Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles

Company: Nintendo

Publisher: Capcom

Developer: Capcom

Genre: On Rails Shooter

Platform: Wii

ERSB Rating: M for Mature

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Premise:

The premise of the game is to take control of one of the many characters as they try to survive and combat the zombie virus outbreak. Characters: There are many different characters the player can take control of within the game: Leon Kennedy, Claire Redfield, Jack Krauser and Steve Burnside. All the characters play the same, however, their view points of each level are completely different from their partners.

Play:

The games pacing is balanced between hardcore on-rails shooting with random quick time events. Each level has common enemies with a few unique ones tied in. The quick times events are level specific but they are all solved the same way, shaking the nun-chuck or by doing contextual button presses. The controls are unique since its on the wii: aiming with the wii mote, b button to shot, z button to bring out the knife, shake the nun-chuck to use the knife, and + button to use the green herbs to heal.

Engagement:

If you don't know your Wesker from your Wiskers the story aspect of engagement is going to be lost for most new players. However, that does not mean the game is a failure, its just hard to follow. The FPS person views allows the game to mess with the player and build up dramatic tension as enemies are jumping from all parts of the screen. Also the light gun action forces the player to have fast reflexes to kill the zombies as quick as possible, because they cannot move the player, only the game can.
Story:

The Resident Evil story never lets down for fans, but it can be hard to follow for new comers. The story takes place in South America with classic characters from the franchise, Leon Kennedy and Jack Krauser. They were dispatched by the U.S government to search for a man named Javier and destroy the t-virus he mysteriously obtained. The t-virus has the ability to turn people into zombies and plants and animals into B.O.W's (Bio Organic Weapons). Leon and Jack reach the South American village and realize that the t-virus was released and the village, which is now littered with zombies. Jack and Leon go through the village looking for the guide that was supposed to take them to Javiers mansion. They find him dead and move on. Eventually Leon and Jack fight through hordes of zombies and reach a mysterious church. Within the church they find a teenage girl named Manuela, she passes out from loss of blood before Leon and Jack are able to talk to her. Then a giant amphibious looking monster jumps out, which force Jack and Leon to kill it. Once they kill it, Jack demands that Leon tells him all their is to know about the t-virus. Leon does and the game takes a flash back to Resident Evil 2. In Resident Evil 2 Leon is a rookie cop on his first day of work. On his first day, there is a t-virus outbreak. While Leon tries to escape from the city, he meets a woman named Claire Redfield. Claire was searching for her brother before the t-virus was released into the city. Leon and Claire escape and the flash back end. When Leon finishes his flashback the search for Javier continues. Resources: There are only two different resources in this game: ammo and health. Ammo can be restored by shooting environmental objects i.e: crates, barrels, dressers, lights, cars, etc. Another way it can be managed is by finding it scattered throughout the environment. The same thing applies to finding health packs.

Challenge:

This game actually follows the traditional easy, medium, hard, and extreme levels perfectly. Easy there are less enemies and they do less damage. Medium they do normal damage and there are moderately more enemies. Hard there are lots of enemies and they do 3X the damage then they do on medium. So a player can cater the challenge to his liking. In addition the boss battle requires intense pattern memorization, in order to defeat them. Once the player completes the game, un-lockables become available: tofu showdown and alternate costumes. The tofu showdown replaces all the zombies with giant pieces of tofu which do extreme damage. Another challenge of this game is thanks to the online leader boards. Players can compete too earn the highest score possible on certain levels.

New Super Mario Brothers

Company: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo
Genre: Side Scrolling Adventure
Platform: Wii
ERSB Rating: E for Everyone
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Premise:
The premise of the game is for Mario and his friends to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser.

Characters:
Within “New Super Mario Brothers”, there are 4 characters that the player can control: Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad and Yellow Toad.

Play:
The games pacing is all platforming and minor puzzles. Within each level, the player has to run through the level jumping on enemies or jumping over obstacles. The minor puzzles are secret areas that the player can uncover by finding a hidden block within the level. The game has two control schemes: wii mote only or wii mote and nunchuck. The wii mote control scheme uses the d-pad to to move, the 2 button to jump, the 1 button to run, and the + button to pause the game. The wii mote and nunchuck set up uses the c button to run, z button to jump, and the analog to move.

Engagement:
Played alone, or in a group, this game is engaging and fun. For solo players, the challenging platform, combined with nostalgia from other Mario games, makes the play captivating. Playing Multiplayer, the engagement comes from players helping or competing against each other.

Story:
Mario games tend to have basic stories that are easy to follow. The story starts off with Princess Peach having her birthday party. Suddenly, the party is crashed by Bowser, Bowser Junior, Koopa Brothers and Bowsers’ minions who kidnap Peach. Mario and his gang then give pursuit in order to rescue Peach and defeat Bowser.

Resources:
There are many different resources in the game, and they come in a variety of shapes and sizes. For example, there are several kinds of mushrooms: Red, Green, Blue, and each has it own function. Red Mushrooms make Mario grow bigger, blue mushrooms make Mario shrink, and green Mushrooms give Mario extra life. The next resources are power ups: fire flower, propeller mushroom, ice flower, penguin suit, and the star. The fire flower allows Mario to shoot fire balls at enemies, the ice flow allows Mario to shoot ice balls to freeze enemies, the penguin suit allows Mario to slide on ice and shoot ice balls, and the star makes Mario invincible. The resources can only be found by hitting yellow blocks within levels.

Challenge:
Mario games are known for their incredible simplicity in their controls combined with an unrelenting challenge in play. The first levels are very easy, but they’re to let the player get used to the game. Once the first world has been beaten, the game gets much harder as the levels start to throw more environmental hazards and enemies towards the player(s) while power ups show less frequently.

No More Heroes

Company: Nintendo
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Genre: Action-adventure
Platform: Wii
ERSB Rating: M for Mature
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Premise:
The premise of the game is to assume the character of Travis Touchdown. The goal is for Travis to fight his way up the ranks of the United Assassins Association finishing as the number one Assassin.

Characters:
The player only controls one character: Travis Touchdown, a young adult anime loving, wrestling fan, who lives day to day trying to become number one.

Play:
The game's pacing is very balanced; it’s an open world, but it can only be progressed by following a linear path. The player has to earn enough money doing odd jobs like collecting coconuts or filling up cars at the gas station. Once enough money has been made doing menial jobs, the player can enter a ranked assassin match. Then the games pacing changes to combat, and the player has to fight and win against multiple enemies, most especially the character (the boss) who holds a higher rank . Once the boss has been defeated, the whole process of collecting money and re-entering is repeated. The controls being on the wii system add a different control scheme: A button to attack, B button for strong attack, C button to lock on, Z button to block, swing controller in any direction triggers a death blow on an enemy.

Engagement:
This game has been a mixed bag with critical reviewers: either players love it or hate it, there seems to be no in between. However, there are many reasons why players liked the game. First off, the writing in the game is brilliantly done (sometimes it doesn't make sense, but its all in good fun), the combat is something that is completely new in how it utilizes the wii mote functions, and the cell-shaded graphics make it look awesome. The combat is extremely engaging because the player can choose how he wants to decapitate the enemies, or he can choose to kill them using wrestling moves. The variety and depth makes no two battles play out the same.

Story:
The story to this game is laugh out loud funny. Extreme gore is mixed with various types of humor ranging from potty humor, to black humor, historical humor, literature humor and so much more. To move on, the main character Travis Touchdown is a man with many obsessions: money, women, wrestling, violence. The stereotypical young man living in poverty (he lives in a motel called "No More Heroes"), he lives day to day. One day, he wins an online auction for a beam katana, and paying for this auction item ruins him financially. He can no longer buy his beloved wrestling videos and video games. He eventually meets a women named Sylvia Christel and she offers him a job to kill a man named Helter Skelter. Travis kills him and is dubbed rank 11 by the United Assassins Association (UAA). Once Travis regained financial footing he wants to go back to his normal life, but Sylvia convinces him that he can become number 1 assassin. Travis then sets out to kill the other 10 assassins in front of him..

Behaviors:
The behavior for the character has already been created by the game designers, this includes: walking, running, talking, melee attacks, climbing, driving, and swimming. Given the range of behaviors available, the progression of the game should be much less predictable in its outcome and game play. However, the combat and overall challenge of the game is so fun , that its linear progression can be forgiven.

Resources:
The player has to manage a three resources: health, money, and beam katana energy. In order to restore health, the player has to find health packs that are scattered through out the open world, or he can restore it by saving the game. The next resource, money, can be earned by doing menial jobs, or by killing high ranking assassins in a UAA rank match. The final resource, beam katana energy, can be restored in two ways. The first is by shaking the wii mote charging the katana until the energy meter is full. The second way is by finding batteries pick ups from killing enemies.


Challenge:
This game is very hard right from the start. The Enemy AI do a lot of damage, and they block (even on the easy setting). One downfall on the challenge in combat is that the enemies do not work together, they just appear in groups. The biggest challenge are the boss fights. Each of the 12 bosses (there are 11 UAA assassins, but there are other bosses besides them) has their own weakness and a specific strategy necessary to kill them. For example, Destroyman announces his attacks before the actual attack. Memorizing those patterns allows the player to pre-empt the attack. If the player does not do that, he will be quickly killed. The next challenge within this game is the menial jobs. While the task is menial, the actual playing of it is very hard because they are timed, and complex to master. Also, how well you do in the job determines how much money you get paid.

Eternal Darkness: Sainty's Requiem

Company: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Silicon Knights
Genre: Psychological horror,Thrid Person Adventure
Platform: Gamecube
ERSB Rating: M for Mature
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Premise:
The premise of the game is to control the main character, Alexandra Rovias-a college student, as she investigates the mysterious murder of her grandfather Edward Roivas and searches for the “Tome of Eternal Darkness”.

Characters:
The player controls many pre-designed characters throughout the game. Each character has their own unique magic abilities as well as Stamina, Health, and Sanity meters. These characters drive the game play. The game’s characters are as follows: Alexandra Roivas, Pious Augustus, Ellia, Anthony, Karim, Dr. Maximillian Roivas, Dr. Edwin Lindsey, Paul Luther, Roberto Bianchi, Peter Jacob, and Michael Edwards. All the characters are related, each from a different era of history, and they can be played consecutively.

Play:
The pacing changes drastically throughout the game. When the player controls the main character, Alexandra, they are able to go anywhere within the mansion (open world) while searching for "Tome of Eternal Darkness" entries and clues to her fathers death. When a piece of the "Tome of Eternal Darkness" is found, a flash back sequence is initiated, and the player takes control of the new character introduced in the flashback. During these flash back sequences, the level is very linear with some mind twisting puzzles. As with all games, there are enemies to combat, the player must kill or be killed. So, all in all, this game is balanced between linear sections of combat and puzzles and open world environments.

Engagement:
This game has received acclaim for its engagement with the player: well written story, unique innovation, complex magic and battle system. The battle system is very engaging because it makes the player think before they start their attack. This battle system incorporates a strategic dismemberment which requires planning ahead. For instance, if you see a zombie, you should cut its head off before you start your attack. Although the zombie does not die,it’s mobility is inhibited, making it easier to eliminate it. This also applies for magic with one exception: the player needs to memorize the monsters magic alignment. If the player cuts the monsters head off using the wrong magic, instead of the monster becoming impaired, the player will be severely hurt. The most engaging aspect of this game is its sanity meter. The sanity meter is drained when enemies spot you. Once the entire meter is empty, weird things start happening within the game. Strange noises can be heard that frighten the player including footsteps, women and children screaming, doors slamming, the rattling of chains and the sound of a blade being sharpened. Another effect is that the player can walk into a new room and find themselves on the ceiling. A very scary effect, that is common in horror movies, is that walls start to bleed profusely. At times when the sanity meter is low, the game will do something very interesting: it breaks the 4th wall. For example, the game will simulate the television volume being lowered by having a fake volume bar or the T.V will simulate being shut off, and will remain off for a couple of seconds. The worst tactic(that every gamer is afraid of) is the game telling the player that the memory card is corrupted and needs to be reformatted. The game starts reformatting the memory making the player think they are losing all their data.

Story:
The story of Eternal Darkness is about the main character Alexandra Rovias. Alexandra is summoned to Rhode Island because of her grandfathers’ mysterious death. The police tell her that they have no leads, and have given up on the investigation. Alex then swears to investigate the murder herself and find the answers. While searching through her grandfathers mansion, she discovers a secret room. Within that room, she finds a book called "The Tome Of Eternal Darkness". When she touches the book, she has a flash back in history to the time period of 26 BC. She watches the Roman soldier named Pious, who was led astray from his army by enticing voices coming from a temple. Within that temple, he touches an artifact that transforms him into a undead warlock, and he becomes a slave to an ancient. Further into the story, Alexandra discovers Pious is trying to summon his ancient god into physical form on earth. If that happened earth would be thrown into Eternal Darkness.

Behaviors:
The behavior for the character has already been created by the game designers, this includes: walking, running, talking, melee attacks, using items, magic attacks, climbing, and swimming. Since the range of behaviors available, the progression of the game should be much less predictable in its outcome and gameplay, however, since the levels are linear it detracts from the second play through.

Resources:
The player has to maintain 3 resources: Magic, Health, and Sanity Meter. All three resources are easily manageable. Health can be recovered by killing certain enemies, using magic, or using artifacts. Magic can be restored by walking around, or finding magic pads that restore it. The sanity meter can be replenished in many ways: performing a killing move on an enemy, using magic to restore it, or finding a sanity meter artifact.

Challenge:
This game is very challenging because of its combat system, and its puzzles. The player has the ability to target specific enemy body parts during combat. Attacking certain body parts helps the player in battle. For example, while fighting a chimera, cutting off one of its heads can make it bleed to death or hasten the death process. The games puzzles are very challenging because they blend magic and traditional puzzle aspects (finding a key to a door). The player can use magic to destroy barriers to progress further in the game, however the challenge is that the player has to use the correct spell to break the barrier. The final challenge is that the player has to watch their sanity meter, to make sure it does not drop too low. The sanity meter creates challenges for the player allowing the in game character to even create fake monsters that can be dispersed with only one hit.

Spyborgs

Company: Nintendo
Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Bionic Games
Genre: 2.5D side Scrolling Beat'Em Up
Platform: Wii
ERSB Rating: T for Teen
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Premise:
The premise of the game is to assume one of the three roles of a cyber soldier. The goal is to prevent the evil villain, Jackal, plans for world domination

Characters:
Within Spyborgs, there are three different characters the player can control and team up with in combat. The characters are: Clandestine, Bouncer, and Stinger. Each Spyborg has their own unique advantages and disadvantages. Clandestine is a speedy and agile ninja, Bouncer is a slow, lumbering tank and Stinger is the average soldier but armed gun projectiles.

Play:
The games pacing is very hard. Right from the start of the game, even on the normal or easy setting, this game is challenging. The 2.5D environment sends squads of enemies able to inflict high damage towards the player. The player must defeat them before moving onto the next level within the environment. There are no puzzles within the game, just fighting. The controls for the game feel great, because there are two settings to choose from: buttons, or motion controls. The buttons are simple, A button is the weak attack, B button for strong attack, C button to jump, Z button to block, and Z+A to initiate a special attack. The motion controls moving the button mashing to wii waggling.

Engagement:
The game would be more engaging but for some serious flaws. The story is reminiscent of an action packed Saturday morning cartoons. Although, the cut scenes had a great detail of polish(that is very uncommon for a wii game), the dialogue is corny and cheap, causing the "wow, that was incredibly stupid moments". The gameplay is basic and simple which makes it monotonous and repetitive, forcing the players to hit the same buttons over and over, performing the same actions.

Story:
The story behind Spyborgs can be fun at times or it can be the most generic and completely unoriginal thing ever played. The story starts out with the team leader named Stinger who wakes up from a coma caused by his last mission. His other team members, Clandestine and Bouncer were waiting for him to recover so that they can tell him what happened on the last mission. As they are briefing him, the base is attacked. The Spyborgs team up and battle the attacking enemy robots. After defeating the robots, the teams realizes that one of their own, Jackal, has gone rogue. The Spyborgs set out on a mission to stop Jackals plans for world domination..

Behaviors:
The characters behavior in the game are created by the game designers and are not influenced by the player. Behaviors include: walking, running, shooting and, melee attacks. Since there is such a range of behaviors available, the progression of the game should be much less predictable in its outcome and gameplay. But due to the linear gameplay, and 2 button combo system, the repetitive behaviors bring the game down and make it generic.

Resources:
The resources within the game are extremely manageable. The player has to watch their health bar, and their team combo bar. In order for players to restore their health bar, they need to find red orbs. To find red orbs, the player can kill enemies using a special combo or destroy the plethora of crates within the level. The same thing applies to finding the yellow special orbs, which allows you to uses a team combo.

Challenge:
The challenge in this game varies because there are 6 difficulty modes to play on: very easy, easy, normal, hard, hardcore, Spyborg Extreme. On the easiest setting, despite the restricted combat system detailed above, this game can be challenging . The challenge arises from having to use the limited tools to achieve a winning outcome. However, the game does allow you to bring a computer controlled ally of your choice and this does make a little easier. But, the player will need to save the computer instead of fighting his own enemies so it a limited assist. The enemies do massive amounts of damage to the player, so blocking is a necessity to make it through the game. Also, the option of choosing what character you want to play can change the challenge for the game. If the player chooses Bouncer, the player can easily defeat enemies and take the most damage. However, if the player is not careful, and just mindlessly mashes buttons, and does not block, they will die very quickly. When a player dies, he has to start at the very beginning of the level, having to re-fight the same enemies. This lack of check points means any mistakes make for a steep penalty: restart from the beginning.

Time Splitters: Future Perfect

Company: Nintendo
Publisher: EA Games
Developer: Free Radical Design
Genre: First Person Shooter
Platform: Gamecube, Playstation 2, Xbox
ERSB Rating: M for Mature
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Premise:
The premise for the player is to battle against Time Splitters while traveling to different points in time to find the Time Crystals

Character:
The player takes control of the character, Sgt. Cortez, who is an officer in the Space Marines.

Play:
The games pacing is easy because it is focused on basic gun play. Besides the gun play, there are small, simple puzzles which are inserted only to break up the gun play. The game progresses in a linear fashion and rarely involves back tracking for the player. It is easy for a player to just go through the motions that the game requires and still enjoy it. This game was made during the last gen era, so it does not support the wii mote abilities. The play rests solely on the gamecube controller set up which means that all the actions in the game are mapped to the physical buttons on the controller.

Engagement:
This game is very engaging for players due to its solid gameplay, comedy, and its incredibly well written time traveling story. The story is humorous because it makes fun of other first person shooters, and movies. For example, during the first level one of the NPC soldiers sees a mass gathering of Time Splitters. He then references a line from the movie Alien: "Oh God they’re everywhere, they’re coming out from the walls". Other humorous moments occur when one of the characters breaks entertainment’s 4th wall by saying something like: "oh man, that would be a horrible idea for a video game." To move on, the gameplay is all done in First Person view (except for the cut scenes) so you are only able to see what your character can see. This makes sense because there are a lot of little Easter eggs to notice within a level. Due to the time traveling part of the story, players are teleported to different eras in human history ranging from the future to the prehistoric age, and Cortez can partner with many different characters ranging from: a 60's spy hippie, a super robot, and a conformist teenager. This range of characters makes the game particularly entertaining because they all speak with their own unique dialogue. In addition, the gameplay is reminiscent of 007 Golden Eye, which has been rated as the top FPS shooter in history. Timesplitters gun fights work just the same, making for interesting interaction.

Story:
The game starts where the second game ends: Cortez in his current time period of 2401,and the space station he is at is being attacked by Timesplitters. Timesplitters are aliens that have waged a war on the human race. They travel in time and disrupt human history. In Timesplitters: Future Perfect, the game begins the opening scene with Sergeant Cortez escaping the space station that is being attacked by the Timesplitters. During his escape he crashes into Earth, and finds out that the Timesplitters have followed him there. Cortez then fights his way through the timesplitter army and reaches the base where he is informed of his mission. Cortez has to find the remaining time crystals before the Timesplitters do. During the missions in time, Cortez teams up with people from that time period, and himself due to time warp holes. Cortez finds out that the timesplitters were created by an evil villain named Crow. The last segments of the story deal with Cortez chasing Crow through a different future that he warped.

Behaviors:
The behavior for the character has already been created by the game designers, this includes: walking, running, shooting, talking, melee attacks, using items, and swimming. Since the range of behaviors available, the progression of the game should be much less predictable in its outcome and gameplay, however, since the levels are linear it detracts from the second play through.

Resources:
The resources within this game are typical of a first person shooter. The player needs to manage their health, ammo, bullet proof armor, and grenades. If the player runs out of ammo, the weapon becomes useless until more ammo is found. The rule is the same for grenades, health, and bullet proof armor. The resources in the game are easily found because most enemies drop ammo and health for the player to recover.

Challenge:
The challenge for Timesplitters is what grabs players right into the game. When starting the single player campaign, there are 3 challenge levels the player can choose: easy, medium, and hard. One challenge that was a little to hard was battling the Timesplitters. Timesplitters turn invisible when they fight the player, and the only time they are visible is when attacking this makes them extremely hard to hit. Their are also a few physical puzzles scattered throughout the game, but they are extremely simple, so they present little challenge to the player. Other than that, Timesplitters: Future Perfect boasts a great challenge that any gamer type can enjoy. In addition to the single player, Timesplitters has over 150 characters to unlock, along with over 300 trophies to collect. Along with the characters and trophies there are arcade style missions that are quick and fun, but hard to get a high score on. So this game will keep any player occupied for a while, if they pursue the game to completion.

Dead Space Extraction

Company: Nintendo
Publisher: EA
Developer: Visceral Games
Genre: On Rails Shooter

Platform: Wii

ERSB Rating: M for Mature

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Premise:

The Premise of the game is to survive the Necromorph infestation on the Mining ship and the Aegis VII colony.

Character:

The player takes control of 4 different characters: Gabriel Weller, Nathan Mcneill, Lexine Murdoch, and Warren Eckhardt. The game play does not change when the game forces you to assume these characters, but their personalities are completely different from one another making the experience different. 

Play:

 The play in the game centers on using the wii-mote and nun chuck set up. The Wii Mote acts as the gun while the nun-chuck serves many purposes: swinging it activates the melee attacks, moving the control stick changes weapons, the C button activates the stasis, and the Z button reloads.

Engagement:

The player is totally immersed when playing this game. The in-game cut scenes and dialogue is so well written it’s like being inside an terribly familiar horror movie. Even though some of the plot points are a little cliché, the player will still feel deeply for the 4 main characters But story aside, this game plays like a typical rail shooter with some unique twists: story driven, original weapons, and interesting dismemberment system. Rail Shooter games are always played in First Person View and this game is no exception. First Person View means that the player sees out of the person he is controlling. The game developers did this on purpose so they could add little nuances that will cause the player to ask themselves: did that really happen, or is my character going crazy?

Story:

The story in Dead Space is not for the faint of heart. The story begins on a distant planet far from the colony. Lexine Murdoch, a surveyor for a mining companyy, has a boy friend who goes crazy when he mines an artifact called a "Marker". The character Nathan Mcneill determines that he has to kill the boyfriend as the boyfriend was clearly out of his mind, and had murdered too many other miners. There was no saving him . Two weeks later, weird cases of murder and suicide started to appear outside the mining area in the Colony. So Nathan along with Gabriel who is another security guard go and investigate. They go to the morgue and notice that all the bodies are gone and know that something is not right. For some unexplained reason, the Marker causes everyone on the Aegis VII colony to start killing themselves and attacking others (Eventually the civilians on the colony start to turn into an enemy called Necromorph). The Necromorphs first appear in the morgue and all hell breaks lose. Nathan and Gabriel try to find an escape pod to the mother ship. Along their journey, they find the egocentric, VIP Warren Eckardt , and the strong willed do-gooder Lexine Murdoch. So now, the 4 of them try to escape. They eventually do and once aboard the mother ship they realize that the Necromorphs are onboard too. From there, the new goal is to make it back to the escape pod in order to send for help. But since the second game is already out, players know that the 4 heroes meet a tragic fate. 

Resources:

The resources in the game are very manageable, because of a piece of equipment called RIG. The RIG (which is basically the HUD) displays the characters health, current ammo, and stasis energy. Other than that, the resources in this game are typical of most rail shooters. The player has to maintain health, ammo, and stasis energy by finding hidden ammo pack and health packs. The stasis energy, however, recovers over time, if it’s not used for a while.
Challenge:

The first challenge that lies within this game is the weapons. The weapons (like previous Dead Space games) are all futuristic mining tools, with the exception of the few weapons like the battle rifle. Mining tools are used to cut rocks apart, and this concept carries over to how the player kills Necromorphs. The only way the Necromorphs can be killed is to strategically dismember their body parts, so getting the classic head shot won’t save you in this game. Besides the tools helping you in combat, you have an item called the stasis. The stasis freezes enemies to a slow crawl to help you dismember them. Another challenge is managing the in game inventory. The player can only carry 3 different weapons out of 10. Each weapon has its own unique qualities and disadvantages. For example the battle rifle has a lot of ammo, but it is very poor at cutting of the enemies body parts. Another challenge is the games puzzles. While they are simple, they are fun because you have to hack into a terminal while Necromorphs are coming to attack you. So if the player does not solve the puzzle in time, he will have to deal with a horde of angry Necromorphs. Another puzzle the game gives to the player are called “Zero Gravity”. Zero Gravity is when the gravity inside the space ship is gone and everything is floating. The player has to point and click on the safe areas to land or risk being torn apart by enemies or getting sucked out into space from holes in the ship. While the challenge in some of the puzzles is lacking, its still fun because it fits with the atmosphere of the previous Dead Space game. Also while the enemies are numerous and difficult, most of them attack in the same way. This is one of the biggest flaws because once the player figures how certain enemies attack, its easier to manage who to shoot first. All in all the game does not get difficult until the last two chapters where the main characters are trying to escape from the mothership and every single Necromorph is coming after them. In the horror movie genre it’s called their "Last Stand" The last and optional challenge this game has is called "Challenge Mode". This mode plays like an arcade style House of the Dead shooter where the player is trying to acquire as much points as possible. This mode is probably the hardest thing in the game because it never ends, and the enemies keep coming.

Where They Got Their Ideas For The Game:

The game designers are the same team who developed Dead Space Extraction’s sequel called “Dead Space” In an interview, the designers said that they wanted to create a wii specific, innovative horror game that pushed the limits. In my view, they did that. Having played the previous Dead Space, the dialogue, combat, and atmosphere is completely the same: eerie and out of this world.