Contest Entry: Challenging Gaming Moments by Archdruid Gaming

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Steemian @enjar offered up this inspiring game-themed contest yesterday, and after some thought I decided that not only did I need to enter, but I had the perfect experience to sum up the theme. I'm going out on a limb to do something a little different with this, so we'll see if it pays off.

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The contest rules are simple: in a written post (not a vlog) of 3,000 words or less, describe a challenging moment in your personal history with gaming. Since I've been gaming for the last thirty-some years, I could pick any number of games from any given era. Heck, I've written about plenty of hard games across multiple genres over the past few years. NES carts, Genesis/Mega Drive games, heck I've even covered Dungeons & Dragons adventures on three separate occasions, proving that tabletop gamers are among the most masochistic individuals inhabiting the Prime Material Plane.

But contest rules insist you can't nominate something you've already written, so we'll forget all those and go with a new tactic. Let's talk about the experience of playing Dead Space.

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When I say Dead Space, I'm talking about the original released almost ten years ago (damn, I'm getting old...!) on the PS3, PC, and Xbox 360. Yes, there have been sequels and spin-offs since then, but that first game is a work of bloody art which delivered on nearly every promise it made. It's scary, it's creepy, it's atmospheric, it's an adrenaline rush, and the Necromorph enemies you face while exploring the U.S.G. Ishimura are plenty different from your standard zombies or Aliens rip-offs that traditionally populate the Survival Horror genre.

Actually calling Dead Space a survival horror title is a bit misleading. While it contains many of the same elements which make franchises like Silent Hill and Resident Evil so memorable and difficult to play, I'd actually classify Dead Space as Action Horror. That isn't to say it's easy, or that there's no resource management--believe me, on your first blind playthrough, you'll get intimately acquainted with the many ways the rampaging Necromorphs can decorate the walls with your body parts, to say nothing of the opportunities to do so to yourself.

You need watch your ammo consumption, but there are plenty of places to loot and find more, and if all else fails, you can buy some at the shop kiosks scattered around the ship. There's inventory management too, but it's possible to upgrade your RIG (that's your armored space suit) so you can haul around more stuff. You're also rarely playing against any kind of timer, save for the sections of the ship which lack atmosphere and require you to draw on your own oxygen reserves, so you can advance cautiously through most areas, disabling foes as needed, and recovering the materials you need to forge ahead in your mission. You're also well-armed for the mission--while you quickly acquire a simple Plasma Cutter tool more suitable for repair work than fending off slavering-fanged aliens, by the end of the game you'll have blueprints for everything from legit firearms like flamethrowers and assault rifles, to heavy-duty tools which mimic shotguns and rocket launchers, to completely off-the-wall makeshift stuff like a cannon that fires razor-sharp saw blades and an arc-welding tool that lays packet explosives via secondary-fire.

Your first trip through the game will see you loaded for bear by the time you reach the final boss, with plenty of medkits, ammo, weapons, and health unless you're the clumsiest gamer on the face of the planet. It also won't prepare you in the slightest for what you'll face when you take on the game's true test: Impossible Mode.

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"Impossible Mode" is aptly named. Deliberately left off the main menu until you've completed the game once to unlock it, "Impossible Mode" takes everything you've learned from your previous playthroughs at lower difficulties and throws it right out the airlock. While most gamers should be able to handle Dead Space on Normal mode, and even Hard mode after some experience, Impossible is a different beast all together. It not only fundamentally alters many of the parameters you've come to expect, it does so in such a way that previous experience actually works against you.

Dead Space on Impossible is practically a second game unto itself.

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With most games, setting the difficulty level higher tweaks a few basic things. In fact, the easiest way for devs to make a game harder is through simple tactics like reducing the player's damage output, or carb-loading the bad guys, making standard enemies bullet sponges and major bosses into feats of endurance. For many designers, that's enough.

For the fiends behind Dead Space, that's just getting started. That's because...

Enemies In Impossible Mode Are More Agile And Hit Harder

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While the Necromorphs are always a bit twitchy, especially in the later levels, in Impossible mode they zip around like over-caffeinated toddlers, sidestepping your shots at long-range, and forcing more in-your-face confrontations. This is far from ideal, because while Isaac can shrug off a few blows in any of the three lower difficulty modes, even the weakest enemies in Impossible will murder you in 2-3 hits unless you're sporting a significantly-upgraded RIG. Fail to time it right, and the very first Necromorph you encounter will tear you in half before you reach the safety of the elevator.

This is already not playing nice, but it's even worse than it seems: melee interaction on lower difficulties is a relative rarity since you will almost always have enough ammo to deal with foes at long range, which means you will have adapted the wrong kind of reflexes for dealing with what the game's throwing at you. Hand-to-hand combat, especially in Easy and Normal modes, just isn't necessary unless you've monumentally screwed up. That means you haven't practiced with it, and that's a problem. You'll find yourself throwing plenty of haymakers and curb-stomps in Impossible, not just because the enemies tend to wind up closer and can soak up more hits on their way into punching range, but also...

You Must Conserve Ammunition (And Everything Else) At All Costs

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Dead Space's difficulty impacts the amount and frequency of item drops. Some things in the game will always be found in the exact same places regardless of difficulty level, but Impossible decreases the likelihood of random drops from enemies, then kicks you in the groin again by reducing the amount in each pick-up. That means less ammo and a noticeable lack of extra Stasis refills and medkits. Since enemies are dishing out more damage and will more often get within melee range, chances are good you'll be relying on those medkits instead of being able to sell them off in the earlier chapters.

You'll also learn, either the easy way or the hard way, to rely on your Stasis module far more than you did during an ordinary run. Stasis, in fact, becomes both a sort of second health meter and a way to conserve ammo all at once: freeze enemies then get the hell away from them as fast as possible or use the time when they can't retaliate to stomp them into meat slurry. Remember, Stasis is the only thing in the game for which you can find free recharge stations. Eagle-eyed players likely noticed a number of these charging stations during a standard playthrough and wondered why the hell they were there, as they weren't at all necessary. Once you play Impossible, you'll understand exactly why the developers put them there, and you'll thank them profusely.

If you think you'll overcome your deficiency in any given area just by toughing it out until you find the shop and fill your inventory, think again: it turns out...

Those Credit Drops Aren't As Frequent Either

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During a normal playthrough, even on Hard mode, you'll be able to reliably salvage enough credits from looting and selling everything you don't need to outfit yourself with a sizable arsenal and devote leftover cash to buy power nodes for upgrading your RIG, your Stasis module, your guns, and still have some left over to get into the optional rooms that require them as keys. That goes completely out the window in Impossible mode--you'll need every last ding-dang credit you can scrape together, and by the time you reach the first shop, you'll likely have to decide between picking up an extra medpack for when the going gets tougher, or grabbing extra ammo for the fights to come.

From there, it only gets harder.

Gone are the days when you could reliably invest in every suit upgrade and new weapon blueprint you scrounged up over the last hour. Impossible mode is all about forcing you to make hard choices:

• You could invest in a better suit with more armor to absorb Necromorph attacks and additional inventory slots, but that's tens of thousands of credits you can't use on anything else.

• Toting four guns around means you're ready for anything, but is only feasible if you give up RIG upgrades and extra power nodes.

• Buying extra nodes to upgrade your guns means going without health kits or Stasis refills.

Impossible mode raises inventory management to an artform, and unless you're a master of logistics, it's possible to inadvertently slit your own throat at the shop and not realize the mistake you made until it's too late. The point is, there will come a time during the playthrough where it costs more ammo to dismember an enemy than it might randomly drop upon death, a problem which is exacerbated if you don't do the opposite of what your intuition tells you and...

Stick To As Few Weapons As Possible

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There's a Trophy/Achievement for Dead Space called "One Gun", earned for beating the game using only melee and the Plasma Cutter, and despite what common sense might dictate, an Impossible run is a great time to attempt that challenge as well thanks to the way the game handles loot drops.

With very few hard-coded exceptions, Dead Space will always gift you with ammo for weapons you're currently carrying. That's fine for lower difficulties, but in Impossible mode it can spell disaster. Ammunition is already at a premium, so there's nothing worse than really needing a reload for your Plasma Cutter and getting literally anything else but that off an enemy's body. The best way to combat this is to keep your load-out to the bare minimum. This ensures no matter what you find, you'll be able to use it, keeps you from clogging up your inventory with ammo you don't need, and leaves more room for extra health or Stasis items.

Sticking to only one or two weapons has the added benefit of forcing you to focus your power node upgrades on as few things as possible. A damage-boosted Plasma Cutter conserves ammo by making every shot hit harder and leaves you with additional nodes to throw into powering up your RIG and Stasis module. You still may want a secondary weapon like the Force Gun for close encounters, or the Line Gun for crowd control, but I played Impossible mode and earned the One Gun trophy at the same time. It's not as crazy as it sounds.

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I love Dead Space. It's a phenomenal product out of the box, but playing Impossible mode gives one a whole new appreciation for what the developers packed into that disc. It's rare a game's higher difficulty level actually forces a player to approach the experience from a whole different angle, but that's what Dead Space manages. What's more, Impossible mode lets you recapture the feeling of the first time you played the game because of all the new rules, mechanics, and strategies you need to work out. Despite the name, it isn't actually "impossible" to beat. I don't normally mess around with the higher difficulty settings in games, but Dead Space was so good I had no problems dumping the extra time required to earn that Platinum trophy. It's the most fun I've had being torn to pieces by reanimated corpses since I started playing video games. That made it a shoe-in for this contest.

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