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EA’s entry into survival horror contains some of the genres most frightening scares.
Dead Space was hyped from its announcement—the magazine where the game debuted boasted that it came from a renegade developer at EA—but from our experience the game meets the hype.
Dead Space takes place several hundred years in the future. Mankind has exhausted the Earth’s natural resources and has to obtain new resources from other planets in space. They do so by dispatching ships to various planets, splitting them, taking their resources, and exporting these resources back to earth. One of the ships that does this, the USG Ishimura, is famous for its “planet cracking” since it has completed more than any other ship. On a standard mission, however, the ship loses contact with its central command, and raises some suspicion. Your team is then dispatched to the USH Ishimura to figure out what’s going on. You play as Issac Clarke, an engineer in the team. You’ll soon find that the new crash is destroyed and the team is attacked by creatures called Necromorphs. They end up killing most of the team, forcing Issac to figure out exactly what’s happening.
One of Dead Space’s biggest strengths is that it provides many tense moments. The only way to defeat Necromorphs is by blasting off their limbs, which will eventually cause enough damage to them. They can take direct hits just fine. As you progress through the game, you’ll encounter more and more enemies, especially at the same time, forcing you to focus and question your survival since you’re seeing limbs go all over the place. This plays off the game’s surroundings, which are frankly terrifying. You know something is wrong as soon as you begin the game and it gets worse. You’ll move from simply eerie areas to areas with limbs and blood on the walls to areas completed infested by the Necromorphs. There are plenty of moments designed you make you jump up—and they work—but the overall atmosphere is superb.
The game makes clever use of Clarke’s engineering background. You won’t have standard weapons in the game—Clarke will have to create them by rewiring existing tools at his disposal. This, in turn, allows you to make the weapons rather powerful by making them do more damage, reload quicker, etc. You can also use your engineering skills to improve the space suit you’re in to make it more durable, for example. You can even rewire the suit to allow you to freeze or throw items at enemies. You won’t be able to max out all of the statistics, forcing you to strategize and focus on certain things since some skills are more effective than others for particular enemies.
Another clever feature is that the game doesn’t use a traditional HUD. You receive messages and check inventory on-the-fly with a hologram that pops up in front of you. Your health is shown on the back of your character and your ammo is displayed on a hologram above your gun. It all helps with the immersion, especially when you notice that Isaac moves his head to follow the hologram as you move the character around.
Once you’ve played the singleplayer campaign, which should take about 12 hours, you have the option of re-playing the game with your current statistics and unlocked equipment. It’s fun to re-play the game as a super-powerful Issac, but unfortunately, you can’t change the difficulty level to a higher one, making the game a bit too easy. There is a new, fourth difficulty level that unlocks once you play the game but you’ll have to start from scratch to play it.
The game isn’t perfect. There are some zero-gravity areas with sometimes frustrating camera work that makes them harder than they should be. There’s also quite a bit of backtracking, which actually makes a lot of sense conceptually but is a bit annoying in practical gameplay. A quick turn-around ability would also have been appreciated, if done properly. As would the ability to replay the game at a higher difficulty level while keeping your equipment. But in the grand scheme of things, these are nitpicks in an otherwise outstanding game.
Dead Space is a visually stunning game—in both technical and artistic terms. Issac’s character model looks great and distinct enough from other sci-fi space suits. The level of detail, though, on the suit is amazing, especially as you pile on upgrades. The Necromorphs also shift quite crazily throughout the adventure. The framerate keeps up with the game even when there are countless limbs flying around the area. The same goes for the weapons. The animation in the game is also superb, and really helps a lot with the immersion. Lastly, as mentioned above, EA Redwood Shores did a stellar job making the different levels and portions of the ship look distinct, eerie, and (when appropriate) gory.
Likewise, the audio in the game is stellar. The game’s sound effects, especially the atmospheric effects, all sound great and further immerse you into the world. The sound design makes you fear for your life when you hear Necromorphs moving closer to you and makes you feel sorry for these same enemies when they’re screaming for their life. The voice acting in the game is also fantastic and extremely well done.
Dead Space shows the beginnings of a very strong franchise. EA Redwood Shores nailed the genre with Dead Space. On one hand, you have a very violent and gory game with tons of action. On the other, you have a fulfilling and well-told story with plenty of plot twists. Holding them together is a superb atmosphere that truly immerses you into this world. Essentially, you’re looking at a must-have. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Oct 13, 2008
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