Ah ha! All has been made clear! Now we know why everyone despises our green-shirted friend! Expect one more installment in this “arc,” appearing a mere two days before “All Hallow’s Even.” (That’s Halloween, for those of you who are still ingesting your first coffee of the day.) Figured it would be acceptable, if not required to bring the occult into the comic for a short while.

I hate putting up new websites, and this was new for me seeing as I barely had to do any of the actual work. This website was put together by the sedulous Natasha Cross of Natcro Design. I’d sent Natasha only the barest of outlines for the website, which also included such detailed instructions as, “Please make this better.” And she did. Much better. She actually infused sexy into the site design. Not only did she make the site trillions of times better than I could have ever hoped to have done, but she made it better than it was in my imagination. Dem’s mad skillz, yo. Go hire her. She’s great. Thanks Natasha!

But back on track: websites and hate. I hate putting them together, even if it just trying to upload an archive of comics. That’s it. Guess there really wasn’t much to discuss on that topic.

Moving on. I am going to again plug two things, the e-mail list, and the Twitter. You can sign up for fantastic news, and comic update notifications to be sent straight to your inbox by sending a request with the subject “EMAIL LIST” to goodintheorycomic@gmail.com. (As for you folks who are already on the list, you have nothing to fear, as you will still continue to receive the updates as usual.

Twitter! I had brought this up a long time ago, and never did anything with it, or really plugged it much, so it never went anywhere. This Twitter is different, and is now fed into the site (you can see it to your right on in the sidebar of the blog.) It will be updated fairly regularly and I always support following on it.

Blabbityblabbityblabbitblab. I leik gamez. (Ignore this stuff non-gaming folks. It isn’t for you.)

Dead Space. I picked it up a few days ago and have been playing it a fair bit. While I have not finished it yet, I feel compelled to share my impressions and thoughts on this game.

First off: this is not a game that I was really anticipating, or had any interest in whatsoever. Noah ventured into the EA booth at PAX and returned with promotional stuff from it, his eyes aglow with amazement. I picked up the book of artwork and flipped through it, greeted by the images of several nasty-looking monsters, and a cold, gore-smeared spaceship. “Looks like Doom 3.” I casually stated in a coolly bored way.

“No, it doesn’t.” He said, deeply irritated by my statement, snatching his little bit of free advertising from my hands.

Truth be told, it does have a really similar look to Doom 3. Compare this and this. (Those are scary and bloody by the way.) I also was unaware that it took place in third-person, as compared to the first-person Doom 3-ness, so that must also be considered. I was just re-reading a forum post that Noah made a short while ago concerning Dead Space (which reads like an advertisement, the tool) in which he basically convinced me to buy it: “Dead Space [looks like it will] play more like a flexible version of RE4 that is actually scary.”

Sold.

So anyways, it only reminds me of Doom 3 in theory, but it has a completely different feel to it. I wouldn’t even say that it feels like Resident Evil 4 either. This is quite a fresh experience and that I am not sure that I even have something to compare it to. Let me say that it is terrifying. I mean scary, which is something that is often hard for a game to pull off (try as they might.) Doom 3 scared me, and I consider the true sign of a scary game is where I am standing at a door, not opening it because I dread whatever is on the other side.

But the real treasure of Dead Space is the depth of the fear. While Doom 3 relied a lot on darkness and cheap-shot monsters, Dead Space scares you out and out. Right-in-your face fear, which speaks volumes for its presentation. While all the monster stuff is plenty creepy, I think that one of the best, newest scares is when you must venture out into space, into zero-gravity, without oxygen. It’s really quiet, and that is bothersome. It has an unnatural feel to it. The oxygen meter, which steadily depletes, is accompanied by increasingly strained and panicked breathing. That absolutely murders me when I hear it, and I begin to search frantically around, disoriented by the gravity, looking for precious, precious oxygen.

Combat is different in this game, as you are immediately told that simply shooting enemies does not kill them very well. You must, (and this is delicious) sever their limbs, which are quite frequently long and spindly. This took some getting used to, as in most games you just point and go. Initially I thought the game had what I like to call “cheap toy gun syndrome,” where your weapons feel ineffective and useless (like cheap toy guns.) That was because I was doing some limb damage, but didn’t realize that the way you must consider your attacks is so different than most games. In most games of the shoot-ery sort, often it is the amount of ammunition you can cram into a target. In Dead Space, you must match shapes of the ammunition to your target: switching your strategies depending on the build of your enemy, when to switch the gun from firing a vertical pattern, to a horizontal pattern. It takes some adjusting, but eventually everything falls into place and any feelings of “cheapness” go away.

In closing, it is a game that absolutely oozes with freshness. I felt the beginning was a tad bit slow, but so far I have been rewarded so far with a truly note-worthy experience. Everything is superbly done and is definitely a must-play for fans of survival horror, or action games. If you have a PS3, 360, or PC, you owe it to yourself to check this one out.

Gaming talk ended.

So that’s basically it for this week. New Poop in Bed should be ready on Friday, and I am sure that Joel will have something that will be spontaneously hilarious. If not, tell him exactly how much you think he sucks. (It’s good for him!)

Later,

-Nathan