Ugh. This morning has not been so good for the game. I have discovered two things I consider to be sins in gaming.

There's a bad mini game that's required for progress. A turret shooting section where you have to gun down asteroids. Randomly generated asteroids, so the difficulty of each run is wildly different. The controls are dreadful; they have mapped movement onto the right stick instead of the left. Both triggers fire one half of the cannon. I'm left holding the controller awkwardly so I can't try to use the left stick to aim and die. The cannon itself is skiddy and not as responsive as it should be. Frequently the asteroid sets it generates force you to take hits. You can't shoot down a whole screenful of little rocks, and there isn't time to shoot up multiple big ones plus the little rocks they break up into. I have survived right up to the end several times, only to die on what must be the final set because it generates a series which requires you to have more than a couple of hits left to survive. I went looking to see if anyone else is struggling with this section; there are quite a few topics complaining about it. The difficulty level you are playing on doesn't affect it at all, nor does repeated failure.

So I am now completely stuck. I will have to replay that mini game over and over until I get lucky, or I will have to leave the game. I've already failed it for 9 or 10 runs in a row. A pity; level 4 was tremendously enjoyable. Using stasis on enemies and shoving them into malfunctioning gravity panels never gets old.

The other sin is Microsoft's, not EA's or the developer's. If you buy the game in the first week you are supposed to get a free suit exclusive to the xbox version. This is advertised in many places, always as a freebie and with no mention of anything else being needed. I went to download mine and I can't - it's exclusive for people with gold Live! memberships. That's false advertising, and disgusting. Worse, Dead Space is a fully single-player game. There's no reason at all to assume many of the people buying it would have the paid subscription which enables you to play multiplayer online. Sony's equivalent suit is freely available for all game owners. I'm not that bothered about having the suit but that's not the point.

Regarding the ammo issue, from what I have heard, at one point, ammo becomes extremely scarce up to the point that you almost have more enemies to kill than you do ammo for all of your guns combined so it would be a good idea to stock up on them while you can.
I have 11 full bundles of ammo for my gun of choice in my storage locker plus 5 full bundles and 1 partial bundle in my inventory at all times. I have 2 large health packs and ... oh, around 7 medium ones in storage plus 3 and a small one in my inventory. That's so much I wonder if I should have played on hard mode instead; resources are a lot scarcer there.

There have been situations which caused me to chew through a couple of bundles of ammo in a single go. They always leave me worried; two situations like that in close succession and I'm bled dry until I can get to a store and withdraw some of my surplus. That’s good; it stops me from feeling unstoppable.

You can buy ammo once you have discovered the schematic for the type you want. Careful selling of unwanted items would carry you along for a bit.

I do suspect that my using a single type of gun is helping me considerably. Enemies only drop ammo for the gun I am using, so drops must be tied to the weapons you are carrying. Better to have lots of ammo for one type than not much for several. I have more money and nodes to plough into fewer areas too, meaning I have the best suit available at this point, my gun is almost fully upgraded, and my rig and stasis module have a few choice upgrades.



Gah! I like this game! I have to get past that nasty turret game. :wishes she could swap control over to the left stick because that would do wonders for her ability to shoot: I completed the sadistic asteroid shooting bonus level on Rogue Leader with a silver medal back in the gamecube days. Surely I can get past this!