/3s the enemies but that's just quibbling heh.