Description
The starship USG Ishimura sends out a distress signal to the Concordance Extraction Corporation during a mining operation on the planet Aegis VII. Another ship is sent to investigate the causes of the signal; however, as it attempts to dock with the Ishimura, it crashes into it because of a system malfunction. The crew is attacked by terrifying monsters. Only three people survive, among them an engineer named Isaac Clark. It looks like the ship is barely able to sustain its existence, many of its systems critically damaged. Isaac is the only one who would know how to fix them, and his two companions send him on a mission to find out a way to bring things back to normal, and discover the truth behind the horrible events.
Dead Space is a third-person sci-fi shooter with elements of survival horror. Controlling Isaac, the player explores the ship, fighting reanimated corpses known as Necromorphs. Combat heavily relies on the so-called "strategic dismemberment", which forces the player to cut off limbs or parts of the Necromorphs to defeat them. Wounding a particular part of the Necromorph's body may either allow the player to kill it, make it change attack patterns, or even become more dangerous.
Many of the weapons in the game are improvised mining tools, such as a rotary saw, a plasma cutter, a hydrazine torch used as a flamethrower, and others. All the weapons feature a secondary fire mode; for example, the plasma cutter can be rotate to cut off vertical limbs more efficiently. Isaac can also use special abilities, allowing him to slow down enemies or pick up and throw items from a distance. A few sections in the game have Isaac float in a zero gravity environment. Ammo and tools can be found during exploration or purchased in automatic shops available on the ship. Workbenches can be used to upgrade Isaac's weapons and armor.
Part of the Following Groups
User Reviews
The Press Says
| Shooterplanet |
Dec 03, 2008 |
91 out of 100 |
91 |
| Boomtown |
Nov 03, 2008 |
9 out of 10 |
90 |
| GameSpot (Belgium/Netherlands) |
Oct 24, 2008 |
90 out of 100 |
90 |
| Jolt (UK) |
Oct 27, 2008 |
9 out of 10 |
90 |
| GameLemon |
Mar 26, 2009 |
9 out of 10 |
90 |
| Gamers.at |
Nov 12, 2008 |
90 out of 100 |
90 |
| Gameplanet |
Oct 24, 2008 |
8.5 out of 10 |
85 |
| OMGN: Online Multiplayer Games Network |
Dec 21, 2010 |
8.3 out of 10 |
83 |
| 2404.org PC Gaming |
Nov 13, 2008 |
8 out of 10 |
80 |
| G4 TV: X-Play |
Oct 21, 2008 |
  |
80 |
Forums
Trivia
Air filtration room bug
Unfortunately, each platform the game was released (PS3, XBox 360, Windows) on, features the same, occasionally reproduced critical bug. In the 6th Chapter, where you are trying to pass the furnaces in the Air Filtration room, the control panels near the locked doors, which you should shoot out, are absent, and there is absolutely no way to proceed in the game. The exact steps to reproduce this bug are still unknown. No fixes exist at the moment of this trivia contribution, but a solution to avoid this bad situation does exist.
Just save your game in the very beginning of each chapter while you are in the tram, and keep it until you finish the chapter. If the bug occurs, just reload your save game and walk through the chapter from the very beginning once more. Just go to the problematic place as fast as possible and examine whether it is the same or not. Do it until the control panels appear, and you'll be able to get along.
Chapters (Spoiler!)
When put together, the first letter of each chapter's name spells out NICOLE IS DEAD.
Development
At first the game was developed for the original Xbox.
Inspiration
Producers admittedly reported to having drawn inspiration from cult-movies like
The Thing,
Alien and
Event Horizon, as well as from successful videogames like
Resident Evil and
Silent Hill.
Prequel
Some of the characters that appear or are mentioned in the game also appear in the animated prequel
Downfall, which depicts the outbreak of the Necromorphs on the Ishimura.
References
- Isaac Clarke, the main character of the game, is named after science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.
- Unitology, the fictional religion that plays a large part in the series' storyline, appears to be vaguely inspired by the Church of Scientology.
Awards
- GAME British Academy Video Games Awards
- 2009 - Original Score Award
- GamePro
- February 209 (Issue #245) - Xbox 360 Game of the Year 2008
- GamePro (Germany)
- February 26, 2009 - Best Console Action-Adventure in 2008 (Readers' Vote)
Information also contributed by
Mark Ennis,
PCGamer77,
POMAH,
Sciere and
sgtcook
