00:00.00 Dave Hello everybody. My name is Dave Jackson and you're listening to tales from the backlog. This is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog play it and discuss my guest today to discuss dead space. Is a friend of the show a twitch streamer under the moniker vertigo2hell and he's here to make us whole again. Welcome to the show Chris good to have you on the show man I've I've watched you stream several times we've been chatting in Various discords and slack servers for a long time now. So good to finally have you on the show 00:25.57 Chris Hey everybody. Thanks, Great to be here. 00:34.55 Dave all right today. We're going to talk about dead space like I said which is a sci-fi horror third person shooter developed by motive studio and published by ea in 2023 for Pc ps5 and the Xbox series consoles we are going to talk about the remake today. That's the only one that I've played the original game is from 2008 and that one was developed and published by ea so again talking about the remake. I know Chris you've played the original so we will probably reference some of that a little bit. Okay, um, the spoiler policy for this episode if someone's listening and has not played dead space. This is how the show works every episode pretty much. 01:27.20 Dave We are not going to spoil the story before the spoiler break. So we'll we'll talk kind of briefly about the story but we'll um, we'll avoid spoiling what happens before the spoiler break so you can find the timestamp for when the spoilers begin down in the show notes. So. We've prepared some elevator pitches for everybody who doesn't know what dead space is I say this is sci-fi horror with one of video gaming's best weapons aboard 1 of video gaming's best spaceships Chris what would you say. 01:59.76 Chris Um, I would say for me. Um it was kind of like aliens meets event horizon with a hell of a lot more stomping. 02:08.71 Dave Aha. 02:13.85 Dave Ah, that sounds good to me. Yeah, um, because some quick stats here for how long the game is um I played this on PS five and it took me 13 hours I did not do a ton of side questing. So I think that you could kind of extend this out. 02:14.56 Chris Yeah. 02:31.77 Dave A little bit longer if you go back tracking for side quests. How about you. 02:36.58 Chris Oh yeah, same I did like 1 or 2 towards the beginning and then kind of had to get on track with the main quest there. But yeah I could see ah a lot more time being put into it like going back for a replay. 02:43.32 Dave Me. 02:52.45 Dave Yeah, for sure you played this on pc. Okay, cool. Um, so we'll start out by getting into our histories with the dead space series and this remake in particular and Chris I'll start with you. 02:54.16 Chris I Guess yeah. 03:07.37 Dave You have played the original So when did you play that and what made you want to play the remake. 03:10.72 Chris All right? Ah so it was kind of a round when it first came out not exactly but I'd say within probably the same year. It first came out. Um I really enjoyed it. Um it but it was really kind of cool getting to ah. 03:30.50 Chris Ah, play play a game like that that kind of like in my elevator pitch that was like ah aliens meets event Horizon being on like a really cool spaceship being a cool space. Dude Um, yeah, ah I yeah. I Actually never played the sequels which which might shock people because I think people generally like to the most of the series. But I Yeah I I I Just know the first one. 03:47.80 Dave Okay. 04:01.87 Dave Um, okay, okay, and was it me inviting you to come on the show that made you want to play the remake or was it already on your radar because you like the first one. 04:04.22 Chris And that that yeah, that's basically it. 04:17.90 Chris Yeah, it it was ah generally on my radar. Um I remember people were actually before it came out were so hyped up for callisto protocol like they thought oh this is going to be the new dead space and then it came out and everybody was disappointed. 04:24.68 Dave Yeah. 04:33.57 Chris And nobody believed that Ea was going to come out with ah this remake that was actually gonna be better. Um, yeah when and yeah when when it first came out I I watched a couple couple of like little short bits of streams and I'm like oh yeah, this looks pretty good. 04:53.53 Chris And I yeah I I had to go back and you know it It was worth it. It took me a while to go back? Um, but yeah, yeah, totally worth it. 05:00.75 Dave Yeah, yeah for sure. Um, for me personally I never played the original. Um I I had an Xbox 3 sixty back in 2008 I played a ton of video games. I'm not sure that I I'm sure I heard of dead space like I don't think it was that off my radar but I certainly never even considered playing it back then even though it got really good reviews and stuff I think 2008 I was probably. Mostly still playing oblivion and fallout 3 and games like that. So This was ah I was too busy spending hundreds of hours in those games to really consider playing other stuff I think so I'm also a very very recent I mean in the last couple of months. 05:37.19 Chris Oh yeah. 05:54.51 Dave Official fan of horror games. So deadspace is one of those games that a lot of people say is super super scary and therefore was totally not part of my plans for video games at all. Um, until I eventually found myself enjoying horror games more and more as time goes on and. Ah, this was actually the winner of the October patreon poll for games to come on the show the patrons I think the 2 finalists were detention and deadpace and so the patrons chose actually it was a tie I remember because we did another smash brothers tie breaker. And deadspace came out victorious. So that's why it's on the show because it was the winner of a Patreon poll but me kind of coming to terms with the fact that I actually do like horror games put it more on my like okay I should probably play dead space. This is like a super famous horror game. Right? Yeah that's right? Yeah, um, yeah for for people who don't know Chris usually streams horror games on Twitch. So you you did stream this game a little bit right. 06:51.20 Chris That's right, 1 of us. Ah. 07:05.50 Chris Yeah, yeah, um I say I probably got a to the good. Oh like halfway point and then I'm like oh wait. Ah, the date is coming up I've really got to sit down and probably do the rest of this offstream. Ah yeah. 07:18.97 Dave Yeah, um, and to get into some quick opening thoughts about this remake here I thought that this game's pretty Good. Um the one big surprise which I will get into you know later in the episode was that I did not think this game was very scary. Which is a big shock to me. Um I'll get into that but it is a tense game. Um, and I think that there's a lot of very very cool gameplay design visual design and sound design to go along with ah all of that stuff. Um I. 07:41.50 Chris Um, who. 07:54.42 Dave Know this game has a story that a lot of people think is interesting and surprising I spoiled myself on the story a long time ago because I was convinced I would never play this game So a shoutout to play along podcast friends of the show for a fun episode that I listened to and completely spoiled the story for myself. Um, how about you? What did you think of this remake real quick. 08:17.13 Chris Um, ah so I can definitely see where you're coming from with your opinion there. Um, so for me, um, I'd say it was a generally of ah probably a bit more scary. But like I have a thing where jump scares and video games really get me because I got my headphones on and you got the loud noise. It's kind of like seeing a horror movie in theaters where it's just loud and ah you know it gets. Yeah um, as far as like the ah. 08:51.45 Chris Like the story you know I mean I guess I could take or leave it really like like like it's a sci-fi space horror story there there there's necromore surrounding around little raw chickens jumping on you. You know like you know it's It's fine for what it is um I'm I'm. 09:11.31 Chris I'm sure Ea has made worse games. Ah, ah, right right? from what I've heard. But yeah, yeah, like in in in general I think it's solid for what it is. It's It's a dumb B horror. 09:13.97 Dave I'm sure they have yeah such as dead space 3 right? yeah. 09:29.62 Dave And here. 09:29.97 Chris Sci-fi story and you know it it. It has fun with its jump scares. It does get a little old to me after a while. Um. 09:39.90 Dave Yeah, 13 hours is um, fairly long for this kind of like super intense, no breaks horror game I think. 09:46.59 Chris Right? right? right? and like like my fate like I do a lot of indie horror games and like I don't know 3 to 8 hours is kind of like the good spot and ah you you know you got 13 hours here and oh and. 09:53.77 Dave So yeah. 10:03.62 Chris You know it's it's it's kind of like the same general. You know you go into a well I and that might be getting into spoilers. Ah, ah, we'll hold off on that. Ah, but yeah, ah overall pretty good I say pretty good. 10:16.50 Dave Right? Yeah, all right? Um, the ah the other thing I guess I'll just mention right at the top is that this is not. Super fair to dead space if you want to view it in a vacuum but nobody plays video games or consumes media in a vacuum and I played Resin evil for remake a couple months ago and 10:40.28 Chris Yes. 10:42.18 Dave Dead space is super super inspired by resident evil 4 and resident evil 4 eats. Its lunch in my opinion. It is just not as good if you play them in close proximity. So while I was playing dead space I did have this nagging thing of like. Man refour was really fucking. Good wasn't it and so it was just kind of on my mind and I I may bring it up when we talk about gameplay a little bit later but I want to kind of get that out there that I am on team r e four if we're picking sides. 11:15.29 Chris Oh ah, absolutely 1000% the same. Ah. 11:19.24 Dave Okay, all right not to not to belavor that point kind of dunking on dead space at the beginning we we both said it's a pretty good game. Let's ah, let's take a little break come back and introduce the story for dead space. 11:25.50 Chris Yeah, yeah. 11:34.17 Dave So in dead space you play as Isaac Clark who is a crewman on a repair vessel called the usg kellyian who is sent to a planetary excavator ship called the usg ishiurra this is the kind of advanced technology. Sci-fi to the point where we have these ships that basically break entire planets apart to to mine them for resources so big advancements in space technology here. The usg ishamura has gone silent and so the kelian is sent to investigate. Um, isaac though is particularly interested in what's going on on the ishamura because his girlfriend Nicole Brennan works on the ishamura and he received a distress call from her about bad shit happening without getting into spoilers here. Ah, this is all you you learn all of this in the first five minutes of the game what I just said right there so a couple things about this like setting or story setup I think um I want to shout out the is issueura for being really fucking cool was in my elevator pitch. Um, there is something to me about Maybe it's the limitations of our own technology. You know the the real world that we live in but a giant like unfathomably big spaceship like this or like ah ah a star destroyer in star wars or something like that. 13:05.39 Dave Always cool. It's like automatically give me a big fucking spaceship. It's cool. Um, the cool thing about this though is you go to lots of spaces inside the ship where you see how big this thing really is and you're in 1 small section of the ship but it's this cavernous room that you're in. And so it really gives you like a crazy sense of scale for where this game the entire game takes place basically in the ishimura. 13:38.86 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely it is a really really cool ship and um I think um, some some something about it that like you know I I go back again to the movie event Horizon um. Which ah, this ship reminds me a lot of is that it's It's very industrial looking which which I think is really cool and goes perfect for being you know, like ah I don't know blue Collar Planet Cracker ship. 13:59.55 Dave Yeah. 14:11.19 Chris Like you know, of course it's going to be industrial looking and you know event Horizon had that kind of like industrial look to it. Um, very very cool. Ship is gigantic I Love it I I don't get very many awesome ships like like I don't know what am I thinking of like ah like. The Normandy from Mass effect I remember was always a lot of fun to just kind of like you know because that was kind of like a hub in between missions and ah yeah, this one especially with like the ah the side quest in it being able to ah you know, backtrack and. 14:46.72 Chris Um, you know you do some backtracking in the game main Quest Anyways, Um, just yeah, really cool. 14:50.84 Dave Yeah, the the fact that it it is so big like you know the the normandy can fit like 20 people onboard this the the issueura is like it's it's like its own city. Basically so. 15:03.75 Chris Yeah, fine. 15:07.14 Dave Compare it more to the Citadel from mass effects. So the fact that it is that big and you go from all of the classic space station locations. You go through crew quarters and Kitchens and ah like work areas and all kinds of places like that. So you really get a good feel. Yeah. 15:24.19 Chris Um, the morgue. 15:26.66 Dave Morgue let us not forget that um hospitals and operating rooms and all of those things you really get a sense for like how complete of an environment. This ship is kind of like um, what's it called Tallos 1 and prayy I might be mixing out my spaceships. Yeah. 15:40.58 Chris Oh yeah, the space station. Yeah. 15:46.70 Dave Yeah, similar scale to that where you you go you see every facet of everyone's life on the ship you go to all those places. Yeah, um one ah 1 notable thing to point out about the remake and I'm interested to get your opinion about this here. Chris is that. Isaac is voiced in the remake isaac was a silent protagonist in the original isaac does not have a so a noteworthy voice I would say he sounds like a regular guy which I think plays into his characterization. He is supposed to be a regular guy. But. Since you played the original where he was a silent protagonist. Do you prefer him with the voice or did you prefer him just being quiet. 16:34.40 Chris Um I I didn't mind his voice in this one um like it like like you said he's very every man. Um, but I guess go going back to resident Evil again. He he. 16:41.59 Dave With him. 16:49.14 Chris He's not the every man that I liked from like Ethan winters from 7 and 8 especially 7 Um he is kind of I don't know forgettable but ah I don't know just ah playing playing modern games like I didn't mind it. 16:53.40 Dave Ah, okay. 17:08.59 Chris It was nice when I was streaming it where I didn't have to read all of his dialogue out loud. Ah, but yeah I I don't know um he had some. He had some fine lines every now and then I'd say I approve. 17:22.30 Dave Yeah, it's cut. Yeah, it's it's kind of isaac's thing like his his whole thing. He's an engineer ah Crewman he's not like compare this to shepherd from mass effect or any number of action games shooters. He's not a buffed up military dude protagonist. He's he's just a guy this plays into the ah the weapons that you use your weapons are mostly like engineering tools and stuff like that like plasma cutter and. You know a flamethrower stuff that an engineer would probably know how to use you know, fixing up spaceships. So it all plays into his characterization his voice actor I think did fine for what they wanted I don't think they wanted you to come out of this with like thinking that. Isaac is this insanely charismatic character because I don't think he's supposed to be. 18:18.20 Chris Right? right? Yeah exactly I agree without 100% 18:24.58 Dave So what's going on on the ship once you get inside. There are a few minutes of calm as you walk in. There's a really great opening where you you exit the ship that you came in on. You're starting to walk down this. I want to say board walklk because I don't have a better word for it in sci-fi terms. But you're walking through this like entrance hall and there's the big lit up sign that says us g ishamura and then all hell breaks loose. There's aliens on the ship. The crew have been turned into these. These monsters called necromorphs they attack your crew on the kelian and everyone either gets killed or separated so this is a very solitary game isaac is by himself and you're trying to press on in the ship to find out what happened and look for Nicole try and save Nicole. Ah, so that is where I'm going to leave off on the story here because I I don't want to get any further with why there are aliens on the ship or what's going on with Nicole but that is basically the bulk of what the narrative of this game is so did you enjoy. Without spoiling what's going on. Did you enjoy finding out what's going on with the crew mates and what's going on with Nicole and all of that. 19:47.59 Chris Yeah, you know I generally had a lot of fun with it. Um, again it it. It is a very ah be horror movie. Ah but I am certainly done for that kind of ah horror story. Um. 20:00.36 Dave Ah. 20:03.23 Chris It's ah you know, um, aside from ah ah so so some of the ah the gameplay loops being kind of samey. Um it it I mean I suppose even in that case it. 20:21.33 Chris It was still worth getting like the the story stuff that happened it would it. It was kind of like ah like a nice break from the action more or less. Um, and ah yeah, I'd say in general just yeah because it has been so long since I played the original. Um. 20:41.18 Chris A lot of the ah the story stuff was actually kind kind of kind of fresh to me like I I didn't remember a lot of the beats because it had been so many years. Um, so yeah, absolutely I I enjoyed it. 20:55.37 Dave Yeah, um I think that without spoiling I think that the explanation for what's going on with the crew and why the aliens are there I thought that was pretty fun I enjoyed that storyline. Um, there are. Other things going on on the ship that I thought are in the story that I thought were a little bit weirder and like a little bit harder to suspend my disbelief. We'll talk about those in the spoiler section. It's worth pointing out though that like you said. Have long chunks of gameplay and then short bits of conversation like you're talking to your crewmates on the radio or something else is happening but a lot of that conversation is literally just like ah classic space station. Everything's breaking conversations where it's like ah. Isaac. Ah, the gravity field is fucked up. Can you go fix the gravity field and isaac's like yeah I can go fix the gravity field and then that's what that conversation is so um I think that a lot of the like storytelling like direct storytelling is pretty backloaded unless you're reading a lot of the notes. That are around the ship and the audio logs and stuff like that which build up flavor about like what happened but not like Isaac's story on the ship if that makes sense. 22:16.79 Chris Oh yeah, um, absolutely like I did really enjoy getting like a lot of the audio logs and stuff. But yeah it it is more like context of like oh I don't know. Ah, this doctor is crazy. 22:23.10 Dave Maybe. 22:33.16 Chris Here's more examples of why he's crazy. You know nothing to do with isaac at all. But you know it's still still a fun way to break up the ah you know the ah the constant shooting. 22:45.31 Dave Yeah, Isaac is um is all Work. He's really focused on what's going on with the mission to basically keep the ship from exploding or breaking apart or getting hit by Asteroids or any number of bad things that can happen to a ship. So. His story is really backloaded like I said but along the way you're learning about this religious cult that's on board you're learning about what went on with the crew mates both before and after shit hit the fan on the Issueura. Um. I Enjoyed that backstory a lot and they do the cool thing where audio Logs let you move around when you listen to them so you can listen to an audio log and go scrounge for supplies while you're listening. You don't have to stand in place I'm glad that that's kind of going the way of the buffalo. 23:36.72 Chris Oh yeah, um absolutely I I I will admit this though I I am too old school of a I guess a gamer guy ah that when I do get an audio log I still tend to sit there. 23:51.97 Dave Ah, ah. 23:52.97 Chris Because I always fear that like oh if I move too far. Cut scene is going to happen and I'm going to miss you know, whatever Dialogue I am just too old school on the ah. 24:01.22 Dave Yeah, that's that's true I did tend to like at least stay in the room that I was in when an audio log's playing because I don't want to go through a door and that have something attack me because I won't be able to to listen in that case. So um. 24:14.40 Chris Absolutely. 24:18.27 Dave Yeah, um, and then a lot of the like I said a lot of the the backstory of what's going on with the crew. Um and the aliens and the source of all of this madness. Um I Thought that that was pretty fun. It's it's not life. It's not a life changing story and again, there's one really big. Thing that would surprise people would maybe surprise people I'll ask you in the spoiler section that I spoiled myself on so I can't really comment on whether that was well delivered. But I do think that it's pretty well. Foreshadowed if that makes sense like I feel like people should pick up on it. 24:58.66 Chris Oh yeah, yeah, definitely I'm pretty sure I know what you're talking about. 25:04.35 Dave Yeah, yeah, kind of famous thing with this game. So um, yeah, ah, the other part of like the storytelling and you know world building and stuff in here is the way that the game looks and sounds. Want to shout out the remake for being a really really good looking game the way that you know it's photorealistic so isaac's suit looks really nice and the way that like light reflects off of the metal pieces of his suit. His suit looks really cool too. Um, especially when you get some of those upgrades and it starts looking more and more like workmen like I don't I don't know an industrial. That's the word I guess I'll use. You know it doesn't look like ah a space suit. It's definitely not like a space military suit like some other. Games that you might control somebody in space. It looks like he's going to work and you get more and more protection in the form of like metal bars going across the suit as you go on throughout the game. So This is a really good looking game I Also want to shout out the lighting. Of course it's a horror game. Should have good lighting and um, really really well done here in dead space. 26:23.12 Chris Yeah, yeah I I agree the ah the suit looks really cool. Um, love the upgrades for it I know me personally I could have used even more protection from it. Ah because I am bad at action games. Ah, ah. 26:39.20 Dave Ah, the pacific. 26:40.52 Chris But yeah, the ah yeah, the visuals are just so good like um I swear I didn't it even have like a thing where like you'd get like ah like if you got like attacked like you'd get like the ah the blood and gore like on the suit too. Um, yeah. 26:53.91 Dave Yeah, yeah, you'd be covered in blood at the end of those fights. Yeah. 27:00.18 Chris Yeah, it's a yeah, visually it's it's It's pretty. Chef's kiss. 27:06.23 Dave Yeah, um, speaking of visual chef kisses this is a really famous thing about dead space the way that it has this minimalist ui and and hud look to it where when you're playing there's there are no hud elements at all. Um. Isaac's health bar is a little tube of weird green liquid on the back of his suit or something I don't know what's in there probably shouldn't drink it. Whatever it is but that will display his health. And then you have another type of ammo like these stasis charges. There's a bar on the back of his suit for that and if you want a way point for where to go if you right click on the if you click on the right thumbstick it will give you a line to follow on the ground not a dot. Out in the distance. That's always there so this is really really well done I don't I mean I feel like this is this and like the the jump scares I guess are probably the 2 most famous things about dead space. So I don't feel like I need to spend a lot of time. Introducing it to people but it is excellent. It's really good. 28:17.40 Chris Oh yeah, I that that waypoint line thing I use that I I was pretty much spamming it the entire game. Um and like like what was also really cool about it is that um the ah the very few side quests that I actually managed to do. 28:24.48 Dave Ah, yeah, me too. 28:33.86 Chris Like when you go into the menu and you change the tracking for it. You could you know use the line on the side Quest which was really nice. Um, but yeah, the ah and ah like as far as the ah like the the no hud thing. 28:49.27 Chris I think ah is really really cool. It's really good looking really cleans up the screen buts for me, not having like a health Hud thing. Um I did not pay a lot of attention to the back of the suit and I would often find myself. 28:59.21 Dave Man. Okay. 29:08.43 Chris Finally paying attention to it with ah I don't know probably like ah 1 health point before death and ah ah yeah I'm I'm just bad at noticing ah that I guess but ah at least visually, it's very very nice, very clean. 29:20.26 Dave It It is small so like it's you want to give them points for being clean and making this like clean interface and or. 29:27.72 Chris Yeah. 29:35.99 Dave No interface to look at you're just looking at your character but it is pretty small and like I played this on a big tv it still took some time for me to get used to after a while I did get used to it. You're always looking generally near that anyway, you know you're looking where you're. Your aiming ridicule is not like directly at Isaac's back but it's not that far away to just you know quick flick your eyes over check and see but you are right like I would often get hit a bunch of times and because the health bar is not where it is in literally every other video game i. Would be like oh got hit got hit I wonder how much health I have I look. Ah oh I'm about to die. Okay, so that did happen often? Yeah, um, the the ammo is displayed on like a little. Holograph screen that comes off of your gun itself. Um, that again, it's cool to not have that as part of like the ui down in the corner of the screen somewhere but it is pretty small and during like hectic fights. It was kind of hard to keep track of even if I'm looking right at my gun. Was so kind of hard to see how much ammo I had left. 30:54.17 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely and um, me being kind of bad at action games in general I Ah I just had very little ammo for anything throughout most of the game. But yeah, it's a yeah, very small. 31:12.77 Chris Like I like the idea it it would be cool to see like um how how something like that could be like better improved I have no idea if you know dead space 2 or 3 did better versions of that or. 31:25.34 Dave Yeah I would assume that like if dead space 2 and 3 did better versions that they would then carry that forward into a remake but I kind of I'm I'm here where I'm like. 31:34.16 Chris Um, oh right? right? yeah. 31:40.71 Dave I Think the idea of this and the execution of it is really good. It's awesome I still had issues seeing that information because I'm just not used to it and the and the ammo thing I think is really small. The stasis bar is really small also so it's it's one of those things. 31:54.52 Chris Oh absolutely. 32:00.68 Dave Where the health I got used to that but the other stuff it was like this is very cool an idea but in execution it's merely like pretty good I guess. 32:14.89 Chris Yeah, yeah, um, pretty pretty pretty good. But ah yeah I'm I'm happy they ah they tried it at least like it is ah it is pretty cool. 32:23.73 Dave Yeah I mean it's definitely something to commend them for for taking all of that stuff away that distracts your eyes from the Action. So kind of on that note, this is a horror game. We could we talked about in the beginning of the episode. Um, how we felt about how scary it was. But um, you mentioned the jump scares. There are lots and lots of jump scares in this game. Um, so those kind of got you. You said. But other than that did you find this to be a creepy place to explore were you always on your toes. Basically. 33:02.46 Chris You know, um, generally I say I was so some sometimes you would get to a big room for example and you know oh oh right? As soon as I walk in here a quarantine is going to happen and 30000 necromorphs are going to be. 33:20.28 Chris Popping through ah but ah, it would do um ah some nice little jump scares occasionally for me, especially when I would backtrack and sometimes I would. Ah. End up like opening a door and I would get into a situation that reminds me a lot of the original doom where you would open the door and there would just be like the monster right? there ready you know ready to kill you? Um, So yeah, you know? Um, yeah. 33:55.42 Chris Generally I'd say it it. It kind of worked throughout while also getting a little you know old after a while but occasionally something neat will pop up and you know jump scare me pretty good. 34:05.54 Dave Yeah, yeah, it does this particular thing like the amount of jump scares and the way that encounters are set up does get old I think because number one there are. Off the top of my head. There's like maybe 4 or 5 types of enemies that you'll fight on a regular basis for 13 hours that's excluding like special bosses. Um, there is like a kind of terminator type enemy that gets introduced part way through the game but it's it's. Another Necromorph. It's just bigger and it regenerates that's about it. So you're right like when you go into those rooms and you're like oh I got to take a battery and put it in the battery slot when I pick up the battery stuff's going to pop out of the walls you you start to see the. The puppet strings well before the game is over so I do think there's a point like I don't know like if a 13 hour game by like hour eight I was like they don't have anything new to throw at me I know exactly how this is gonna go. And there's a particularly like the last couple chapters of the game are really really samey. Ah you you can predict exactly how all the combat's going to go because they just they don't have anything new to show you by that point in the game. So. 35:38.88 Dave I'm with you. It definitely did kind of like I was still kind of like okay I want to see the conclusion of the story. So I don't want to say the game like totally wore out its welcome, but there were a couple times when I was like man this is I can't believe there's more of them. 35:57.11 Chris Ah, yeah, you know it's ah we brought up a resident evil 4 remake earlier and I hate to do it again. But I'm going to ah I I don't know how that one is able to do the loop so well throughout the whole game. 36:16.57 Chris Um, and this one dead space does get a little tired. Um I I don't I don't know if it's dead space just being kind of like like just samey locations being on like 1 spaceship generally or or what but um. 36:30.50 Dave Yeah. 36:35.99 Chris Yeah, it's a ah more variety definitely might have helped it. 36:40.88 Dave Yeah, yeah, I was thinking about this and I think I was talking about this with um with Adam Bucceri 1 of our our mutual friends around the Discord servers. Um and we were talking about how in resident evil 4, the ganados have so much variety to them. Um, even early in the game. You'll meet several different types. They kind of act unpredictably whereas the necromorphs as far as like they look really cool and scary and and disgusting but they all acted. They all just run straight at you. There's no. 37:15.80 Chris Right? right. 37:17.13 Dave Real strategy to fighting them. So I think that contributes to like we're we're here talking about like was this game scary. This is why this game wasn't that scary to me because I'm going through a hallway I see a big vent and I'm like well something's going to pop out of that. Something's popped out of like 10 of the last fifteen vents I passed so I really get used to how they introduce those and how they're supposed to jump out and be scary and then once they're there I maybe I get swarmed by them and I get killed. But it's not because like they're doing something I didn't predict. It's just because there's 10 of them and sometimes it's too much. So I think that really plays into why this game starts to feel like it's too long at some point and by the end of it I was. Not the least bit afraid of what might be coming because I already was like they're not going to introduce a new enemy in our 13 they would have introduced it already. 38:19.19 Chris Yeah, exactly exactly I will ah I will say this though something that I weirdly discovered. 38:23.32 Dave You know. 38:27.95 Chris So when when when I end up getting swarmed by enemies in in like horror games or action games or whatever I end up doing a thing where I try to loop them around the big room. Um, so I can get my bearings. Maybe you know turn around really quick. Get a couple of good shots off. Generally in games. They they kind of just stick behind you but I did notice something in this where if you have more than one necromorph. Um, they won't just always chase behind you. They'll actually move differently. 39:01.43 Dave Ah. 39:01.93 Chris Which I thought was pretty pretty interesting like they'll they'll be like oh well. Um, this guy's going to like move up the middle of the room. All of a sudden or or this little tentacle guy is just not going to really move it all and then you'll just run right into him ah looping back around. But. 39:16.85 Dave Fuck Those little tentacle guys God D I hit those are so annoying. Yeah. 39:21.94 Chris I I Yeah, the little tentacle guys and the little raw chickens I hated so much. Ah. 39:30.74 Dave Yeah, um, so we talked a little bit about the neckramorphs. They look really scary. They look really gross I like the design of them. Um, the thing that I think I want to give this game credit for because like the the jump scares and stuff. 39:48.12 Dave I can't think of a single one that really got me in a satisfying way. It's just kind of like oh a loud noise and then I'm kind of like startled for a second but you know if if someone walks in my room and smacks my desk when I'm not looking I'll get scared by that too. It doesn't mean it's a good scare. So. The thing that I want to give this game credit for is I think that the sound design is really creepy and so like the tension and kind of so the tension that I felt when I'm walking through the space station I want to attribute partly to. Um, the lack of ammo which we'll talk about in a bit. There's a little bit of tension knowing like oh I don't have much ammo left if a bunch of stuff pops out. It's going to be a whole thing but I think a lot of it goes into the sound design as you're wandering through the ship and hearing everything that you hear. It is really really well done I think this is the best part of its like horror vibes the sound. 40:52.65 Chris Oh yeah, definitely um I Really dug the sound in this the ah um, you know between ah the monster songs the weird whispers you'd hear throughout the ah the classic horror kind of like soundtrack with the Violin strings and they ah. 41:09.89 Chris You know their own kind of like jump chord kind of things that would happen eventually. Um, you know like ah you you walk into one of those big rooms. Yeah, you'd get the usual. Oh. The room is quarantine. There's anomalies about but then you get and like the cool music. Ah, which which you know I dig I Dig I Love it. 41:34.15 Dave Yeah, yeah, the um, the combat music like it's not melodious music I think that's word melodious. It's It's not catchy hooky music. But it's like intense pounding stuff in the background which is which is cool. You know. Horror game intense combat which we'll talk about in a bit but the combat does get intense. Um the the music reflects that for sure I'm glad you mentioned the whispers that you hear um the other thing that you hear because it's It's often a very quiet game until it's not quiet. Suddenly right. But when it is Quiet. You're just walking around and you hear like the groan of metal as you're walking through and like the ship's kind of in a bad shape so you might hear things break like you hear like sparking wires and stuff like that. Um, it's all all really good like environmental sound. 42:32.80 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely um I think ah they really nailed it with this one really gives it that just classic bee horror movie vibe just ah, you know, um, while it might not be as scary or the scariness. Ah. You know, wears out it to welcome. You know, 13 hours in the music. Um I don't know I love just love it. The whispers all of that stuff. Um I think the the whispers also help remind me of ah my comparison to the movie event horizon. 43:05.50 Dave Yeah, yeah, the um, the movie event Horizon came across my mind like real early in the game and I never watched that movie because I don't like horror movies that much. But. 43:05.62 Chris And he gives it that haunted spaceship feel even though it's not technically haunted. 43:21.61 Dave I did read the Wikipedia page several times because I think the the idea of that movie is really fucking cool and so like this this game did remind me of um of what I had read there I'm probably never going to watch the movie because from what I read. It's intensely brutal and fucked up. but ah yeah but yeah it did remind me of that. 43:45.34 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely and a event Horizon has that like the similar be horror movie vibes that I've been talking about So it's it's It's pretty perfect for that. 43:57.40 Dave Yeah, okay, get into gameplay here. So the gameplay and dead space is a third person shooter over the shoulder camera. It's that resident evil for the last of us third person. Cinematic action game camera that we have now I guess this was one of the early adopters of it back in the day though. So the gameplay your third person shooting. It's most famous for this dismemberment system. The cool thing about the combat here is that even though it's a third person shooter. Just shooting the enemies a whole bunch of times is rarely the best way to deal with them because it will use more ammo and ammo is scarce in this game so using the dismemberment system is the way to go about it so you will shoot enemies usually with the necromorphs because again like. 80% of the things you're going to fight are the regular necromorphs. We didn't really talk about what they look like they're humanoid because they used to be the crew members but their limbs are really long, kind of spidery really thin and gangly and this is perfect for. The main loop of the game which is to shoot the limbs off using your main weapon which is called the plasma cutter so you line up the plasma cutter with their limbs as they kind of run toward you or crawl toward you depending on what's going on. Um. 45:29.91 Dave You can press your alt fire button to alternate between horizontal and vertical for the plasma cutter and then you pop pop shoot the limbs off if you shoot off their legs. They fall down if you shoot off their arms. They can't um you know swing their stabby appendages at you anymore. And that is ah the way to go about it. So How did you feel about this main kind of ah first part of the combat here which is as they write in blood on the walls cut off their limbs. 46:02.83 Chris I let let me talk about that for a second no who ever scrawled Cro cut it cut off their limbs in their own blood on the wall that that that is just absolutely ridiculous I love it. Um. 46:05.34 Dave Yeah, yeah. 46:13.94 Dave Yeah, call call me crazy. But like if I'm if I'm ever bleeding that much I don't think I'm going to have the wherewithal to write out a full sentence on the wall in my own blood. 46:26.37 Chris Yeah, exactly I can barely function with a basic cold. Ah let ah let alone bleeding out. But yeah, yeah, exactly. But ah, but yeah, the ah um so like ah. 46:32.20 Dave Ah, could barely function with all the blood in my body. 46:41.97 Chris I guess I'm of 2 worlds on on this combat. Um, if I think about it too much. It's it's kind of ah, ridiculous and very video game me but but. 46:51.53 Dave Oh yeah. 46:55.89 Chris Um, it is very satisfying, especially taking out the legs of like the ah bigger main necromorphs getting them done on the ground crawling to where they're a lot more manageable, especially in a room filled with you know I don't know like 5 of those guys 3 tentacle guys and. 47:05.80 Dave Yeah. 47:15.39 Chris Um, you know what one of those like Poisony guys. Um, it is ah I'd say it is a ah, a pretty pretty satisfying loop in general um not quite as good as like ah res Evil fours. Ah. Ah, combat loop for me. But I mean I mean who who can compare really to that perfection. Ah, but ah. 47:35.20 Dave Yeah, yeah. 47:42.40 Dave Yeah I'm I'm with you on that I think it's mainly because once you get an enemy down or disabled in dead space. The only real move is to stomp on them repeatedly until they explode whereas you know Leon's doing suplexes and. Spinning jump kicks and shit on the enemies in Ari 4 and isaac just can't compare. 48:05.71 Chris Yeah I will I will say this though something that I did find satisfying it. It didn't work so much in rooms with multiple enemies because they would often get up in front of me but the the punch with the gun like I took out. 48:19.94 Dave Oh yeah. 48:24.30 Chris So many necromore without needing to use any ammo just by punching them over and over and over again for about a minute and and it worked it worked. 48:33.29 Dave I don't I don't think I ever got to the point where I was malaying them that much. You do have a melee attack with your gun but it is useful like because like I said the enemies they get it right up in your face. If you're not able to shoot out the legs before they get to you. You can hit them with a melee to like back them up a little bit so that you can buy yourself some more space. Um, so it is useful for that for sure. Um, where do you mention like the other half of this loop is when the enemies are down. You can either like precisely line up headshots or save your ammo and do these brutal footstomps. Um, the footstomps are cool. They're visceral um isaac like screams and curses when he's doing them, especially like as the game goes on. It gets more and more gruff. By the end. He's he's had it with with the stomping. Um I had a hard time predicting how many stomps it would take to kill a particular enemy so like sometimes I'd shoot them down. They'd be down on the ground 1 stomp would take them out. Sometimes 2 sometimes it would be like 5 though and I really couldn't predict it I took a lot of like seemingly unnecessary damage because of that did that happen to you at all. 49:57.63 Chris Um, occasionally. Um I think most of the time I did generally take them out with either the ah you know the Melee punching with the gun or um, just shooting them enough times to where they were no longer moving. And then I you know do the typical one stomp to get the ah whatever The ah delicious reward was from that Monster. Um, but yeah there there were definitely some ah panic stomps while they were up and attacking me. Ah, and yeah that that. 50:20.30 Dave I Can just. 50:26.61 Dave Oh oh yeah. 50:33.93 Chris Generally took a while but I don't know me personally I loved ah the stop mechanic. It was very ah ah, gourly satisfying I guess. 50:42.52 Dave Oh yeah, there's explosions of blood and and viscerran shit when you're stomping isaacs yelling at him. It is it is good, especially when it you know works the way I feel like it should like there're just a couple too many times where it was like man how many stomps is this thing going to take. Ah I think 1 other funny thing is if you kill an enemy without stomping them. You can still run over and stomp on their corpse to get like an ammo drop or something like that. So there was like a real psychopath gamer behavior of mine where maybe I would see a dead body. That I didn't stomp on. Maybe it was already. There. Maybe it was like a dead Crewman's body or something and I'd run over and stomp on it like please give me some more plasma cutter ammo I'm out. 51:32.63 Chris Oh absolutely I did the exact same thing I was punching I was stomping. In fact, I had 1 one good moment. Um that that I loved that I ah. I was able to ah capture footage of where so like ah there there would be a when when when you get to the medical unit. Um, there's like a lot of like dead people strapped into like beds medical beds and ah, you'd you'd punch them and they they they wouldn't really move or. 52:04.55 Chris You know? Um, Ah, you know, break up into chunky bits or anything but I had one that was in some straps that I did one punch and he like flew across the room. And like these gory bits and it was just like whoa that that that is my favorite moment of this game Period. Ah. 52:27.62 Dave Ah, they need some ah need some stronger duct tape to hold that body together I Guess um we we kind of talked before about how like this this combat system and I think it's a good basis for our combat system I think it's really good. 52:29.60 Chris Yeah, seriously. 52:43.57 Dave Um, but I do think that it gets old about halfway or 2 thirds of the way through the game. Um, it was never like not saying it was not fun to do all this stuff but the encounters became incredibly predictable and it really felt like they ran out of ideas. So. 53:02.61 Dave The reason that this didn't downgrade to just being like I'm sick of this is because there's not enough ammo for the guns that you want to use So I Do think that it's programmed in that like if you're favoring the Plasma Cutter. It will stop giving you Plasma Cutter ammo for a while to force you to use the other guns in your arsenal and this is the thing that I think saved the combat from becoming like gradingly boring because if I could just use the plasma cutter the whole game I would have because it's so Cool. It's one of my favorite video game weapons Now. It's like gravity gun levels of of awesome I think um, but they do make you mix it Up. So the other weapons Luckily I think are really fun like pretty much across the board. Interesting. Different use cases for different weapons. Um, they will force you to get familiar with weapons that you're not familiar with. So I think that this again is it's cool how they force you to mix it up and it it really saves the whole thing I think. 54:17.64 Chris Yeah I think ah that was generally a pretty good idea I agree with that. Absolutely like ah you know most games most of us we end up favoring you know 1 or 2 weapons at most. Ah, to play through the entire game and making me literally ah being so low on ammo that I've had to use every gun and then sometimes just punching people ah was was was a really good idea to get that. Ah. You know that variety throughout the whole game with the ah the weapons. 54:51.47 Dave And there is like another layer of strategy that I I kind of like intuited but didn't fully understand until I watched a couple of videos after I was done and that's that in the remake. There's this mechanic with the enemies where their skin will peel off. As you shoot them. I mean you'll you'll see this with the Plasma Cutter. You'll shoot a necromorph in the leg and you'll see the skin fly off and then you can shoot the exposed like bone or something I don't know and you'll you'll cut the leg easier. Um. 55:28.29 Dave But different weapons have different properties as far as that goes some weapons are really great for peeling skin and some weapons are really good for cutting. Um, but you can't cut until you've peeled So That's why it takes a couple of Plasma cutter shots to like peel peel and then it Cuts. Um. And there's a couple other weapons that don't do a whole lot of damage but they're really great at peeling and so if I understood this I could have like been more efficient with my ammo where it's like there's ah, a shotgun analog gun in this game called the Force Gun. It doesn't do a lot of damage but what it will do is it will peel all the skin off in one shot and it will push them back which is super helpful and then one shot with the plasma cutter instead of 3 or 4 will cut the limb and then you can go from there. Um I Wish I understood this when I was playing the game doesn't explain it to you but it it is shown visually I Guess if you're paying attention to the Enemies. You'll be like holy shit that dude's got no more skin would have been nice to know. But I think that there is a little bit of like mechanical complexity. There. Ah. Where you could get really really Creative. It would be super useful on hard difficulties. 56:43.70 Chris Oh yeah, definitely ah that that's actually something I I I don't think I really noticed on my playthrough. Ah definitely ah, will keep that in mind for any ah future replays that is very interesting. 56:48.70 Dave Yeah, me either. 56:59.85 Dave Um, did you have a favorite of the other weapons that you get. 57:04.89 Chris Um, so I actually um, you know aside from the Plasma cutter I agree with you on that one that that gun is a very cool. Um, but I think my favorite is actually the ripper. Um. 57:16.30 Dave Oh yeah. 57:19.25 Chris Just throwing that saw Blade out and being able to basically stunlock the enemies until they're dead with was very satisfying and then um oh that was that one gun I Forget what it's called like it has like the ah. 57:37.21 Chris Like the ah the ridicule is like kind of like I think it's like the longest line. Um, which was perfect when you had it horizontal for for getting rid of the ah tentacles. Um, yeah, right right? Yeah, yeah, that that that was. 57:47.52 Dave Oh the line gun. It's like a plasma cutter but bigger. Basically yeah, yeah, the line gun. 57:56.68 Chris Perfect in those situations especially when you got those? Ah oh would it with that dude in the wall who would spit out freaking tentacle guys. Yeah, um, but yeah, overall probably the river. 58:14.36 Dave Yeah, um, it's interesting that I think the 1 traditional weapon that you get in this game you pick up a carbine. It's by far the worst gun in my opinion all of your engineering tools like the plasma cutter the ripper like you said. Um, the force gun which just does these kinetic blasts. Those are all in my opinion much much better. Um I have heard a lot of people say that they hate the flamethrower in dead space and I do not understand I loved the flamethrower. 58:48.35 Chris Oh ah, the flamethrower was absolutely essential against those little raw chickens. Um, yeah. 58:54.60 Dave Yep, because they swarm you and they're all over the place. So just a sweep with the flamethrower takes them out. Um, all of your weapons have alt fires as well by pressing I Forget the button I should have written it down. It's probably r one. 58:58.26 Chris Absolutely. 59:11.20 Dave To use an alt fire. Um the Plasma Cutters alt fire just rotates like what alignment the the 3 plasma beams are but the other guns all have special things so the ripper will shoot the saw Blade out instead of just holding it out in front. I mean kind of stunlocking enemies. It will shoot them out which is helpful again for those little tentacle baby assholes those are babies by the way I don't know if you notice those are babies with tentacles. Um, the yeah they. 59:44.21 Chris Ah, worst babies ever. 59:48.28 Dave Yeah, they suck. They're the worst. Um the let's see some other the flamethrower will just shoot like a shoot a bomb Basically which is real helpful for those assholes that are stuck in the walls that you just talked about there. Um, the line gun will set up like pylons that will hurt enemies if they run through it. I Never did that because I was always kind of in panic mode in combat I wasn't um I didn't have the foresight to set up traps ahead of time. 01:00:14.38 Chris I Actually use that against those tentacle guys in the wall and when they would shoot out their tentacles. They would just hit it and then eventually die. So I didn't have to really do anything. It was really nice. 01:00:18.82 Dave Nice. 01:00:26.98 Dave Hell yeah work smart or not harder. Awesome! Um, yeah, So as is the case in RE four as we've praised so much I do want to give dead space. Its props for having a ton of weapons that are all viable. Um, I said the carbine kind of sucks. But I used it a lot because a lot of times that was what I had ammo for so you're kind of forced to use everything I don't know if it works like how you only pick up ammo for the weapons you have with you. Or if use can still pick up because you have like a storage box I Wonder if you leave a gun in the storage box if you'll still pick up ammo for it. But I wanted to try everything So I took everything with me. 01:01:14.74 Chris Yeah, same I'm I'm really not sure how the item drops work like I know I've there. There were moments where I had to reload a bunch of times because I kept dying to something and. And would see like the ah ah the same item drops and they like they would seemingly be randomize like sometimes it would be oh here's some health here's an ammo for this here's an ammo for that Here's some money like like it didn't seem very consistent. 01:01:34.20 Dave Sometimes. 01:01:45.84 Dave Yeah I think that it is dynamic based on how much ammo for each weapon you have how much health you have basically what situation are you in and it will give you something to mix things up. Ah so it it is. Like I think it's an elegant way to force you to use all your weapons I never totally ran out of ammo in like a way that prevented me from proceeding through the game or making progress you know, but there were a lot of hairy situations where it was like. I'm out of ammo for 3 of the 4 guns I have the last one I have like 10 shots left. Um, let's make this work. Luckily you have a couple of powers that you can use 1 of them being kinesis which lets you pick up stuff and throw them. And a lot of the arenas are littered with explosive canisters like fire extinguishers or something like that pipes etc that you can pick up and throw and do damage that way so like even if you totally run out of ammo. You can still use that stuff. 01:02:54.98 Chris Yeah, you know, um, a very cool idea but a um, ah mechanic that I actually never really used if I can admit that just being in my typical panic mode. 01:03:02.24 Dave Yeah. 01:03:09.57 Chris Where I need to just ah, throw off 1000000 shots from whatever gun. Um I don't know like um, my my brain doesn't work with ah okay I got to press this button hold that down click this and you know all that kind of stuff so I never really used it outside of combat. 01:03:27.71 Dave Yeah, um I think that this is yeah I think this is the pro move to like to use this stuff because um, those explosive canisters are really powerful. You can take out an entire group of enemies with them. Um. 01:03:29.32 Chris Or in combat rather. 01:03:45.44 Dave If you pick up a pipe and like pin a necromorph against the wall. It's a one hit kill I Just always forgot to do it and I would I would literally be like sometimes tiptoeing around the explosive things because I know they explode I don't want to be around them like. 01:03:50.70 Chris Yeah. 01:04:02.11 Dave In the crossfire and and die because one of them blows up but like it was really hard for me to make that mental connection for a lot of the game like hey idiot pick that up and throw it. It will make your life a lot easier. Um, it wasn't until like the last third of the game where I was like consistently like okay. Pick up and throw the explosive thing save your ammo Dave you know. 01:04:27.24 Chris Yeah, exactly. Ah, ah I guess I'll ah any any future replay I'll have to be sure to do more of that. 01:04:34.67 Dave Yeah, the other thing to be sure to do if you didn't already is to use your other power which is called stasis which you shoot out like a ball and whatever it hits it will so it will create like a slow time field around that. If you hit an enemy. It will slow down that enemy and any other enemy that runs up close will also get slowed down. This was another thing that like they give it to you within the first hour or 2 of the game and then for like 3 or four more hours I never used it. Until I suddenly was like oh this is actually incredibly powerful and then it became a regular part of my my combat how but did you use this. 01:05:20.18 Chris Ah, similar to Kinesis Not really I think ah but most of the time it was on those ah really fast doors that were opening and closing. But yeah again, just like in combat I Just ah and just was not thinking about it. 01:05:36.97 Chris Mostly just thinking about using you know the the weapons or or punching them. You know. 01:05:40.88 Dave It is tough to kind of train yourself to use a new tool that you maybe didn't expect to use or you just not used to. 01:05:53.51 Chris Yeah, exactly I know I hit a couple of enemies throughout the game with like there were those like little stasis ah canisters or whatever that are sometimes littered about um which then was like oh wait. Yeah, that's right I have stasis. 01:06:02.43 Dave Yeah. 01:06:11.11 Chris And then 10 minutes later you know I'd just forget about it. But. 01:06:12.59 Dave That was that was me with kinesis I did make it a point to use stasis a lot especially later in the game you have a big group of enemies together. You can just hit them with stasis. It'll freeze them for like 5 seconds or something and then you can. You can kill some of them or you can run to the other side of the room to buy yourself some time. It became very very helpful. 01:06:36.12 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely and it's ah you know, nice that they ah you know for a game that still even gets a little ah you know tired 13 hours in with the ah the combat loop. Um, it is nice that there are options like that you know using kinesis or stasis. Ignoring them and using weapons punching you know and and you can get you know through really using you know any of it. 01:07:02.51 Dave Yeah, it is cool that you can get through pretty much any of the regular encounters um with no ammo if you use stasis if you use Kinesis to throw stuff. Um, if you're meleing if you're stomping. I Do think that a lot of the game is really doable without shooting the guns very often. But you want to shoot the plasma cutter that shit's Fun. What did you think of the boss fights. 01:07:27.12 Chris Um, hell? yeah oh boy um I I you know I am generally not a ah ah fan of boss fights in general. Um, there's very few that I actually ah legitimately like which I I know is crazy for a lot of people and especially in our post you know, dark souls world where it's all about those gigantic bosses but they were fine. I guess I don't know um like like ah for example, my my rare favorite boss fight in a video game is is probably like ah the various Jack Baker ones from re 7 um, but that's mostly just because I like that dude. 01:08:23.40 Chris Ah, they give them ah an interesting personality but like you know these these are serviceable I Guess for me. 01:08:29.30 Dave Yeah I don't think the boss fights are very good you you said that the the main combat loop of shooting off limbs and stomping is video gamy. Well the bosses are super video gamey. They're often like There's one recurring boss. That's like this eldridge alien terror something that's way too big to seems it feels like it's way too big to like be damaged by anything that you could possibly use. Um. The the couple of boss fights that you do with it are in zero g which is like fine. It's not it's not fun I heard it's way better than the original. The zero g stuff. But yeah I I the bosses all feel super formulaic like. Ah, this thing has there's 3 stations you have to go to where you can line up like the orbital lasers and shoot it and once you shoot it it will break the computer and then you go to the next station and you do the same thing and then you to go to the third station and do the same thing and then you beat it? um. Or there's a boss where it's like you can't hurt this thing you have to lure it into a room and freeze it and that's that's it and it's it's just super video gamy I don't think that they're that good. Yeah I just don't think they're that good. They were more frustrating than fun. 01:09:48.36 Chris Ah, and. 01:10:01.16 Dave And felt very like video game boss fight by the numbers. The spectacle is cool I will say ah the one I talked about that's a giant giant fucking Alien like amorphous thing. The spectacle is cool. It's real big. 01:10:20.18 Chris Yeah I think ah, once again, going back to resin evil I think ah they kind of do the spectacle boss fight a little better where the the boss fight is just extremely easy. They're just gigantic and ah you know, um, you know like ah. Ah, the old lady at the end of Re 7 or or heisenberg from village you know you you just blast them a few times they're gigantic but they go down easy so you get the spectacle. It's no big deal and it's done really quick. 01:10:52.14 Dave Yeah, my my frame of reference for resident. Evil is is really limited but a e 4 lets you skip boss fights by using the rocket launcher if you want to and dead space is like now you're going to go through these these three phases we learned how to make boss fights from Mario and zelda that's kind of how it feels. Um, and it just yeah, it's cool spectacle but I did not enjoy really any of them from a gameplay perspective. So the boss point the boss fights were like the low point of the gameplay for me personally. 01:11:26.38 Chris Yeah I'd I'd say probably about the same that always just became kind of like a loop of all right I'm going to die I don't know a few times I'm going to run around wait. How am I supposed to do this and then eventually figure it out. Whatever the trick is. Um, yeah, not not very good. 01:11:49.26 Dave Yeah, ah 1 last thing about gameplay that I want to give props for we said resources and ammo are really scarce and this game really activates my gamer Gremlin brain of going through all these spaces opening all the containers. Looting everything I can see for every last resource I can find um, it's intensely satisfying and in this game a lot of the containers are on the ground and so the most efficient way to open them is to stop the fuck out of them which is cool think that. 01:12:22.20 Chris Oh Absolutely I being a big fan of the stomp mechanic period man stomping corpses stomping boxes. Ah it was pretty perfect and ah also um, ah, a lot of the ah the containers and lockers. Um. You can't get into when you first see them so you get to back track when you get like higher clearance levels and all of that ah get some more you know goodies for the future. Really really nice. 01:12:50.73 Dave Yeah, agreed there is some degree of backtracking that the main story makes you do but often like you'll go through some dead space shit and then you'll find yourself in a new area of a level. You've already been in and it's like. Okay, to go to the next chapter you have to go to the Tram station. But next to the tram station is these hallways and rooms that were either locked before or there's locked containers in there and so you can go back and kind of clean up some of that stuff and that always feels great. 01:13:26.88 Chris Yeah, and I figure that like if you're dedicated to like doing like the side quests. Um the very few that I did towards the beginning had a lot of back tracking as well. So you got like another reason to go back and then you can check out. You know the new. 01:13:37.14 Dave Yeah, yeah. 01:13:43.48 Chris New access to goodies. That's all right. 01:13:45.89 Dave Yep, engage that game or brain. So before we get into spoilers we will finish up the non-s spoililer part by just giving some brief wrap-up thoughts and answering the question who would you recommend. Dead space too. So Chris who would you recommend dead space to. 01:14:07.22 Chris All right? Um, if you like B horror movies you like aliens you like event Horizon you like stomping on people you like gore you like jump scares. Um, this one is a right up your alley. Um I'd say ah. Probably the most obvious is ah fans of the original. Um I'd say ah this is definitely an improvement over the original and ah yeah, and anybody who you know played it back in the day. Ah, it's worth going back to? Um, you know. Especially with a you know?? Ah, the added things you know a side quest while you know I I didn't do very much of that myself. Um I think ah, some of those are ah pretty Cool. You get more context for different characters. Um. Yeah, it's a I don't know you like action horror right up your alley. 01:15:07.50 Dave Yeah, um I think I would first of all, just recommend this game to fans of third person shooters. Especially if you are fond of resident evil four or the re 2 or 3 remakes from what I've seen from those. Um. I do think that this combat system of cutting off limbs and stomping and stuff like that is fun enough to like give a recommendation to try dead space just based on that because you'll probably think the story is at the very least interesting to follow along even if. As I'm going to talk about in the spoiler section some of the story falls a little bit flat but a lot of it is pretty interesting to follow. But I do think that the the combat is really really good until that point where I said that it kind of got old but like the first section of the game were before that point. Was really fun like consistently It's challenging. It's always making you mix up your weapons and approach things with different strategies. So. There's a recommendation just based on that um I have not heard anybody who played the original dead space say that the remake is worse. Um, it was a pretty consistent opinion like when I was because I I when dead space won the patreon poll I was like oh well I can play the original. It's on game pass. So should I play the original or should I play the remake and it was a pretty unanimous like now just play the remake. it's it's better so 01:16:41.42 Dave Fans of the original if you liked it try out the remake you can trust all of those other people Chris you would agree with that right. 01:16:49.59 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely. Ah, no reason to go back to the original. Maybe maybe maybe watch some video footage online. But yeah, the ah the remake is definitely an improvement. 01:16:59.10 Dave Yeah, it's it's I would say like you could go back to the original if you're if you're one of those people that like places value in playing the original thing and seeing the original thing. But. For me I'm probably only going to play dead space 1 time so I wanted to just play the better version which sounds like the remake is so yeah, um I yeah I think that's it I think that's the people I'd recommend dead space fans of horror games. Of course this is a really. Famous horror game if you haven't played it give it a shot. It's yeah I came out of it thinking that this game is is pretty good. It does a lot of things well and it it just kind of overstays. Its welcome in more ways than 1. 01:17:49.67 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely which is really easy to do I mean I've always thought like ah horror games. You know 4 to 8 hours max is ah the perfect sweet spot. You know you kind of go past that 8 hours and you know things start to get old. Um, and I you know a game like dead space. Um definitely being longer ah kind of hinders it a bit. 01:18:14.15 Dave Yeah I think we talked about this on last week's episode about iron lung which is an hour long so it has no opportunity to overstay its welcome. We talked about that on on that episode. How horror is a a mood that is you just It's really hard to sustain for longer than 10 hours or so by a certain point people are just going to get used to what you're doing. So I think nothing really quite beats the first couple hours in a horror game when you're not fully aware of how everything works yet. Um and anything could happen which is. You know how dead space was too I actually streamed the first couple hours of this game. so I think that so I think that also played into this game not scaring me because when it was introducing all of its newest fresh ideas at me I was talking with people in the chat I was. Um, describing what's going on on the screen as you you know people do when you stream and I think that took a lot of the edge away and then it just didn't have anything new for me after those first couple hours as far as like ways to scare me or anything. So. A little bit unfortunate but hey that's hollywood. So. 01:19:34.27 Chris Yeah, that's right? And yeah, it was streaming. Yeah and definitely makes things ah scary games a lot less scary. 01:19:41.64 Dave Yeah, um, speaking of streaming if they want to find you Chris and your Twitch channel. Can you talk about your Twitch channel talk about what you stream and where people can find you. 01:19:53.39 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely. Um so um, I am ah a vertigo to hell on Twitch. Ah the word 2 is just the number 2 um and ah basically I stream a lot of horror games like a lot of indie horror games. Um, and then I also stream weirdo games ah games that I don't think a lot of people generally stream like ah um, like for example, I've I've recently done road warden I still got to go back to that the weird indie rpg. Um, I've done a lot of like weirdo fmv games ah including a a little remembered one from capcom in the 90 s that was a comedy spy thriller that was ah, not very funny. Ah. 01:20:45.15 Dave Ah. 01:20:45.82 Chris But yeah, yeah, generally horror and weirdo games. Um, but yeah, yeah, the ah ver vertigo to hell on Twitch. Um I also have um. Vod uploads and Youtube shorts of that stuff on Youtube under the exact same screen name. 01:21:05.44 Dave Awesome! Yeah, so anyone who's interested in watching chris stream can go check out Vertigo to hell on Twitch. Um I I don't watch streams often but I do pop into Chris's streams from time to time to to hang out. They're a good time. Um I like your streaming setup the I've never seen anyone else have their game on the tv behind them which is cool I love it. Um, more people should do it. It's a cool little visual look and the the black and white filter and everything. Um, it's a good time and you know. Good, friendly people in the chat. Um I enjoy hanging out with you when you do it so I'll give the recommendation for everyone who's looking for It's especially indie and weird horror game streams to check out Vertigo to hell on Twitch and you'll find a link down in the show notes where you can easily go and um. Hit that follow button. So yeah, um, for tales from the backlog if people want to support this show. Um, if you've enjoyed this episode I would really appreciate if you just helped me spread the word that is the best way to help a young indie podcast spread its wings. 01:21:59.42 Chris Awesome! Thank you. 01:22:17.90 Dave Is to spread the word tell people about it share it in your online spaces. Um, you can also leave a rating and review if you listen to podcasts on Apple Podcasts Spotify or podcast addict that is really helpful as well. If you write a review on Apple Podcasts and I know who you are in any capacity. Um I will retake that. Ah, if you write a review on Apple Podcast or podcast addict where I can see who you are I will dedicate the next treat I give to my dog to you so there you go. Um, you can also join the discord server for this podcast and my other podcast which is called a top three podcast. We have a awesome discord community full of people who want to talk video games talk about movies all kinds of other stuff. We would love to have you come join the community. There's an invite link down in the show notes. And finally if you would like to support monetarily you can do so at patreon.com/real Dave Jackson where you can vote in polls for games to appear on the show just like dead space or um, at higher levels. You will get my bonus retro gaming show. Called tales from the wayi backlog. The October game is zombies 8 my neighbors so you can check out patreon.com/realdavejack for all of that with all of that being said Chris and I are going to take a break. We're going to come back. 01:23:49.71 Dave After that point it is full spoiler time for dead space. Okay you doing good dude. Okay so um, there are 2 main storylines things I want to talk about in the spoiler section. Um I want to talk about what's going on. 01:23:57.50 Chris Yep, all good. 01:24:09.50 Dave Why this happened everything with the marker and then I want to talk about the Nicole is dead thing and then we can talk about the 2 endings I suppose um I don't want to walk through the story chronologically so we can just have like a general chat about. 01:24:26.97 Dave Each of those and of course if there's anything that I don't bring up that you think is cool and worth talking about feel free to bring it up of course all right. 01:24:36.57 Chris Okay, sounds good. 01:24:43.90 Dave Okay, Chris and I are back and it is full spoiler time for dead space and when I say full spoilers. We are not going to go in chronological order. So we're going to spoil the entire fucking thing right now. So if you don't want to get out of if you don't want that you should leave right now. Okay. So you mentioned event horizon ah several times as soon as we started seeing the logs and like text files about psychological symptoms. For what's going on I immediately jumped to event horizon now I don't remember what the cause of that an event horizon was was it some alien artifact in that movie to oh hell. But. 01:25:33.97 Chris Oh it's it's literally hell yeah there there's ah the spaceship has this gateway drive which is used to like jump from 1 place in space to another. But when they activated it for the first time it opened a portal to hell and the ship went there and then came back haunted by hell yeah. 01:25:53.85 Dave Awesome! That's a that's that's a little bit cooler than what's going on in dead space If I'm being honest, Um, but what's actually happened is they discovered an Alien artifact called the marker. It is like a. 01:25:58.76 Chris Yeah, exactly. 01:26:09.60 Dave Ah, monolith type thing that they found and being nearer the marker um causes all of these psychological symptoms and then causes people to transform into necromorphs after repeated exposure or getting like really really close to it. Um, the marker was found on this planet that they were going to excavate and there are like multiple conspiracies surrounding the marker as as you learn about why it's there and um. Who knows that it's there and who knew it was there the whole time. So What did you think about this storyline of like this is the explanation for why they're aliens. Basically. 01:26:58.81 Chris Yeah, it's weird. Um I don't know I know for me I could never ever get over just kind of like the ah the generic sounding marker. Um it it was I don't know always something I couldn't really take. That seriously? um, but yeah, like I don't know I think it does fit in with the ah kind of like be horror movie kind of ah Deal. You got some weird monolith Object. It's creating aliens or Necromorphs. You know you got the ah the weird Ah Cult church mixed up with that whole deal. Yeah. 01:27:40.71 Dave Yeah, the the unitologists that are they you read a little bit about the unitologists and it is just scientology in space. Basically it's. 01:27:52.94 Chris Yeah. 01:27:56.36 Dave Structure of how they describe how it works how you pay money to advance within the church and the belief that you know they believe that they will ascend to you know a higher form of living which is being the necromorphs. Um, it's like. 1 to 1 scientology. 01:28:20.31 Chris Yeah, absolutely and so like like for me personally I I didn't really find ah the church of unitology that's scary or creepy to me. Um for me. I Just kept being reminded of ah the habbologists from fallout to ah which was a earlier also spoof on scientology. Um, you know more comedy based but I don't know. 01:28:52.83 Chris Ah, doing kind of like a horror scientology I don't know I think real life science that that whole deal is a lot scarier than the ah any any fictional version. 01:29:05.58 Dave Yeah, yeah, um I would I would tend to agree. It's the 1 thing I will give it though in here is that the the scientologists and there's the ship is like full of unitologists. Unitologist, um, and it seems like more widespread than scientology is in our real world like the ship is full of them. Isaac's parents were unitologists. Ah, the 1 thing that I think is cool I retake that. 1 thing that I think is really cool is that the unitologists thought that the us government was trying to hide the marker. Um, they were because they found it on the planet they were mining. They brought it up to the ship. Um, they thought there is this big conspiracy about that the us or the earth government that they call it. Um, is involved in trying to cover up this whole thing that's part one of their conspiracy but they were right about that. The earth government was trying to cover up this whole thing. That's why isaac and Kendra and the rest of the the kelian were there to try and. Cover this up. 01:30:22.60 Chris Yeah, you know yeah that that is true and ah, kind of kind of reminds me a lot. Ah not even talking about our event horizon this time but ah, um, Alien or aliens. 01:30:37.50 Chris With a wayylan yutani that corporation doing their own coverups secret conspiracies trying to get their own. Ah you know the Alien for themselves for whatever you know they wanted to do with it all that kind of stuff. 01:30:51.38 Dave I haven't seen Alien in such a long time that yeah I don't remember but I mean I the reason I think that this is cool is because like once you read just the slightest bit about. Unitology in here. You're going to be like oh that's scientology. They're full of shit because scientology is full of shit. But then they present this thing where they're like we believe the government is hiding this from us and they're right about that. You just dismiss it out of hand because. Why would they be right about anything their scientology so that's. 01:31:28.31 Chris Yeah, that that is true that that is a cool little twist on it. 01:31:33.70 Dave Um, the thing that they were wrong about though is the whole death and rebirth in a higher plane of being or whatever the fuck they call it high in dead space. What they are is they're turning into aliens and you know there's There's no happy ending after that. So they they had me a little bit in the first half but they were the most wrong about the most important thing so you know. 01:32:02.70 Chris Yeah, yeah I would totally completely pass on getting turned into a necromorph. 01:32:11.70 Dave Yeah, hard pass for sure. Um, although you still get to keep your clothes. There's some of the neckramors were funny that they were still. They still got to wear like their shin guards so that you can't shoot their legs out. 01:32:25.99 Chris See Ah, there's always a silver lining. 01:32:28.82 Dave Yeah, um, but they they eventually explain what I think is cool. Another kind of like fun twist on this story is that this marker that's on the planet was not originally there. It was originally on earth they brought it to this planet to take it off of earth and hide it and then the issue where I found it and now the earth government led by Kendra who's your we're not. She's not the leader. She's just the representative of the earth government on the kel in with you. Um, she's been kind of helping you along your your quest to the whole game but her real purpose is to get this marker under control and hide it and cover it all up again which is just classic earth government. 01:33:21.84 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely and um I know I found myself personally? Ah, ah, ah, getting into the ah the red herring of the ah the other dude that you're working with um. Being like oh I'm not I'm not trust in this guy. This guy is up to some conspiracy stuff. But yeah, then it ends up being you know Kendra really. 01:33:46.52 Dave It was kind of um I'm going to do one of those guy who's only seen the boss baby comparing everything else to the boss baby things here, but it reminds me of Barry versus wescar and resident evil the first one where. If you play his jill they set up Barry as the one you can't trust when it's actually wesker the whole time kind of similar here where Kendra seems really helpful but the other guy it's one of those things where he's like um, yeah, isaac. Everything's fucked. Um I need you to go repair the gravity field. I'm going to hang out in the comms tower I'm just going to be chilling in this office while you go do all this stuff. Yeah, could you go fix the satellites that be great. 01:34:34.57 Chris Yeah, ah, just an entire game of ah yeah, isaac we're going to need you to do this and risk your life over and over and over again for 13 hours ah 01:34:40.28 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, actually I made a mistake I misspoke the marker on the ishamura is a duplicate of the real marker that was on the Earth. So. Again, the unitologists were were right about that the the earth government's covering it up. This was an experiment to make a new marker and see how it goes basically so we see how it goes um and Kendra is there to do the cleanup I suppose. 01:35:13.95 Chris Oh yeah, yeah I kind of forgot. Yeah, the the whole duplicate thing. Oh yeah, all all of that is just pretty wild. 01:35:21.12 Dave Yeah, yeah, right? it's it's it's kind of fun following the story of the marker and um, what's actually going on I Mean. An Alien artifact that causes people to go crazy and turn into aliens is fun I like that it's ah it's just a fun little concept. 01:35:44.10 Chris Yeah, it's always a good time. Always a good time and then you get to you get to stop bottom which is ah even a better time. 01:35:48.99 Dave Yeah, yeah, um I will say the last level when you leave the ishiura to like take the marker back down to the surface of the planet that last level sucks. It is an entire level. An entire hour Hou Hour Hou hour and a half of the markers on a conveyor belt. Oh no,, There's a bridge blocking it. Go raise the bridge and fight a bunch of dudes and then it moves to the next room. Oh no, the markers stuck on something else. Please get rid of that and fight a bunch of dudes for like an hour in its. Yeah, it sucks. 01:36:27.30 Chris Yep, agree there Not a big fan of that at all. 01:36:29.36 Dave It was cool to get off the ship. It was cool to see something other than the inside of the ship. But what you're doing was so clearly out of ideas that I yeah didn't like it. 01:36:42.31 Chris Yeah I buy I would have taken a couple more zero g segments outside of the ship than that. Honestly. 01:36:51.33 Dave Yeah, yeah for sure. Oh there's another thing that I heard was really shitty in the original that got fixed was um, the 0 g segment where you're doing like the asteroid defense. 01:37:04.71 Chris Yeah, um, that is ah ah, definitely improved I don't like like it's been so long I don't remember a ton of details from from the original segment of that. But ah I think ah. 01:37:20.48 Chris Just in general like the 0 G segments were were pretty pretty Improved. You know they're not perfect or anything but um I don't know it.. It's always kind of fun floating around you know setting that ah jet pack or whatever the the boots off. Um, reminded me a lot of ah ah some of those segments from Prey actually. 01:37:46.32 Dave Yeah, um I think they're better in dead space than they were in prey some like fighting in 0 g and pray was terrible I thought it also gave me motion sickness so that doesn't help but in dead space they were. 01:37:53.46 Chris Yeah. 01:38:01.30 Dave Fight I didn't like the boss fights that were in zero G but the regular fighting was was kind of fun. 01:38:07.45 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely and um, you know you you get a couple necromor couple tentacle dudes and you can just you know, kind of zip on by really a loop you know loop around them in in zero G I I thought those are pretty fun. 01:38:22.62 Dave Yeah, so the other thing probably the more famous part of the story in dead space is that you're on the hunt to find Nicole who is isaacs girlfriend wife partner. Whatever um. 01:38:39.31 Dave And Nicole has been dead the entire time and that is a a revelation. There's a big scene at the end where um Kendra tells you about what's been going on first though, all the chapters have names and. 01:38:58.72 Dave There's like a little easter egg I guess that the chapter names the first letter in every name of the chapters spell out Nicole is dead. So did you notice this when you were playing. Yeah. 01:39:11.32 Chris I did not ah this is actually all new to me I never had this spoiled and yeah, just ah, seeing it here is is pretty wild and kind of fun. 01:39:22.66 Dave Yeah I mean honestly I don't know how anyone would notice that unless they write down all the chapter names or they look at a guide and then they spend too long looking at the list of chapter names like it. It's so like. What's the word I'm trying to look for it like it's to the point where like I don't think anyone's going to figure this out on their own if you did if you're listening and you did that's cool. You are much more observant than the 2 of us. But in my opinion, it's to the point where like it wouldn't be a cool reveal to figure that out. It's just something where everyone's going to see it after the fact and be like huh that's kind of interesting but that's that's all that that adds up to in my opinion. Um, but anyway, Nicole's been dead the whole time. So we said at the beginning isaac gets a distress call from Nicole. Um, this is the thing that I said is just kind of dumb I think the way that they explained this so as you've been going through the game you you see all these um what you now know are hallucinations. You've been talking with Nicole Nicole's been with you. She rode in the spaceship down to the surface of the planet with you but like she doesn't act like a normal person. She teleports from place to place. Um. 01:40:54.94 Dave She kind of leads you along and she doesn't run up and give you a hug when she sees you like it's your romantic partner or something like she acts super detached and all of that and it turns out it's because she's not real and the reason for this that they gave is that there's. An extra minute on the video and isaac just didn't watch it so like the first half is the distress call and then the second half is Nicole killing herself but isaac just stopped it after the distress call part and that is an explanation that I'm just like I don't buy that for one second. 01:41:30.47 Chris No, absolutely not like how who is not watching the whole video like come on. Yeah. 01:41:31.38 Dave At all. 01:41:36.43 Dave Yeah, from their from their wife or their girlfriend or whatever like you think I'm not going to watch though I'm just going to stop after like the part where she's like we're in danger and then I'm like yeah I don't need any more information I see there's another minute here but I've seen what I need to see. You know. 01:41:55.58 Chris Yeah, at least like like like in the ah the beginning of ah like Resin evil 7 when Mia sends Ethan ah that little footage you know the hey baby bye baby kind of oh I love you kind of thing and then there's like a second one but that one doesn't get sense. 01:42:03.43 Dave And again. 01:42:13.57 Chris Like it's stop by Lucas or whoever ah were you know she's like stay away. Um, that's a better explanation than ah I I'm done with you Nicole. Ah yeah. 01:42:16.62 Dave Ah. 01:42:25.68 Dave Again I've seen what I need to see I don't need to watch this entire video. It's like this. So This was spoiled for me beforehand. I did it to myself I listened to play a long podcast and their episode about it. So I knew that she was dead but I like I was doing yard work or something I wasn't like paying attention to how you find out that she's dead and I just like I think The. Storyline of Isaac hallucinating and all of that is cool and you get like really cool visual glitching and um the sounds of the whispers and people like whispering to isaac and saying stuff. That's all awesome. But then the explanation being that. Isaac Just willfully didn't watch the whole video is really fucking stupid I think. 01:43:23.28 Chris Yeah, it's so stupid but it also ah yeah, the whole Nick Hole thing actually again ah reminds me of a ven horizon. Ah I hate to do it again. But. 01:43:30.44 Dave Okay. 01:43:35.95 Chris Like like there is a scene where there's ah like a character. She's you know, ah back on Earth She's like a mother and you know and all that she has like a kid who's ah sort of kind of like injured and then all of a sudden. She thinks her kid is on the ship somehow. Because you know hell is haunting the ship but she really starts to believe this kid is on the ship and is chasing him around until you know she ends up falling and injuring herself. Really bad like no Nope no your your kid did not fly up to space to get on the spaceship like. 01:44:11.91 Chris Yeah, Nicole isn't really there. Dude. 01:44:14.50 Dave Yeah, yeah, um, which I think that it's this is revealed in like a big dramatic conversation with Kendra at the end after you fight the final notes. But. Before you fight the final boss I think so no, it's after because it's right, it's after because it's right before you escape. Um, she has this big conversation explaining what's going on but like anyone who's. 01:44:33.17 Chris No yeah, so after right right. 01:44:47.63 Dave Paying it like did this surprise you the first time when you played the original the knowledge that she's dead. 01:44:54.12 Chris Oh I'd say probably um but I was also a lot younger back in 2008 not not as ah, knowledgeable on the horror ah stuff and tropes and stupid tricks. 01:45:03.38 Dave That's we all were yeah yeah, that's fair I was going to say I think that this was laid out pretty well like pretty obviously. I guess if you're not looking for it then maybe but the fact that you know when you're leaving the planet Nicole literally teleports from the room where you were to inside the spaceship. Um, you turn your head. She's not there and when you turn back she's sitting next to you and so. Should be a little hint and the way she acts and all of the other obvious hallucinations should kind of clue you in I think a little but you're right in 2008 I was a lot less media savvy than I am right now and also as I've noted on the show many times. Um. A twist will normally catch me by surprise because I'm normally not putting those puzzle pieces together I guess I just had the benefit of already knowing in order to see the foreshadowing this time. 01:46:06.66 Chris Yeah, and I know for me personally especially when I'm watching movies. It also happens with games like I I end up getting into this mode where I'm I try to be more focused but I end up missing. So much because I'm I'm I'm trying to be focused on something and then all this other so you know and like people think I'm crazy for it but like it's kind of like why I got to watch a movies multiple times to really fully get it. 01:46:27.12 Dave Ah. 01:46:39.96 Dave Yeah I think that like doing games for the podcast helps me with that because I'm always taking notes. So like those little those details that maybe seemed weird I'm more likely to write them down now than like. If I'm playing something that's not for the podcast or you know five years ago I would play something and maybe I wouldn't note down that hey why doesn't Nicole give isaac a hug. Maybe I wouldn't make note of that so something like that you know. Um, but yeah, it's it's it's an it's a weird twist that I think works in some ways but like the biggest reveal is really dumb I think um, the other part of that though is that there's another doctor. On this ship that you've been talking with and the marker has been forcing her to think that isaac is her dead boyfriend who was on the ship as well. Which I think that's cool like hey this is happening to other people like the exact same thing is happening to other people so that's kind of cool. 01:47:57.22 Chris Yeah, definitely there. There's actually a couple of interesting doctors on that ship I know there was that one a dude doctor who is like all all about a unitology and ah like like ah. I can't remember if it was actually in one of the side quests where I eventually got um like one of those holograms of the dot like like he was like ah experimenting on people working on the ishamura and. I know there was that one dude at least that he I don't know if it was his first time making a necromorph for or what was like a oh yeah, yeah, exactly the regeneratator guy. Yeah. 01:48:34.97 Dave The one who made the the regenerating 1 01:48:43.79 Dave Yeah, all it seems like maybe not all the doctors I bet the issue more I had more than three doctors. But at least those 3 were up to some ah some nonsense on this ship. Um, so. 01:49:00.90 Dave What did you think of the final boss fight that was um, again cool because there is this giant Alien on the surface of the planet that is um, it's like a hive mind I think it's it's controlling all the necromorphs and So. You're returning the marker to the planet. But you also want to stop the Necromorphs. So um, yeah, you're fighting this giant Alien thing. Did you enjoy that fight. 01:49:32.48 Chris Um, I Well more or less I you know again I think the spectacle is cool. Um, but the ah you know the actual fight I Can you know take or leave really um, but you know you're you're you're doing an action horror game. 01:49:37.91 Dave Yeah. 01:49:49.31 Chris You know, make that shit big. You know it's very cool looking. 01:49:50.72 Dave Yeah, it. It is big and the boss the boss fight basically amounts to it slams its tentacles down and you just run to the side to avoid it and it spits out poison and you just run to the other side to avoid it. And it'll sponsor some ads and you kill them? Um, the cool thing is after you beat it. It will pick you up and hold you upside down so you have an upside down um, kind of action sequence where you have to shoot the eye you get unlimited ammo for this section. Um, it is possible to fail which kind of sucks kind of wish it wasn't possible to fail that. But anyway that was kind of cool. That's the final boss. 01:50:37.26 Chris Hey yeah would be ah would be cool if ah, they could learn a little bit maybe from a you know, resy evil even like a for make like ah that final boss fight not not too difficult in my opinion you know Salazar you know and you're running across the little you know area. 01:50:44.53 Dave Ah, there is. 01:50:54.74 Chris But ah I don't know that is still better to me and. 01:51:00.60 Dave Well they they had the courage in that game to have the final boss turn into this this giant screen filling enemy and then ah you get a rocket launcher which kills it in one hit and it's this big cinematic badass moment. Um. 01:51:14.88 Chris Yeah. 01:51:18.10 Dave Whereas in dead space. You're just kind of dodging these tentacles and shooting the weak spots as they become uncovered. It's it's extremely legend of zelda you know. so so yeah um there are 2 endings which ending did you get. 01:51:25.83 Chris Yeah, exactly. 01:51:36.14 Chris Um, oh I got the ah the regular one. 01:51:39.48 Dave It might be might you actually? yeah now that I think about it the regular one's the only one you can get if you just play it once? yeah, um in this ending. Ah you leave on the ship isaac kind of sits in silence on the ship. He's. 01:51:44.37 Chris Yeah. 01:51:57.30 Dave Extremely fucked up by what he's seen and done which is understandable. Um the distress call from Nicole Plays Again, he turns it off but then he hears the line I wish I could just talk to someone from the video. But. 01:52:02.62 Chris Yep. 01:52:15.39 Dave This time it's not from the video recording it's from inside the room and he looks over and Nicole's dead body is in the seat next to him and then um, this jump scare got me the dead body lunges at you and it cuts to black right? at the end. 01:52:33.58 Chris Yeah, ah this again apologies again. This is a very event Horizon ending. Ah yeah, is that one like like like it ends with like kind of like a jump scare like that where. 01:52:38.27 Dave Have one more for the road. 01:52:49.19 Chris Oh you know we're we're We're off the ship or traveling you know away and then big jump scare. Oh you're not really off the ship. Ah and and and and then the ah the lady wakes up and she's with like the ah ah whatever, recovery crew. You know, found them or whatever. 01:53:06.49 Chris And you know she's just all like like she's kind of gone like insane in panic and all of that really reminds me of that. 01:53:13.54 Dave Man I wrote at the beginning that this movie or this game reminded me of a event Horizon I didn't know it went that deep throughout the whole thing. 01:53:23.43 Chris Yeah, yeah, it it it. It is pretty crazy and there's ah, no aliens in event Horizon. So yeah. 01:53:33.86 Dave Well there we go. We've got one half like he said in the elevator pitch one half alien and one half event horizon um have you watched the other ending before. Okay, um. 01:53:40.90 Chris That's right, perfect. 01:53:46.30 Chris Um I have not. 01:53:50.81 Dave I will describe it to you and for anyone else listening there is another ending that you can get if you play new game plus and then there are these items called marker fragments that are situated around the station. Um, you go collect all of them and then put them in like the captain's. Office. There's like a table with like a a diorama set up or something and you place all of them and then you can get this alternate ending where it starts out the same except Nicole is alive and walking around in the spaceship with isaac as they escape. Um and they're talking to each other. Um. They're talking about where they're going to go and what they're going to do isaac has this very creepy like grin on his face like he doesn't look disheveled like he does in the regular ending he looks deranged now he's got this weird smile and shit him and Nicole are talking and he. Basically says we before we do anything else I have to build a little something first. But I think you're going to like it. He says to her. Um, and then she was in the background and she walks forward up to the pilot seat and she's still very much dead. From what you can see of her face. So I think this means isaac is going to build another marker I think since you left the other one on the planet. 01:55:18.80 Chris Oh that that is interesting I I kind of dig that for like a dark horror kind of ending. 01:55:24.97 Dave Yeah, yeah I like it more than the regular ending which I guess makes sense if they want people to work harder to get this ending this this fits. 01:55:32.90 Chris Oh yeah. 01:55:38.37 Dave Well the the original ending fits but this is cooler I think because it leaves me with a lot more questions. 01:55:45.10 Chris Yeah, absolutely and I I kind of dig that idea like it reminds me of the ah the horror game ah visage. Ah where you can. You know you you can go through the game and then once you're done with all the chapters you can end it. Or you can collect all these pieces for this mask and then you get the quote Good ending. Um, even though I don't think any ending in that game is good. Um, but yeah, yeah, that that is kind of ah a very fun for like a yeah like a replay. Um. 01:56:06.17 Dave Um, yeah. 01:56:19.53 Chris And crazy isaac. That's pretty cool. 01:56:20.60 Dave Yeah, yeah, it's yeah he you should? Ah, you should look up the ending on Youtube it's you know these endings are like a minute long so you should look it up on Youtube and see. See his face. It's it's kind of cool how he's just completely lost it. But in a like happy and content way now instead of mentally broken like the the original ending. Um, and you said you never played dead spacece to. 01:56:52.30 Dave But I I did watch some videos that kind of said that this alternate ending connects a little bit better with dead space to than ah the original one because I and I don't want to get too deep into it because I don't know if. 01:57:01.79 Chris Oh interesting. 01:57:10.42 Dave What I know about dead space too is like a late game spoiler that they reveal about what's going on there but this does connect a little bit better. 01:57:20.10 Chris Oh yeah, that that is pretty cool and I do know ah this did ah yeah, playing through dead space. We make did leave me curious about actually finally getting to dead space to um and ah, well. 01:57:33.33 Dave Ah, yeah, yeah. 01:57:36.60 Chris Knows about 3 I know that does not have its fans but a yeah. 01:57:38.71 Dave Right? from what I hear it's it's I think they I think I if I remember right? they leaned more in an action direction and less of a horror direction and also like you've already played 2 games of this what else. Do they have for you? Um I'm curious if they're going to keep remaking these like I imagine this this game did pretty well I think so I imagine we'll get dead space to remake which will be cool I'll play that for sure. 01:58:12.65 Chris Oh yeah, absolutely yeah now now I'm kind of like oh do I wait a few years to play the ah dead space do remake or do I play the original and then I guess the real test comes. 01:58:18.58 Dave I Think that? yeah. 01:58:26.20 Chris If they get to ah dead spacece 3 remake or are they going to be able to pull a Capcom and like improve whatever you know was bad about the original kind of like ah you know at least for me capcom improving like ah the military island for example in in 4 make. 01:58:41.26 Dave Oh yeah, yeah for sure. Huge improvement there. But this um this remake of the first game was was good enough that if they remake dead spacece too I'll definitely play it and if they don't I will I'll definitely consider playing the original dead space too I just you know. Lot of games to play and this one this one like I enjoyed it but the we talked about how we're out. It's welcome and it didn't leave me with a feeling of like I need to play dead space to immediately. It didn't leave me with that feeling. 01:59:16.13 Chris Yeah, yeah, ah say more or less like you know if if if it did leave me like that I would have you know gone right? right into dead space too and not ah you know any any anything else, but ah yeah, I'd say this. You know for me is probably that like um, classic ah like a lot of indie horror is like this for me where it's like a solid that C Plus B minus kind of like just right in there where it's ah it's Enjoyable. You know for what it is. 01:59:44.11 Dave No. 01:59:50.38 Dave Yeah I I think it's too long I think they ran out of gameplay ideas well before they wrapped up the story and the story was like half of a success and then half of kind of a you know. Ah, wet fart at the end of the Nicolas Dead storyline so it was a little bit disappointing I was I was expecting more from the story from that perspective. But yeah, what are you going to do? Um, this has been a good time. Man. Thank you so much for coming on. 02:00:21.44 Chris That's right. Oh Thanks for having me. 02:00:29.00 Dave Um I will recommend again at the end of the show for everyone who's stuck it out to the end. Thank you very much I recommend you all check out Vertigo to hell again, the number 2 on Twitch good horror game streams there. Fun vibe. Cool chat good ah, good stuff. Again, check down in the show notes you'll find a link to the Twitch channel where you can go and check out that everything Chris is doing there. So Chris thank you again? Good times. Thank you to everybody who listened to the end you all are my heroes and tune in next week for the final game of horror month which is. Signalis coming up next week.