The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I’m like “You know what gamez are fun to play with peoples who maybe don’t know so much about games? Rail shooters.” So I used my awesome Gamefly powers to Gamefly up a copy of Dead Space: Extraction for my Nintendo Wii.

We played it for an hour or two, and then I sent it back.

It’s obvious the people who made Extraction had good ideas and high hopes. They were looking at the Wii, and how shitty actual shooters were on it, and they thought, “Hey, we can make a light gun shooter that has depth like a regular shooter! And tell a story!” These sound like great things, you know? In reality, though, it just ends up being really stupid.

First off, the storytelling just isn’t compelling. This is mostly because you almost always have a target icon on the screen while people are talking. So you do what anyone would do. You flail it about on the screen, and fire shots near people’s heads that they ignore, and generally completely break immersion. I don’t often say this, but a cutscene would have been much more effective during these sequences. It’s also extra-annoying when you’re character looks around, because he almost always isn’t going to look at what you actually want to look at, which is the powerup in the corner of the screen.

Speaking of powerups, the game rewards you mashing the A button constantly to try to grab things completely at random. I got way, way more ammo that way than actually attempting to pick up ammunition. This is yet another annoying thing you do during boring story bits that just completely breaks it apart.

Basically, what I’m saying is that it’s a huge, huge mistake to let you fire your gun at all in these sequences. The targeting thing is huge, and a big distraction, even during actual gameplay. Putting it up there when I’m supposed to listen to people talking just makes me want to shoot people in the head. It’s not a good idea.

The actual shooting isn’t bad. It’s normal light gun fare. But when you have to go through all these talky bits that constantly break up the action so much, there just seems to be little point to going on with it. You can have the same fun faster by booting up House of the Dead: Overkill. You’ll actually laugh at the little tiny bits of plot in that game, too.

They tried with Extraction. They really did. But the game was just boring. You pick up a light gun game and expect to shoot things. Exploration where you aren’t actually exploring just isn’t any fun. Not being able to shoot things isn’t any fun. It could have been a lot better than it was. I didn’t feel bad sending it back.