I finally found a good use for the pulse rifle.

Generally, I steer away from that weapon.  I’ve kept it in my inventory because the grenades can be handy…  But for simply cutting through normal necromorphs, it’s pretty crappy.  Takes a good amount of precision to chop off a limp with a pulse rifle.  More precision than I can normally muster.

But I had an especially creepy section where I was working my way through some kind of nursery or school or something.  There were a bunch of fairly quick little necromorphs that looked an awful lot like greys.

They’re small, quick, attack in packs, and don’t really have to be dismembered.  So the pulse rifle was great for mowing them down.

Then some very creepy dead babies started crawling towards me…  They explode if they get close enough, or if you hit them right.  And again they don’t need to be dismembered.  So the pulse rifle worked well on them.

Had to do some very neat mini-game sort of things…

Had to lobotomize a computer in a sequence that was simultaneously reminiscent of 2001 and Alien.  I had to climb into the computer core and pull out various memory modules.  Then a cluster of cylinders rose from the deck, and I had to activate them to disable the computer itself.

Then I had to re-align some mirrors for the solar array…  Had to go out into space and grab them with my telekinesis to move them.  While slowly running out of air, and getting attacked by necromorphs.

Later I had to navigate through some kind of obstacle course in the bowels of the station.  There were giant valves that had to be opened…  And an assortment of rapidly spinning blades to squeeze past…  And then some pillars of fire…  It kind of makes me wonder what kind of sadistic bastard built a space station like this.

So…  Now I’m back aboard the Ishimura, and it is creepy as hell.

I came aboard through the shuttle bay, just like I did in the beginning of the first game.  Went through some of the same rooms and hallways.  Only now it’s all covered in plastic and red tape, with biohazard signs stuck up all over the place.  They’re obviously trying to clean or decontaminate the place.

It’s somehow even more creepy with the tape and plastic everywhere…  Like it’s the scene of a giant murder investigation…  Though, I guess, that’s probably pretty accurate.

Of course things couldn’t stay nice and quiet…  Had to make my way down to engineering.  There was a warning as I entered the engineering section that said cleanup and decontamination hadn’t been completed down there yet.  And then a voice log a little later that indicated the Ishimura was covered with organic goo that would reanimate in the presence of a marker signal.  So I’m going to assume that there’s something big and angry in my near future.

I’m thoroughly enjoying Dead Space 2.  It’s got pretty much everything that made the original so much fun…  But it’s been refined and perfected in a number of ways.

Stasis is back.  You can still freeze or slow down monsters to deal with them at a slower pace.  And you still find various environmental hazards that can only be navigated by hitting them with a stasis charge.

But, unlike the original Dead Space, your stasis will recharge automatically over time.

It doesn’t happen quickly…  And in areas where you’re expected to play around with stasis a lot, they’ll provide some recharging stations.  But if you can go for 5-10 minutes without freezing anything, it’ll recharge all by itself.

Zero-gravity sections are back.  You still get that eerie silence when you’re in the vacuum, too.  But you no longer have to make those awkward leaps from one platform to another.  Your suit now has some directional thrusters on it…  So you can just disengage your magnetic boots and slowly fly across the environment.

Telekinesis seems to be far more useful than it was in the first game.  Sure, there’s still puzzles where you have to yank panels off of things or move equipment around…  But it also makes a very nice offensive weapon.  You can grab spines off of dead necromorphs and use them to impale attackers.

The Church of Unitology is back…  And creepier than ever.  I just spent about an hour stomping through a big ol’ Unitology church…  Made my way through the ornate upper levels, through their indoctrination chambers, and then down into the crypts where they’re storing the dead for eventual “convergence”.

The line gun is still just as awesome as it used to be.  And the plasma cutter is still a terrific backup weapon.  And dismembering charging necromorphs is still more fun than it ought to be.

There’s some great, new stuff as well…  Like a very simple hacking mechanism.  It isn’t anything impressive.  It’s almost hard to fail a hacking attempt.  But it reinforces the idea that Isaac is an engineer.

Of course, it isn’t all perfect…  There are a few things I’m not so happy with.

There are some strange little sections where you have to crawl through maintenance ducts.  You’ve got no weapons.  You can’t even really punch or kick or anything.  Which is OK, since I have yet to actually encounter anything hostile in those tunnels…  But it’s just kind of weird and awkward, and interrupts the normal flow of gameplay.

There are some very dramatic quicktime/cinematic sequences.  They’re very cool and very impressive…  But a little annoying, too.  Suddenly control is taken out of your hands and you’re watching this awesome sequence…  Which is fine.  But then you suddenly have to mash a key or shoot a target, or you’ll instantly die.

And then there’s the javelin gun…

A good chunk of what makes Dead Space different is the combat.  The whole element of “strategic dismemberment”.  Body shots don’t generally do you much good.  You need to take off limbs.  And if you just chop off a leg, for example, they’ll drag themselves along the floor with their arms.

This means that weapons like the plasma cutter and line gun are very handy – since they project a line-shaped blast.  And you can fire them either vertically or horizontally, which can make it very easy to slice off some limbs.

This also means that weapons like the pulse rifle aren’t so handy…  Sure, it fires out a lot of bullets really quickly…  But it just kind of puts lots of little holes in things, instead of cutting off limbs.

But the javelin gun doesn’t really follow those rules.  It fires out a single javelin in a straight line.  It’ll impale a necromorph and stick it to the wall.  One shot is generally fatal – even if it’s a body shot.  You don’t have to aim for limbs.  You don’t have to cut off multiple limbs.  You don’t even need to fire more than once with most enemies.

And the alternate fire mode electrifies the javelin and fries anything nearby.

It’s certainly a nice, powerful weapon…  It was a relief to get it.  At first I was thrilled that I could kill things so easily.  It seemed like the answer to my prayers.

But after mowing down piles of necromorphs without even trying, I’m a little miffed.  It almost seems like cheating.

Played some more Call of Pripyat today…  I finally feel like I’m making progress again, rather than backtracking.  I finished up all the jobs for the scientists.  Basically finished up the whole Jupiter area.  Built my team and made my way to Pripyat itself.

The trek there was frustrating as hell.  I really wanted everyone to make it there alive, so I was absurdly cautious.  I’d save my game, open a door, fight my way through to the next door…  Then check to make sure everyone was still alive.  And, more often than not, I’d have to re-load my save and try it again because somebody had died.

The trek itself wasn’t even that hard…  A few hamsters, some snorks, a few Monolith soldiers…  I was handling the hostiles just fine.  The problem is that my team members kept killing themselves.

A snork would jump in-between a couple guys, and they’d open up on it with shotguns and automatic weapons.  One of them would invariably die.  And then I’d have to reload.

Haven’t done much in Pripyat itself…  Did that ambush at the hospital.  Got my hands on a broken, unidentified weapon.  Looks like one of the rail guns from Shadow of Chernobyl.  I went back to the Jupiter area after I finished that job…  Didn’t even stick around long enough to find the recon team…  I figure that either Nitro or the scientists ought to be able to do something with the broken railgun.

I posted a nice, clean, HD clip of the trailer for a STALKER television series a few days ago…  And that guy’s YouTube account was promptly shut down.

Here’s another clip posted by “GSCSTALKEROFFICIAL“.  It’s not nearly as crisp or clear, but it’s less likely to get taken down.

Dead Space 2 finally finished downloading…

It wanted me to log in to an EA account.  I didn’t realize I had an EA account, but I guess I do.  And I apparently registered the original Dead Space on that account, so I was given a Refurbished Plasma Cutter.  It’s basically supposed to be one of the same plasma cutters that I was using in the original game.

I cranked up the resolution to 1280×1024, left the quality on “medium”.  I’m kind of surprised at how well it plays on my machine…  Figured I’d have to turn things down or tweak stuff more or something like that.  But it’s actually running fine.

There’s a nice little recap movie that I watched – gives you a brief overview of what happened in the first game.  I’m actually glad that’s in there…  The original Dead Space had a fairly unique storyline going on…  I could easily see somebody picking up DS2 without playing the first one, and not having any clue what was going on.

The game starts off with a deafening bang.  Isaac Clarke is apparently crazy.  I’m in a straight jacket and some guy is trying to get me out of it…  And then all hell breaks loose.  Necromorphs everywhere.  And I’m still in a straight jacket.

Had to run through the halls of this medical facility as necromorphs leapt out and killed everyone around me.  Barely made it to safety.  Got jumped at the last minute and had to squish them in a door.

Eventually I found some doctor guy who looked like he was going to stab me…  But then he cut my arms free and killed himself instead…

Eventually I got my hands on a flashlight, and a telekinesis module, and then a plasma cutter and a stasis module, and then I replaced my tattered straight jacket with the engineer suit.

I’m thrilled to see a lot of the things that made the original game so unique are present…

You’ve still got the terrific holographic interface to everything.  Still have a simple inventory system, and the ability to upgrade various pieces of equipment.  Still gathering money to buy stuff from the store kiosks.  Still displaying your ammo right on your weapon, and your health right on your armor.

The architecture is very reminiscent of Alien…  It’s got that dark, dirty, utilitarian thing going on.  These are structures that were built for a purpose, and they’ve been used hard for years.  They are shining, new, pristine structures.

It’s all very dark, creepy, claustrophobic, and tense.  Critters popping out all over the place.  Stuff going bump in the dark.  Things rattling behind the walls.  Random groans and shrieks to put your nerves on edge.

I’m having a great time so far…  It’s got everything that made the original so good, and they’ve actually fixed some of the complaints I had with the original.  The controls, for example, are much better.

But it’s a very tense, creepy game.  I actually had to quit after an hour or so because it was getting to be too much for me.  I’ll come back to it tomorrow, when the sun is up.

Playing some Call of Pripyat while the soup simmers and Dead Space 2 downloads…

Completed pretty much every job available in Zaton.  Picked up a compass for Beard…  Got those fancy new detectors built…  Stopped some bandits…  Tracked down a bunch of artifacts and sold them for a nice profit…

Then I started knocking out some jobs in the Jupiter area.

Paid off that poor guy’s debt…  Rescued the hostage…  Did a bunch of work for the scientists…  Killed some mutants…

I’ve wound up siding with Freedom.  I like their attitude towards The Zone much better than Duty’s.

Got myself a fancy gun from Nimble – a GP-37.  I’m pretty happy with it so far.

Tried to find those ex-Monolith guys a home with Freedom, but things went a little pear-shaped.  I talked to the Freedom rep at Yanov, and he sent me back out to that Monolith camp with a couple Freedom members to talk things over…  But I arrived to find a couple snorks wreaking havoc.

A couple snorks aren’t normally much of a problem…  Especially when I’ve got some company to distract them…  But the snorks were right in the middle of the Monolith camp, and bullets were flying everywhere.

But the time the snorks were dead, so were my two Freedom representatives.  With no Freedom representatives to talk to Strider, I was unable to finish the job.  So I had to roll back to a previous save…  Only I hadn’t saved in a while.  So now I’ve got to re-do a bunch of jobs.

Annoying, but not the end of the world.

Terri was going to surprise me with Dead Space 2 today…

But she fell ill yesterday, and felt even worse today.  So I left work early to take care of her, and got home before she could go out and buy it.

Of course she didn’t just tell me this…

We had to run out to pick up some groceries and she wanted to swing past GameStop to pick up Just Dance. Well, that’s what she said at least…  What she actually wanted to pick up at GameStop was Dead Space 2.

So we got to GameStop, and I was shocked at how tiny their PC section is now.  It’s just a couple 2′ shelves.  Couldn’t have been more than about 20 PC games or so.  The whole rest of the store is console stuff.  And I guess I’m not surprised…  I honestly wouldn’t bother going to a physical store for my games when I can just download them instead.

They did have a copy of DS2.  A single copy.  But we didn’t get it.  Once I found out that was what we were looking for, I told Terri that I’d just rather buy it on Steam.

Terri was a little surprised.  Wondered why I would prefer to buy it on Steam rather than buying a disc…

Honestly, the only advantage to buying a disc these days is avoiding the download.  You don’t get a nice box, you don’t get a nice manual, you’ve got physical media to keep track of.  The only benefit is that you just install from the disc, rather than waiting for several gigs to download.

So, we went home and I bought DS2 on Steam.  It’s downloading right now.  Moving rather quickly, too.  Shouldn’t be more than an hour or two before I can play.