Dead Space Review: Meet Your Marker
Survival horror games are right in my wheelhouse. Whether that involves fending off zombies in an abandoned house, crawling your way through a diseased town, or fighting off the disgusting manifestations of the characters own mind, I’m in. I love being frightened while playing games.
Dead Space is a great newcomer to the genre, and with it being a Sci-Fi setting, it’s hard for me not to love it immediately. Well, almost. The demo that’s available on Xbox Live left me confused as to how a game that is essentially a third-person, survival horror space story left me underwhelmed. It’s just not good. Once you play the first chapter however, it becomes clear what is great about this game.
Everything.
What It’s About
You control Isaac Clarke, an engineer, as he and his crew travel to a non-responsive deep space mining ship called the USG Ishimura. What starts out as a simple reconnaissance mission turns into a violent fight for survival against an alien infestation of “Necromorphs” and all Isaac has to defend himself are his assorted mining tools and an air-tight work suit.
What’s Awesome
Welcome To Hell: Isaac travels everywhere on the Ishimura (the engine room, flight deck, sleeping quarters, etc), and even makes his way onto a second ship and the surface of a planet during the course of the game. Each area has its own feel and quirks, making every time you step off the tram that connects the sections a surprise.
Did You Hear That?: It’s one thing when you an enemy startles you, screams, and attacks. It’s a whole different story when you can hear the thing clanking around in the ducts and vents only to have them never appear, or show up later on. Add that to the silence of the vacuum of space and humming engines and this game sounds amazing.
Original But Familiar: It’s hard to be truly original with Science Fiction. A lot of the basic stories have been told and re-told. Most of them involve spaceships, religion, wars, lasers and aliens. The one thing Dead Space does is make the characters surprise you. I never guessed the twist at the end and I was constantly guessing who was on my side and who was against me. It was a little hard relating to the Gordon Freeman-like Isaac, but it was better if you thought of him as a version of yourself. I plan on watching the prequel animated movie and reading the online comics, and I’m excited to see where they take the franchise in the future.
Showing Only What You Need: I usually don’t like “real-time” inventory, and missing HUDs in video games, but Dead Space does it really well. All of your HUD elements (health, ammo, various gauges, etc.) are shown using glowing meters on the back of his suit or using LEDs on the weapons themselves. Health packs are mapped to a button for easy healing and there are plenty of breaks to catch your breath and get yourself situated.
Say Hello To My Little Friends: Using mining tools for weapons is a great idea, and it’s even better when you have cutting tools that fire flat lines of plasma, saws that hold their blades suspended a few feet out in front of you while they spin, and other assortments of death-bringers. It makes it even more interesting that you have to use them to dismember the limbs of your opponents to bring them down, as headshots and body attacks do little damage to the Necromorphs. You also get a concentrated slow-motion suit add-on, to freeze the enemies, and a Half-Life-esque kinesis module that allows you to pick up and move large objects.
What’s Annoying
Die And Die Again: Trial and error in some games isn’t that detrimental to the experience. A lot of games — especially puzzle and rhythm games — thrive on the “one more try” model. It will even work in the occasional action/shooter. Because of the checkpoint system in Dead Space, it does little harm to enter a room, and get so overwhelmed by enemies, that you just let Isaac die and try again, to learn the patterns. This goes somewhat against the survival theme, and may be cheap, but I’ll trade this little annoyance for the truly challenging experience that Dead Space is.
Incoming Garbage: The tiny asteroid shooting gallery section of the game is just pure garbage. It’s frustrating to try to shoot incoming space rocks with guns that overheat too quickly and have slow reaction times. It makes sense for the story — and is thankfully short — but I could have done without it.
If you couldn’t tell by my ridiculously long review, I really liked Dead Space. It has all the elements that I like in video games: interesting story, cool environments, creative game mechanics and an immersive aesthetic. If you’re a fan of the survival horror or third-person action genres, Dead Space is definitely something you need to try.
About Game Reviews: Since I usually buy my video games on the cheap, it means I don’t play them immediately after they are released very often and my reviews are “old news”. I know there are many reviews for the games I play already available online, and I don’t expect to be considered a review source. I simply like video games, and thought I would share what I think of the games I play.
Thanks for reading.
Comments
Thanks for reading! If you liked, or didn't like, what you read, let me know by leaving a comment.
danny. Posted on 05.14.09 at 14:07
I liked it too. I look forward to seeing some slightly delayed reviews. What was old is new again and so forth.
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