Game EXP: Dead Space (Mobile) - Chapters 9 & 10

 

Dead Space (Mobile)
Systems: iOS & Android
Release Date: January 25, 2011 & December 2011
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: IronMonkey Studios

Chapters 1 & 2
Chapters 3 & 4
Chapters 5 & 6
Chapters 7 & 8

CHAPTER 9: TRADING UP

Oh boy, Chapter 9 is where I almost stopped playing because I felt that I might have hit a skill wall or not used my Power Nodes as efficiently as possible, but we will get to this frustration at the end of the chapter.

Similar to Tiedemann's call with Vandal to help remind the player of their overall goal, Vandal creates another journal entry to document their actions, their goal, and how history might view them in revealing the actions of the Church of Unitology.  It is a nice touch that works in-game (since people in the Dead Space universe like to leave audio logs just lying around) that doesn't insult the player with the way they are being reminded of what they are doing, because grinding up and severing waves of Necromorphs through after hallway upon hallway of a space/moon station, why you are doing what you are doing can get a little murky.

I like that the corruption is becoming more prevalent as you get closer to where the Necromorphs are congregating and as over two hours have passed (assuming that real-world time equates to in-game time, which would make sense) since Vandal started sabotaging systems back in Chapter 1.  I also like that you start to see more hallways blocked up with furniture and objects in an attempt to block the Necromorph advance. It has frequently been one of the weaker points in Dead Space (Mobile) (as well as Dead Space 2) that rarely if ever come across anybody doing anything or just fleeing from Necromorphs.  Even if someone is running away from you down a hall only to get picked off by a Necromorph crawling out of a vent, the best we have here is evidence of an attempted blockade.  There are plenty of instances though of Necromorphs crawling through intersections of hallways or into vents as Vandal enters a room, and I love that too, in part because it is one less Necromorph that I have to use ammo on, but also because it means that they are doing something that does not involve Vandal.

And here we get Vandal's third death when I tried to be conservative in my usage of Ripper blades and take on a Pregnant and Swarmers with just a Plasma Cutter.  That is a bad approach and should be avoided at all costs.  The Line Gun with a healthy dose of kinesis on the other head is great for taking off a Pregnant's legs followed by subsequent stomps until they drop a four-pack of Ripper blades.

Ah, the Core Extractor, aka the BFG of the Dead Space franchise.  That is really all I am going to say at the moment about this weapon since I don't really use it until much later in the playthrough.

In the battle against the Brute, you will have to excuse my poor playing skills, just standing there while letting it run right into me.  Then running into its slowed arm as I unsuccessfully try to make my way around to its backside.  I get that the game is urging you to use the Core Extractor what with Tyler talking about its secondary function as you enter the room with the Brute, and the three Core Extractor ammo drops around the room, but again, I wanted to stockpile that ammo for later; also because I tend to stockpile rare consumables until the very last minute.

And then comes the tram section of the stage, being in my opinion, the hardest area in the entire game, taking me a grand total of nine attempts to finally pass.  It was just a difficult combination of enemies in the order that they appear in, made all the more troublesome by the asset tearing going on creating a major visual distraction. 

I genuinely don't know how/why the game exited from the tram stage back to the main menu, maybe there was a failsafe that after you die a certain number of times, the game takes you back so you can take a break.  It was at this point that I started thinking about the tram stages in general.  Their look and construction seem similar to the trams used by Issac in the first Dead Space, but here, Vandal rides on top like they are in some kind of double-decker bus situation.  I then started to wish that there was an option to skip these tram stages by opting to stay inside the tram.  Maybe have the option to fight Necromorphs on the tram as a chance to gain more credits or Power Nodes, or just skip the tram fights and arrive safely at your destination.

What is interesting about this chapter is that it is primarily all about traversal.  You do pick up the Core Extractor, and you do get some items from Tyler (somehow that is never explained where he is and how he is managing to follow you physically unless he is literally one floor above you), there were no significant hallucinations or effects from the Marker, and you do fight a Brute, but there is nothing here that felt absolutely necessary to progress the story.  You could just as easily have exited the tram, found the Core Extractor, then got on another tram and started Chapter 10.

CHAPTER 10: REVERSAL

So what I was doing in that first room, where I turned around and went back into the tram station was because the second door, next to the door I had just passed through, confused me.  At first, I could not figure out if that door was just a misplaced asset, but based on its location in relation to the Store, one could surmise that it was for staff to access and restock the Store.  That might be me just making something up, but it would answer the question as to how the stores are stocked, especially if there is more than one suit that someone would choose to upgrade to when the station was not infested with Necromorphs.

For your first ride on the Gondola, I love that by this point in the game, you come to recognize some level of game design and this area is designed to run around and fight Necromorphs.  The only thing that would have been better is if there had been a box or two to break open, which is what I was looking for when I first entered and was running around.  And that is the brilliant thing here, is that nothing happens.  You do receive the calls from Tiedemann and Tyler, but for 70 seconds, it is just Vandal alone, with the tension building the entire time.  Would the Necromorphs attack midway through the ride, or right after the gondola docks and before the doors unlock.  I think it's a brilliant choice.

In the Crossover Seal Control Room is where one of the few cutscenes takes place, which makes sense because you are supposed to see a lot that you could miss or gloss over in a hurry.  It is also supposed to make clear to the player what Tyler has been manipulating Vandal to do the entire game.  It's nice to see the close-up of the security camera as the Necromorphs break into the Crossover Tube as well as the animation of them flooding the Crossover Tube, if anything to help orient the player as to what is happening where on the Sprawl.  I am not sure if the warbly sounding alarm as Tyler is talking to Vandal is an audio glitch or if it is supposed to play so much louder, but I am a little sad that it played over the last time Vandal talked with Tyler.

And then, on your ride back on the gondola to the Titan Shard, you run into the Necromorphs.  Although, more kudos to the developers for waiting a good 20 seconds after the gondola starts, potentially giving the player the impression that once again, they will not be attacked.  I know that I probably should have used other weapons besides the Line Gun, or at least swapped between other guns, but a lot of this had to do with the placement of the screen recording widget, which again made touching the menu button a little finicky.  I probably should have also used stasis a lot more frequently than I did, but because there was so much room to run and there were never so many enemies on screen at one time (likely to reduce the difficulty for touchscreen controls and (maybe?) for engine limitations of having too many enemies on the screen at one time).

Something else that was interesting was that the gondola ride back took 3 minutes 26 seconds, which I had originally thought was from me needing to kill all of the scripted Necromorphs before the gondola could dock, but there was that one last Pregnant roaming around before the lockdown was lifted.

I do love that reveal of the hallway leading back to the tram station, where you see the direct and immediate effect of Vandal releasing the Necromorphs into and out of the Crossover Tube.  Just this long hallway filled with corpses of people who fewer than five minutes ago had all been alive and possibly on their way home from whatever job they were doing.  I find it more effective to show to consequences of Vandal's mistake rather than just hearing about it.  I also find that part of the tension here is from the fear that any or all of these bodies could pop up and start attacking as a Necromorph considering the only combat so far in this stage happened during the second gondola sequence.  But I like that there wasn't any combat, that the hallway was there for Vandal to reflect on what their actions had led to.

And then we get the final tram sequence.

Starting this sequence off against two Pregnants, you just know that the devs are intentionally being difficult since just one swarm of Swarmers can take down Vandal, but now you potentially have to deal with two.  And then on attempt #2, having to deal with the Crawler while a host of Swarmers jumping around me as my health was dipping lower, I knew that that run was just about over.

In between Attempts #2 and #3, I moved the minimized screen recording widget from the upper right to just below the center on the right side of the screen so that I could easily access the menu button to switch weapons more easily, and so that it didn't get in the way of my right thumb which was used to move the camera around.  What I had not anticipated was that it would then get in the way of the "Tap" button when the Lurker latches onto you and you have to tap it until its tentacles wave back allowing you to slice them and then punt the demon asshole into oblivion.

Attempt #3 was just a comedy of errors, with the timed mine completely missing the Pregnants, then only hitting one with the next mine, and then having the Corer animation be interrupted by Swarmers and then getting smacked by the other Pregnant.  That was a bad run, along with a similar outcome on attempt #4.  

Finally, we made it through on attempt #5, although I still made plenty of mistakes.  Like using the Corer on a single Exploder several times.  Missing entirely with the Ripper on Swarmers and your standard buffed Necromorph.  Then taking a whopping 20 seconds to dispatch a single Crawler because of the aforementioned moving of the widget over the "Tap" button on the right side of the screen.  Although, in my own defense, with all of the asset-tearing going on by the end of the stage, it was really difficult to see where anything was on the screen.  I am actually really surprised that I survived that final wave of surprise Swarmers as my health was already really low and after only a second, dropped down to critical.

This series of chapters ended up being a mixed bag in more than one way.  First, the difficulty of the tram sections in both chapters was nearly paralyzing in both cases, taking a combined total of 14 attempts.  Granted some of that was through a combination of asset tearing and bad placement of the widget, but also my poor playing at times.  For the amount of content in these chapters, they probably could have been combined into one making for a better and more concise experience, but then you would run into the problem of needing to rework the phrase from the first letter of each chapter.  Yeah, they did that here too, which I think is great, and was a little disappointed that it didn't happen with any of the other games.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

You're Gonna Die