Ah Dead Space. Let me give you a little history of this game. A long time ago, in a gaming company not so far away (for some of us) there was a made up, magical kingdom of EA. Now EA was already known for making a few good games, like the sims and a few good sports games. But the king wasn't happy with their recent accomplishments and demanded more money. So his magical elves worked late into the night, coming up with a solution for their furious king when one of the magical elves looked up and said... "Wait! lets re-release our old games in better graphics with a few tweaks!" The next day, the elves brought it before the king and told him of their plans. He applauded the little elves, but agreed the games must only be okay with him. So, they all set off to work, churning out the same games again and again until the little woodland creatures in EA were sick of it. They complained to the king for years and years to give them something new otherwise they'll mutiny and move on over to the magical kingdom of Nintendo or the wartorn realms of Blizzard out of defiance. The king of EA was aghast at this. In order to remedy the situation he demanded the elves to work on a new solution, giving them free reign to create any kind of game they wanted that would please the little woodland critters and keep them in the kingdom of EA. Of course, the elves had no idea how to think on their own anymore and so they went to the bar and got so hammered they all stumbled into work the next day and vomitted all over their computer screens. One little elf saw his mommy in his barf while another elf saw a skull and a space ship; thus Dead Space was born.
Dead Space is EA's newest attempt at showing everyone they aren't just cutthroat, cop-out, bum pirates (see Madden series). Yes, the EA we used to know and hate has released this game in order to prove to us they have turned over a new leaf. Based upon everything within Dead Space, I think its safe to say they have. Luckily enough for me, I could test this game on some of the biggest screens known to man along with a surround sound system strong enough to make a deaf man on the east coast file a noise complaint. The game begins with a stereotypical "here’s a creepy pixilated chick" video. After all it can't be a horror game without a creepy girl in it right? It also begins with yet another stereotypical "show the place you'll be stuck in for the entire course of the game/movie/what have you" scene followed by the ever predictable "oh no something is wrong! time for an emergency landing" gig.
This is where you finally are able to pick up the game and actually play. Once the game starts you'll notice the screen is nearly clean. Hell its a sci-fi game, we should have more shiny heads up menus than lights in Disneyland. But EA, in a rather rare stroke of genius, decided to make the displays projections against the background. While this may sound rather bothersome to the game, it does have its own charm in reeling the player in and making sure they drown in the oceans of blood and decapitated limbs soon to follow. It even gives you the feel that you’re looking through Isaac's eyes despite him standing right in front of you getting nibbled on. An interesting side note though, if a player were to take out Isaac's model completely, the camera view would be highly identical to an FPS.
The health and "stasis" bars are conveniently located on Isaac's back. Which, while it may sound like a detriment to game play, is yet another lightning bolt of genius for this game, since it clears the game’s screen in order for you to appreciate the bone chilling horror it’ll be ramming down your throat every other minute? As another genius usage of the display less interface, if the player is ever lost, then he just needs to press the right joystick in and viola, Isaac summons a nice line to guide him to where he needs to go. The only time this serves to inconvenience the game is when you’re stuck in a cluster of items and you only want to pick up one. This leaves you to run around the room like a drunken maniac till you’re the right distance away from the item you want. Thankfully, you'll rarely be found in that situation. But when you are, it’s a very bothersome thing. As the game progresses, your taken through the many layers of the "Ishimura". Plot wise it’s called a planet cracker ship that, surprise, cracks planets. It then takes the bits of the planet and turns it into fuel for the rest of society (a statement on the usage of fossil fuels by EA perhaps?). Once you’re in the Ishimura though, the game's atmosphere constantly keeps you so close to the edge of your seat you might as well fall off and start eating floor, if you weren't constantly jumping at the slightest movement within a 10 mile radius of you.
An example of this is when poor Isaac is forced to go through a tram way to another part of the ship. EA really showed how dedicated they are to really scaring the living hell out of you by making this one tram ride one of the most bone chilling parts of the game. I mean, you'd think "it’s just a bloody tram" but once you get on the atmosphere almost comes to life as it begins to pick up speed and the lights slowly start to die out ahead as the tram way takes you into the black maw of the tunnel itself.
It could just be because I played this game in surround sound, but it seemed like one of the scariest portions of the game was the soundtrack. From the gurgling ghouls in the air vents to the bone chilling, orchestrated scores used to alert you death just so happens to be relaxing in a Jacuzzi near you, the game plays upon your sense of hearing to keep you on your toes and to ensure that if you want to survive each room and puzzle you need to listen closely (no matter how much you don't want to) for the scratching, gurgling, or pawing of anything undead. You know, kind of like in Hollywood. I would just like to add that hearing all of this in surround sound made the entire experience all the more frightening. In a way, it suddenly felt as though the room your playing in has become part of the Ishimura's halls, and the many sounds to alert you of the monsters coming can either be from the speakers or the air vent right next to it.
Once you hit the combat though, the game starts to love some of its horror charm. Yes the monsters are scary, and yes they are hard to keep down at times. But the problem comes when all of your battles can be summed up as "pop a cap in their knee, then blow their arms off gangsta style." I mean, the whole idea of murdering them in the arm is intuitive, but it makes little sense. After all, the entire idea behind blowing off someone's head is so you disable the nervous system so the alien can't use it anymore. Blowing off the arm or leg shouldn't be that much of a detriment since they aren't worried about bleeding to death anymore. This idea is so stressed in battle they might as well have renamed the game "Dead Space" to "Knee capper 5000".
Of course, not all enemies will have knees, but the simplest way to deal with them would be to shoot the glowing orbs or the tentacles that are popping out all over their bodies. Melee is accurately portrayed as a desperate, last resort, flailing action to give yourself some space. Although, it'll never get old to pimp slap an infected man to death. The curb stomp seems a little out of place for a lowly engineer, but when you have boots heavy enough to make you move at the speed of a retarded, legless hippopotamus, you may as well put them to good use.
Death is a very interesting mechanic in this game. While you may die and restart at the beginning of the room, there are times where you just don't want to die because of how graphic it is. There are times where you'll be ripped to ribbons as Isaac feebly tries to resist. Other times you'll lose your head and Isaac will feel his stump before collapsing to the ground in a blood heap. Of course, the best way to avoid some of the most gruesome death scenes are to just stay at range, and in this field, Dead Space excels at. The Guns are well balanced, since no one gun will be your cure-all like in some games, you'll be forced to switch guns periodically depending on the situation you get yourself stuck in. Such as if enemies are crawling out of the air vents in hordes. You could use the plastma cutter, but the Pulse rifle might be better in this situation.
Plasma Cutter:
Main fire- it fires a horizontal shot.
Secondary Fire- it changes the shot from horizontal to vertical and vice versa.
Usefulness- Gets the job done. Good Side arm.
Pulse Rifle:
Main fire- full automatic fire
Secondary fire- alleluia it’s raining bullets
Usefulness- This gun slices, it dices, it makes your salad and does your laundry. Sadly it sucks up so much ammo you'll be forced to prostitute yourself to keep up with its high demand.
Line cutter:
Main fire: giant cutter of death
Secondary Fire: Explosive mines of death
Usefulness: It’s like dominoes. When all the enemies are in a straight line, you make them all fall down at the same time. The mines make people do mid-air ballets.
Contact Beam:
Main fire: Big beam of death.
Secondary Fire: shockwave of death.
Usefulness: Its like the Spartan laser, except it doesn't go through things, and blows up in their face instead. It sucks up quite a bit of ammo when they're coming in from all sides and it’s still warming up.
Chainsaw thingy:
Main fire: You fire a chainsaw and control it for a good duration
Secondary fire: You fire said chainsaw and watch as it mutilates everything.
Usefulness: Have you ever seen Evil Dead and wondered what it'd be like to have a chainsaw arm? Now make that arm extend. Yeah that’s pretty much the equivalent of this gun.
Flamethrower:
Main fire: Disco inferno
Secondary fire: Hadoken
Usefulness: It’s a lot like the pyro's flamethrower from Team Fortress 2. You fire a stream, things go on fire, takes a while for them to die.
Those are all the guns I've used so far, there are several more but I'll come back and edit this section once I've gone back and used them. Of course, the guns all run on ammo you find throughout the ship or you buy from the store. The current ammo system keeps the survival flavor and gives a good balance to the guns. There’s enough bullets to make sure you down what you need to, but not enough for you to go and recreate the sistine chapel on your enemies and your neighbor's yappy dog.
While we're on the subject of the store, this useful place becomes the only thing you have to stay sane in the hellish world of the Ishimura. It’s nice neon glow massages away all your fears as you look onto its inventory screen and suppress a slight giggle as it shows you all the big new toys it wants to give you and dresses your armored bum in the best suits to date. Of course, this all comes crashing down when you realize the store will only do all this nice stuff for a price. Luckily enough, Dead Space keeps its money in check and since the enemies are just infected humans, you can rummage around in their naughty parts for a penny or two. So you'll be slightly scarce on money, and be forced to decide if you want to deck yourself out with a new piece of armor, or get a new gun for the level, or even buy a lot of health and air tanks.
Dead Space also incorporates genius usage of zero-g rooms along with rooms with no oxygen. This leads to moments where you truly feel the monsters can come at you from all sides. Even above you. It also leads to very interesting puzzles revolving around restoring gravity.
Rooms where your forced to use your suit's air though are truly terrifying, due to the limited amount of oxygen you'll have and knowing once that number display on your back hits zero, your dead. All the baddies in the world apparently realize this and decide to smear your face against every object in the room. Air canisters have to be used out of the inventory, which is slightly bothersome.
The plot of dead space is both intriguing and bothersome. While it may be interesting to see how this society works and how a ship the size of a large city operates, the plot is riddle with little bothersome inconveniences. For example, the other characters in the cast that aren't Isaac are a bunch of whiners. All they ever whine about too is how you need to fix the engines, fix the guns, fix the backed up toilet, and help their cat get out of a bloody tree. Next on the list comes, Isaac kill this, Isaac kill that, when the heavily armed black guy, who's in charge of the security of our team, sits back and does the hacking. Another point in time comes when you meet Osama Bin Laden. Yes, I said it. Osama is in it. Not literally of course, but quite like him. All he talks about is how the end of the human race has come and how we have to foster the way for the monsters to take over. How nice of EA to make a statement on the middle eastern conflicts too, just like everyone else. Another part of the plot that I don't fully comprehend is why an entire military war vessel can get corrupted and destroyed by one little monster thing. I mean for god sake, your all well trained soldiers! I'm just a weak little engineer! How the hell does an entire regiment go down while I down these things by the hordes?!
Anyway, puzzles feel as though you’re doing the exact same thing again and again, but after a while you really don't seem to mind. Reason being, while you’re trying to do the puzzle there’s some little filthy hell thing nibbling away at your ankles and which are you going to worry about, the hell-thing, or the puzzle? Some of the puzzles, while they seem repetitive, are a nice refresher though. For example releasing a giant asteroid into space, or gunning down more asteroids. Another example is defending some girl who helps you while she's all the way on the other side of the room and your both divided by a giant chasm in the center.
Anyhow, time to sum:
Graphics: Beautiful and terrifying at the same time. The enemies look real enough to rip your arms off. Projected displays against the background are just works of sheer genius and I wish more games would do this so the screen no longer becomes cluttered up with random menus. Sadly though, most parts of the ship seem to look the same and the atrium part needs more green to really set itself apart from the rest of the gunmetal gray. I would also suggest for there to be more colors than just gray on a space ship, just because it got so bothersome after a while I had to redecorate everything with fire. Red, orange and yellow > Crap loads of gray.
Sound: it really does sound like you've been put into some of the scariest situations possible. Eventually the sound will make you think every shadow has some sharp thing waiting to turn you into strawberry pudding.
Story: This is one of those bothersome parts, since everyone seems to rely on you to be their workhorse and marines are apparently well armed pansies who can't fire straight to save their lives (literally), but once they get turned into mutant freaks of nature they suddenly become hell bent demons who want to snack on your liver.
Conrols: Easy, fun and intuitive. Its slightly bothersome to only be able to do certain things in "aim mode" though.
Overall fun: If you’re the kind of person who gets a jolly out of being scared to death than you've just found your new Silent Hill, because this game delivers on the fright in almost every waking second you’re in it.
Multiplayer- None. Although it'd be fun to go through this with a friend.
Single player- The game is very fun and very frightening. I also recommend going through this with surround sound to make it sound like your actually in the space ship waiting to get your head hacked off. The environment your pressed into sounds and looks genuinely terrifying and the game keeps you immersed at all times by keeping everything real time, even when you’re looking through inventory.
Now then, it’s time for me to actually finish the game and edit this review to incorporate the ending and any other criticisms I can come up with.
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