T w e n t y S i d e d

I know I’ve told this story before, but I can’t remember where or when. Odds are, this will be new to some of you…

At the end of this episode, we get to a broken bridge where you have to jump over the gap while under fire from a gunship. My first time through the game, I misunderstood how the gravity gun worked. I was under the impression that if the gun claw didn’t open up (which it does when you point at an object that can be lifted) that the object you were looking at was static and non-movable. Therefore, I didn’t realize that you could “punt” cars out of your way. When I reached this point in the game, I saw the wall of wrecked cars and assumed this was a clear sign to the player that it was time to leave the buggy behind. So I did.

I walked the rest of the way on Highway 17, constantly annoyed by the long, boring stretches of walking and somehow never taking the hint that I was supposed to be driving this part.

I didn’t realize my mistake until the very end, when you reach the lighthouse. When I got there, one of the NPC’s got stuck in a loop, repeating over and over for me to park my car in the garage. At that point I facepalmed, and the previous two hours of hiking suddenly made sense. The NPC kept on screaming about parking the car, on through the ensuing fight. I don’t remember if he stood in the open, or if his disembodied voice followed me around the battlefield, but I do remember I didn’t escape him until I went through a loading screen.

Subsequent patches have fixed things for people afflicted by my particular brand of idiocy. If you leave the car behind, it will teleport to you at the next loading screen. If you arrive at the end with no car, the guy won’t harass you about it.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

For those of you who have been eager to hear us criticize Valve a bit… your moment has come.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I know Dead Space is a popular game, so before people jump on us about how we “hate” Dead Space, I should clarify:

I enjoyed Dead Space 2. The gameplay was fun, but the atmosphere was often undercut by heavy-handedness and a complete lack of pacing. In the opening cutscene, before you’re even given control of your character, the game gives you a close-up, full-on view of a monster roaring in your face. It feels like too much, too soon, with too little reason to care. By blending the exposition and tutorials with a slow-building threat they could have made something far, far more powerful.

Also, I simply refuse to believe that Josh grabbed a flaming barrel with the gravity gun and survived the subsequent detonation. I’ve made that same mistake a few times, with a 100% fatality rate.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.