Brain Junkfood: What's Wrong With This? Part One: Dead Space 2

There is no quicker way to earn my seething hatred than to take a good concept for a horror movie, game, book, etc, then put a dumbass twist in the end. Well, normally, that is true. Dead Space 2 jumped on the challenge wagon with the infamous "Your Mom Hates Dead Space" ad campaign. For those of you who don't know, the campaign was a "focus group" of mothers watching Dead Space 2, and commenting on how disgusting it, and people who play it, are. This was shortly after the ad debacle with Dante's Inferno, and after Visceral Studios and EA Games claimed that they would never advertise to children below the rating age. So, some genius decided to advertise in a way that would attract children. Having gone to school for graphic design and advertising, this tainted me from reviewing the game, ethically. Unlike IGN, I have ethics! Luckily, this isn't a review, nor completely serious. Without further ado, what's wrong with Dead Space 2?

Continuing from the first game, where Isaac Clarke managed to single handedly destroy a metric shit load of "aliens" and free himself from an overrun mining station in space, Isaac is now in a mental institution on Titan, the moon of Saturn. In a mental institution, no less. Funny. I seem to remember Isaac getting mauled by a Necromorph in the end of the first game, but maybe, I'm looking at this with Rose Colored glasses.

The first section of the game has you escaping from the mental institution with the help of a woman named Daina. So far, every woman in Isaac's life has either A: Died B: Betrayed him or C: Given birth to him (and probably died shortly afterwards, betraying him by never taking care of him). Figuring Daina isn't his momma, chances are, she's going to betray him. But first, she has to remind us several times that the Marker is man-made. Just about every other line: "It's man made! It's man made! It's man made! It's alien technology! It's--" Wait a dog-fucking, honey badger licking minute. Did she just say it's alien technology, after saying that it's man made? And, to make it even better, she says that it's man made a minute later.

Sweet Mother of Continuity Fucking Space Chimps... I cannot believe just how many people missed this point. I couldn't even find it in "Dead Space Wikia." I've played this part three times, and every time, I immediately catch "It's powerful alien technology." So, she just did what I never expected: She betrayed the plot. I'm honestly surprised Isaac didn't lose his mind upon hearing this. No, the mind fuck is yet to come.

She does in fact betray him. She is a Scientologist-- UNITOLOGIST! I mean, the difference is about as major as confusing IGN with Yellow Journalism, or Jessica Chobot with awful role model for gamer girls everywhere. Yeah... that's another topic for another type of article. Lo and behold, she dies when the real villain, Hans Tiedmann, no really, that's his name, shoots the window, sucking her through it into deep space. Isaac crawls in a vent and eventually meets the rest of our sad sack cast of characters. The first is Stross, a fellow mental case who keeps going through "the steps" to destroy the marker. We'll get back to those in a second. The second is Ellie, a pilot who initially hates Isaac for... reasons.

Actually, this is understandable. She doesn't really hate him so much as distrusts him at first. This is quickly changed when she meets Stross, and asks Isaac if she can kill him. Isaac tells her not to, because he can come in handy. Saying that the violent psychotic will be helpful is about as smart as saying a rabid dog would make a great pet. Or that being in a game also means that you can cover it in journalistic stories. Dammit, I did it again! Sorry!

Well, of course the inevitable happens, and Stross tries to kill Ellie. Twice. The second time, he pulls out her eye. This is foreshadowing for later. Yeah, remember those steps that I mentioned Stross ranting about? Well, after you send Ellie off of the Sprawl, you come to grips with your dead girlfriend's death. She leads you to a machine that can be used to destroy the Marker. Step 1: Crawl in to the machine. Step 2:The screws go tight all around. Step 3: Cross my heart hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye. If you screw this up, Isaac dies by getting his eye stabbed. This somehow manages to dislocate his entire jaw, too.

After the machine, Isaac goes to the final battle. Teidmann tries to kill him with a harpoon gun. Isaac shrugs two of them off as if he's fucking Superman. He then shoots Teidmann with his own harpoon. Nicole touches him, and he has to fight her and the marker. If he loses, Isaac shoots himself with the harpoon gun, which somehow dislocates his entire jaw. For the love of God, people, physics! Jaws don't just fly off when an area remotely close is hit. Especially when you shoot the bottom of your face through the top of the crown. Your jaw is not going to hula hoop around the harpoon!

If you win, however, Isaac mopes until Ellie saves him. Isaac is a defeatist who won't do anything to save himself, yet he can save a woman with one eye, kill several monsters stronger and bigger than him, and destroy a horrible artifact that he made, despite the fact that it's supposed to be thousands of years old, and alien technology. He can't save himself, though!

But, that's all not the biggest issue I have with Dead Space 2. Enemy AI comes close. Slashers will die if you shoot their arms off. So, what do they do? Guard their heads with their fucking arms! The developers seemed to have decided that the best way to remedy the lack of intelligence by filling the room with more monsters than the room has square feet. If Dead Space 2 were a drink, it'd be really, really bad Powerthirst: "More monsters than this room has room for!!!"

But, the biggest issue is the shitty level design. One area is repeated no less than five times before anything happens. I go from a freezer to another freezer... until finally... a monster screams at me. Then another freezer. Then another. Then finally a fight. In another freezer. With a hallway so full of monsters that they can't even move.

The biggest offender is the school level. I played it more than three times. Mainly because I played F.E.A.R. 2. It's pretty much the exact same level, but in reverse. The only thing missing was, "The ass, he's behind the ass!" Of course, that means she'd have to be in this game, and review it. Okay, that one was reaching a little... Not by much though.

I have to give Dead Space 2 credit; it does have some creepy moments. They're just overshadowed by its sheer stupidity, and lack of original level design ideas. I mean, lets face it, the few new scenes that weren't from the first game were so short lived, that they're barely memorable. The only one I can remember is flying from a train car to another train car, and that's because it was done in two different ways, in two different places in the game. Is it a bad game? Mechanically, not really. Everywhere else, it falls flatter than Jessica Chobot's acting. And you wonder why I refused to review Mass Effect 3...

Coming up, we have the bane of my gaming existence, and killer Smurfs. But, can they compare to the most off the wall bad games that is actually completely awesome? Let me ask my friend, Zack, after we delve into Singularity and Silent Hill 2 next.

"Jacob's Ladder," "Silent Hill 2," and "Crackdown 2." How do I fit these into a blog?

So, as some of you may have seen on my facebook, we watched Jacob's Ladder last night. This was our second try after a scene put a bad taste in Alexis's mouth. I have to say this: for the hour of build up with him seeing demons and everything, they sure forgot that in the last hour of the movie. Seriously, we went from Jacob seeing demons once every fifteen minutes or so, to it being more like a John Grisham novel where a guy tries to sue the government. And, yes, this is an anti-war movie, namely anti-Vietnam. That would be great if it were made in the '70's. Unfortunately, it was made in 1990.

I think that's part of it for me, though. I wasn't alive for the Vietnam war, so its hard for me to relate to the character. I was, though, in the Iraq War, and can relate to the general feel of what the characters were supposed to be going through, although, very loosely. What it felt like to me was PTSD. What they pinned it on in the movie was Agent Buzz. After all, the government only wanted to drug our soldiers unwillingly to make them better fighters. Sure, they killed each other, but who cares? They're only soldiers, right. Bullshit, movie. I'm sorry, but the government cares more about the people who potentially sacrifice their lives a whole lot more than you give them credit for. Sure, its not perfect, but to say that the government is nothing but a bunch of monsters? Bite me.

A few people have told me that it felt like Silent Hill to them. Maybe. I'd say Silent Hill 2, and that's not a complement. See, Silent Hill 2 and Jacob's Ladder have the same problem: the build up has nothing to do with what's going on, and no one gets that. I'm not going to spoil Jacob's Ladder anymore than I did. But, here's the issue with Silent Hill 2: James gets a letter from his dead wife. He goes to Silent Hill to investigate. He gets attacked by monsters until he remembers that he killed his sick wife. After coming to grips with his guilt, he defeats the monsters.

Simple plot... except for why he forgot he killed his wife. I can somewhat understand going into a town after getting a letter from your dead wife to investigate. But, people make James seem like this horrible person. "He killed his sick, suffering wife! He deserves to be punished!" Here's the big, glaring issue with this: She begged him to kill her to end her suffering. Sure, he'd feel guilty about that, and it may not be right. But the fact is, she was in pain, and she wanted to end it. I may not back his actions of killing her, but going so far as to say that he did it because he was a ruthless bastard? He did it because he loved her. Letting her suffer more would seem more cruel to him. Also, why do most of the monsters represent sexual repression? I've heard, "he hadn't gotten any since his wife was sick." I'm pretty damn sure he had bigger things to worry about than getting laid. Like, you know, his dying wife!

Finally, I'm to the point where I've pretty much given up on Crackdown 2 being a playable game. I will dare to say this: Singularity was actually slightly, very slightly, better than Crackdown 2. Here's why: At least the game is playable. Every time I turn around in Crackdown 2, I get stuck because fifteen guys are shooting rockets at me. As I've said before, for some reason, rockets stop you in mid-step instead of sending you flying. So, when you can't progress in a game because you can't move, how do you expect to play it? Not to mention the unbeatable mission where you need another player, too. Oh, and the fact that the buildings are virtually unclimbable at max agility. The last grip is always just out of reach.

Here's the thing: if you want a free roaming game that you can be a jerk in, play The Saboteur, Red Faction: Guerrilla, or, if you have a PS3, Infamous. Hell, even Red Dead Redemption, which is a fantastic game, but not a jerk game. Or go play the original Crackdown. I'll guarantee that you'll have more fun with those than Crackdown 2.