Just came away from an hour or so of playing this. First impressions: Welcome to the USS Narcolepsy: home of things that would have been entertaining if they hadn't stopped being unpredictable sometime around 1974, and wearisome 'drag the unarmed, useless drone player by the nose for ten minutes before anything happens' introductions.
Second impressions: These controls are really quite poor. X to use health items? X is reload in every other game with guns, ever, you idiots. Hammer A to not die, sigh. Hold a button to run? What the fuck are you doing giving an analogue stick no analogue function?
Third impressions: Seeing as this is a survival horror game, I'd better use some melee att... jesus christ, is that aimless, lumbering swing supposed to be useful? You might as well just post the zombies a letter about how you'll definitely be hitting them quite hard sometime in the near future, oh yes.
Fourth impressions: Apparently you should shoot them in the limbs. Apparently you should shoot them in the limbs. Apparently you should shoot them in the limbs. ApparenWILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP I HEARD YOU THE FIRST TIME (and that would have been a better gimmick if you'd hinted at it later instead of spunking it repeatedly over the player's face the instant they start the game).
Fifth impressions: Oh, goody. Bullet time.
Sixth impressions: Actually, maybe I'll switch off the console I just spent the afternoon repairing and do something that's actually entertaining.
Sorry, but it's a pretty abysmal start so far. The fighting's dull, the main character is sluggish and generally awkward, the zombies are plain irritating and something you splat just so they'll get out of the way (as opposed to things you wanted to destroy like in Aliens, or things you just wanted to please, please go away and stop muttering about all the horrible things that have happened on the ship and the equally horrible things your creepy hive mind wants to do to me), and the atmosphere is just totally by the numbers. "THEY R USING THE VENTS GUSY! I TOTALY NEVER THOURT OF MOSNTERS ON THE SHIP USING THE VENTS!!"
"LET ME THROUGH THE DOOR! I will bang on it and scream about how urgently it must be opened in a repeating loop until the end of time, unless you realise you're not supposed to replace the battery a la system shock, but shoot it, whereupon I will SHOCKINGLY HORROR SCARILY be killed by a zombie! Scary, eh?"
"You're crazy, leader guy... or possibly soldier guy.. or husband guy... I honestly don't know or care who any of these people are, and their apparently random interactions don't help! You're crazy, trying to get us killed by er... trying to get us off the ship instead of standing around serving no apparent purpose other than having large breasts!"
"So, this is a huge mining ship and huge crew, blah blah, n oanswer, we go on board blah blah. Here, dogsbody, you go and do all the dangerous work while we hang around in another room behind plate glass. We definitely won't get slaughtered or anything, and I am so confident of your success I will send you off on a variety of maintenance and repair tasks on a mysteriously dead ship with no weapons and no equipment whatsoever. Make sure you go through the obligatory scene where monsters are vaguely nearby but you don't have a weapon yet (and apparently have still a few minutes' worth of hand-eye co-ordination to develop before you can throw a largely useless punch), so have to run for safety in a manner that would have been really exciting and original about twelve years ago. Cheers!"
I know it's just a game, but it's all been done before with far more subtlety and character, and a far more effective sense of dread and foreboding and danger. Without the effectively-built atmosphere of Resident Evil or System Shock it's just a bland FPS hammered into a vaguely survival horror shape by limiting the ammunition, rusting up the controls and scattering a few yawnworthy audio logs around. I really am very disappointed with everything it's shown me so far.
Also: On my first death, I was warped back to the previous room after a fairly long load time. Not to reload my last save, oh no. It took me back to the previous room, but divested me of all my ammunition. So, I had to them quit and reload. It appears to have been a glitch, but lordy.
Is there any reason to give this one a second hour?
_________________ Lonely as a Mushroom Cloud
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