Dead Space

The Good
Yes, as you may have heard or read, this game is largely a mixture of previous, successful Survival Horror/Adventure franchises like System Shock 2, Resident Evil, Doom 3, BioShock, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Left4Dead, Singularity, Metroid Prime as well as numerous Sci-Fi movie plots which contribute to the basic atmosphere and premise of this game; mainly: Aliens, Event Horizon, Solaris and The Thing.

That’s not a bad thing in this case, and the similarities end at a fairly superficial level.

In the 25th Century, humanity's insane appetite for resources inevitably leads us to other planets, to extract their abundant mineral wealth, free from any ethical, political and environmental considerations to deal with.

Planets we think... will have no native life forms to interfere with our harvesting. Turns out, we encounter an alien species that harvest resources of a different kind. Dead flesh.

A huge "Planet-Cracker" ship, the USG Ishimura (appropriately meaning “Stone Village” in Japanese), sends out an emergency SOS signal while in orbit above Aegis VII, a nondescript planet in a distant solar system.

Isaac Clarke, who is one of the unluckiest and unassuming guys you'll ever meet in a video game, as well as nod to the great Sci-Fi pioneers Isaac Asimov & Arthur Clarke, is an experienced engineer is dispatched aboard the USG Kellion with a crew of 4, to investigate what they assume are just mere communications problems aboard the Ishimura. Sounds good huh? You have no idea.

What Dead Space does best in the over-saturated Survival Horror Genre is PERFECT things to a tee.

Ammunition and pick-up scarcity is at just the right balance to make the game difficult enough but not insanely frustrating for all but the most novice survival horror players.

Necromorph attacks have a consistent pace throughout the game, so you're never too comfortable and familiar with your enemy, but also never too far away from the next fire fight.

You're weapons feel underwhelming and rustic (because they are just improvised mining tools for the most part), so you're never too confident with your arsenal but at the same time they can be heavily modified to wreak serious hell on the USG Ishimura later on in the game. The customization aspect of your weapons, RIG (your space suit) and stasis/kinesis abilities provide some serious replay value.

The immersion factor sucks you into this game like few others (Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the closest at matching it) because of the HUD-less interface, in-game holographic projection screens instead of atmosphere-breaking menus and very interactive environments. Everything in the game is presented in a 3rd-person, over-the-shoulder perspective; rarely breaking from this angle.

Isaac's every step and action you undertake while breathing right down his neck, and the excellent physics and animation makes every heart-pounding, close encounter with the hideous Necromorphs all the more terrifying. You'll notice this the most if you let one of those suckers come too close and grab a hold of you or if one of them sneaks up behind you, in which case all you’ll see is a giant pointy arm come up behind Isaac that will require you to change your pants.

One factor that strikes you in a big way, is that you do feel like an everyman in the wrong place at the wrong time. Isaac doesn’t give you the impression of a super-human, one-man army like Duke Nukem or Master Chief. He feels very mortal, very afraid and very lonely; like any Space Engineer would be trying to combat the living dead on what was supposed to be a repair mission. Isaac doesn’t move very fast, his aim is quite slow (no this is not a design fault) and he isn’t very adept at hand-to-hand combat.

The locale is not only extremely well-designed but for once, everything in the setting MAKES SENSE. The Ishimura feels like a real, deep-space, mining vessel; not just a series of meaningless, inter-connected, metallic corridors with dim lighting and computer panels on the walls (I'm looking at you Doom 3).

There are numerous decks, roughly modelled after large military ships, all serving very specific and necessary tasks (i.e. the Flight Deck, where you first dock, Crew Quarters, where everyone sleeps, Medical Deck, where the infirmary is, Hydroponics Deck, which purifies the oxygen on-board and provides the entire ship's food supply). Everything is linked together via the centrally-located tram, which is basically the spine of the Ishimura and your continual source of progression in the game.

Everything makes sense. The artistic designers and graphic artists did their homework, and made a very believable and plausible world for you to explore. The technology you come across in the Ishimura doesn’t ever make you stop and go “Oh yeah right, like that could ever happen”. Zero-Gravity chambers, the Asteroid Defence System which protects the hull from rock impacts, the breath-taking Bridge, the way rooms compress and decompress when oxygen escapes/enters, the gravity tethers that hold giant objects in place, the deafening silence of a vacuum, even the little, nit-picky details like having numerous toilets on each deck or how quarantine is trigged when Necromorphs breaking into a room through the air vents… it just makes freakin’ sense.

What doesn't make sense though, at least at first, are your enemy: the Necromorphs (“Shape of Death” in Latin, I like that). The grotesque, walking, body-part scrapyards that roughly resemble parts of dead carcasses slapped together in random order.

They are uncomfortable to watch and even less pleasant to fight; your enemy in this game has that unique element of blending vague, human-like qualities with the most inhuman purposes, e.g. deformed babies that scurry along the walls with 3 retractable tentacles that can fire organic missiles at you.

They are incredibly well-designed creatures, very frightening and utterly relentless. You have to slice and dice your way into victory in Dead Space, there are no "BOOM HEADSHOT!" shortcuts. Just limb loppin' good times to be had.

The story is probably the best and most original (a rarity for EA nowadays) in the Survival Horror genre since Resident Evil and Silent Hill came out over a decade ago. The way it blends a love story with religious fanaticism and philosophy, as well a sinister agenda by the powers that be is very well done. The script is honestly more well-written and fleshed out than most horror films released nowadays. The numerous plot twists and character developments are flawlessly integrated into the gameplay, happening at just the right moments, never distracting you from your immediate goals and revealing just enough to keep you satisfied in your quest for understanding but never too much to allow you to figure out the story well before its conclusion.

The story is delivered in the tried-and-true storytelling method of past Survival Horror games: audio & video logs. In much the same way as System Shock 2, Doom 3 and BioShock reveal the background of what led to the disastrous downfall of their once Utopian settings, Dead Space will provide you often with cryptic and some not-so-cryptic voices/faces from the past describing most of what went on before Isaac and the USG Kellion arrived. I was genuinely surprised at the last two chapters of the game.

The designers really got me with some totally unexpected revelations.

Finally, as most know, sound design is everything when you’re trying to recreate a living nightmare of never-ending tension and suspense. What Dead Space does differently is not having an ambient sound design which is overlayed with a composed soundtrack, like almost all games these days. Dead Space has a continual, background sound track that is primarily composed of sound effects, cues and faint verbal whispering with subtle rhythms and music being used VERY sparingly and only in certain locations (e.g. each time you board and exit the tram).

This means essentially, whenever you’re not dissecting Necromorphs like high school biology projects, you are immersed the dark and eerie sounds of the Ishimura as the game’s ambient soundtrack. Is that metal clanking in the distance a broken machine or someone moving around? Am I really hearing those voices in my head or is it just my imagination? The beauty of the ambient sounds is that they blend so well into the game play to frighten you, for example; every time you receive a video transmission from the few living, breathing humanoids on the Ishimura a loud, electronic distortion noise breaks the silence; which if you’re in a pitch-dark room that is very quiet, can literally jolt you awake. Whenever you enter a vacuum, almost NOTHING can be heard (which is scientifically accurate as sound waves need air to travel any meaningful distance) aside from Isaac’s magnetic boots stomping on the floor and his labored breathing, which is terrific at allowing Necromorphs to come up right behind you, without you knowing until a pointy appendage dangles over Isaac’s head.

However the shining example of the excellent sound design in the game goes unequivocally to the voice acting, particularly via the rest of your crew, although the in-game audio logs are incredibly heart-felt and emotionally delivered. Many have praised it as Hollywood-quality voice acting and that’s because quite a number of the voice actors in the game are experienced Hollywood actors who have starred in big-budget, blockbusters like Peter Mensah from Avatar, 300, Tears of the Sun and Navid Negahban from TV shows like NCIS, 24 and CSI.

The Bad
Yes it does get predictable mid-way through the game, but so does every single other Survival Horror title once you've become desensitized to it. Some of the objectives you’re given are quite tedious and dull, (you will seriously regret Isaac’s career choice to become an Engineer, as the rest of your crew treat you as the universal DIY “fix-it” man) and some of the “peek-a-boo” scares are very predictable as are the different Necromorph types once you fight them enough times, but I mean, how clever can reanimated, dead body parts be?

Towards the end of the game, which clocks in at a respectable 12 hours of solid gameplay for most (maybe 11 or 10 if you're very accustomed with Survival Horror like I am), the designers crammed in a succession of major plot twists, stunning revelations and one big disappointment after another (from Isaac’s perspective) that will leave you feel slightly weary, unsure of the story and eager to conclude the events of the game. Several major plot twists are revealed in the space of just an hour or so, which I thought felt a bit rushed and panicky.

Aside from the last two chapters, which are noticeably shorter and have a frenzied pace, the ending is very climactic rest assured, and the game never let me down in my opinion. I was always engaged in the story, always intrigued by the latest revelations and always unsure where I would end up 10 minutes from now.

Survival Horror at its essence is about making the player feel less-than, inferior, helpless, desperate, unaware of the larger forces at work and giving him no glimmers of hope in the near future until it concludes.

Dead Space succeeds with flying colors in all aspects. Technically, on the PC version, there are no major deal-breakers or glitches aside from the widely reported “mouse lag” issue (which is actually to do with the frame rate being capped at 30 FPS instead of the more common 60 FPS) but which can very easily be rectified by forcing Visual Sync on in your graphics driver's control panel and then disabling VSync in the game’s visual settings menu. That did the trick for me.

The Bottom Line
Think of the dark corridors of Doom 3, the ruthlessly fast and hideously ugly zombies of Resident Evil, the "ghost town"-like planet colony of Aliens and the haunting atmosphere of Silent Hill, a place that was once a normal, likeable locale... and you have Dead Space. If you're at all a fan of Survival Horror, Science-Fiction settings or FPS games, or even better all of the above, then you’re going to enjoy the heck out Dead Space.

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.

The Good
Good character-design.

Inventory is pretty clever.

Good scares are actually pretty common in this game.

You always know where to go.

The Bad
All enemies are killed in exactly the same way.

Chapters drag on for way too long.

Plot is not interesting in the slightest.

Level-design is very monotone.

Very little challenge.

The Bottom Line
Story

The story starts off with engineer Isaac on a spaceship with a small crew. The ship has been send to check up on a so-called planet-cracker vessel whose communication went completely silent. It doesn't take very long to realize that it's not just an unplugged telephone causing the trouble, as the ship has been infected with a mysterious alien race and most of the crew has been killed already. Isaac gets separated from his pals and has to find a way to escape the Ishimura (as the ship is called) with his life in tact, along the way he is also looking for his wife who was stationed at the ship.

It sounds like a pretty good setup and the Alien franchise has proven to us before that been trapped on a spaceship with alien lifeforms is frightening as all hell. The story itself is not very fantastic, but it does a good job at putting our hero in the worst places imaginable and is thus sufficient. My only gripe lies with the ever-so-important pacing, which is very bad in this title. There are a total of twelve chapters, but I stopped caring around the fifth, simply because each level drags on for eternities and just keeps getting longer and longer with every second. Every time you think you're done with a chapter, some plot-event demands you to travel halfway across the sector again to fix some broken computer or do some other engineer business.

I also briefly mentioned the side-story involving Isaac's missing wife, which might have seemed a bit too relevant to skim over. The intro features a brief message from her, but then it's not brought up again for almost half the game. It's a shame, because with such little narrative, it becomes even more obvious that most of the game consists of running through the same metal corridors for long amounts of time.

Gameplay

Since Isaac is an engineer, he is naturally not very familiar with the working of guns. What he does know, however, is how to use sharp objects and that's fortunate since the alien lifeforms are full of limps. This is what makes the combat in this game work, unlike a Resident Evil or Left 4 Dead, enemies can't just be killed by regular gunfire. The most effective way is to cut off their limbs, since that not only kills them faster, but also makes sure that they are less effective when they are brought back to life by some other foe. The combat also feels gratifying because of the great impact each weapon has, it genuinely feels like you have a power-tool in your hands and are mowing through fleshy foes.

Besides fighting your way through enemies, Isaac also has to do a lot of running around. Since this is a horror game, much of the emphasis lies on building atmosphere. This is however handicapped by the fact that all enemies are very weak. You might be shocked when an enemy jumps through a vent in front of you, but one good shot at their tentacles will stun them and a second shot will break them completely. All enemies succumb to this tactic: just aim for whatever limbs you see and cut them off. This eventually resulted in me still using the starting pistol several hours into the game and all the fancy tools in the shop just went completely by me.

The rest of the gameplay is very basic: missions consist of Isaac running around an area of the Ishimura looking for items to open up a path or a way to fix some broken systems. It's nice that it sorta sticks with the whole Engineering gag, but the events lack any sort of fun-factor. Sometimes you have to do a short puzzle, but the mechanics usually limit this to either picking something up or slowing it down, since that is all Isaac can really do. Sometimes you're in zero-gravity getting absolutely lost, but not in an engaging or interesting way and at other times you have to do little mini-games to progress, but these all control like absolute shit.

Presentation

The first hour or so was really frightening for me, since I had to run away from fucked-up monstrosities with no means of defense. Even when I found the pistol, it seemed very weak to me and I refrained from exploring too much. The sighing and breathing I heard coming from the other side of walls kept me on edge and, dang it, I was having a load of fun. As described in the Gameplay section of the review, though, it wasn't meant to last. When I realized just how feeble enemies were it sucked all the horror from the presentation and the few times the game did present me with a new foe, I could just freeze it with stasis and fire away at whatever obvious weak-spot we were using this time around.

When frightening the player no longer works, then trying to amaze them with jaw-dropping scenery is a good road to take. This should not be too difficult in practice, since we are already in space anyway. Just show us some awesome stars, planets and spaceships and you should be good. However, the game rarely goes outside and when it does, the view is often too limited to allow any kind of sightseeing. You also can't breath, which is quite logical when you think about it. A real waste, but at least the gory presentation during combat makes up for some of it. I just love the sounds of limbs been cut off...

Replay-value

Not recommended. The game is pretty long and lack the variety needed to justify a second run through it. You could make it a big interesting by using different weapons than before, picking a higher difficulty or taking different routes in the upgrade trees, but it's definitely limited to the fans only.

Verdict

I couldn't be bothered to make it to the end of Dead Space, simply because the pacing is just so bad. Spending hours tracking through various similarly-looking hallways with little to no combat or narrative to keep you engaged is pretty boring. It could have worked if the atmosphere they were trying to present worked well with the enemies they used, but it really doesn't work. It's like greeting your new neighbor every day, the first few times are interesting and you might feel the need to strike up a conversation, but after a few days you are just going to say "hi" and mozy along to work. That's my relationship with the necromorphs in a nutshell, except the greeting is a saw-blade.

If you are easier to scare than me, then the atmosphere might really get to you and if that happens, then I can recommend it to you. Ask yourself just how easily you lose yourself in a horrifying setpiece (a Silent Hill, perhaps) and you will know whether or not you should get this game.