Summary
EA shows they're still capable of original thinking.
The Good
You're a member of a repair crew that's tasked to rescue the mining ship U.S.G. Ishimura. Upon arrival you're greeted by some unwelcome visitors, which quickly devolves into a butcher's yard of body parts.
This is an over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter, and you get to re-learn one of the basic rules of the genre: Head shots don't mean ANYTHING. In order to take down your enemies, you have to dismember them. The aliens have one objective: perpetuate themselves and spread. In order to do this, they have to kill humans, and then 'repurpose' their bodies. The Flood from Halo are a close analogy in this regard.
EA has done something new with the weapons and equipment, which is to allow you to upgrade them with power nodes. In one playthrough you can typically upgrade your suit and two weapons, so choose what you want to power up wisely.
Also new to Dead Space is how they handled Zero-G environments. A 360 degree battlefield takes some getting used to, and it's definitely well implemented.
The aliens themselves are suitably creepy, and do very well to convey the impression of more than just a bug hunt.
The Bad
I wish it could have been longer. There are 12 acts, and once you know what you're doing these acts take an average of 45 mins - 1 hour to complete. Also there's limited replayability incentive after you've completed the game. It took me two passes on Normal and one on Impossible to unlock all 1000 achievement points. 40 hours isn't too bad for a game, but damnit, this was fun. I wanted more!
The Bottom Line
Aliens meets Resident Evil.
